Category World News

Officials in Colombia say the country will continue to share intelligence with international agencies combatting drug trafficking, just days after President Gustavo Petro said he was suspending such collaboration with the United States over attacks on vessels in international waters.

Colombian Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sanchez said in a social media post on Thursday that Petro had provided “clear instructions” to maintain a “continuous flow of information” with international agencies working on drug trafficking.

“Against transnational crime, the answer is international cooperation,” Sanchez wrote on X.

The country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti, also said in a separate statement that there had been “a misunderstanding” and Petro never said that US security agencies would stop working in Colombia alongside their Colombian counterparts.

“We will continue working as this Government has done against drug trafficking and crime with the United States,” Benedetti said on social media.

The apparent about-face comes after Petro — a left-wing leader and vocal critic of US President Donald Trump — said on Tuesday that an order had been issued “to suspend communications and other dealings with US security agencies”.

Petro has been critical of a series of deadly US attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration accused of smuggling illegal drugs.

The strikes have prompted widespread condemnation, with United Nations officials and other experts saying they amount to clear violations of international law.

“These attacks — and their mounting human cost — are unacceptable,” Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, said in late October.

“The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”

The Trump administration has rejected the criticism, saying its attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific aim to deter drug traffickers. The US bombing campaign, which began in September, has killed at least 76 people to date.

Trump, without providing any evidence, also has accused Petro of being involved in drug trafficking, imposing sanctions on the Colombian president and his family last month.

The Colombian leader has, in turn, called for Trump to be investigated for war crimes linked to the attacks, which have affected citizens from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Petro also has accused Washington of going after peasants growing coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, instead of targeting major drug traffickers and money launderers.

On Sunday, Petro said that he met with the family of a Colombian fisherman who was allegedly killed in one of the US strikes.

“He may have been carrying fish, or he may have been carrying cocaine, but he had not been sentenced to death,” Petro said during a summit between Latin American and European leaders hosted by Colombia. “There was no need to murder him.”

US news outlet CNN reported earlier this week that the United Kingdom had suspended some intelligence-sharing with the US over its strikes on the boats in the Caribbean.

Africa is experiencing its worst outbreak of cholera in the past 25 years, with Angola and Burundi seeing renewed surges that suggest active transmission of the disease, according to African medical officials.

On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a public health agency for the African Union, said it had recorded about 300,000 confirmed and suspected cases of cholera so far in 2025. In addition, it had logged more than 7,000 deaths.

The figures show an increase of more than 30 percent over the total number of cases recorded last year, which was 254,075.

“Cholera is still a major issue,” Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya said in a news briefing on Thursday. “It’s like every year we have more and more cases.”

Kaseya told reporters that two countries in particular have shown increases, suggesting active transmission of the infection: Angola and Burundi.

Angola has seen at least 33,563 total cases of cholera so far in 2025, resulting in 866 deaths, and Burundi has experienced at least 2,380 cases, leading to 10 deaths.

Cholera is a bacterial disease usually spread when people drink contaminated water or have contact with the water through open wounds. In some cases, it is possible to become infected when eating raw shellfish.

It cannot be transmitted from person to person, so casual contact with a person who has the disease is not a risk.

The disease causes severe diarrhoea and dehydration. If the disease is left untreated, cholera can kill within hours — even among people who were previously healthy.

The Africa CDC blamed the rise of the disease on poor access to safe water and conflicts across the continent.

“As we know, without water, we cannot really control the outbreak,” Kaseya said Thursday.

Even in countries that have seen slight declines in cholera cases, Kaseya encouraged health officials to address the root causes, including overcrowding and poor sanitation in refugee camps.

“Insecurity, displacement of our populations — all of that are not helping, in addition to a lack of wash commodities,” he said.

As of August, at least 40 people had died from cholera in Sudan’s Darfur region, with local refugee camps hit particularly hard.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, described the situation as the country’s worst outbreak in years.

The war in Sudan has damaged and destroyed much of the country’s civilian infrastructure, including sewage and water treatment works, and turned many places, including the capital Khartoum, into battlefields.

“On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years,” MSF said in a statement in August, cited by the AFP news agency.

“In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week.”

In total, Sudan has experienced at least 71,728 cases of cholera in 2025, resulting in 2,012 deaths, according to the Africa CDC.

Canada is hoping to rebuild ties with major trading partner India, its trade minister said, as the two countries seek to turn the page on a years-long diplomatic row linked to the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist.

Canadian International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu told Reuters on Thursday that he had a productive meeting with Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi.

“The meeting went really well. We focused on areas of opportunity — aerospace, AI, critical minerals, energy, agriculture — and what more we can do together,” Sidhu, who is on a three-day trip to India, said after the talks.

The minister’s visit marks one of the highest-level trade engagements between Canada and India since negotiations on a bilateral pact were halted in 2023 over accusations that India was involved in the killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist leader.

The Canadian prime minister at the time, Justin Trudeau, had said there were “credible links” between the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s assassination in the province of British Columbia in June 2023.

New Delhi vehemently denied the allegations, which prompted both governments to expel each other’s diplomats. India also suspended visa services in Canada.

Despite the accusations, Trudeau’s successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, has sought to re-establish ties with India since his government came into office earlier this year.

Carney met Modi on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June in the Canadian province of Alberta.

The two leaders “reaffirmed the importance of Canada-India ties, based upon mutual respect, the rule of law, and a commitment to the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity”, according to a readout of the discussions released by Carney’s office.

“The leaders agreed to designate new high commissioners, with a view to returning to regular services to citizens and businesses in both countries.”

Thursday’s talks in New Delhi also come as both India and Canada face increased economic uncertainty spurred by United States President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs.

Sidhu, the Canadian trade minister, told Reuters that the Carney government was eager to enhance cooperation with India to attract investment in the energy and critical minerals sectors.