World News

By Jasper Ward and Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of State has started a review of the more than 50 Mexican consulates operating in the United States, a State Department official said on Thursday.

The move, which comes amid tense relations between Mexico and the U.S., could result in the closure of some diplomatic offices, the official said.

“Department of State is constantly reviewing all aspects of American foreign relations to ensure they are in line with the president’s America First foreign policy agenda and advance American interests,” Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said when reached for comment.

The news of the review was first reported by CBS News.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mexican immigrants have the largest immigrant population in the United States with at least 37 million people of Mexican origin living in the U.S. in 2021, according to Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

As a result, Mexico – with whom the U.S. shares a southern border – has an expansive foreign consular network in the United States with its offices providing an array of services for residents, including legal services.

A host country’s closure of consulates can reflect strained diplomatic relations with a home country. In 2020, the State Department ordered the closure of China’s consulate in Houston, Texas, after accusing Beijing of espionage activities. 

U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have had a somewhat tense relationship since he returned to the White House last year.

Tensions peaked last month after two U.S. officials were killed in a car crash. Those Americans were officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, sources said.

Sheinbaum has also been outspoken about the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., after several Mexican nationals have been killed in anti-immigration operations in the United States. 

(Reporting by Jasper Ward and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Additional reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey, Mexico; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Salvadoran investigative outlet El Faro announced Thursday that two of its members’ assets, including a bank account and property, were frozen, in what it denounced as an escalation of political persecution for its work exposing corruption in the government of President Nayib Bukele.

“It’s another level of attack against us with a clear purpose,” El Faro Director Carlos Dada said in a news conference Thursday. “These are not fiscal measures. They are political measures trying to silence us.”

El Faro has publicly sparred with Bukele over its investigations into corruption during his administration, including revelations that his administration negotiated with gangs. The latest move comes shortly after the outlet released a documentary with PBS Frontline about the gang negotiations.

Bukele, who rose to power on an anti-corruption platform in 2019 as the region’s youngest leader, has faced increasing criticism from human rights groups for his crackdown on dissent and abuses under a four-year state of exception that has imprisoned more than 91,000 people.

Bukele’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he has called the outlet’s reporting “fake news” in the past.

The outlet learned of the freezing of assets through the bank and property registry, according to Dada, rather than through formal notification from the government.

The outlet has been subject to ongoing audits by Salvadoran authorities since 2020, in which the government alleges it has evaded $200,000 in taxes, which Dada denied.

El Faro journalists have been the target of spyware attacks, and Pegasus was detected on more than 20 of its journalists’ iPhones in 2022. Its journalists sued NSO Group in United States federal court later that year.

In 2023, the outlet moved its headquarters to Costa Rica because of the country’s repressive climate and all its members currently live in exile outside of El Salvador.

Bukele’s crackdown intensified in 2025 with the arrest of prominent human rights activist Ruth López, who is in prison a year later without a trial and limited access to family and legal counsel. Shortly after, in July 2025, the country’s leading human rights organization where she worked, Cristosal, announced it was leaving El Salvador because of mounting harassment and legal threats.

The practice of launching audits and confiscating assets has been weaponized in other parts of the region to intimidate critics, most notably in Nicaragua under President Daniel Ortega.

Claudia Paz y Paz, the director of Costa Rican-based Center for Justice and International Law, which is representing El Faro in its case before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, said in the Thursday news conference that the measure is “retaliation” for El Faro’s work and that it seeks to “silence the voices of journalists.”

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Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese military court gave suspended death sentences Thursday to two former defense ministers who were accused of bribery, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The court said Wei Fenghe was guilty of accepting bribes and sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. It said Li Shangfu was guilty of accepting and offering bribes, and handed him the same sentence.

Suspended death sentences are often commuted to life in prison in China.

The sentences are the latest in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign of purging senior officials. Xi started an anti-corruption drive more than a decade ago and his drive has continued unabated, culminating in the removal of China’s highest ranking general and military leadership in January. China’s powerful Central Military Commission, which in years past had 11 members, now has just one member aside from Xi himself.

While the drive targets corruption, Xi has also used anti-corruption as a way to consolidate political loyalty and control among the political elite.

It is unclear whether either men had policy or political disagreements with Xi.

Wei served as defense minister from 2018 until 2023. Li succeeded him but served for just months before disappearing from public view. He was removed from office in October 2023.

Li spent most of his career as a specialist in the missile and procurement branches of China’s People’s Liberation Army, and had faced travel and financial sanctions from the U.S. over the purchase of Russian military hardware.

The Communist Party expelled both men from its ranks in 2024, sealing their fate.

Li’s replacement, Dong Jun, continues to serve as defense minister. However, experts note that he was not appointed to the once powerful Central Military Commission, which oversees the military and is a standard appointment for someone in that role.

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LONDON, May 7 (Reuters) – British counter-terrorism police have arrested a 19-year-old man in connection with an attempted arson attack on a synagogue in north London last month, marking the third arrest in the investigation, the force said on Thursday.

The man was arrested on suspicion of attempted arson and remains in custody, police said. The investigation relates to an incident in the early hours of April 15 at a synagogue in Finchley, north London, in which no damage was caused and no injuries were reported.

A 38-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man were arrested on the day of the attack on suspicion of arson endangering life. Both have since been released on bail until July.

Police said the inquiry is being led by Counter Terrorism Policing London and forms part of a wider set of investigations into recent arson attacks across the capital.

(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; editing by William James)

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MOSCOW, May 7 (Reuters) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Armenia was being drawn into what it described as the European Union’s “anti‑Russian orbit”.

The comment by the ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, was a sign of increasing tensions between the two countries, formerly close allies, after Armenian officials accused Russia of failing to protect it from neighbour and longtime rival Azerbaijan.

Zakharova told reporters that Armenia, with the approval of its leadership, was becoming aligned with what she described as “aggressive Euro-Atlantic standards”.

“Such a course will inevitably lead to negative political and economic consequences for Armenia,” she said in a briefing.

Armenia has in recent years sought to deepen ties with the EU, including by hosting the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Yerevan on May 4 and a follow‑up EU-Armenia summit, bringing more than 40 European leaders to the capital.

Ties between Russia and Armenia, host to various Russian military bases, have grown increasingly rancorous since Azerbaijan forcibly retook its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 despite the presence there of Russian peacekeepers.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, Writing by Anna Peverieri; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Gareth Jones)

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May 7 (Reuters) – The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said on Thursday it had arrested 21 Croatians, including an acting and a former public official, in a probe into possible corruption and fraud involving European Union farm subsidies.

The head and a former expert adviser of a payment agency of agricultural funds in one of Croatia’s counties were among those arrested on May 6 in coordination with local police and Croatian tax administration authorities for suspected “abuse of office and authority and receiving bribes”, the EPPO said in a statement.

The EPPO, which began operations in 2021, is the EU’s independent public prosecution office tasked with investigating and bringing to judgment crimes against the bloc’s financial interests. It first announced the investigation into the Croatian affair on Wednesday. 

The acting public official under arrest is suspected of coordinating with farmers to help prepare and submit applications and secure EU farm subsidies under potentially irregular circumstances, in exchange for illicit financial benefits, the EPPO said on Thursday.

It also said a former expert was suspected of having set up a criminal gang with another two suspects to help farmers obtain farm subsidies by inflating pastureland and falsifying documents in return for a financial reward since 2020.

Neither Croatian state police nor a government spokesperson in Zagreb responded immediately to a request for comment.

The arrests followed a scandal in Greece over suspected fraud similarly related to EU farm subsidies that has shaken the centre-right government in recent months.

(Reporting by Angeliki KoutantouEditing by Gareth Jones)

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SARAJEVO, May 7 (Reuters) – Bosnia will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on October 4, the election commission said on Thursday.

About 3.3 million registered voters will choose the Serb, Croat and Bosniak members of the tripartite presidency and deputies in the national parliament. They will also vote for parliaments in Bosnia’s two regions, the Bosniak-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, in the neutral Brcko district and in the federation’s 10 cantons.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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By Nolan D. McCaskill

WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told members of a congressional committee in private testimony on Wednesday that he couldn’t recall why he and his family had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, members said.

Lutnick, the former chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, had lunch with the convicted sex offender for two hours on the island in 2012, contradicting a past public statement about cutting ties with Epstein years earlier.

In a podcast last year, Lutnick said he vowed to “never be in a room” with Epstein after the financier invited Lutnick and his wife around 2005 to tour his townhome where Epstein made a sexually suggestive comment about a massage table he had set up. Lutnick and Epstein were next-door neighbors on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“We asked him over and over again, ‘Why did you go to the island?’” said Representative Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat. “He says he doesn’t remember, that it’s inexplicable and he simply didn’t know how to answer the question.”

Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Lutnick was transparent in his voluntary testimony. Comer said Lutnick told the panel Epstein found out his family and friends were vacationing in the Virgin Islands and invited them all to lunch.

“The only thing that I’d seen that Lutnick did wrong was [he] wasn’t 100% truthful on the brief visit to the island with his family. He corrected that in his opening statement,” Comer told reporters. “If we find that there were any misstatements by Lutnick, it’s a felony to lie to Congress and he’ll be held accountable.”

A massive batch of files released by the Justice Department in January included emails showing Lutnick had apparently visited Epstein’s private island for lunch in 2012. The emails also showed Lutnick invited Epstein to a November 2015 fundraiser at his financial firm for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Lutnick told lawmakers at a February 10 hearing that he and Epstein had only exchanged about 10 emails and met three times over 14 years. His family had lunch with Epstein on the island, Lutnick said, because they were on a boat nearby. 

“I did not have any relationship with him,” Lutnick said of Epstein at the time. “I barely had anything to do with that person.”

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges, including soliciting an underage girl. He was sentenced to 13 months in jail and arrested again in 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. His death that year in a Manhattan jail cell was ruled a suicide.

(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill. Editing by Michael Learmonth and Sanjeev Miglani)

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SEOUL, May 7 (Reuters) – North Korea is not bound to any treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, state media KCNA reported on Thursday.

Kim Song, permanent representative of North Korea to the United Nations, said in a statement the U.S. and some countries are “tarnishing the atmosphere” at the 11th NPT review conference held at UN headquarters, bringing up the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, KCNA said.

The position of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state “does not change in accordance with rhetorical assertion or unilateral desire of outsiders,” Kim said.

(Reporting by Heejin Kim; Editing by Chris Reese)

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By Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON, May 6(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday ruled that the U.S. Justice Department can keep possession of 2020 election ballots seized during an FBI search in January, a victory for President Donald Trump’s administration as it pursues the president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

Atlanta-based U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee rejected Fulton County’s request for the return of original copies of the seized material. Lawyers for the county had argued that the FBI’s search of the county’s election hub relied on faulty and discredited evidence and violated protections under the U.S. Constitution.

A spokesperson for Fulton County didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling is a rare court victory for Trump’s Justice Department in investigations that Trump has demanded. It will allow the FBI to keep possession of more than 600 boxes of 2020 ballots as it pursues a criminal investigation into whether election records were not properly retained or whether residents in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, were defrauded out of a fair election.

But the investigation still faces significant obstacles. DOJ lawyers have not identified any individual targets of the probe and have not disputed claims that the statute of limitations appears to have expired on both crimes prosecutors have said they are investigating.

The dispute was closely watched by election officials and experts across the country as Trump continues to threaten a potential federal government takeover of some local elections and sows doubts about voting ahead of the November elections.

Trump has continued to falsely claim that his defeat in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud and has deployed U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to re-investigate claims about the collection and tallying of votes.

Justice Department lawyers argued that Fulton County had not met the stringent legal standard necessary to secure the return of material seized during a court-approved search.

During the search, which was approved by a federal magistrate judge, FBI agents seized original 2020 ballots and other records from the county’s election center in Union City, Georgia. Authorities cited alleged “deficiencies or ​defects” with the 2020 vote, including ​claims that some digital images of ⁠ballots were missing and some absentee ballots did not appear to have been folded as required.

The investigation began with a referral from Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and has since been tasked ​by the White House with re-examining the vote. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, attended the search in an unusual move for an official whose focus is on foreign threats to the United States.

Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold in a state that has become hotly ​contested in presidential elections, became the center of conspiracy theories and fraud claims spread by Trump and his allies following the 2020 election.

Biden’s wide margin in Fulton County was key to flipping ​Georgia in Democrats’ favor. The state swung back to Trump in 2024.

Lawyers for Fulton County argued that the FBI affidavit used to justify the search omitted crucial context showing that many of its claims had previously been investigated and found to be either unfounded or mistakes that were not the result of intentional misconduct.

During a March court hearing in Atlanta, an election expert who advised the county on the 2020 election testified that much of the evidence cited in the affidavit appears to show a misunderstanding of how elections are conducted.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward. Editing by Michael Learmonth)

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