West African nations met with European leaders on Tuesday for talks on preventing jihadist conflict in the Sahel from spilling over into countries on the Gulf of Guinea.. Under the so-called Accra Initiative, heads of state from the Gulf of Guinea, Niger and Burkina Faso are meeting with representatives from the West African bloc ECOWAS, the EU, Britain and France.
International pressure mounted Tuesday on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to launch a threatened ground offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria.. Turkey has launched three offensives into Syria since 2016 aimed at crushing Syrian Kurdish fighters, whom it charges are allied to the PKK. Erdogan has repeatedly called for a 30-kilometre (19-mile) "safe zone" to protect southern Turkey against cross-border attacks from Syrian territory.
Iwan Gunawan was forced to leave his gravely injured wife buried under rubble to run outside and save his daughter after a strong earthquake rocked Indonesia's largest province.. I tried to protect my daughter and I tried to be strong," he said.
Iran has begun producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at its Fordo plant, which was reopened in 2019 amid the breakdown of a nuclear agreement with major powers, reports said Tuesday.. "Iran has started producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at the Fordo plant for the first time," Iran's ISNA news agency reported.
Italy's new far-right government unveiled its 2023 draft budget on Tuesday, with most of the nearly 35 billion euros in spending going on the energy crisis rather than flashy electoral promises.. The draft budget now heads to parliament, where it can be amended.
Colombia's government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized rebel group in the country, resumed formal peace talks in Venezuela Monday for the first time since they were suspended in 2019.. The ELN peace talks delegation spent four years based in Cuba, as they had been barred from returning to Colombia by the previous government.
Acclaimed Cuban singer, songwriter and guitarist Pablo Milanes died early Tuesday in Spain, where he had been hospitalized in recent days, his agent said.. He entered the Cuban music scene in the early 1960s with "Mis 22 anos", and went on to win two Latin Grammys for best singer-songwriter album (2006) and musical excellence (2015). lp/cjc-mlm/dva/leg
For Olena Chernyavska, the long-awaited liberation of Kherson from Russian troops this month was a bittersweet experience.. "I managed to reach her and talk to her, telling her almost everything I wanted to but then the connection dropped," Chernyavska told AFP. Just days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, its troops swept across vast tracts of southern Ukraine, crossing the vast Dnipro River and capturing Kherson before their offensive was halted by the Ukrainian military.
With megacities under lockdown, infection numbers climbing and sporadic protests, China's Covid-19 policy has reached a stalemate as authorities persist with seeking to contain the virus while trying to keep the economy alive.. China is the only major economy still attempting to stamp out the domestic spread of the virus, shutting down entire cities and placing contacts of infected patients into strict quarantine.
Acclaimed Cuban singer-songwriter and guitarist Pablo Milanes died early Tuesday in Spain, where he had been hospitalized in recent days, his agent said.. "It is with great pain and sadness that we inform you that the maestro Pablo Milanes died this morning, November 22, in Madrid," his agency said on the singer's official Facebook page.
