Category World News

Nine bus passengers have been killed after gunmen kidnapped them in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan province, officials have said.

The passengers were taken from several buses on Thursday evening, the provincial government spokesman, Shahid Rind, said on Friday.

The bus was travelling from Balochistan to the central region of Punjab. It is thought the travellers were targeted due to their Punjabi ethnicity, officials said.

The bodies of the victims, riddled with bullet wounds, were found in the mountains overnight, another government official, Naveed Alam, said.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi confirmed the incident and strongly condemned the killings. “The blood of innocent people will be avenged. The killing of innocent citizens is an open act of terrorism by India-sponsored terrorists,” Sharif said.

There was no immediate reaction from India to his statement. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), separatist Baloch fighters, have in the past been involved in such incidents, killing passengers after identifying them as coming from the eastern Punjab province.

The BLA is the strongest of a number of groups involved in a rebellion, who have for years operated in the area bordering Afghanistan and Iran, a mineral-rich region.

A senior International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan’s western Darfur region.

ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan presented her assessment before the United Nations Security Council on Thursday of the devastating conflict, which has raged since 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing 13 million others.

Khan said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.

She said it was “difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur”.

“On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur,” she said.

The prosecutor’s office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighbouring Chad.

She detailed an “intolerable” humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that “famine is escalating” as aid is unable to reach “those in dire need”.

“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.

In June, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan warned that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and weaponised humanitarian relief, amid the devastating consequences of the civil war.

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both parties may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in the region, while the administration of then-US President Joe Biden determined that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide.

The Security Council had previously referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a new probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the SAF and RSF.

The RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

“I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population – they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past,” said Khan.

Six Secret Service agents on duty during last year’s failed assassination attempt against United States President Donald Trump have faced disciplinary action, including suspensions ranging from 10 to 42 days, the agency has said.

The US Secret Service said it was prohibited from releasing the names of those facing disciplinary action in a Thursday statement marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024.

It said the six individuals face punishments ranging from “10- to 42-day suspensions without pay”, while all will also be “placed on restricted duty or into non-operational positions”.

The statement did not specify the grounds for their suspensions, but said the incident – in which a lone gunman opened fire at a rally in the town of Butler – represents an “operational failure”.

The attacker accessed a nearby rooftop with a direct line of sight to the former president as he spoke on stage. A bystander was killed, while Trump’s ear was reportedly wounded in the attack. Agents shot and killed the gunman at the scene.

In an interview with Fox News set to air on Saturday, Trump said the Secret Service should have stationed an agent on the rooftop. “There were mistakes made. And that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.

The agency said it will carry the event as a “reminder of the critical importance of its zero-fail mission and the need for continuous improvement”.

“Breakdowns in communication, technological issues, and human failure, among other contributing factors, led to the events of July 13,” it said.

The Secret Service said it has implemented 21 of 46 recommendations made by congressional oversight bodies in the wake of the assassination attempt.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who was in charge of Trump’s security detail at the rally, said the agency “has taken many steps to ensure such an event can never be repeated in the future”.

Detailed in the Secret Service statement were new protective measures for golf courses.

Soon after the Butler assassination attempt, a man with a gun hid near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course in Florida with the intent to kill the then-Republican presidential candidate.

Prosecutors said Ryan Routh methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as he played golf on September 15, 2024. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before he was able to open fire on Trump.

On Thursday, Routh told Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida he wants to get rid of his court-appointed federal public defenders and represent himself at trial. Routh did not state his reasons for doing so.

President Donald Trump has announced that the United States would impose a 35 percent tariff on imports from Canada next month, while eyeing blanket tariffs of 15 or 20 percent on most other trading partners as he broadens his trade war.

In a letter released on his social media platform on Thursday, Trump told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney the new rate would go into effect on August 1 and would go up if Canada retaliated.

It was the latest of more than 20 such letters issued by Trump since Monday, as he continues to pursue his trade war threats against dozens of economies.

The letter on Thursday came despite what had been warming relations between Trump and Carney.

The Canadian leader visited the White House on May 6 and held a cordial meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

They met again at the G7 summit last month in Canada, where leaders pushed Trump to back away from his punishing trade war.

In an interview with NBC News published on Thursday, Trump also said that other trading partners that had not yet received such letters would likely face blanket tariffs.

“Not everybody has to get a letter. You know that. We’re just setting our tariffs,” Trump said in the interview.

“We’re just going to say all of the remaining countries are going to pay, whether it’s 20 percent or 15 percent. We’ll work that out now,” Trump was quoted as saying by the network.

In recent days, he also set new tariffs on a number of countries, including allies Japan and South Korea, along with a 50 percent tariff on copper.

On Friday, Myanmar, which was also hit by stiff Trump tariffs, pleaded with Trump for a reduction in the 40 percent tariff rate, with ruling Senior General Min Aung Hlaing saying he is ready to send a negotiation team to Washington if needed, according to state media.

Locked in talks

Canada and the US are locked in trade negotiations, hoping to reach a deal by July 21, and the latest threat seems to put that deadline in jeopardy.

Canada, as well as Mexico, are trying to find ways to satisfy Trump so that the free trade deal uniting the three countries, known as the USMCA, can be put back on track.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement replaced the previous NAFTA accord in July 2020, after Trump successfully pushed for a renegotiation during his first term in office.

It was due to be reviewed by July of next year, but Trump accelerated the process by launching his trade wars after taking office in January.

Canadian and Mexican products were initially hard hit by 25 percent US tariffs, with a lower rate for Canadian energy.

Trump targeted both neighbours, saying they did not do enough on undocumented immigration and the flow of illicit drugs across borders.

Argentina’s former President, Alberto Fernandez, has been ordered to stand trial for alleged corruption related to insurance policies taken out by the government for the public sector during his 2019-2023 term.

Fernandez will be prosecuted for “negotiations incompatible with the exercise of public office”, according to Judge Sebastian Casanello’s ruling published in Argentinian media on Thursday, and confirmed by the former leader’s lawyer, Mariana Barbitta.

The 66-year-old stands accused of fraudulent administration over his government’s use of brokers – one of whom allegedly had ties to his office – to contract insurance policies that could have been negotiated directly.

The judge noted in his order that in December 2021, in the middle of his presidency, Fernandez issued a decree that forced the entire public sector to contract exclusively with Nacion Seguros SA, an insurance company then led by Alberto Pagliano, a friend of Fernandez.

It resulted in a boon and tremendous growth for the company.

The main broker of the deal was allegedly the husband of Fernandez’s personal secretary.

The court ordered a freeze on about $10m of Fernandez’s assets as the case proceeds, according to Thursday’s ruling.

Some 33 other people are also named in the case. Fernandez did not immediately comment on the case.

Fernandez did not seek re-election after serving a single term, handing the keys of the presidential palace to self-described “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milei in December 2023.

The corruption allegations emerged when a court ordered an examination of his secretary’s phone while investigating assault claims made against Fernandez by his ex-partner Fabiola Yanez.

Yanez filed a complaint accusing Fernandez of having beaten her during their relationship, which ended after he left office.

He faces a separate trial on charges of domestic abuse.

Fernandez’s leftist Peronist movement, which dominated Argentinian politics for most of the country’s post-war history, has been dogged by allegations of corruption.