Category World News

In advance of a widely dissented national election scheduled for the following month, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has made a goodwill visit to Myanmar. It is believed that Lukashenko will support the military of the Southeast Asian nation.

The self-installed de facto leader of the country, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, met with Lukashenko at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, according to Myanmar state media on Friday.

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“This visit marked a historic occasion and demonstrated Belarus’ goodwill and trust in Myanmar. A Belarusian Head of State has visited Myanmar for the first time in 26 years of diplomatic relations, according to military-run newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar.

Premier Nyo Saw, Prime Minister, and other top military officials from Myanmar’s military government welcomed Lukashenko on Thursday night with full state honors and cultural performers.

Since Myanmar’s military imposed the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on February 1st, 2021, Lukashenko is only the second foreign leader to visit the country after former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The Belarusian leader’s visit comes just one month before the military is scheduled to hold national elections, which many domestic and international observers have denounced as a fake. The military government has hailed his visit as a return to normalcy, with polls scheduled for late December being supported by the general public.

The Global New Light also confirmed that Belarus plans to “send an observation team to Myanmar” following Lukashenko’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing on Friday.

The leaders also agreed that “collaboration will also be strengthened in military technologies and trade,” a day after Yangon’s Myanmar-Belarus Development Cooperation Roadmap 2026-2028 was signed.

According to Belarus’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov, who was quoted by the state media as saying that Belarus has “expertise and modern technologies in mechanical engineering” while Myanmar has “significant potential in various industrial sectors.”

“We in Belarus produce a full line of machinery and equipment, and Myanmar intends to mechanize its agriculture. No topics are off limits for our cooperation, according to our president, according to Ryzhenkov.

Since the organization was founded in 1994, Lukashenko has been the former Soviet state’s first and only president. Belarus’s government is widely regarded as authoritarian.

Belarus is one of the few nations that has kept in touch with Myanmar’s military leaders since the coup, along with its major backers China and Russia.

The Myanmar military’s control of the divided nation, where ethnic armed groups have waged decades-long conflicts for independence, has since become a popular protest movement in the immediate wake of the coup.

In late 2024, census workers for the military government were only able to count the population in 145 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, which suggests that the military now controls less than half the nation.

Other recent estimates estimate that the military controls only a portion of the nation’s territory. About twice as much of the territory is controlled by ethnic armed groups and the anti-regime People’s Defence Force, which have pledged to boycott and violently disrupt the upcoming elections.

Critics have criticized the absurdity of holding elections in such circumstances despite geographic restrictions, rampant violence, and the Myanmar military’s vote to dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi’s enormously popular NLD in March 2023.

As the President Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown intensifies in the wake of a fatal attack on two National Guard members, the US State Department has announced it is “immediately” suspending issuing visas for individuals traveling on Afghan passports to protect “public safety.”

The United States immigration authorities announced on Friday that they would continue to make decisions regarding all asylum applications for the time being.

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In a post on X on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the State Department had “paused visa issuance for ALL individuals traveling with Afghan passports.”

Authorities named Afghan national Rahmanaullah Lakanwal as the main suspect in the Washington, DC shooting that left one National Guard member in critical condition on Wednesday.

Rubio claimed that protecting our country and our people is the top priority for the United States.

The State Department under President Trump has stopped issuing visas to ALL travelers using Afghan passports. &nbsp,

Protecting our country and our people is the top priority for the United States. https://t.co/HuR1Lj7F9t

Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe, both of whom were patrolling close to the White House, are accused of being attacked by Lakanwal in an unprovoked attack by Lakanwal.

The Trump administration confirmed on Thursday night that 24-year-old Wolfe is still in critical condition while 20-year-old Beckstrom passed away from her injuries.

Lakanwal worked for the spy agency in Afghanistan before immigrating to the US shortly after the Western forces backed out of the nation in 2021, according to the CIA.

The charges against Lakanwal have been upgraded to first-degree murder, along with two counts of assault with the intent to kill while armed, according to US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director Joseph Edlow stated in a separate announcement on Friday that the agency had also put a stop to all asylum applications in the name of “the safety of the American people.”

In a post on X, Edlow wrote that “USCIS has halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the fullest extent possible.”

According to Trump, Edlow claimed a day earlier that he had ordered “a full, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern.”

At Trump’s request, the measures are the most recent in a line of increasing immigration restrictions.

Trump has criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, including the granting visas to Afghan nationals who worked with US forces in Afghanistan, on numerous occasions in recent days.

Following the US’s exit in 2021, Lakanwal arrived in the US as part of a program from the Biden era called “Operation Allies Welcome.”

Trump declared he planned to suspend immigration from “all Third World countries,” and ordered authorities to re-examine all green card applications from 19 “countries of concern” in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.

Although he did not define the term “Third World,” it is frequently used as a slang term for developing nations in the Global South.

Trump added that he would “remove anyone who is incapable of loving our country or who is not a net asset to the United States.”

He declared, “I will denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquillity, deport any foreign national who poses a public security risk, or is incompatible with Western civilization,” and so on.

In response to allegations that she allegedly lured 17 men to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, her daughter, former South African president Jacob Zuma, has resigned from parliament.

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla resigned on Friday after being named in police custody over her alleged involvement in luring South Africans to Russia. A group of men between the ages of 20 and 39 reportedly ended up on the front lines of Ukraine’s conflict after the police made the announcement.

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Zuma-Sambudla had been a member of parliament since June 2024 for her father’s opposition party, the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), after he was expelled from South Africa’s then-governing African National Congress.

Nkosinathi Nhleko, the MK Party’s national chairperson, stated at a press conference that “the national officials have accepted comrade Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s decision to resign and support her efforts to ensure that these young South Africans are safely returned to their families.

According to MK officials, Zuma-Sambudla resigned on her own and that all other public positions and titles were immediately removed.

Nhleko, the MK’s Nhleko, added that Zuma-Sambudla’s resignation was not a confession of guilt, but that MK would support the men’s families in Ukraine. She added that the party was not involved in luring the men to Russia.

Zuma-Sambudla’s half-sister has not publicly refuted the accusations she made, even though she did not speak at the news conference.

After being duped into fighting for mercenary forces under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts, South Africa’s government announced earlier this month that 17 of its citizens were stuck in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

After her half-sister had submitted a formal request for the investigation into her and two other people, police announced they would investigate Zuma-Sambudla last weekend.

In an affidavit, Zuma-Sambudla’s half-sister, Nkosazana Bonganini Zuma-Mncube, claimed that two other people had duped the South Africans into fighting by promising to give them security training in Russia. The other two people’s identities were unknown.

According to the affidavit, the South Africans were forced to fight in the conflict and handed over to a Russian mercenary group. Eight of the 17 men were members of Zuma-Sambudla’s and Zuma-Mncube’s extended family, according to the report.

Authorities were “working ever so quietly” at all levels “to secure their safe return,” according to South African presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya, who spoke to Al Jazeera.

However, an investigation is still being conducted that will examine how they were recruited, who was involved, and what were promised. . . said Magwenya

Following the murder of two Jordanian nationals on Thursday, Jordan became the latest nation to criticize Russia for recruiting its citizens to fight.

The Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared it would “take all available measures” to stop further recruitment of Jordanians and demanded that Moscow renounce its current enlisted citizens’ contracts.

According to figures shared by Ukrainian Brigadier General Dmytro Usov, who claimed that almost 3,400 foreigners had died fighting for Russia, Moscow claims to have recruited at least 18, 000 foreign fighters from 128 nations.

Zuma-Sambudla is seen as a divisive political figure in South Africa, according to Michael Appel, who is a journalist for Al Jazeera in Johannesburg. He is already facing “serious charges” related to the unrest in South Africa in 2021 that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.