World News

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s Senate on Thursday approved a major pre-election aid package, sending the government-backed measure to the lower house.

The measures are seen as a crucial pillar of President Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election campaign, and use the energy price spike resulting from the Ukraine war as legal justification for overriding a constitutional spending cap.

The package includes a 1,000 reais ($192.38) aid for self-employed truckers, a key Bolsonaro constituency. It also increases by 50% the amount paid in the Auxilio Brasil social welfare program, and increases a gas voucher.

At the last minute, government-backed senators managed to include in the proposal two more measures, an aid targeting taxi drivers and to grant more funding to an existing food security program.

The two latest benefits will together cost an additional 2.5 billion reais, senators said, bringing the cost of the whole proposal to around 40 billion reais ($7.61 billion).

($1 = 5.2340 reais)

(Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Peter Frontini; Editing by Chris Reese)

source

GENEVA (AP) — The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained relatively similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

The biggest weekly rise in new COVID-19 cases was seen in the Middle East, where they increased by 47%, according to the report released late Wednesday. Infections rose by about 32% in Europe and Southeast Asia, and by about 14% in the Americas, WHO said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said cases were on the rise in 110 countries, mostly driven by the omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5.

“This pandemic is changing, but it’s not over,” Tedros said this week during a press briefing. He said the ability to track COVID-19’s genetic evolution was “under threat” as countries relaxed surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, warning that would make it more difficult to catch emerging and potentially dangerous new variants.

He called for countries to immunize their most vulnerable populations, including health workers and people over 60, saying that hundreds of millions remain unvaccinated and at risk of severe disease and death.

Tedros said that while more than 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally, the average immunization rate in poor countries is about 13%.

“If rich countries are vaccinating children from as young as 6 months old and planning to do further rounds of vaccination, it is incomprehensible to suggest that lower-income countries should not vaccinate and boost their most at risk (people),” he said.

According to figures compiled by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, fewer than half of the 2.1 billion vaccines promised to poorer countries by the Group of Seven large economies have been delivered.

Earlier this month, the United States authorized COVID-19 vaccines for infants and preschoolers, rolling out a national immunization plan targeting 18 million of the youngest children. American regulators also recommended that some adults get updated boosters in the fall that match the latest coronavirus variants.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

source

PARIS (AP) — The lawyer for the only surviving attacker from the November 2015 terrorist massacre in Paris criticized her client’s murder conviction and life prison sentence without the possibility of parole, saying Thursday the verdict “raises serious questions.”

Salah Abdeslam, the chief suspect in the Islamic State attacks on the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and France’s national stadium that killed 130 people, was found guilty Wednesday of murder and attempted murder in relation with a terrorist enterprise, among other charges.

His lawyer, Olivia Ronen, argued throughout a marathon trial of Abdeslam and 19 other men that her client had not detonated his explosives-packed vest and hadn’t killed anyone the night of the deadliest peacetime attacks in French history,

Abdeslam, a 32-year-old Belgian, was given the most severe sentence possible in France for murder and that “raises serious questions,” Ronen said in an interview with public radio station France Inter.

During his trial testimony, Abdeslam told a special terrorist court in Paris that he was a last- minute addition to the nine-member explosives squad that spread out across the French capital on Nov. 13, 2015 to launch the coordinated attacks at multiple sites.

Abdeslam said he walked into a bar with explosives strapped to his body but changed his mind and disabled the detonator. He said he could not kill people “singing and dancing.”

The court found that Abdeslam’s explosives vest malfunctioned, dismissing his claim that he decided not to follow through with his part of the attack because of a change of heart.

The other nine attackers either blew themselves up or were killed by police. The worst carnage was in the Bataclan. Three gunmen burst into the venue, firing indiscriminately. Ninety people died within minutes. Hundreds were held hostage – some gravely injured – for hours before then-President Francois Hollande ordered the theatre stormed.

Abdeslam was nowhere near the Bataclan at any time that night, defense lawyer Ronen said, suggesting he therefore did not deserve France’s most severe murder sentence possible.

“We have condemned a person we know was not at the Bataclan as if he was there,” Ronen said. “That raises serious questions.” She did not say if Abdeslam would appeal the verdict and sentence.

The sentence of life without parole has only been given four times in the country, for crimes related to rape and murder of minors.

The special terrorism court also convicted 19 other men involved in the attacks.

Of the other defendants, 18 were given various terrorism-related convictions, and one was convicted on a lesser fraud charge. Some were given life sentences; others walked free after being sentenced to time served.

They have 10 days to appeal.

___

Surk reported from Nice, France. Associated Press writers Alex Turnbull, Oleg Cetinic and Masha Macpherson in Paris contributed to this report.

source

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Thursday held their first major gathering of Islamic clerics and tribal elders since they seized power in August, with over 3,000 coming to the capital for the event.

Held in the Loya Jirga Hall of Kabul’s Polytechnic University, the meeting aimed to address grievances and a variety of issues, although its agenda was not announced publicly, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman and deputy information and culture minister said.

Women were not allowed to attend the event, although media reports suggested that the reopening of the girls’ schools would be discussed, along with other issues.

The Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi told state broadcaster RTA on Wednesday that the event would be a forum for different views, and “a positive step for stability and strengthening national unity across the country.” Male delegates would represent women, he added.

“The women are our mothers, our sisters, and we respect them. When their sons are in the gathering it means that they are also involved,” he said.

The meeting comes as finance and central bank officials from the Taliban-led government are meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar to discuss economic and aid issues following Afghanistan’s deadly earthquake last week, the latest of the country’s woes.

The Washington Post first reported Tuesday that senior Biden administration officials are working with the Taliban leadership on a mechanism to allow Afghanistan’s government to use its central bank reserves to deal with the country’s severe hunger and poverty crises while erecting safeguards to ensure the funds are not misused.

source

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at breaking an impasse over how to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact have ended in Qatar without the progress “the EU team as coordinator had hoped-for”, EU’s envoy Enrique Mora tweeted on Wednesday.

“We will keep working with even greater urgency to bring back on track a key deal for non-proliferation and regional stability,” Mora said.

The EU-mediated, indirect talks started on Tuesday with Mora as the coordinator, shuttling between Iran’s Ali Bagheri Kani and Washington’s special Iran envoy Rob Malley based in separate rooms in a hotel in Qatar’s capital.

Iran refuses to hold direct talks with its arch-foe, the United States, resulting in the “proximity” talks arrangement involving Mora.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Naser Kanani said Bagheri Kani and Mora “will be in touch about continuing the path and the next stage of the talks”, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

The nuclear pact seemed near revival in March but 11 months of talks between Tehran and major powers in Vienna were thrown into disarray chiefly over Tehran’s insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the IRGC, blamed President Joe Biden administration’s “weakness and its inability to make a final decision” for lack of progress in the talks.

“What prevented these negotiations from coming to fruition is the U.S. insistence on its proposed draft text in Vienna that excludes any guarantees for Iran’s economic benefit,” Tasnim said.

“Washington seeks to revive the deal to put restrictions on Iran without allowing Tehran to gain any economic benefit.”

Under the nuclear pact, Tehran limited its uranium enrichment programme, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons though Iran says it seeks only civilian atomic energy, in exchange for relief from the economic sanctions.

But in 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the deal, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions, spurring Tehran to breach nuclear limits in the pact.

(Writing by Parisa HafeziEditing by Gareth Jones and Lisa Shumaker)

source

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Mali vowed on Wednesday to defy a United Nations Security Council call for the West African country to allow freedom of movement for peacekeepers to investigate human rights abuses.

The council extended a nine-year-old U.N. peacekeeping operation – known as MINUSMA – for another 12 months on Wednesday with 13 votes in favor, while Russia and China also objected to the rights mandate of the mission and abstained.

Mali’s military took power in a 2020 coup and has cut ties with former colonial power France as a Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group, steps in to help with a decade long battle against militants.

MINUSMA says it has documented 320 rights violations by Mali’s military between January and March.

“Mali is not in a position to guarantee the freedom of movement for MINUSMA’s inquiries without prior agreement of the government,” Mali’s U.N. Ambassador Issa Konfourou told the council. “Mali does not intend to comply with these provisions despite them being adopted by the Security Council.”

He said Mali was responsible for investigating any human rights violations.

“MINUSMA must be able to get access to the areas affected in order to carry out its mandate and to publish quarterly reports on human rights. The perpetrators of violations must be brought to justice,” said French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere.

The most notable case being investigated by MINUSMA is in the town of Moura, where witnesses and rights groups say the Malian army accompanied by white fighters killed scores of civilians they suspected of being militants.

Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva described the human rights language in the resolution adopted on Wednesday as “intrusive,” adding that it “will not help to ensure that the Malians enjoy their sovereign right to protect their own citizens and to investigate any incidents.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

source

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A Congolese woman was kidnapped twice by militants in the Democratic Republic of Congo, repeatedly raped and forced to cook and eat human flesh, a Congolese rights group told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday.

Julienne Lusenge, president of women’s rights group Female Solidarity for Integrated Peace and Development (SOFEPADI), told the woman’s story while addressing the 15-member council about the conflict-torn east of Congo.

The U.N. Security Council was meeting for a regular briefing on Congo, where heavy fighting between the government and rebel groups since late May has sparked a surge in violence.

Lusenge said the woman was kidnapped by CODECO militants when she went to pay a ransom for another kidnapped family member. The woman told the rights group that she was repeatedly raped and physically abused. Then she said the militants slit a man’s throat.

“They pulled out his entrails and they asked me to cook them. They brought me two water containers to prepare the rest of the meal. They then fed all of the prisoners human flesh,” Lusenge told the Security Council, recounting the woman’s story.

Lusenge said the woman was released after a few days, but while trying to return home was kidnapped by another militia group whose members also repeatedly raped her.

“Again I was asked to cook and eat human flesh,” the woman, who eventually escaped, told SOFEPADI.

Lusenge did not name the second militant group during her council briefing. CODECO could not be reached for comment.

CODECO is one of several armed militias that have long been fighting over land and resources in Congo’s mineral-rich east – a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced millions over the past decade.

Congo’s army has been locked in heavy fighting since late May with the M23 rebel group, which is waging its most sustained offensive since a 2012-2013 insurrection that seized vast swathes of territory.

U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed in Congo for more than 20 years.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Josie Kao)

source

By Uditha Jayasinghe

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lankan doctors and other medical staff as well as teachers will take to the streets on Wednesday to demand that the government solve a severe fuel shortage at the heart of the South Asian country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Weeks of street demonstrations against cascading problems including power cuts and shortages of food and medicine escalated last month when nine people were killed and about 300 were injured, leading to the resignation of the prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the older brother of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The government, left with only enough fuel to last about a week, on Tuesday restricted supplies to essential services, like trains, buses and the health sector, for two weeks.

But doctors, nurses and other medical staff say that even though they are deemed essential workers, they struggle to find fuel to get to work.

“This is an impossible situation, the government has to give us a solution,” H. M. Mediwatta, secretary of one of Sri Lanka’s largest nursing unions, the All Island Nurses Union, told reporters.

Sri Lanka’s most serious economic crisis since independence in 1948 comes after COVID-19 battered its tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from its overseas workers.

Rising oil prices, populist tax cuts and a seven-month ban on the import of chemical fertilisers last year that devastated agriculture have compounded the woes.

Mediwatta explained how special token meant to ensure medical staff can buy fuel were being ignored at the petrol pumps.

“The people at the pump won’t let us get ahead in the line … We cannot be on time for our shifts.”

Public health inspectors and other health service workers are also on strike on Wednesday and Thursday.

The island nation of 22 million people has nearly run out of usable foreign exchange reserves to import essentials including food, medicine, petrol and diesel.

With a growing sense of crisis, many people have been detained trying to flee the country by boat.

The government is also looking abroad for help.

Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera on Tuesday met Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs and the CEO of Qatar Energy in a bid to secure fuel.

Wijesekera is also seeking a credit line from the Qatar Fund for Development.

Another Sri Lankan minister will travel to Russia at the weekend in search of energy deals.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged $20 million for Sri Lanka to feed more than 800,000 children and 27,000 pregnant women and lactating mothers for the next 15 months, President Rajapaksa said.

Investment firm Asia Securities said the shortages of fuel and other essentials, dwindling reserves, and low fiscal space would remain key concerns for the rest of the year.

The economy could contract by 7.5% to 9.0% year on year, compared with its previous forecast of a contraction of about 5.5%. The economy grew by 3.3% last year, it said.

“This combined with low USD liquidity and rising rates looks to dampen economic productivity for the medium term,” it said.

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Writing by Krishna N. Das)

source

MADRID (AP) — The Latest on the NATO summit in Madrid:

___

Some 10,000 police are locking down Spain’s capital for the NATO summit.

The gathering of 40 world leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, is taking place behind roadblocks formed by police vans and armored cars.

They are ringing Madrid’s vast IFEMA conference center on the edge of the city, where the talks open Wednesday.

Spain’s National Police have deployed surveillance drones, while the flying of civilian drones is prohibited during the event.

Local authorities have recommended that Madrid residents work from home if possible and avoid further complicating the traffic problems caused by the security apparatus.

___

— Turkey lifts objections to Sweden, Finland joining NATO ahead of alliance summit

— Biden, NATO to beef up force posture amid Russian aggression

— Macron says Russia can’t win in Ukraine

— The AP Interview: Spanish PM says NATO summit to show unity

— OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the military alliance faces its “biggest challenge” since World War II amid the war in Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said at the start of the NATO summit in Madrid on Wednesday that the allies are meeting “in the midst of the most serious security crisis we have faced.”

“This will be a historic and transformative summit,” he told reporters.

Stoltenberg said the alliance is going to agree on deterrence to be able to deploy more combat formations and get more pre-positioned equipment in Eastern Europe by next year.

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy is expected to address the 30 leaders via video link Wednesday, as Russia’s invasion stretches into its fifth month.

The gathering has already seen a breakthrough agreement between Turkey and Finland and Sweden for the Nordic countries to begin their accession process.

The asked to join the alliance after witnessing Russia’s brutal attack on its neighbor Ukraine, but Turkey had some misgivings that were overcome Tuesday.

source

PARIS (AP) — Over the course of an extraordinary nine-month trial, the lone survivor of the Islamic State extremist team that attacked Paris in 2015 has proclaimed his radicalism, wept, apologized to victims and pleaded with judges to forgive his “mistakes.”

For victims’ families and survivors of the attacks, the trial for Salah Abdeslam and suspected accomplices has been excruciating yet crucial in their quest for justice and closure. At long last, the court will hand down its verdict Wednesday.

Abdeslam faces up to life in prison without parole on murder and other counts, the toughest sentence possible under France’s justice system.

The historic trial in Paris of 20 men suspected of critical roles in the Islamic State massacres that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, 2015, addressed the violence in the Bataclan theater, Paris cafes and the national stadium — France’s deadliest peacetime attack.

For months, the packed main chamber and 12 overflow rooms in the 13th century Justice Palace heard the harrowing accounts by the victims, along with testimony from Abdeslam. The other defendants are largely accused of helping with logistics or transportation. At least one is accused of a direct role in the deadly March 2016 attacks in Brussels, which also was claimed by the Islamic State group.

For survivors and those mourning loved ones, the trial was an opportunity to recount deeply personal accounts of the horrors inflicted that night and to listen to details of countless acts of bravery, humanity and compassion among strangers. Some hoped for justice, but most just wanted tell the accused directly that they have been left irreparably scarred, but not broken.

“The assassins, these terrorists, thought they were firing into the crowd, into a mass of people,” said Dominique Kielemoes at the start of the trial in September 2021. Her son bled to death in one of the cafes. Hearing the testimony of victims was “crucial to both their own healing and that of the nation,” Kielemoes said.

“It wasn’t a mass — these were individuals who had a life, who loved, had hopes and expectations,” she said.

France was changed in the wake of the attacks: Authorities declared a state of emergency and armed officers now constantly patrol public spaces. The violence sparked soul-searching among the French and Europeans, since most of the attackers were born and raised in France or Belgium. And they transformed forever the lives of all those who suffered losses or bore witness.

Presiding judge Jean-Louis Peries said at the trial’s outset that it belongs to “international and national events of this century.” France emerged from the state of emergency in 2017, after incorporating many of the harshest measures into law.

Fourteen of the defendants have been in court, including Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10-member attacking team that terrorized Paris that Friday night. All but one of the six absent men are presumed to have been killed in Syria or Iraq; the other is in prison in Turkey.

Most of the suspects are accused of helping create false identities, transporting the attackers back to Europe from Syria or providing them with money, phones, explosives or weapons.

Abdeslam, a 32-year-old Belgian with Moroccan roots, was the only defendant tried on several counts of murder and kidnapping as a member of a terrorist organization.

The sentence sought for Abdeslam of life in prison without parole has only been pronounced four times in France — for crimes related to rape and murder of minors.

Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for nine other defendants. The remaining suspects were tried on lesser terrorism charges and face sentences ranging from five to 30 years.

In closing arguments, prosecutors stressed that all 20 defendants, who had fanned out around the French capital, armed with semi-automatic rifles and explosives-packed vests to mount parallel attacks, are members of the Islamic State extremist group responsible for the massacres.

“Not everyone is a jihadi, but all of those you are judging accepted to take part in a terrorist group, either by conviction, cowardliness or greed,” prosecutor Nicolas Braconnay told the court this month.

Some defendants, including Abdeslam, said innocent civilians were targeted because of France’s policies in the Middle East and hundreds of civilian deaths in Western airstrikes in Syria and Iraq on Islamic State fighters.

During his testimony, former President François Hollande dismissed claims that his government was at fault.

The Islamic State, “this pseudo-state, declared war with the weapons of war,” Hollande said. The Paris attackers did not terrorize, shoot, kill, maim and traumatize civilians because of religion, he said, adding it was “fanaticism and barbarism.”

The night of the attack was a balmy Friday evening, with the city’s bars and restaurants packed. At the Bataclan concert venue, the American band Eagles of Death Metal were playing to a full house. At the national stadium, a soccer match between France and Germany had just begun, attended by then-President Hollande and then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The sound of the first suicide bombing at 9:16 p.m. barely carried over the noise of the stadium’s crowd. The second came four minutes later. A squad of gunmen opened fire at several bars and restaurants in another part of Paris. That bloodshed outside came to an end at 9:41 p.m.

Worse was to follow. At 9:47 p.m., three more gunmen burst into the Bataclan, firing indiscriminately. Ninety people died within minutes. Hundreds were held hostage – some gravely injured – inside the concert hall for hours before Hollande, watching people covered in blood make their way out of the Bataclan, ordered it stormed.

Abdeslam was silent for years, refusing to speak to investigators. In April, his words started flowing, in testimony that at times contradicted earlier statements, including on his loyalty to the Islamic State.

He told the court that he was a last-minute addition to the group. He said he “renounced” his mission to detonate his explosives-packed vest in a bar in northern Paris that night. He hid out at first near Paris, and then fled with friends to Brussels, where he was arrested four months later.

Prosecutors emphasized contradictions in Abdeslam’s testimony — from pledging allegiance to the Islamic State at the start of the trial and expressing regret that his explosives strapped to his body failed to detonate, to claiming he had changed his mind in the bar and deliberately disabled his vest because he did not want to kill people “singing and dancing.”

During closing arguments Monday, Abdelslam’s lawyer Olivia Ronen told a panel of judges that her client is the only one in the group of attackers who didn’t set off explosives to kill others that night. He can’t be convicted for murder, she argued.

“If a life sentence without hope for ever experiencing freedom again is pronounced, I fear we have lost a sense of proportion,” Ronan said. She emphasized through the trial that she is “not providing legitimacy to the attacks” by defending her client in court.

Abdeslam apologized to the victims at his final court appearance Monday, saying his remorse and sorrow is heartfelt and sincere. Listening to victims’ accounts of “so much suffering” changed him, he said.

“I have made mistakes, it’s true, but I am not a murderer, I am not a killer,” he said.

___

Surk contributed from Nice, France.

source