Shortages in Peru of basic products, including increasingly expensive fuel and food, continued to mount Wednesday as over a month of anti-government demonstrations showed no end in sight.. Governor Luis Otsuka said that if the roadblocks continued he would have to try to source food and fuel from Brazil and Bolivia.
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday called for South American trade bloc Mercosur to urgently seal a free trade agreement with the European Union before negotiating with China.. "We will step up our discussions with the EU and sign this agreement so that we can then discuss a deal between China and Mercosur," Lula said in Montevideo, where he met with President Luis Lacalle Pou.
One of Colombia's most notorious drug lords pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking charges in a New York court Wednesday as part of a plea deal.. "With today's guilty plea, the bloody reign of the most violent and significant Colombian narcotics trafficker since Pablo Escobar is over," said Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. af/pdh/tjj
Poland on Wednesday vaunted the key role its tenacious diplomatic wrangling played in Germany deciding to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine after weeks of feet dragging by Berlin. . Germany said Wednesday it would send 14 of its Leopards, and allow other European nations to send tanks from their own stocks.
The United States called Wednesday for an impartial probe in Eswatini into the killing of a top opposition leader and urged political dialogue, as Russia seeks influence in Africa's last absolute monarchy.. "We offer condolences to his family and friends and we call for a full, transparent and impartial investigation, as well as accountability for those responsible," State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
The trial of Mauritania's former president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz opened Wednesday with the dramatic image of the former head of state in a cage-like box answering accusations he amassed an illicit personal fortune during his 11 years in power.. Aziz is suspected of siphoning off money from state contracts or the sale of real estate, amassing a fortune equivalent to more than $72 million.
On a road near Soledar, members of Ukraine's territorial defence launched a surveillance drone towards the front line, where fighting is raging to hold back waves of fierce Russian attacks.. "Soledar is gone," said 144th territorial defence battalion deputy commander Volodymyr Leonov, 10 kilometres (six miles) away, where servicemen recouped away from the front.
Romanian prosecutors on Wednesday further questioned divisive influencer Andrew Tate over alleged human trafficking and rape, with the British-American national denouncing the case brought against him as void.. Former kickboxer Tate, his younger brother and two Romanian women are under investigation for allegedly "forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking and rape".
France said Wednesday it will withdraw its contingent of hundreds of troops stationed in Burkina Faso within a month, after the junta ruling the Sahel country demanded the pullout.. The French foreign ministry said it received a request from Burkina Faso to withdraw its troops within a month and will do so.
A French-Canadian woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to sending letters containing deadly ricin to former president Donald Trump and to eight Texas law enforcement officials, the US Justice Department said.. She sent similar letters with ricin and threatening language to the Texas officials.
