World News

LONDON (AP) — Investigation into lockdown parties says people at top allowed ‘culture’ of rule-breaking in UK prime minister’s office.

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SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Authorities in Bulgaria said Wednesday that the bodies of seven people were discovered outside a cemetery near the capital.

Police said that according to initial data, the bodies buried in a forest without coffins belonged to older adults who had died of natural causes.

One of the theories investigators are exploring is that the people lived in various hospices in Sofia and were buried as part of an unregulated funeral scheme.

A 51-year-old funeral agent has been detained in the case and charged with fraud. Authorities believe he was part of a larger group and more bodies could be discovered.

Police alleged the agent took the bodies from care homes, supposedly for cremation, and instead buried them in the forest close to the cemetery.

Pre-trial proceedings, including DNA tests of the deceased, have started in the case.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Eleven people, eight of them women, were killed in simultaneous shooting attacks on two bars in north-central Mexico, authorities said Tuesday.

Handwritten signs left at the scenes of the killings suggested the attacks were part of a rivalry between two drug cartels that have been battling for control of Guanajuato state for several years.

Police in the city of Celaya said the attacks occurred late Monday at two bars on the same street. They said 10 of the victims died at the scene, and another was declared dead at a hospital later.

Police confirmed that messages were left at the scene, but did not confirm what they said. But photos posted on social media suggested the killers were from the Santa Rosa de Lima gang. The messages appeared to accuse the bars’ owners of supporting the rival Jalisco cartel.

The photos showed women — it was not clear if they were bar employees or customers — heaped in pools of blood between tables. Part of one bar also appeared to have been partly burned.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister said Tuesday that improved ties with Israel will not come at the expense of its commitment to supporting the Palestinians and the two-state solution to the conflict.

Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke in the Palestinian administrative headquarters in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank during a joint press conference with his Palestinian counterpart, Riad Malki.

Cavusoglu’s meeting with Palestinian officials comes a day before he makes a landmark visit to Israel. It would be the first visit to the region by a senior Turkish official in 15 years.

“We are leading the normalization process in coordination with Palestinian authorities,” Cavusoglu said. “Our support for the Palestinian cause is completely independent of the course of our relations with Israel.”

Cavusoglu said that dialogue with Israel would “make an important contribution to the reduction of tensions, as it did during Ramadan, and … will also contribute to making the Palestinian cause or the voice of the Palestinians to be heard stronger.”

The foreign minister’s visit to Israel is another sign of efforts by the two former allies to improve long strained relations. Earlier this year, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the first official visit by an Israeli leader in 14 years.

Turkey and Israel once were close allies but relations grew strained under Erdogan, who is an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Israel also has been angered by Erdogan’s embrace of Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist group.

The countries withdrew their respective ambassadors in 2010 after Israeli forces stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians that broke an Israeli blockade. The incident resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists.

Relations broke down again in 2018 when Turkey, angered by the U.S. moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, once more recalled its ambassador, prompting Israel to respond in kind. The two countries have not reappointed their ambassadors.

On Wednesday, Cavusoglu will meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, visit Israel’s main Holocaust memorial and pay a private visit to Jerusalem’s flashpoint holy site, known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

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By Josephine Mason

(Reuters) -The World Health Organization does not have evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated, a senior executive at the U.N. agency said on Monday, noting the infectious disease that has been endemic in west and central Africa has tended not to change.

Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat that is part of the WHO Emergencies Programme, told a briefing that mutations tended to be typically lower with this virus, although genome sequencing of cases will help inform understanding of the current outbreak.

Health experts watch for concerning mutations that could make a virus more easily transmissible or severe.

Over 100 suspected and confirmed cases in a recent outbreak in Europe and North America have not been severe, said Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses lead and technical lead on COVID-19.

“This is a containable situation,” particularly in Europe, she said. “But we can’t take our eye off the ball with what’s happening in Africa, in countries where it’s endemic.”

The outbreaks are atypical, according to the WHO, occurring in countries where the virus does not regularly circulate. Scientists are seeking to understand the origin of the cases and whether anything about the virus has changed.

The WHO is asking dermatology and primary healthcare clinics, as well as sexual health clinics, to be alert to potential cases.

PROACTIVE PATIENTS

Many – but not all – of the people who have been diagnosed in the current monkeypox outbreak have been men who have sex with men (MSM).

The officials said it was too early to say why, but this demographic may be likely to seek medical advice or have access to sexual health screening.

Monkeypox does not usually spread easily between people, but it can be passed through close person-to-person contact or contact with items used by a person who has monkeypox, such as clothes, bedding or utensils.

“We know that MSM if they do spot an unusual rash, they’re likely to want to get it sorted out quite quickly,” said Andy Seale, strategies adviser at the Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and STI Programmes at the WHO.

“The fact they’ve been proactive in responding to unusual symptoms might be part of the story. This will become clearer in the weeks and days to come,” Seale said.

Van Kerkhove said she expected more cases to be identified as surveillance expands.

Asked whether the early findings may fuel discrimination, Seale said: “There are ways we can work with communities to learn from decades of experience around tackling stigma and discrimination with HIV. We want to apply those lessons learned to this experience.”

U.S. health officials said at a press briefing on Monday that one case of monkeypox in Massachusetts has been confirmed and they have identified four additional presumed cases, one each in New York City and Florida, and two in Utah.

All were men with a history of international travel consistent with the types of exposures that have been seen elsewhere, they said.

FACTBOX-Monkeypox cases around the world[ nL5N2XF1XF]EXPLAINER-How concerned should we be about monkeypox?

(Reporting by Josephine Mason in London; Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New Jersey; editing by John Stonestreet, Ed Osmond and Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States issued an advisory on Monday warning U.S. companies of growing reputational risks of doing business with state-owned enterprises and military-controlled firms in Sudan.

“These risks arise from, among other things, recent actions undertaken by Sudan’s Sovereign Council and security forces under the military’s command, including and especially serious human rights abuse against protesters,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

The African country has been racked by protests since a military coup in October, and lawyers say dozens of political prisoners remain in detention.

“Businesses and individuals operating in Sudan should undertake increased due diligence related to human rights issues and be aware of the potential reputational risks of conducting business activities and/or transactions with SOEs and military-controlled companies,” Price said.

The advisory was issued by the U.S. departments of State, Treasury, Commerce and Labor, he said.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Bernard Orr)

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BOGOTA (Reuters) – A team of Colombian soldiers will travel to Europe to train their Ukrainian counterparts on de-mining techniques, the South American country’s defense minister said on Monday.

Colombia’s nearly 60 years of internal conflict between the armed forces, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels has made it one of the world’s most-mined countries, according to the United Nations. Landmines have killed 2,342 people in Colombia and injured close to 10,000 since 1990, according to the government.

Russian soldiers and Ukrainian authorities both have said they will clear landmines from various locations in Ukraine amid the ongoing invasion launched by Russia in February.

The experts from Colombia, which is a NATO partner, were invited to give the training by the United States, Colombian defense minister Diego Molano said in a statement.

“This training will be given by 11 military engineers who will go to a NATO member country which is a neighbor of Ukraine,” Molano said.

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Will Dunham)

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(Reuters) – Representatives of seven nations, including those who walked out of an Asia-Pacific trade ministers meeting in Bangkok to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said on Sunday they support the organization and host nation Thailand.

Representatives of the United States, Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand said in a joint statement that they had “grave concerns” over the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

“Reaffirming the importance of the rules-based international order that underpins an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific region, we strongly urge Russia to immediately cease its use of force and completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from Ukraine,” the nations said.

Representatives from Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia joined the Americans, led by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, in walking out of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting on Saturday.

The walkout took place while Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov was delivering remarks at the opening of the two-day meeting of the group of 21 economies.

The delegations from five countries that staged the protest returned to the meeting after Reshetnikov finished speaking, a Thai official said.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Paul Simao)

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — At least five people were shot to death Sunday night at a public housing complex in Puerto Rico, authorities said.

Police spokesman Axel Valencia told The Associated Press that the deaths occurred in the community of Caimito in San Juan, capital of the U.S. territory. He said the group was shot outside the Villa Esperanza housing complex.

Valencia said that police had not yet identified the victims and that it wasn’t immediately clear why they were targeted.

No one had been arrested.

Last month, police reported that two men were found fatally shot inside an overturned car at the same public housing complex.

At least 235 people have been reported killed in the island of 3.2 million so far this year, compared with 234 during the same period of last year.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed in a Brussels meeting on Sunday to work further on a peace plan for Nagorno-Karabakh that has stoked a wave of protests in Yerevan over opposition claims that Pashinyan is being too soft.

European Council President Charles Michel held bilateral talks with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan before they had a trilateral at which Karabakh was discussed.

“The leaders agreed to advance discussions on the future peace treaty governing inter-state relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Michel said in a statement after the meeting, adding that foreign ministers will meet “in the coming weeks.”

A commission on border delimitation and border security will start work in “the coming days,” with Aliyev and Pashinyan agreeing also on the need to proceed with unblocking transport links between the two countries.

A simmering dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared into a six-week war in 2020.

Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around Nagorno-Karabakh before Russia brokered a ceasefire.

Baku said Aliyev told Michel “that Azerbaijan had laid out five principles based on international law for the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and for the signing of a peace agreement.”

Armenia’s Pashinyan discussed with Michel the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh, humanitarian issues and stressed the need to resolve them, the Armenian prime minister’s office said.

But Pashinyan is under pressure at home from opponents who say he mishandled the 2020 war and claim his recent public statements indicate he is giving up too much to Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan has faced a series of protests over recent weeks in Yerevan since he said the international community wanted Armenia to “lower the bar” on its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The unrest also coincides with Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has prompted many former Soviet neighbours to reassess their own security just as Moscow is preoccupied with the biggest confrontation with the West for generations.

Michel said that another trilateral meeting will be held by July or August.

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge in London and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Michael Perry)

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