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RIYADH (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed plans for Gaza during a meeting on Monday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Rubio is visiting the Middle East after President Donald Trump infuriated the Arab world with a proposal for the Palestinian residents of the war-torn strip to be resettled in other Arab nations and for the U.S. to lead reconstruction of the enclave.

“The Secretary underscored the importance of an arrangement for Gaza that contributes to regional security,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a readout of the meeting between Rubio and the crown prince.

The two also reaffirmed their commitment to the ceasefire agreed last month between Israel and Hamas and discussed Syria, Lebanon and the Red Sea, Bruce said.

Saudi state news agency SPA said they discussed regional and global developments and efforts to achieve security and stability.

Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia earlier in the day from Israel where he began his first visit to the region as the top U.S. diplomat.

Rubio’s previously planned visit comes ahead of an anticipated meeting between U.S. officials with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that is set to focus on ending the war in Ukraine and restoring broader Russia-U.S. ties.

Neither side’s statement mentioned discussions about Ukraine.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Jaidaa Taha, Menna Alaa El-Din; writing by Simon Lewis; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Chizu Nomiyama)

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LIMA (Reuters) – The leader of an indigenous community in Peru asked for the government to declare a state of emergency on Monday and accused illegal miners of using children as “human shields” in the Amazon.

He will ask the Peruvian government to declare a state of emergency in the area to allow the eviction of illegal miners.

“They are using children between 5 and 10 years old as human shields when there is any action against illegal miners,” Teófilo Kukush, president of the Wampís community located in Amazonian regions on the border with Ecuador, told local radio station RPP.

Kukush said that the miners are “incentivizing” some local residents with payments and when authorities try to conduct armed raids, miners place children in front of the dredges they use to extract the gold from the river.

Government officials were not immediately available to comment on the complaint. There have been several clashes and attacks on established mines that have left at least thirty people dead in the past two years.

Last July, an indigenous land rights activist was found dead and indigenous leaders said dozens of community heads have been murdered due to conflicts with miners, loggers and drug traffickers.

According to the local financial regulator, the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Private Pensions, between January and October of last year, customs reported $1.096 billion in operations linked to illegal mining. 

Peru produced 108 million grams of fine gold in 2024, 6.9% more than the previous year, with almost half supplied by small-scale miners, according to official data.

The government has 85,000 registered artisanal miners, most of them from poor and remote areas, but only 20% of these miners have formal permits according to government data.

The rest operate with suspended permits in areas belonging to formal companies, or illegally.

(Report by Marco Aquino; Writing by Alexander Villegas; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

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LA PAZ (Reuters) – A bus crash in Bolivia on Monday killed at least 31 people and wounded over a dozen more, according to local police.

The driver of the bus likely lost control of the vehicle, causing it to drop nearly 800 meters (2625 ft) off a precipice in the southwestern municipality of Yocalla, a police officer speaking from the local hospital said.

(Reporting by Monica Machicao; Editing by Brendan O’Boyle)

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(Reuters) -A plane crashed at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday and injured eight people, officials said, with CBC television reporting the plane flipped on landing.

Video posted by News Channel3 Now showed a Delta Air Lines plane belly up on a snow-covered tarmac, with people walking away from the plane.

Of the eight injuries, one was critical and the rest were mild to moderate, Peel Regional Paramedic Services Supervisor Lawrence Saindon said.

Toronto’s Pearson Airport said it was aware of an incident involving a Delta plane arriving from Minneapolis and that emergency teams were responding.

All passengers and crew were accounted for, the airport said in a statement on X.

Representatives for Delta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“There is a plane crash. However, we don’t know the circumstances surrounding it at this point,” said Constable Sarah Patten of the Peel Regional Police in Ontario.

“It is my understanding that most of the passengers are out and unharmed, but we’re still trying to make sure so we’re still on scene investigating,” Patten said.

Toronto Pearson Airport’s website showed more than four dozen delayed flights leaving and arriving at the airport. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said there was a ground stop at the airport.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada, the independent agency that investigates plane crashes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The crash in Canada comes after some other recent crashes in North America in late January. An Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet in Washington, killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Additional reporting by Ryan Jones, Kanishka Singh, Jasper Ward; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Monday is the 500th day of the war triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into southern Israel.

A tenuous ceasefire in the Gaza Strip has held for nearly a month. But the current phase of the truce is set to expire in early March and it is unclear if the sides will extend it, begin negotiations for a more lasting ceasefire or resume fighting.

Here are some numbers that show the scale of death and devastation. Sources include the Israeli government, the Gaza Health Ministry and U.N. agencies.

People killed in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023: Around 1,200

Hostages taken into Gaza: 251

Hostages remaining in Gaza: 73, including 3 taken before Oct. 7, 2023

Hostages in Gaza believed to be dead: 36, including one from before Oct. 7, 2023

Palestinians killed in Gaza: Over 48,200 (This figure from the Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but the ministry says more than half of the dead were women and children)

Palestinians wounded in Gaza: Over 111,600

Israeli soldiers killed since Oct. 7, 2023: 846

Rockets fired at Israel from Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023: Over 10,000

Percentage of Gaza’s population displaced: Around 90%

Palestinians who have crossed into northern Gaza since the ceasefire began: 586,000

Israelis displaced by attacks from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon at their peak: Over 75,500

Housing units damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 245,000

Primary roads damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 92%

Health facilities damaged or destroyed in Gaza: Over 84%

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

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BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday that the international community wanted steady and sound Sino-EU relations now more than ever.

The international community is also eager for China and Europe to become a constructive force in a changing world, said Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesperson, said at a regular news conference.

Guo was responding to a question on the significance of China’s ties with Europe as transatlantic relations face new uncertainty after U.S. President Donald Trump took office last month.

(Reporting by Joe Cash; writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden does not rule out sending troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force, public broadcaster Swedish Radio reported on Monday, citing comments by the country’s foreign minister.

The minister’s comments came after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ready to send British troops to Ukraine for peacekeeping duties as he tried to show the U.S. that European nations should have a role in talks on ending the war.

“We must now first negotiate a just and sustainable peace that respects international law, that respects Ukraine and that first and foremost ensures Russia can’t just pull back, build new strength and attack Ukraine or another country in just a few years’ time,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in an interview. 

“Once we have such a peace established we need to ensure it can be maintained and then our government doesn’t exclude anything,” she added.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of expected talks with Russian officials aimed at ending Moscow’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Helen Popper)

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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Germany hasn’t seen significant economic growth in five years. It’s a stunning turnaround for Europe’s biggest economy, which for much of this century had expanded exports and dominated world trade in engineered products like industrial machinery and luxury cars.

So what happened?

Here are five reasons for Germany’s ongoing economic slump:

Moscow’s decision to cut off natural gas supplies to Germany in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dealt a severe blow. For years, Germany’s business model was based on cheap energy fueling production of industrial goods for export.

In 2011, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to hasten the end of nuclear power use in Germany while relying on gas from Russia to bridge the gap as the country moved away from coal generation and toward renewable energy. Russia was then considered to be a reliable energy partner; warnings to the contrary from Poland and the United States were dismissed.

When Russia discontinued the flow, prices in Germany skyrocketed for gas and for electricity generated from gas, both key costs for energy-intensive industries such as steel, fertilizer, chemicals and glass. Germany had to turn to liquefied natural gas, or LNG, super-cooled and imported by ship from Qatar and the U.S. LNG costs more than pipeline gas.

Electricity now costs industrial users in Germany an average of 20.3 euro cents per kilowatt hour, according to a study the research firm Prognos AG prepared for the Bavarian Industry Association. In the U.S. and China, where many competitors of German companies are located, the cost is the equivalent of 8.4 euro cents.

Renewable sources of energy haven’t scaled up fast enough to fill the gap. Homeowner and regional resistance to turbines slowed wind energy growth. Infrastructure to transport hydrogen as a replacement fuel for steel furnaces remains mostly on the drawing board.

For years, Germany benefited from China’s entry into the global economy – even as other developed countries lost jobs to China. German companies found a massive new market for industrial machinery, chemicals and vehicles. Through the early and mid 2010s, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and BMW reaped fat profits selling into what became the world’s largest car market.

At the time, Chinese companies produced items like furniture and consumer electronics that didn’t compete with Germany’s core strengths. Then, manufacturers in China started making the same things that Germans did.

State-subsidized Chinese solar panels wiped out Germany’s makers. In 2010, Chinese panel makers depended on imported German equipment; today, global solar panel production relies on equipment from China. The government in Beijing has ramped up efforts to promote and subsidize manufacturing for export. The resulting goods — steel, machinery, solar panels, electric vehicles and EV batteries — now compete with German goods on export markets.

Germany, the most auto-centric of the European Union economies, had the most to lose from China’s export-oriented industrial policy. In 2020, China was not a net exporter of vehicles; by 2024, it was exporting 5 million a year. Germany’s net exports fell by half over the same period, to 1.2 million cars. Chinese factory capacity is estimated at 50 million vehicles a year, roughly half of global demand.

Germany grew complacent during the good times and put off investing in long-term projects such as rail lines and high-speed internet. The government balanced its budget and sometimes ran surpluses off the tax revenue from a booming economy.

These days, German commuters shake their heads at trains that don’t run on time and constant service disruptions while repairs are made to worn-out tracks. High speed internet hasn’t yet reached some rural areas. A transmission line to bring electricity from Germany’s windy north to factories in the south has run years behind and won’t be ready before 2028. A key bridge on the highway connecting the industrial Ruhr region with southern Germany had to be closed in 2021, 10 years after doubts about its durability emerged. A replacement won’t be ready before 2027.

A 2009 constitutional amendment handcuffed the government by limiting deficit spending. Whether to loosen the so-called debt brake will be a thorny issue for the German government installed after the country’s Feb. 23 election.

German companies are having trouble finding workers with the right skills, from highly trained IT workers to daycare providers, senior care workers and hotel staff members. In a German Chamber of Commerce and Industry survey of 23,000 firms, 43% of companies said they couldn’t fill open positions. The response rose to 58% for companies with more than 1,000 workers.

Fewer German students are interested in STEM fields, meaning science, technology, engineering and mathematics. An aging population compounds the problem, as does a shortage of affordable child care that keeps many women working part-time or not at all. Bureaucratic hurdles pose an obstacle to employing high-skill immigrants, though a law passed in 2020 and strengthened in 2023 aims to ease the process.

Lengthy approval procedures and too much paperwork are a drag on the economy, according to Germany companies and economists. Securing a construction permit for a wind turbine can take years. A few other examples, among dozens raised by German business groups:

— Companies installing solar panels need to register with both government regulators and their local utility even though the utility could pass on the information to the government level.

— Restaurants have to log refrigerator temperatures by hand and keep hard copies of the records for a month even if the data has been stored digitally.

— A law requiring companies to certify that their suppliers are obeying environmental and labor standards went beyond EU requirements, putting a heavier burden on German companies than their European competitors.

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TBILISI (Reuters) – A presidential election held on Sunday in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia produced no clear winner, setting up a second round between the top two candidates, state news agency Apsnypress said.

Apsnypress, citing Abkhazia’s electoral commission, reported that acting President Badra Gunba had taken 46% of the vote, while opposition leader Adgur Ardzinba had taken almost 37%.

Gunba, who was previously vice president, took over as Abkhazia’s leader in November, after his predecessor was driven from office by protests against an investment agreement with Russia.

It was the third time since 2014 that an Abkhazian leader had been driven from office by mass protests.

A lush, Black Sea coastal territory of around 240,000 people, Abkhazia broke away from Georgia after a war in the early 1990s, with the support of Russia. Moscow recognised Abkhazia as independent after another war in 2008.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were expelled from the region, and most countries, bar a handful, consider Abkhazia to be part of Georgia.

Though the territory is politically and economically dependent on Russia, some Abkhazians have been critical of what they see as Moscow’s growing influence in the breakaway state.

(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian delegation has arrived in Saudi Arabia for meetings in preparation for a possible visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Ukrainian minister said Sunday, at a time of intense speculation over planned U.S.-Russia talks in the kingdom to end Moscow’s war on its neighbor.

It also comes as a top U.S. envoy revealed that he and a fellow negotiator appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump were heading to Saudi Arabia.

Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who also serves as first deputy prime minister, didn’t clarify whether there is a link between Zelenskyy’s possible trip and the previously announced U.S.-Russia talks. In a Facebook post, she said that the Ukrainian delegation’s focus is on strengthening economic ties, as Kyiv “prepares to sign important economic agreements with countries in the region.”

Svyrydenko didn’t say anything about when Zelenskyy might go to Saudi Arabia and who he might meet with. No further details were immediately available.

Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Zelenskyy, said earlier Sunday that there was no possibility of Ukrainian and Russian representatives meeting directly in the immediate future. In a Telegram post, Yermak said the Ukrainians weren’t planning to do so “until we develop a plan” to end the war and bring about a “just peace.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, another Zelenskyy adviser, on Saturday denied that Ukraine will participate in any planned U.S.-Russia meetings in Saudi Arabia.

“There is nothing on the negotiating table that would be worth discussing,” Podolyak said on Ukrainian television.

But Svyrydenko’s remarks came within hours of an announcement by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s close ally and special envoy to the Middle East, that high-level meetings were imminent in Saudi Arabia to discuss a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program, Witkoff said that he and national security adviser Mike Waltz will be “having meetings at the direction of the president,” and hope to make “some really good progress with regard to Russia-Ukraine.”

Witkoff didn’t specify who they would be meeting and what they would discuss, but he said that he was leaving for Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening.

Following a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Trump noted that they “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately” on ending the fighting. The president appointed Witkoff and Waltz to lead those talks, alongside U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Earlier this week, Russian officials and state media took a triumphant tone after Trump jettisoned three years of U.S. policy and announced that he would likely meet soon with Putin to negotiate a peace deal in the almost three-year war in Ukraine.

Trump’s announcement created a major diplomatic upheaval that could herald a watershed moment for Ukraine and Europe.

Zelenskyy said that he wouldn’t accept any negotiations about Ukraine that don’t include his country. European governments have also demanded a seat at the table.

Putin has been ostracized by the West since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader.

Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy, didn’t directly respond to the question about whether Ukraine would have to give up a “significant portion” of its territory as part of any negotiated settlement.

“Those are details, and I’m not dismissive of the details, they’re important. But I think the beginning here is trust-building. It’s getting everybody to understand that this war does not belong continuing, that it should end. That’s what the president has directed us to do,” he said.

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