International

AFP :A Ukrainian drone dropped explosives on a substation in a Russian village close to the border on Friday, cutting off the power supply to a hospital, the regional governor said. In Belaya, less than 25 kilometres (16 miles) from the border, “a Ukrainian drone dropped two explosive devices on a substation”, Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoyt said on the messaging platform Telegram. “One of the transformers caught fire. Five settlements and a hospital were cut off from power supply....

Reuters :US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged India to cooperate with a Canadian investigation into the murder of a Sikh separatist during a meeting with Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Thursday, a US official said. Speaking in Quebec earlier on Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has alleged an Indian role in the killing, said he was certain that Blinken would broach the issue with Jaishankar. India has dismissed Canada’s allegations as absurd, and ties have become...

AFP :The Philippine Coast Guard vowed Friday to “do whatever it takes” to remove any more floating barriers installed by China at a disputed reef in the South China Sea. The remarks came after an aerial inspection of Scarborough Shoal on Thursday confirmed a 300 metre (328-yard) barrier that ignited the latest diplomatic row between Beijing and Manila had been taken away. AFP journalists were on board a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources’ plane as it flew over the...

AFP :Seven soldiers were killed Thursday in southwestern Niger in an attack by suspected jihadists, and five others died in a traffic accident while trying to respond to the assault, the country’s defence minister said. A military unit was “violently attacked by several hundred terrorists” in the town of Kandadji, Defence Minister Salifou Mody said in a statement, adding that seven soldiers were killed in the fighting. “During an intervention” launched in response to the attack, “a tragic traffic accident...

Reuters : Saudi Arabia is determined to secure a military pact requiring the United States to defend the kingdom in return for opening ties with Israel and will not hold up a deal even if Israel does not offer major concessions to Palestinians in their bid for statehood, three regional sources familiar with the talks said. A pact might fall short of the cast-iron, NATO-style defence guarantees the kingdom initially sought when the issue was first discussed between Crown Prince...

AFP  :The United States said Tuesday it would halt assistance to Gabon after the military took charge last month. “The US government is pausing certain foreign assistance programs benefiting the government of Gabon while we evaluate the unconstitutional intervention by members of the country’s military,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. He said that the United States was maintaining diplomatic and consular operations in the oil-rich Central African country. The move is temporary as the State Department...

Al Jazeera  :The International Monetary Fund did not reach a staff-level agreement with Sri Lanka in its first review under a $2.9bn bailout package, due to a potential shortfall in government revenue generation, says the lender. Speaking after a two-week visit to the country, IMF delegation head Peter Breuer on Wednesday said a second tranche of about $330m under a lending programme would only be released after the IMF reaches a staff-level agreement, and there was no fixed timeline on...

Al Jazeera  :More than a third of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh have fled the region as part of an exodus triggered by a military offensive which brought the enclave back under Azerbaijan’s control. The Armenian government said on Wednesday that about 47,000 “forcibly displaced” people have moved from the long-troubled region to Armenia. Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on September 19. A day later, separatist authorities said they were forced to lay down their arms and agreed...

Reuters :Senior diplomats from South Korea, China and Japan agreed on Tuesday that their countries’ leaders would meet at the “earliest convenient time”, Seoul’s foreign ministry said after a rare meeting aimed at kickstarting trilateral exchanges. The three countries had agreed to hold a summit every year starting in 2008 to foster regional cooperation, but that initiative has been frayed by bilateral feuds and the Covid-19 pandemic. The last summit was in 2019. Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement...

AP :The Biden administration announced Monday that it is offering a $2 billion loan to Poland, which has been a hub for weapons going into Ukraine, to support the ally’s defense modernization. The State Department said in a statement that Poland is a “stalwart” ally of the US whose “security is vital to the collective defense” of NATO ‘s eastern flank, and that such funding is reserved for Washington’s most important security partners. The US government is also providing Warsaw...