World News

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Two Mexican journalists were killed on Monday in the eastern state of Veracruz, the state attorney general’s office said, adding to the toll in one of the deadliest years on record for media workers in the country.

Yessenia Mollinedo and Sheila Garcia died in the municipality of Cosoleacaque, the office said on Twitter. Local media said unidentified gunmen shot the two as they sat in a car.

Violence against media workers has jumped during President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration, according to a report published in April by Article 19, a freedom of expression advocacy group.

The latest killings come four days after veteran journalist Luis Enrique Ramirez was found dead on the side of a highway in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Prior to the death of Ramirez, eight journalists had been killed this year in Mexico, according to Article 19 data.

(Reporting by Kylie Madry and Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in Shanghai have again tightened anti-virus restrictions, just as the city was emerging from a month of strict lockdown due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Notices issued in several districts said residents were ordered to stay home and are barred from receiving nonessential deliveries as part of a “quiet period” lasting at least until Wednesday. The tightened measures could be extended depending on the results of mass testing, the notices said.

“Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Together we can lift the lockdown at an early date,” said one notice issued in the city’s Huangpu district and posted online.

It wasn’t clear what prompted the renewed tightening, with numbers of new COVID-19 cases in the city continuing to fall.

Shanghai on Monday reported 3,947 cases over the previous 24 hours, almost all of them asymptomatic, along with 11 deaths. Authorities have been gradually lifting isolation rules on the city’s 25 million residents, but the new orders appear to be returning to conditions at the early stage of the outbreak.

Shanghai originally ordered mass testing along with a limited lockdown, but extended that as case numbers rose. Thousands of residents have been forced into centralized quarantine centers for showing a positive test result or merely having been in contact with an infected person.

Two Shanghai residents reached through social media said they’d had no prior notice of the new restrictions, which they were told could last for up to a week.

“We’re unprepared,” said Zhang Chen, a researcher with a technology company. “I packed my luggage thinking it would be my turn next” to be taken to a quarantine facility.

“I don’t know what will happen in May, but after the lockdown, I think I’ll need psychological help,” Zhang said.

A marketing professional in the western Pudong district said quality of life has been declining even as living expenses continue to rise under lockdown.

“Every time, they say lockdown will be eased after a few days, but there seems to be no end,” said the woman, who asked that she be identified only by her surname, Lu, to avoid repercussions from authorities who have cracked down heavily on dissent.

“All aspects of work are affected. I don’t know when it will be time for the lockdown to come to an end,” Lu said.

In Beijing, authorities closed down the largest city district, with residents told to stay home and stores closed. Beijing has ordered daily testing of all residents, closed parks and other leisure venues and limited restaurants to takeout business only.

The usually bustling Sanlitun area crammed with restaurants, boutiques and an Apple store was all but deserted. Despite that, retiree Yang Xiaochang said Beijing appeared to be far better prepared to weather the surge than its southern cousin.

“Even though at the beginning there were some panic buying … Beijing will not be like that,” Yang said, referring to Shanghai.

Still, companies and investors worry the ruling Communist Party’s “zero-COVID” strategy that closed most businesses in Shanghai and other industrial centers is disrupting global trade and activity in autos, electronics and other industries.

China’s export growth tumbled in April as global demand weakened, adding to pressure on the world’s second-largest economy.

Exports rose 3.7% over a year earlier to $273.6 billion, down sharply from March’s 15.7% growth, customs data showed Monday. Reflecting weak Chinese demand, imports crept up 0.7% to $222.5 billion, in line with the previous month’s growth below 1%.

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LONDON (AP) — The U.K. and Irish governments have urged rival parties in Northern Ireland to come together to resurrect its power-sharing government after Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein scored a historic victory in local elections to become the biggest party in Northern Ireland’s Assembly.

Sinn Fein, which seeks union with Ireland, won 27 seats in the 90-seat legislature, beating the Democratic Unionist Party, which secured 25 seats. It’s the first time in Northern Ireland’s history that an Irish nationalist party has topped the voting.

But it’s not clear whether Sinn Fein will lead a new government because of Northern Ireland’s delicate power-sharing politics and ongoing tussles over the legacy of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

While Sinn Fein’s vice-president Michelle O’Neill now has the right to the post of first minister, a functioning Northern Ireland Executive — or devolved government — cannot be formed unless the largest unionist party agrees to join in the role of deputy first minister.

In February the DUP’s Paul Givan quit as first minister in protest against post-Brexit border arrangements, collapsing the Executive. His party has said it will not return to government unless their demands over the customs arrangements are met.

Leaders in London and Dublin said all parties must now re-establish the government as soon as possible.

Irish prime minister Micheál Martin said late Saturday that “it is now incumbent on all political parties and elected representatives to deliver on their mandate.”

“Power-sharing and principles of partnership, equality and mutual respect are at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement, through which peace has been secured and progress achieved for almost 25 years,” he added. “A new power-sharing Executive is vital for progress and prosperity for all in Northern Ireland.”

In London, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said he will meet with party leaders Monday to discuss how to re-establish a functioning government.

Lewis reiterated his position that the U.K. government would like to reach an agreement with the EU to resolve disputes over post-Brexit rules known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The DUP is strongly opposed to the rules, which have imposed customs and border checks on some goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K. Unionists say the new checks have created a barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. that undermines their British identity.

Britain’s Conservative government is trying to get the EU to agree to major changes, but negotiations have reached an impasse.

“The U.K. government’s position is we want to secure a deal with the EU. We’re very clear about that,” Lewis told the BBC Sunday. “We have worked very hard on that for over a year now across a series of conversations. We made proposals. The EU haven’t shown any flexibility.”

Northern Ireland’s delicate system, which splits power between the largest British unionist party and largest Irish nationalist party, was created by the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant conflict.

If no power-sharing Executive can be formed within six months, a new election may be triggered.

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DUBAI (Reuters) – The European Union’s Iran nuclear talks coordinator Enrique Mora is to visit Tehran on Tuesday, the semi-official agency Nour News reported on Saturday, as talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers have stalled.

“This trip could be seen as a new step in constructive consultations on the few but important issues that have remained in the Vienna talks,” Nour News said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

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(Reuters) – Several missiles hit the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Saturday, the regional administration’s spokesman Serhiy Bratchuk said in televised remarks.

Bratchuk said the strikes hit the city after targets in the surrounding Odesa region had been hit by four missiles earlier in the day.

He did not give further detail about the new strikes, saying that the facts were still being established.

Reuters was not able to immediately confirm details of the report.

(Reporting by Max Hunder; editing by Jason Neely)

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FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) – A meeting of European Union foreign ministers will be held next week should countries from the bloc fail to reach an agreement over an oil embargo against Russia by the weekend, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday.

The European Commission is proposing changes to its planned embargo on Russian oil in a bid to win over reluctant states, including Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event in Florence, Borrell reiterated he had faith in reaching “a solution that is shared, as not all countries are in the same situation,” adding a deal had to be found quickly.

The European Union’s executive proposed the oil embargo on Wednesday as part of a wider package of EU sanctions on Russia – the sixth since Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what the Kremlin calls “a special military operation”.

Asked about a possible embargo on gas imports, Borrell said “gas is not for tomorrow, (but) for the day after tomorrow,” indicating the EU needed to take one step at a time in its sanctions against Russia.

Earlier on Friday he said the bloc needed to be “realistic” in its plans to become independent from Russian energy and that it needed to do so in an “orderly and prudent way.”

“Gas cannot be substituted with something else… if it’s not Russian gas it needs to be gas anyway,” he said.

Europe, which sources about 40% of its gas imports from Russia, has been scrambling to diversify its energy supply mix as the conflict in Ukraine escalates.

The top diplomat added there were several ways of hitting Russia’s oil exports and that action might not be just limited to a simple ban on buying the oil.

“If insurance companies don’t provide the insurance for the transportation of Russian oil, it’s going to be a big problem for Russian oil exports – not only to the EU but to rest of world,” he said, without giving further details.

(Reporting by Silvia Ognibene in Florence and Giulia Segreti in Rome, editing by Maria Pia Quaglia and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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By Jonathan Landay

KYIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -Amnesty International said on Friday there was compelling evidence that Russian troops had committed war crimes, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, when they occupied an area outside Ukraine’s capital in February and March.

Civilians also suffered abuses such as “reckless shootings and torture” at the hands of Russian forces during their failed onslaught on Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion launched by the Kremlin on Feb. 24, the rights group said in a report.

“These are not isolated incidents. These are very much part of a pattern wherever Russian forces were in control of a town or a village,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, told a news conference in Kyiv.

Information collected by the group “can be used, hopefully, for holding the perpetrators to account, if not today, one day in the future”, she said.

Russia, which calls its invasion a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, denies its forces committed abuses. Kyiv and its Western backers say the fascism claim is a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression.

Ukrainian authorities say they are investigating more than 9,000 potential war crimes by Russian troops. The International Criminal Court is also looking into alleged war crimes.

The Amnesty report is the latest to document alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces when they occupied an area northwest of Kyiv, including the town of Bucha, where Ukrainian authorities say more than 400 civilians were killed. Moscow withdrew its troops in early April.

‘UNLAWFUL KILLINGS’

The report concluded that Russian troops had committed a “host of apparent war crimes” in Bucha, including “numerous unlawful killings”, most of them near the intersection of Yablunska and Vodoprovidna streets.

A Reuters investigation published on Thursday documented clues, including testimony and evidence focused on Yablunska Street, to the identities of individual Russian soldiers and military units present in Bucha.

The units included the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which the Amnesty report also found was present in the town.

Rovera said she collected in Bucha armour-piercing bullets and shell casings produced at a plant in Tula, south of Moscow, for rifles used only by elite Russian airborne units whose presence in Bucha Amnesty had confirmed.

“We also found and were able to view some military documents that indicate the presence of these special units in these places where these crimes were committed,” she said.

Amnesty said it had documented 22 cases of unlawful killing by Russian forces – “most of which were apparent extrajudicial executions” – in Bucha and nearby areas.

Asked by Reuters before the Amnesty report about Russia’s operation in Bucha, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The Bucha story is a set-up and a fake”.

Amnesty also said in its report Russian airstrikes that hit eight residential buildings on March 1-2 in the town of Borodyanka, killing at least 40 civilians, were “disproportionate and indiscriminate, and apparent war crimes”.

“Russian forces cannot credibly claim to have been unaware that civilians were living in the targeted buildings,” it said.

(Reporting by Jonathan LandayEditing by Gareth Jones)

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BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union citizens may be able to claim damages from governments if their health has been affected by excessive air pollution, a top court adviser said Wednesday.

In her opinion, Advocate General Juliane Kokott said that “an infringement of the limit values for the protection of air quality under EU law may give rise to entitlement to compensation from the State.”

Advocates General routinely provide legal guidance to the European Court of Justice. Their opinions aren’t binding on the Luxembourg-based court, but are followed in most cases.

The court looked at the matter after a Parisian plaintiff requested €21 million in damages from the French state, claiming that the growing air pollution in the French capital had damaged his health. He said the French state was liable for that harm because it did not ensure that EU limits were respected.

The Administrative Court of Appeal in Versailles, France, which is hearing the dispute, asked the Court of Justice if, and under what conditions, individuals can claim compensation from the state for health damage caused by infringement of the EU limit values.

In 2019, the Court of Justice found that France had “systematically and persistently” exceeded the annual limit for nitrogen dioxide since 2010. In addition, France’s top administrative court last year fined President Emmanuel Macron’s government a record 10 million euros for failing to reduce air pollution to acceptable levels.

Kokott considered that the conditions for state liability applied in this case, although establishing a “direct causal link” between the serious breach of the rules on air quality and specific damage to health might be difficult to prove.

The Advocate General also pointed out “that even if a direct link between a serious infringement of the limit values and damage to health were proved, the matter would not end there.”

“Rather, the Member State may exonerate itself by proving that such exceedance of the limit values would also have occurred if it had adopted in good time air quality plans which satisfy the requirements of the directive.” the court said in a press release.

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SALTA, Argentina (AP) — Feminist groups have rallied to the support of 18 cloistered Carmelite nuns who have filed an unusual complaint of gender violence against the local Catholic archbishop.

Dozens of activists gathered Tuesday in the esplanade of the Convent of St. Bernard in Salta, some 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires.

The nuns, members of the Discalced Carmelites order, have filed a complaint with a local court accusing Salta Archbishop Mario Antonio Cargnello, Bishop emeritus Martín de Elizalde and vicar Lucio Ajalla of “physical, psychological and economic violence.”

The archbishop has denied the accusations and the position of the other two is unclear because they have not given statements or officially named attorneys.

Elizalde had been designated by the Vatican to hear the nuns’ complaints, but they complain he had accepted the behavior they denounced.

Protesters carried posters reading “Sister, We Believe You” and “Enough of Violent Priests!” The woman joined hands and spread out around the historic structure in a symbolic hug.

“Sometimes one thinks that the sisters are in harmony, in a contemplative live, but the violence of the church itself has made them say, ‘enough!’” said Irene Cari of the Forum of Women for Equal Opportunities, one of several groups that participated in the demonstration.

The cloistered nuns have long been at odds with Cargnello over their support for a local woman who professes to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary that he does not accept.

Attorneys for the nuns say the archbishop was upset when an image of the Madonna del Cerro was placed at the funeral of a nun in 2020 and that Ajalla lunged at a nun to stop her filming the scene. They say the archbishop himself, as well as Ajalla, hit the prioress’ arm when she recovered the device used to film.

The attorneys say there were other threats and aggressions but did not detail them, citing a court gag order. The archbishop’s defense says the problem is rooted in economic issues and the administration of the Carmelite properties.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A judge in Fiji has ruled that U.S. authorities can seize a Russian-owned superyacht — but has put a hold on his order until at least Friday while defense lawyers mount a challenge.

The yacht Amadea — worth $325 million — had earlier been stopped from leaving the South Pacific nation because of its links to Russia. That order will stand for now, preventing U.S. authorities from taking the yacht to Hawaii or elsewhere.

A question remains over which of two Russian oligarchs really owns the Amadea, with only one of them facing sanctions. There are also questions about how far U.S. jurisdiction extends into Fiji.

Suva High Court Justice Deepthi Amaratunga on Tuesday granted an order allowing the U.S. to seize the superyacht after the U.S. had earlier filed a warrant. But the judge has also allowed for a pause while defense lawyers put together their challenge.

The judge’s next decision in the case will come on Friday, when he will decide whether to continue to put a hold on the yacht’s seizure pending a formal appeal by the defense.

The U.S. Justice Department in March announced the creation of a team of federal agents and prosecutors to pursue wealthy Russians or those aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The team, called Task Force KleptoCapture, was set up to seize assets belonging to oligarchs with the aim of pressuring Russia to end the war.

The U.S. claims the real owner of the superyacht Amadea is Suleiman Kerimov. The economist and former Russian politician was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for alleged money laundering and has faced further sanctions from Canada, Europe, Britain and other nations after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Kerimov made a fortune investing in Russian gold producer Polyus, with Forbes magazine putting his net worth at $14.5 billion.

But defense lawyers claim the real owner is Eduard Khudainatov, the former chairman and chief executive of Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian oil and gas company. Khudainatov currently does not appear to face any sanctions, unlike many oligarchs and people with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin who have been sanctioned since the war began.

As with many superyachts, determining the real ownership of the Amadea is difficult due to the shadowy trail of trusts and shell companies. On paper, the superyacht is registered in the Cayman Islands and owned by Millemarin Investments Ltd., also based in the Cayman Islands.

Defense lawyers have claimed in court that Millemarin Investments Ltd. is the legal owner of the vessel and that the company is linked to the real, or beneficial, owner, Khudainatov. But U.S. authorities have claimed that behind all the various fronts, the real owner is Kerimov.

On April 19, after the yacht had sailed into Fiji from Mexico, the High Court in Suva ordered that the Amadea not leave Fiji until the merits of the U.S. warrant to seize the vessel were determined. Perhaps reflecting the question over ownership, the court later ordered Fijian prosecutors to amend an original summons, which named just Kerimov, to also include Millemarin Investments Ltd. as a second respondent to the case.

For now, the yacht continues to sit in a Fijian harbor with its crew of about 25 rotating on and off the vessel, while a police officer remains on board to ensure it stays put.

According to Boat International, the Amadea is 106 meters long and was built in 2017. It features a stainless steel albatross that extends off the bow and weighs more than 5 tons, a live lobster tank in the galley, a 10-meter (33-foot) pool, a hand-painted Pleyel piano and a large helipad.

The U.S. Embassy in Suva earlier said in a statement that the U.S. was acting with allies and partners around the world to impose costs on Russia because of its “war of choice.”

“We continue to ratchet up the pressure on Putin’s oligarchs and we are working with allies and partners to go after corrupt gains from some of the individuals closest to Putin, no matter where they are held around the world,” the embassy said.

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