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BRUSSELS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the leaders of a coalition of Ukraine backers would meet again in Paris next week, hoping to finalize plans to secure a potential truce in the war with Russia.
“We will hold another meeting of the coalition of the willing next Thursday in Paris in presence of President (Volodymyr) Zelensky,” Macron told reporters following an EU summit.
Russian forces launched a mass drone attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, late on Wednesday, injuring nine people and causing considerable damage, emergency services and officials said.
Emergency services, posting on the Telegram messaging app, said the attacks started four fires in the city center and posted pictures of firefighters battling flames alongside piles of rubble. The strikes, it said, caused serious damage to buildings.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said there had been at least 12 drone strikes on the city, a frequent target of Russia’s military, located some 30 km (18 miles) from the border.
Kharkiv resisted capture in the early weeks of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but has been repeatedly hit by drones and missiles and Russian forces changed the focus of their campaign to Ukraine’s east.
A drone attack also triggered fires in the central city of Dnipro, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram. Pictures posted online showed smoke and flames drifting skyward.
No casualties were immediately reported in the city.
The party of South Sudan’s First Vice President Riek Machar said on Wednesday it was trying to locate him after the defense minister and chief of national security “forcefully entered” his residence and delivered an arrest warrant.
In a statement, the SPLM-IO party condemned “a blatant violation of the Constitution and the Revitalized Peace Agreement,” which ended a 2013-2018 civil war between forces loyal to Machar on one side and to President Salva Kiir on the other.
“His bodyguards were disarmed, and an arrest warrant was delivered to him under unclear charges. Attempts are currently being made to relocate him,” the statement said.
A government spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.
Earlier on Wednesday, the United Nations reported clashes over the past 24 hours between forces loyal to the two men outside the capital Juba.
Those clashes followed weeks of tensions that originated in fighting in the country’s northeast between government troops and a militia that has historically been close to Machar’s forces.
Kiir’s government, in turn, detained several officials from Machar’s party, including the petroleum minister and the deputy head of the army, leading the UN to warn of the risk of renewed civil war.
The civil war from 2013-2018 resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the world’s youngest nation, which won its independence from Sudan in 2011.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced imposition of 25 percent tariffs on all cars and light trucks not built on US soil.
“What we’re going to be doing is a 25 percent tariff on all cars that are not made in the United States. If they’re made in the United States, it is absolutely no tariff,” he announced at the White House.
PRISTINA: Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani on Wednesday said that Kenya had become the latest nation to recognize Kosovo as an independent country and has pledged to open diplomatic ties.
“Kosovo continues to move forward on its path of integration and strengthening its international position,” Osmani said on her Facebook account.
In her post, she published a proclamation she said was from Kenyan President William Ruto that spoke of Kosovo’s right to self-determination and included a statement that said “this recognition will extend to the establishment of diplomatic relations.”
Serbia’s ministry of foreign affairs “strongly condemned” Kenya’s decision to recognize “the unilaterally declared independence of so-called ‘Kosovo’.”
“Such a move constitutes a gross violation of international law and a direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244,” the ministry said in a statement.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after a war in the late 1990s between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in what was then a breakaway Serbian province.
While the United States, many European nations and other countries recognize Kosovo as independent, Serbia and two of its most powerful allies — Russia and China — do not.
Serbia says it has persuaded some countries to withdraw recognition, but Kosovo denies this and insists that more than 100 countries do.
SYDNEY: Alarming levels of coral bleaching have been recorded off Australia’s western coast, scientists said Wednesday, turning huge chunks of a celebrated reef system a sickly dull white.
A months-long marine heatwave had “cooked” the sprawling Ningaloo Reef, ocean scientist Kate Quigley said, part of a world heritage-listed marine park renowned for vibrant corals and migrating whale sharks.
Although environment officials were still verifying the scale of damage, Quigley said it was on track to be the region’s worst mass-bleaching event in years.
“Warm oceans have just cooked the corals this year,” Quigley said.
“It wouldn’t be amiss to throw in the word ‘unprecedented.’
“It has gone deep, it’s not just the top of the reef that is bleaching. Many different species of coral are bleaching.”
Branching through shallow waters along Australia’s western coast, the 300-km Ningaloo Reef is one of the largest “fringing reefs” in the world.
The unfolding mass bleaching looked to be the worst since 2011, Quigley said.
Ocean waters lapping Western Australia have been as much as 3 degrees warmer than average over recent summer months, according to the government weather bureau.
Rising temperatures shot past the “bleaching threshold” sometime in mid-January, according to monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Bleaching occurs when warm waters trigger a biological response forcing coral to expel the colorful algae embedded in their tissues.
“Bleaching is a sickness, but it does not mean outright death,” said Quigley, a research scientist with environmental charity the Minderoo Foundation.
“But if it is bad enough, the corals will die.”
Government data showed smaller patches of coral bleaching had also been spotted at the northern tip of the more famous Great Barrier Reef on Australia’s east coast.
Quigley said the Ningaloo Reef and the Great Barrier Reef were shaped by different weather patterns — and it was rare to see bleaching on both at the same time.
“What we’re seeing is the level of ocean warming is so great, it’s overriding the local conditions in some places. “It’s just shocking. When we take a national snapshot it’s extremely concerning.”
The Great Barrier Reef, a popular tourist drawcard, has suffered five mass bleachings over the past eight years.
Quigley said the extent of damage on the Great Barrier Reef was not currently widespread enough to be considered “mass bleaching.”
Global average temperatures were the hottest on record in 2024, with prolonged heat waves in many of the planet’s oceans causing particular alarm.
Australia sits on bulging deposits of coal, gas, metals and minerals, with mining and fossil fuels stoking decades of near-unbroken economic growth.
But it is increasingly suffering from more intense heat waves, bushfires and drought, which scientists have linked to climate change.
