Category World News

Taiwan and the United States have reached a “general consensus” on a trade pact that would reduce US tariffs on Taiwanese exports, officials in Taipei have said.

Taiwan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said on Tuesday that the outlines of a deal had been reached following months of negotiations with US officials.

“The goal of the US-Taiwan tariff negotiations has always been to seek reciprocal tariff reductions without stacking tariffs, and to obtain preferential treatment under Section 232,” the office said in a statement, according to the AFP news agency.

The trade office did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

US President Donald Trump announced a 32 percent “reciprocal tariff” on Taiwanese exports in April, before lowering the rate to 20 percent in August pending further negotiations.

Countries have made pledges to boost investments in the US in exchange for tariff relief since Trump launched his trade war last year.

Japan and South Korea last year agreed to invest $550bn and $350bn, respectively, to see their tariff rates cut from 25 to 15 percent.

Taiwan’s trade office did not provide details on the deal, but Bloomberg and The New York Times reported that the self-governing island’s tariff rate would be lowered to 15 percent.

As part of the deal, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would agree to build at least four more production facilities in the US state of Arizona, according to Bloomberg and The New York Times, which cited unnamed officials.

TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker and supplier to companies such as Nvidia and Apple, said in March that it planned to spend $100bn on new fabrication and packing plants in the US, bringing its total investment in the country to $165bn.

Due to its strategic importance, the chipmaker has been under pressure from Washington since 2020 to expand production outside Taiwan.

The US fears that a blockade of Taiwan by China, which claims the island as its territory, could cut off access to TSMC’s chips.

A former United States Navy sailor has been sentenced to more than 16 years in prison after being convicted of selling technical and operating manuals for ships and operating systems to an intelligence officer working for China.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Diego sentenced Jinchao Wei, 25, to 200 months in prison.

In August, a jury convicted Wei of six crimes, including espionage, based on accusations he was paid more than $12,000 for selling information, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Wei, an engineer for the amphibious assault ship USS Essex, was one of two California-based sailors charged on August 3, 2023, with providing sensitive military information to China. The other, Wenheng Zhao, was sentenced to more than two years in 2024 after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of receiving a bribe in violation of his official duties.

For years, US officials have expressed concern about the espionage threat they say the Chinese government poses, and prosecutors have pursued criminal cases against Beijing intelligence operatives who have allegedly stolen sensitive government and commercial information, including through illegal hacking.

Wei was recruited via social media in 2022 by an intelligence officer who portrayed himself as a naval enthusiast working for the state-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, prosecutors said.

Evidence presented in court showed Wei told a friend that the person was “extremely suspicious” and that it was “quite obviously” espionage.

Wei disregarded the friend’s advice to delete the contact and instead moved conversations with the intelligence officer to a different encrypted messaging app he believed to be more secure, prosecutors said.

Over the course of 18 months, Wei sent the officer photos and videos of the Essex, advised him of the location of various naval ships and told him about the Essex’s defensive weapons, prosecutors said.

Wei sold the intelligence officer 60 technical and operating manuals, including those for weapons control, aircraft and deck elevators. The manuals contained export control warnings and detailed the operations of multiple systems on board the Essex and similar ships.

He was a petty officer second class, which is an enlisted sailor’s rank.

The navy’s website says the Essex is equipped to transport and support a Marine Corps landing force of more than 2,000 personnel during an air and amphibious assault.

In the dense hill forests along Bangladesh’s border with war-torn Myanmar, villagers are losing limbs to landmines, casualties of a conflict not of their making.

Ali Hossain, 40, was collecting firewood in early 2025 when a blast shattered his life.

“I went into the jungle with fellow villagers. Suddenly, there was an explosion and my leg was blown off,” he said. “I screamed at the top of my voice.”

Neighbours rushed to stem the blood.

“They picked me up, gathered my severed leg and took me to hospital.”

In Ashartoli, a small settlement in Bandarban district, the weapons of a foreign war have turned forests, farms and footpaths into killing grounds.

Bangladesh’s 271km (168-mile) eastern border with Myanmar cuts through forests and rivers, much of it unmarked.

It is crossed daily by villagers, as their families have done for generations, to collect firewood or carry out small-time trading.

Myanmar is the world’s most dangerous country for landmine casualties, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which has documented the “massive” and growing use of the weapons, banned by many states.

The group recorded more than 2,000 casualties in Myanmar in 2024, the latest full year for which statistics are available, double the total reported the year before.

“The use of mines appeared to significantly increase in 2024-2025,” it said in its Landmine Monitor report, highlighting “an increase in the number of mine victims, particularly near the border” with Bangladesh.

Bangladesh accuses Myanmar’s military and its rival armed groups of planting the mines.

Arakan Army fighters, one of the many factions challenging the junta’s rule, control swaths of jungle across the border.

More than a million Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar also live in Bangladesh’s border regions, caught between the warring military and separatist forces.

Bangladesh police say at least 28 people were injured by landmines in 2025.

In November that year, a Bangladesh border guard was killed when a landmine tore off both his legs.

Bangladesh’s border force has put up warning signs and red flags, and carries out regular mine-clearing operations.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed 27 people in a reported drone attack on a Sudanese army base in the southeastern city of Sinja, a military source told Al Jazeera.

Monday’s attack coincided with an announcement a day prior that the government, aligned with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), would be returning to the capital, Khartoum, three years after it had shifted its base of operations to Port Sudan.

The SAF and the RSF have been locked in a brutal civil war since April 2023, with Khartoum State serving as a central area of dispute.

The military source, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said Monday’s drone attack targeted not only leaders in the government forces but also the security teams and civilians accompanying them.

It was unclear how many people were wounded in the attack.

Al Jazeera received reports that 13 people were injured, while some estimates have put the number much higher. The AFP news agency put the total at 73 wounded, citing military and health sources.

Qamar al-Din Fadl al-Mawla, the governor of Sudan’s White Nile state, was among the officials in Sinja at the time of the attack, according to a government statement. While he survived, two of his colleagues were reportedly killed.

Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, is located along a key route to Khartoum, some 300km (180 miles) to the north.

It also houses the headquarters of the SAF’s 17th Infantry Division, which was the apparent target of Monday’s attack.

RSF adviser Al-Basha Tibiq indicated on the social media platform Facebook that the drone attack was intended to send a warning to the Sudanese military leaders.

However, Salah Adam Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sennar state government, described the SAF as repelling the drone attack. “The army’s anti-aircraft defences dealt with it,” he said.

He added that the shelling resulted in losses and injuries among civilians, but that life has now returned to normal in the city.

Despite its strategic position as an artery to the government-controlled east, Sinja has largely avoided the worst of the fighting since the Sudanese military regained control in 2024. Sennar state was last targeted by drones in October.

The civil war is now deep into its third year, with the SAF renewing efforts for an operation to retake the Kordofan and Darfur regions from the RSF.

The SAF said on Friday it had inflicted heavy losses on the RSF during a series of air and ground operations in the two regions, pushing RSF fighters out of some areas and killing hundreds more.

On Sunday, Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris announced the government’s return to Khartoum, after the army recaptured the city in May. The government has pursued a gradual return in the months since.

In the early days of the civil war, the RSF took control of the capital, forcing the army-aligned government to flee. Port Sudan has served as the government’s wartime capital in the meantime.

Fierce fighting and global funding cuts have pushed more than 21 million people in Sudan — nearly 45 percent of the population — towards starvation in what has become one of the world’s severest humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has conveyed to a governing party executive her intention to dissolve parliament’s lower house next week, according to the Kyodo news agency, less than three months into her tenure.

Citing a source, Kyodo reported on Tuesday that Takaichi plans to declare the dissolution of parliament at the beginning of the regular session of the Diet on January 23.

The decision will pave the way for snap elections in the world’s fourth-largest economy, with Takaichi’s once-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) hoping to increase its parliamentary seats.

An early election on the back of the Takaichi cabinet’s high approval rating could help boost the majority held by the ruling coalition of the LDP and the Japan Innovation Party in the lower house, Kyodo reported.

On Friday, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper also reported that Takaichi was considering dissolving the lower chamber on January 17 for a snap election on February 8 or 15.

Takaichi hopes a bigger majority will help her implement her agenda of more “proactive” fiscal spending and stronger intelligence capacities, the Yomiuri said.

Takaichi, the country’s first female prime minister, has so far remained mum in public about calling an early general election.

The ruling coalition and the LDP have yet to comment on the report.

On Monday, NHK News reported that leaders of the Japanese opposition parties Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Komeito have agreed to “explore ways to work more closely together” to counter Takaichi’s coalition in the event of snap polls.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Democratic Party for the People, Tamaki Yuichiro, warned that dissolving the lower house before the budget for the next fiscal year is passed would mean the government of Takaichi putting the economy on the back burner.

NHK reported that Takaichi is expected to make her final decision on snap elections while taking into account her diplomatic schedule.

On Tuesday, the prime minister hosted South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in her hometown of Nara to discuss the two nations’ security and economic ties.

Tokyo shares jumped more than 3 percent on Tuesday on speculation that Takaichi will call snap elections to capitalise on strong poll numbers.

A clear mandate for Takaichi and the LDP could also help break the deadlock in a diplomatic spat with China, according to Yomiuri.

Ties have deteriorated since Takaichi suggested in November that Japan could intervene militarily if China ever launched an attack on Taiwan, the self-ruled island it claims.

Beijing has announced a broad ban on the export to Japan of “dual-use” goods with potential military applications, and has reportedly been choking off exports of rare-earth products crucial for making everything from electric cars to missiles.

Last month, Takaichi said she was “always open” to dialogue with China.

Japan last held general elections in October 2024, in which the LDP lost its majority under the leadership of Takaichi’s predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba.

Aleppo, Syria – Spent bullet shell casings litter the classrooms and corridors of Qassem Amin school in Aleppo’s Ashrafieh neighbourhood. Desks barricade the stairwells; glass from shattered windows crunches underfoot.

The school’s playground turned into a battleground last week, as it sat on the front line of fierce fighting between fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian government forces.

SDF snipers had commandeered the top floor of the school five months earlier, while classes continued below, school staff explained.

“It was very wrong,” said the school’s head teacher, Ouafa Zein al-Dein, “especially for the children”.

“We never interacted with them, never even spoke to them,” Zein al-Dein said of the SDF fighters. “I never let anyone near them.”

On January 6, the day fighting started, the school’s pupils had just sat down for exams. They never finished them. When Zein al-Dein heard the first explosions, she quickly sent the children home.

SDF strongholds

At least 155,000 people fled Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud, the predominantly Kurdish Aleppo neighbourhoods where the fighting took place.

The areas had been controlled by the SDF for 10 years.

Last March, the SDF agreed to merge with the Syrian army after a meeting between the group’s leader, Mazloum Abdi (also known as Mazloum Kobani), and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. It was part of a broader deal to bring all SDF-controlled areas of Syria under the control of the new government, which took power after the fall of the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

But the integration of the SDF into the state never happened.

The five days of intense fighting that broke out last week only ended when SDF forces agreed to withdraw. They only did so, they said, to stop the Syrian army targeting civilian buildings, accusations the Syrian army denies. The SDF itself is accused of hitting civilian targets, an accusation it also denies.

Civilians return

The Syrian government is now allowing residents to return to most of the areas hit by last week’s fighting.

In the freezing rain on Monday, families were finally allowed back into Sheikh Maqsoud’s warren of tightly packed streets. A spider’s web of electricity cables hung across the tops of the three- and four-floor concrete and breeze-block homes that make up this neighbourhood.

“Someone from the SDF wanted to use my house to fire from,” said one man, Abu Walid, as he reopened his supermarket on the main road running through Sheikh Maqsoud.

“I stopped them by saying the house had been affected by the [2023] earthquake. I asked him, ‘What about the lives of civilians?’ He told me it didn’t matter; what mattered is that we remain here as the ones in control.”

After the SDF withdrew at the end of last week, Syrian army security forces searched the neighbourhood for booby traps and weapons.

They were also looking for prisoners taken during the fall of the al-Assad regime. At the time, the SDF was allied with the regime, and civil activists and opposition fighters had been arrested if they were stopped at SDF checkpoints.

The Syrian army is now fully in control of these two neighbourhoods.