A Russian drone strike hit a Turkish-owned commercial vessel at Ukraine’s Chornomorsk port. Ukraine said Odessa port was also hit and a total of three Turkish ships were damaged. Kyiv said Russian attacks on Black Sea shipping showed it wasn’t serious about ending the war.
Everything changes for 55-year old Sang, a child of the Vietnam war, when he miraculously discovers his American father.
Sang is one of hundreds of thousands of unwanted and discriminated children left behind by the US soldiers after the Vietnam War. When his lifelong dream of finding his father comes true, Sang’s only mission is to race against time to meet his ailing dad and break the cycle of war trauma that has plagued generations.
After a long and challenging journey, Sang can finally go to the US, but without his wife, daughter, and beloved grandson. Reuniting with his father is a healing experience for both, but far from easy. Even though 50 years have passed since the last US soldier left Vietnam, many wounds remain open.
A Bolivian judge has ordered former President Luis Arce to remain in detention for five months while prosecutors investigate allegations he embezzled millions of dollars from a fund meant for Indigenous communities.
Arce, who left office just a month ago, appeared before Judge Elmer Laura in a virtual hearing on Friday, two days after his arrest on the streets of La Paz.
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The judge rejected appeals from Arce’s legal team for his release and ruled he must await trial in one of the capital’s largest prisons, citing the seriousness of charges that “directly affect state assets and resources allocated to vulnerable sectors”.
No trial date has been set.
The accusations centre on Arce’s time as economy minister under former President Evo Morales between 2006 and 2017, when authorities say he oversaw the diversion of approximately $700m from a state fund created to channel natural gas revenues into development projects for Indigenous peoples and peasant farmers.
Interior minister of the new right-wing government, Marco Antonio Oviedo, has described the 62-year-old former president as “the principal person responsible” for approving transfers of large sums into personal accounts of government officials for projects that were never completed.
Arce maintained his innocence during Friday’s hearing, saying he had no personal involvement in managing the fund and dismissing the case as politically motivated. “I’m a scapegoat,” he told the judge. “The accusations are politically motivated.”
His defence lawyers had requested his release on health grounds, noting his previous battle with kidney cancer.
However, Judge Laura denied the appeal and exceeded the prosecution’s request of three months’ detention by ordering five months in a state prison rather than a juvenile facility.
The case first emerged almost a decade ago in 2015 when the Indigenous fund was shut down amid corruption allegations, but investigations stalled during the years of Movement Toward Socialism governance.
The probe was revived after conservative President Rodrigo Paz took office last month, ending nearly two decades of left-wing rule in Bolivia.
Paz campaigned on promises to root out corruption at the highest levels as Bolivia grapples with its worst economic crisis in 40 years. His vice president, Edmand Lara, celebrated Arce’s arrest on social media, declaring that “everyone who has stolen from this country will return every last cent”.
Former ministers in Arce’s administration have condemned the arrest as an abuse of power and political persecution against the Movement Toward Socialism party.
China has held a low-key memorial ceremony for the Nanjing Massacre, as a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan continues to simmer.
President Xi Jinping did not attend the ceremony on Saturday commemorating the 1937 attack, in which China says Imperial Japan’s troops slaughtered 300,000 people in the eastern city of Nanjing.
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A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars have denied that a massacre took place at all. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has infuriated Beijing after her remarks last month in which she projected that a hypothetical Chinese attack on the self-governed island of Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan.
Doves flew over the national memorial centre in Nanjing after the ceremony, which was completed in less than half an hour, in front of an audience that included police officers and schoolchildren.
Shi Taifeng, head of the ruling Communist Party’s powerful organisation department, made far less combative remarks than recent rhetoric from Chinese government officials.
“History has proven and will continue to prove that any attempt to revive militarism, challenge the post-war international order, or undermine world peace and stability will never be tolerated by all peace-loving and justice-seeking peoples around the world and is doomed to fail.”
He did not mention Takaichi but alluded to China’s previous assertions that the Japanese leader seeks to revive the country’s history of militarism.
On Saturday, the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army put out a picture on its social media accounts of a large bloody sword, of the type used by many Chinese soldiers during the war, chopping off the head of a skeleton wearing a Japanese army cap.
“For nearly 1,000 years, the eastern dwarves have brought calamity; the sea of blood and deep hatred are still before our very eyes,” it said, using an old expression for Japan.
Last month, Japan’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi announced that Tokyo was moving forward with plans to deploy a missile system on Yonaguni, the country’s westernmost island located 110km (68 miles) off Taiwan’s east coast, which has hosted a Japanese military base since 2016.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs blasted the announcement, describing Japan’s plan as a “deliberate attempt to create regional tension and provoke military confrontation”. Koizumi pushed back, saying the Type 03 guided missile system was purely defensive and “intended to counter aircraft and missiles invading our nation”.
Beijing views Taiwan as its own territory and has promised to unite the island with the Chinese mainland, an aspiration that Taipei says infringes on its sovereignty and that only Taiwan’s citizens can decide their future.
Both countries have since traded quarrelsome accusations, with Japan summoning China’s ambassador earlier this month over an incident in which Chinese military aircraft allegedly twice locked fire-control radar onto Japanese fighter jets.
Illuminating aircraft with radar signals a potential attack that could force targeted planes to take evasive measures, making it among the most threatening actions a military aircraft can take.
For its part, the Chinese embassy denied Tokyo’s claims, saying in a statement that “China solemnly demands that Japan stop smearing and slandering, strictly restrain its frontline actions, and prevent similar incidents from happening again”.
Jose Manuel Albares on Trump’s strategy, NATO, Ukraine, and Spain’s plan for a viable Palestinian state.
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares discusses Trump’s new national security strategy and what it means for Europe’s security, NATO and the war in Ukraine.
Venezuela’s oil exports have plummeted since the United States seized an oil tanker off the country’s coast this week and imposed new sanctions on shipping companies doing business with the embattled Latin American country.
Oil tanker movements into and out of Venezuelan waters have almost come to a standstill, the Reuters news agency reported on Friday, after the US announced that it would seize more vessels as part of its military pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
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The seizure on Wednesday of the Skipper tanker marked the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since Washington imposed sanctions on Caracas in 2019. It also comes amid a US military build-up in the Caribbean, which appears designed to remove Maduro from power.
Threats of more seizures have now left tankers – loaded with about 11 million barrels of oil and fuel – stuck in Venezuelan waters and fearing to venture further, according to data and documents reviewed by Reuters.
Only tankers chartered by US oil giant Chevron have left ports and sailed into international waters carrying Venezuelan crude since the seizure of the Skipper, according to Reuters. Chevron has US government authorisation to operate in Venezuela through joint ventures with state-run oil company PDVSA and can export its oil to the US.
Chevron confirmed this week that it was operating in Venezuela “without disruption and in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable”, according to Reuters, and had exported two cargoes of Venezuelan heavy crude to the US since the seizure of the Skipper.
As the Skipper was taken to Houston, Texas, on Friday for the unloading of its confiscated fuel cargo, Trump reiterated that the US military will start carrying out strikes on land against drug trafficking targets in Latin America.
Speaking at the White House, Trump said that US forces – which have been attacking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean for weeks, killing some 90 people – had stopped 96 percent of drugs trafficked to the US by water.
The US also claims it is attacking drug trafficking vessels but has provided no evidence, while international law experts say the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings by Washington in international waters.
The Agencia Venezuela News site reported on Friday that Venezuela’s Executive Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez, filed a formal complaint with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) denouncing Washington’s “violation of freedom of navigation in the Caribbean”.
Rodriguez told the IMO of the “vulgar robbery” of Venezuelan oil by the US, which was an “internationally illegal act”, the news agency said. “The Vice President also reiterated that Washington’s threatening actions are not related to a supposed fight against drug trafficking,” it added.
On Monday, Trump said in an interview that Maduro’s “days are numbered” while also declining to rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela by US forces.
Washington has offered a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture, accusing the Venezuelan president of leading the alleged “Cartel of the Suns”, which the US has branded a “narco-terrorist” organisation.
On Thursday, the US Treasury announced sanctions on three relatives of Maduro and six shipping companies and six vessels involved in transporting Venezuelan oil, a move that could imperil his leadership.
“If there are no oil exports, it will affect the foreign exchange market, the country’s imports… There could be an economic crisis,” Elias Ferrer of Orinoco Research, a Venezuelan advisory firm, told the AFP news agency.
“Not just a recession, but also shortages of food and medicine, because we wouldn’t be able to import,” Ferrer said.