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BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar has carried out its first executions in nearly 50 years with the hangings of a former National League for Democracy lawmaker, a democracy activist and two men accused of violence after the country’s military takeover last year.

The executions announced Monday were carried out despite worldwide pleas for clemency for the four political detainees.

The Mirror Daily state newspaper said the four planned, directed and organized “the violent and inhuman accomplice acts of terrorist killings.”

The paper said they were hanged according to prison procedures but did not say when the executions occurred.

Phyo Zeya Thaw, a 41-year-old former lawmaker from ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party also known as Maung Kyaw, was convicted in January by a closed military court of offenses involving explosives, bombings and financing terrorism.

He had been arrested last November based on information from people detained for shooting security personnel, state media said at the time. He was also accused of being a key figure in a network that carried out what the military described as terrorist attacks in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.

Phyo Zeya Thaw had been a hip-hop musician before becoming a member of the Generation Wave political movement formed in 2007. He was jailed in 2008 under a previous military government after being accused of illegal association and possession of foreign currency.

Also executed was Kyaw Min Yu, a 53-year-old democracy activist better known as Ko Jimmy, for violating the counterterrorism law. Kyaw Min Yu was one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, veterans of a failed 1988 popular uprising against military rule.

He already had spent more than a dozen years behind bars for political activism before his arrest in Yangon last October. He had been put on a wanted list for social media postings that allegedly incited unrest and state media said he was accused of terrorist acts including mine attacks and of heading a group called Moon Light Operation to carry out urban guerrilla attacks.

The other two men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, were convicted of torturing and killing a woman in March 2021 whom they believed was a military informer.

Western governments, rights groups and U.N. experts blasted the decision to hang them.

“The illegitimate military junta is providing the international community with further evidence of its disregard for human rights as it prepares to hang pro-democracy activists,” two U.N experts, Thomas Andrews, special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, and Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions, said earlier.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had earlier urged Myanmar to reconsider and suggested their executions would draw strong condemnation and complicate efforts to restore peace.

Hun Sen has a special interest in Myanmar because Cambodia this year chairs the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has sought to end the violence in Myanmar and provide humanitarian assistance. Myanmar is a member of ASEAN but has failed to cooperate with the bloc’s plans.

Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry rejected criticism of the decision to proceed with the executions, declaring that Myanmar’s judicial system is fair and that Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyaw Min Yu were “proven to be masterminds of orchestrating full-scale terrorist attacks against innocent civilians to instill fear and disrupt peace and stability.”

“They killed at least 50 people,” military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said on live television last month, referring to Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyaw Min Yu. He said the decision to hang the four prisoners was for the rule of law and to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Myanmar’s military seized power from Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021, triggering peaceful protests that soon escalated to armed resistance and then to widespread fighting that some U.N. experts characterize as a civil war.

Some resistance groups have engaged in assassinations, drive-by shootings and bombings in urban areas. Mainstream opposition organizations generally disavow such activities, while supporting armed resistance in rural areas that are more often subject to brutal military attacks.

According to Myanmar law, executions must be approved by the head of the government. The last judicial execution to be carried out in Myanmar is generally believed to have been of another political offender, student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo, in 1976 under a previous military government led by dictator Ne Win.

In 2014, the sentences of prisoners on death row were commuted to life imprisonment, but several dozen convicts received death sentences between then and last year’s takeover.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental organization that tracks killing and arrests, said Friday that 2,114 civilians have been killed by security forces since the military takeover. It said 115 other people had been sentenced to death.

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PAJU, South Korea (AP) — As a medical student in North Korea, Lee Gwang-jin said he treated his fevers and other minor ailments with traditional herbal medicine. But bad illness could mean trouble because hospitals in his rural hometown lacked the ambulances, beds, even the electricity at times needed to treat critical or emergency patients.

So Lee was skeptical when he heard recent North Korean state media reports that claimed such so-called Koryo traditional medicine is playing a key role in the nation’s fight against COVID-19, which has killed millions around the world.

“North Korea is using Koryo medicine a lot (for COVID-19) … but it’s not a sure remedy,” said Lee, who studied Koryo medicine before he fled North Korea in 2018 for a new life in South Korea. “Someone who is destined to survive will survive (with such medicine), but North Korea can’t help others who are dying.”

Like many other parts of life in North Korea, the medicine that the state says is curing its sick people is being used as a political symbol. That, experts say, will eventually allow the country to say its leaders have beaten the outbreak, where other nations have repeatedly failed, by providing homegrown remedies, independent of outside help.

As state media churn out stories about the effectiveness of the medicine and the huge production efforts to make more of it, there are questions about whether people suffering from severe disease are getting the treatment they need.

Defectors and experts believe North Korea is mobilizing Koryo medicine simply because it doesn’t have enough modern medicine to fight COVID-19.

“Treating mild symptoms with Koryo medicine isn’t a bad option. … But the coronavirus doesn’t cause only mild symptoms,” said Yi Junhyeok, a traditional doctor and researcher at South Korea’s Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine. “When we think about critical and high-risk patients, North Korea needs vaccines, emergency care systems and other medical resources that it can use to” lower fatalities.

More than two months have passed since North Korea admitted its first coronavirus outbreak, and the country has reported an average of 157 fever cases each day in the past seven days, a significant drop from the peak of about 400,000 a day in May. It also maintains a widely disputed claim that only 74 out of about 4.8 million fever patients have died, a fatality rate of 0.002% that would be the world’s lowest if true.

Despite widespread outside doubt about the truth of North Korea’s reported statistics, there are no signs that the outbreak has caused catastrophe in North Korea. Some outside experts say the North may soon formally declare victory over COVID-19 in an effort to boost internal unity. North Korea may then emphasize the role of Koryo medicine as the reason.

“North Korea calls Koryo medicine ‘juche (self-reliant) medicine,’ treats it importantly and views it as one of its political symbols,” said Kim Dongsu, a professor at the College of Korean Medicine at South Korea’s Dongshin University. “North Korea doesn’t have many academic and cultural achievements to advertise so it’ll likely actively propagate Koryo medicine.”

North Korea officially incorporated Koryo medicine — named after an ancient Korean kingdom — in its public healthcare system in the 1950s. Its importance has sharply grown since the mid-1990s, when North Korea began suffering a big shortage of modern medicine during a crippling famine and economic turmoil that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Koryo medicine refers to herbal concoctions that sometimes include animal parts, acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion and meridian massages. Such ancient remedies are used in many Asian and Western nations, too. But while in those countries traditional and modern medicines operate independently, North Korea has combined them.

Medical students are required to study both modern and traditional medicine at school, regardless of what they major in. So once they become professional doctors, they can practice both. Each hospital in North Korea has a department of Koryo medicine. There are also Koryo medicine-only hospitals.

Kim Jieun, a defector who is a traditional doctor in South Korea, said she majored in Koryo medicine at school in the North but eventually worked as a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor. She said that South Koreans generally use traditional medicine to maintain or improve their health, but North Koreans use it to treat diverse diseases.

“In South Korea, patients with cerebral hemorrhage, hepatocirrhosis, liver cancer, ascites, diabetes and kidney infections don’t come to traditional clinics. But in North Korea, traditional doctors treat them,” said Kim, who resettled in South Korea in 2002 and now works for Seoul’s Well Saem Hospital of Korean Medicine.

North Korea’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper has recently published a slew of articles praising herbal medicine and acupuncture for curing fever patients and reducing the aftereffects of COVID-19 illnesses, including abnormal pains, heart and kidney problems, nausea and coughing.

The newspaper also published calls by leader Kim Jong Un to embrace Koryo medicine. Other state media reports said the production of Koryo medicine has quadrupled since last year, while a vast amount of modern medicine has also been speedily delivered to local medical institutions, a claim that cannot be independently verified.

North Korea’s nominally free socialist medical system remains in shambles, with defectors testifying that they had to buy their own medicine and pay doctors for surgeries and other treatments. They say North Korea’s advanced hospitals are largely concentrated in Pyongyang, the capital, where the ruling elite and upper-class citizens loyal to the Kim family live.

Lee, 29, who attended a medical school in the northern North Korean city of Hyesan, said Koryo doctors reused their acupuncture needles after sterilizing them with alcohol, and hospitals typically charged patients for the use of electricity for a medical examination.

H.K. Yoon, a former North Korean doctor who fled the country in the mid-2010s, said her mid-level hospital in the northeast had no ambulance, no oxygen concentrator and only three to four beds in the emergency room. She said she shared surgical equipment with other doctors, and her monthly salary was the equivalent of 800 grams (1.76 pounds) of rice.

“My heart aches when I recall the lack of surgical equipment,” said Yoon, who asked that her first name be identified only by initials because of safety worries about relatives in North Korea. “When my patients were critical, I wanted to perform surgeries quickly. But I couldn’t do it because surgical equipment was being used by someone else, and I worried about how soon I could sterilize and use it.”

Some experts earlier predicted that the COVID-19 outbreak could cause dire consequences in North Korea because most of its 26 million people are unvaccinated and about 40% of its people are reportedly undernourished. Now, they speculate that North Korea is likely underreporting its death count to prevent political damage to Kim Jong Un.

Lee, the former North Korean medical student, said people in Hyesan didn’t go to hospitals unless they were extremely sick.

“When they are moderately ill, they just receive acupuncture or Koryo herbal medicine. They trust Koryo medicine but they also don’t make much money and Koryo medicine is cheaper than Western medicine,” Lee said.

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(Reuters) – The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization’s highest level of alert, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday.

The WHO label – a “public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)” – is designed to trigger a coordinated international response and could unlock funding to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.

Members of an expert committee that met on Thursday to discuss the potential recommendation were split on the decision, with nine members against and six in favour of the declaration, prompting Tedros himself to break the deadlock, he told reporters.

“Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners,” Tedros told a media briefing in Geneva.

“Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” he added.

He said the risk of monkeypox – which spreads via close contact and tends to cause flu-like symptoms and pus-filled skin lesions – was moderate globally, except in the Europe, where the WHO has deemed the risk as high.

The White House said the declaration was a “call to action for the world community to stop the spread of this virus.” Raj Panjabi, director of the White House pandemic preparedness office, said a “coordinated, international response is essential” to stop the spread of the disease and protect communities at the greatest risk of contracting it.

Previously, Tedros has typically endorsed expert committee recommendations, but two sources told Reuters earlier on Saturday said he had likely decided to back the highest alert level due to concerns about escalating case rates and a short supply of vaccines and treatments.

So far this year, there have been more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox in more than 75 countries, and five deaths in Africa.

The viral disease has been spreading chiefly in men who have sex with men in the recent outbreak, outside Africa where it is endemic.

Health experts welcomed the WHO’s decision to issue the PHEIC declaration, which until now had only been applied to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing efforts to eradicate polio.

“The right result is clear – not declaring an emergency at this point would be a historic missed opportunity,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., calling the decision politically brave.

The decision should help contain the spread of the viral disease, said Josie Golding, head of epidemics and epidemiology at the Wellcome Trust.

“We cannot afford to keep waiting for diseases to escalate before we intervene,” she said.

JUNE MEETING

The WHO and national governments have been facing intense pressure from scientists and public health experts to take more action on monkeypox.

Cases of the viral disease have ballooned since the committee first met at the end of June, when there were only about 3,000 cases.

At the time, the expert group agreed to reconsider their position on the emergency declaration if the outbreak escalated.

One of the key issues driving a reassessment was whether cases would spread to other groups, particularly children or others who have been vulnerable to the virus in past outbreaks in endemic countries.

On Friday, the United States identified its first two monkeypox cases in children.

WHO officials said on Saturday they were exploring the possibility of the virus spreading via new modes of transmission.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby and Natalie Grover in London, John Revill in Zurich and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Helen Popper and Daniel Wallis)

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(Reuters) – A senior U.S. Congressional delegation met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Saturday and promised to try to ensure continued support in the war against Russia.

The delegation – which included Representative Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee – is the latest in a series of high-profile American visitors to Ukraine.

“The United States, along with allies and partners around the world, have stood with Ukraine by providing economic, military, and humanitarian assistance,” the delegation said in a statement.

“We will continue to seek ways to support President Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian people as effectively as possible as they continue their brave stand,” they added.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday that Washington would send four more high mobility artillery rocket systems to Ukraine, bringing the total provided so far to 16.

The statement from the delegation on Saturday made no specific reference to weapons transfers. Separately, Smith was quoted as telling the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Washington and its allies were ready to hand over more multiple launch rocket systems.

(Reporting by Elaine Monaghan, editing by David Ljunggren and Marguerita Choy)

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By Natalia Zinets

KYIV (Reuters) -Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa on Saturday, the Ukrainian military said, threatening a deal signed just a day earlier to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports and ease global food shortages caused by the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the strike blatant “barbarism” showing Moscow could not be trusted to implement the deal. However, public broadcaster Suspilne quoted the Ukrainian military as saying the missiles had not caused significant damage and a government minister said preparations continued to restart grain exports from Black Sea ports.

The deal signed on Friday by Moscow and Kyiv and mediated by the United Nations and Turkey was hailed as a breakthrough after nearly five months of punishing fighting since Russia invaded its neighbour. It is seen as crucial to curbing soaring global food prices by allowing grain exports to be shipped from Black Sea ports including Odesa.

The strikes on Odesa drew strong condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy. On Friday, U.N. officials said they hoped the agreement would be operational in a few weeks.

Turkey’s defence minister said Russian officials told Ankara that Moscow had “nothing to do” with the strikes. Neither Russian defence ministry statements nor the military’s evening summary mentioned missile strikes in Odesa. The ministry did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Two Russian Kalibr missiles hit the area of a pumping station at the port; two others were shot down by air defence forces, according to Ukraine’s military. Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ignat said the missiles were fired from warships in the Black Sea near Crimea.

Suspilne quoted Ukraine’s southern military command as saying the port’s grain storage area was not hit.

“Unfortunately there are wounded. The port’s infrastructure was damaged,” said Odesa region governor Maksym Marchenko.

But Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook that “we continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports”.

SAFE PASSAGE

The strike appeared to violate Friday’s deal, which would allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports.

“If anyone in the world could have said before this that some kind of dialogue with Russia, some kind of agreements, would be necessary, look at what is happening,” Zelenskiy said in a late-night video.

He vowed to do everything possible to acquire air defense systems able to shoot down missiles like those that hit Odesa.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that “this attack casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal.”

“Russia bears responsibility for deepening the global food crisis and must stop its aggression,” he added.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “unequivocally condemned” the strikes, a spokesperson said, adding full implementation of the deal was imperative.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusai Akar said in a statement: “The Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack … The fact that such an incident took place right after the agreement we made yesterday really worried us.”

Ukraine has mined waters near its ports as part of its war defences, but under the deal pilots will guide ships along safe channels.

A Joint Coordination Center (JCC) staffed by members of all four parties to the agreement will then monitor ships transitting the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait and off to world markets. All sides agreed on Friday there would be no attacks on these entities.

‘SPIT IN THE FACE’

Ukraine foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook that “the Russian missile is (Russian President) Vladimir Putin’s spit in the face” of Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Moscow has denied responsibility for the food crisis, blaming Western sanctions for slowing its food and fertiliser exports and Ukraine for mining the approaches to its ports.

A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia’s Black Sea fleet since Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of grain and stranded many ships.

This has worsened global supply chain bottlenecks. Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has stoked food and energy price inflation. Russia and Ukraine are major global wheat suppliers and a global food crisis has pushed some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the World Food Programme.

The deal would restore grain shipments from the three reopened ports to pre-war levels of 5 million tonnes a month, U.N. officials said.

Also on Saturday, the U.S. State Department confirmed that two Americans were killed recently in Ukraine’s Donbas region but declined to provide details.

A U.S. congressional delegation that met Zelenskiy in Kyiv promised continued support. Adam Smith, chair of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, was quoted as telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Washington and its allies aimed to provide more multiple rocket launch systems.

Three people were killed when 13 Russian missiles hit a military airfield and railway infrastructure in Ukraine’s central region of Kirovohrad, the regional governor said.

Ukraine struck a bridge in the occupied Black Sea region of Kherson, targeting a Russian supply route, a Ukrainian official said. The deputy head of the Russian-installed regional authority said the bridge had been hit but was still operating, Russia’s TASS news agency said.

Zelenskiy said late on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were moving “step by step” into the eastern Kherson region, which was taken over by Russia at the start of the war.

Putin calls the war a “special military operation” and has said it is aimed at demilitarising Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West call this a baseless pretext for an aggressive land grab.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Tom Balmforth in London and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Frances Kerry, Louise Heavens, Grant McCool and David Gregorio)

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By Mahamat Ramadane

N’DJAMENA (Reuters) – Chad rebels said on Friday they would renew their participation in peace-building talks with the interim authorities, after breaking off negotiations last week.

The decision revives the possibility of their participation in a national dialogue in August that is meant to be a precursor to long-awaited elections after interim President Mahamat Idriss Deby seized power following his father’s death last year.

In a statement, the rebel groups said they would resume talks, without giving further details. They had earlier accused the interim authorities of creating a “bad atmosphere” at negotiations in Qatar.

Deby declared himself head of a Transitional Military Council in April 2021 after his father, Chad’s longtime ruler Idriss Deby, was killed while visiting troops fighting the rebel insurgency in the north.

Initially his council had said it would oversee an 18-month transition to democratic rule, but it has shown little sign of organising elections as that deadline nears.

The Chadian authorities have set Aug. 20 as the date for the national dialogue. Deby has presented this as the first step towards planning a vote. It would in theory include the armed groups, but the conditions for their participation have not yet been agreed on.

Pressure has started to grow from opposition groups within Chad and bilateral partners to advance the transition process.

Chad is an ally of France and other Western countries in the fight against Islamist militants in Africa’s Sahel region.

(Writing by Alessandra ; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Max Hunder

KYIV (Reuters) – The United States promised more military support for Ukraine, including drones, and is doing preliminary work on whether to send fighter aircraft, as fighting raged on in the east of the country five months into Russia’s invasion.

Moscow and Kyiv signed a landmark deal on Friday to unblock grain exports from Black Sea ports. However, representatives declined to sit at the same table and avoided shaking hands at the agreement ceremony in Istanbul, reflecting wider enmity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Friday’s agreement as unlocking around $10 billion worth of grain exports, needed to ease a food crisis.

But on the war, he said there could be no ceasefire unless lost territory was retaken.

“Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

“Society believes that all the territories must be liberated first, and then we can negotiate about what to do and how we could live in the centuries ahead.”

There have been no major breakthroughs on front lines since Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held cities in eastern Luhansk province in late June and early July.

The Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff said Russia had shelled several dozen positions on front lines on Friday but had no success capturing territory.

Russian forces failed in a bid to establish control over Ukraine’s second biggest power plant at Vuhlehirska, north-east of Donetsk, and troops also tried to advance west from the city of Lysychansk but were pushed back, it said.

Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment out-of-hours by Reuters.

Kyiv hopes that its gradually increasing supply of Western arms, such as U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), will allow it to recapture lost territory.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Friday its forces had destroyed four HIMARS systems between July 5-20, refuted by the United States and Ukraine. Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

The White House on Friday announced a package of additional support totalling around $270 million and said it was doing preliminary work on whether to send fighter aircraft to Kyiv, although such a move would not happen in the near term.

The Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has caused Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945, forcing millions to flee and turning entire cities to rubble.

The Kremlin says it is engaged in a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Both Kyiv and Western nations say the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.

As the conflict drags on, credit rating firms Fitch and Scope downgraded Ukraine, two days after the country requested a debt payment freeze.

GRAIN DEAL

Friday’s export deal hopes to avert famine among tens of millions of people in poorer nations by injecting more wheat, sunflower oil, fertilizer and other products into world markets, including for humanitarian needs, partly at lower prices.

A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia’s Black Sea fleet, trapping tens of millions of tonnes of grain and stranding many ships, has worsened global supply chain bottlenecks and, along with Western sanctions, stoked food and energy price inflation.

Moscow has denied responsibility for the crisis, blaming instead sanctions for slowing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for mining the approaches to its Black Sea ports.

A U.N. official said a separate pact signed on Friday would smooth such Russian exports and that the United Nations welcomed U.S. and European Union clarifications that their sanctions would not apply to their shipment.

Addressing Western concerns that reopening shipping lanes could leave Ukraine open to attack, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow would not seek to take advantage of the de-mining of Ukraine’s ports.

Kyiv does not see a risk of Russian ships attacking through the ports as they would be vulnerable to missile strikes, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.

Senior U.N. officials said the deal was expected to be fully operational in a few weeks and would restore grain shipments from the three reopened ports to pre-war levels of 5 million tonnes a month.

Safe passage into and out of the ports would be guaranteed in what one official called a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered, they said, although the word “ceasefire” was not in the agreement text.

“Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of hope… possibility… and relief in a world that needs it more than ever,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; writing by Costas Pitas; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

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By Oliver Griffin and Luis Jaime Acosta

BOGOTA (Reuters) -Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro on Friday met with representatives of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration in Bogota, the Colombian capital, where they discussed topics including drug trafficking, the environment and economic development.

Petro, a 62-year-old economist who will become Colombia’s first leftist leader next month, has been roundly critical of the U.S.-led war on drugs and was elected on promises to tackle deep inequality and climate change and to seek peace with remaining leftist rebels.

“This is a positive meeting because it shows the interest that exists in the government of the United States in Latin America and in Colombia,” Petro told journalists, as he was accompanied by U.S. principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer.

The conversation between Petro’s team and the U.S. delegation focused on a full range of topics, Finer told reporters, including climate change, economic development and counter-narcotics.

Colombia is a top producer of cocaine and faces constant pressure from Washington to eradicate drug crops and tackle drug trafficking.

Petro and the Andean country’s truth commission have criticized the U.S.-led war on drugs, with the latter urging Colombia’s president-elect to lead a global conversation on changing drug policies, with a focus on regulation over criminalization.

Though Finer hailed talks with Petro and his team as positive, he told journalists at a later briefing that there would always be areas of disagreement, as in any of the U.S.’s relationships.

“The United States and the Biden administration is not supportive of decriminalization,” Finer said.

Petro has also raised concerns in Washington over his outreach to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is under U.S. sanctions. The two have discussed reestablishing normal relations at their countries’ border.

The Biden administration will continue to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, Finer said, adding that restarting talks between Maduro’s government and Venezuela’s opposition could be a key focus for Petro and the United States.

“We think that also could be an area of common ground with the incoming administration, whether or not they take a different approach to their predecessors, as they’ve said they will, to a recognition and normalization with Maduro,” he said.

(Reporting by Oliver Griffin and Luis Jaime AcostaEditing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler)

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GENEVA (Reuters) – A grains agreement will be signed in Istanbul, Turkey this afternoon, a U.N. spokesperson said on Friday, adding that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as well as parties from Russia, Ukraine and Turkey will be present.

“The signature of this agreement … is expected to take place this afternoon at 4:30 Istanbul time (1330 GMT),” U.N. spokesperson Michele Zaccheo told a Geneva press briefing.

(Reporting by Emma Farge)

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LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s Prince Harry was granted permission to challenge a UK government decision in court over his security arrangements, a High Court judgment showed on Friday.

Harry, who moved to the United States two years ago with his wife Meghan, is challenging a decision for him to cease receiving police protection while in Britain, even if he covers the cost himself.

The decision was made in early 2020 by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, on behalf of the Home Office, the ministry responsible for policing, immigration and security.

A British High Court judge granted permission for part of Harry’s claim for a judicial review of the decision. A judicial review involves a judge examining the legitimacy of a public body’s decision.

Permission for Harry to apply for judicial review was granted on several different grounds although not all of those the prince’s legal team had sought, the judgment, published on the court’s website, showed.

Harry’s legal representatives were immediately reachable for comment. The Home Office did not immediately comment.

Earlier this month lawyers for Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, argued in court that the royal household should not have been involved in the UK’s decision to deny him police protection in Britain.

(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James)

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