New Zealand's foreign minister on Wednesday congratulated Sitiveni Rabuka on emerging victorious from Fiji's election, giving the troubled vote a seal of approval even before 16-year leader Frank Bainimarama has conceded.. In a Twitter post, New Zealand's foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta offered her "congratulations" on forming a coalition to lead the country.
With shootings and threats against a princess and the prime minister it sounds like a crime drama, but for the Dutch the growing menace from drug cartels is all too real.. Both the 19-year-old royal and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were mentioned in messages by organised crime groups, raising fears of plans to kidnap or attack them, Dutch media reported.
China said Wednesday that not a single person had died of the Covid-19 the previous day, after changing the criteria for recording virus deaths to mean most are no longer counted.. Previously, people who died of an illness while infected with the virus were counted as a Covid death.
Peru's Congress on Tuesday voted to move up general elections from 2026 to April 2024 in a bid to ease political tensions and head off deadly protests sparked by the ouster and arrest of president Pedro Castillo.. - Instability - Castillo, a 53-year-old former rural school teacher and union leader, unexpectedly took power from Peru's traditional political elite in elections last year.
US lawmakers voted Tuesday to make public Donald Trump's tax returns, ending a years-long battle by the former president to keep the filings private as his cloudy financial past continues to stoke controversy. . "Democrats will open the door for partisans in Congress to have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns," the panel's top Republican Kevin Brady said in a statement.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky plans to visit Washington on Wednesday for a possible meeting with Joe Biden and an address to Congress, US media reported -- his first trip abroad since Russia invaded in February.. The potential White House meeting could feature an expected announcement from Biden of a new arms package for Kyiv including Patriot missiles, according to the reports.
Panama on Tuesday observed a day of national mourning for the first time ever to mark the anniversary of the US invasion in 1989 to oust dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega.. In March, Panama's Congress approved the declaration of December 20 as a day of national mourning.
Georgia's ailing ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who has launched several hunger strikes to protest his imprisonment, requires life-saving medical care abroad, doctors linked to his lawyers told AFP Tuesday.. A group of US-based doctors, who examined Saakashvili in person on his legal team's request, told AFP he is facing life-threatening complications stemming from his detention conditions.
The Taliban have freed two Americans in detention in Afghanistan, the State Department said Tuesday, on the same day that the militant regime faced condemnation for banning women at universities.. The release came on the same day that the Taliban banned women from universities, drawing strong condemnation from the United States, which warned it would impose costs on the Islamist militants.
The United States on Tuesday offered to share vaccines with China to stem soaring Covid cases, saying containing the outbreak was in the interest of the world.. It is unlikely that China would accept the offer from the United States, its frequent adversary, after Beijing invested heavily in Covid diplomacy that included shipping its homegrown vaccines around the world.
