Colombia declares health emergency due to yellow fever cases, deaths
Colombia declares health emergency due to yellow fever cases, deaths/node/2597391/world
Colombia declares health emergency due to yellow fever cases, deaths
Travelers are vaccinated for yellow fever at the bus terminal in Bogota, Colombia on April 16, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 17 April 2025
Reuters
Colombia declares health emergency due to yellow fever cases, deaths
The outbreak has resulted in 74 confirmed cases and 34 deaths since the start of last year
Most critical situation is in Tolima, in central-west Colombia, where 22 cases have been detected
Updated 17 April 2025
Reuters
BOGOTA: The Colombian government declared a nationwide health emergency late on Wednesday due to an increase in yellow fever cases.
The outbreak has resulted in 74 confirmed cases and 34 deaths since the start of last year, said Health Minister Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo.
Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by the bite of Aedes and Haemagogus mosquitoes.
Jaramillo said the most critical situation is in Tolima, in central-west Colombia, where 22 cases have been detected.
China and Russia have sometimes touted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to the NATO military alliance
Updated 53 min 7 sec ago
AFP
TIANJIN, China: President Xi Jinping gathered the leaders of Russia and India among dignitaries from around 20 Eurasian countries on Sunday for a showpiece summit aimed at putting China front and center of regional relations.
Security was tight in the northern port city of Tianjin, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit is being held until Monday, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.
The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus — with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin on Sunday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives.
Meanwhile Xi held a flurry of bilateral meetings with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and one of Putin’s staunch allies, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
He also met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Xinhua news agency reported.
China and Russia have sometimes touted the SCO as an alternative to the NATO military alliance. This year’s summit is the first since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
In an interview published by Xinhua on Saturday, Putin said the summit will “strengthen the SCO’s capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats, and consolidate solidarity across the shared Eurasian space.”
“All this will help shape a fairer multipolar world order,” Putin said.
As China’s claim over Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the United States and Europe, experts say that Beijing and Moscow are eager to use platforms such as the SCO to curry favor.
“China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which, it claims, is more democratic,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
More than 20 leaders including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are attending the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.
“The large-scale participation indicates China’s growing influence and the SCO’s appeal as a platform for non-Western countries,” Loh added.
Beijing, through the SCO, will try to “project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game,” said Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“It is framed as something different, built around sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity, which the Chinese tout as a model,” Lee said.
Xi met leaders including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet in Tianjin on Saturday.
Putin is expected to hold talks on Monday with Turkiye’s Erdogan and Iran’s Pezeshkian about the Ukraine conflict and Tehran’s nuclear program respectively.
The Russian president needs “all the benefits of SCO as a player on the world stage and also the support of the second largest economy in the world,” said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan’s Soka University.
“Russia is also keen to win over India, and India’s trade frictions with the United States presents this opportunity,” Lim said.
The summit comes days after India was hit by a sharp bump up in US tariffs on its goods as punishment for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil.
India’s premier Modi arrived on Saturday, in his first visit to China since 2018.
The two most populous nations are intense rivals competing for influence across South Asia and fought a deadly border clash in 2020.
A thaw began last October, when Modi met with Xi for the first time in five years at a summit in Russia.
Modi was not on a list of attendees for the Beijing parade published by Chinese state media that included Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.
Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state in September angers Israel and the US
France, along with the UK, Canada, Australia and Malta, plans to formalize the Palestinian recognition at the UN General Assembly next month
The recognition is symbolic but increases diplomatic pressure on Israel to end the nearly 23-month war in Gaza
Updated 31 August 2025
AP
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, prompting similar moves from other Western nations, angered Israel and its US ally by putting a two-state solution back at the heart of diplomatic efforts to end the devastating war in Gaza.
In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Macron wrote that “our determination to see the Palestinian people have their own state is rooted in our conviction that lasting peace is essential to the security of the state of Israel.”
France’s diplomatic efforts “stem from our outrage at the appalling humanitarian disaster in Gaza, for which there can be no justification,” Macron added. Israel on Friday declared Gaza’s largest city a combat zone as the death toll surpassed 63,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
France, the UK, Canada, Australia and Malta have said they would formalize their pledge during the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly, which starts Sept. 23. Some others, including New Zealand, Finland and Portugal, are considering a similar move.
Netanyahu rejects Palestinian statehood and plans to expand the military offensive in Gaza.
Israel and US say recognizing a Palestinian state emboldens militants
Macron’s letter comes after Netanyahu accused him of “fueling” the “antisemitism fire” with his call for a Palestinian state, remarks Macron denounced as “abject.”
Last week, US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner also wrote a letter arguing that “gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence and endanger Jewish life in France.” Kushner was summoned by the French foreign ministry and represented in his absence by his deputy.
Such angry reaction “shows that symbols matter,” said geopolitics expert Pascal Boniface, director of the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations. “There is some kind of race against time between the diplomatic path, with the two-state solution back at the heart of the debate, and the situation on the ground (in Gaza), which is every day making this two-state solution a little more complicated or impossible.”
Boniface said some supporters of a two-state solution showed disappointment at leaders’ decision to wait until September to officially recognize a Palestinian state, because they “fear that recognition will come when Gaza has even more become a graveyard.”
Calls on Israel to stop the Gaza offensive
Macron and other international leaders have urged Israel to stop its offensive in the besieged territory, where most of its over 2 million residents are displaced, neighborhoods lie in ruins and a famine has been declared in Gaza City.
“The occupation of Gaza, the forced displacement of Palestinians, their reduction to starvation ... will never bring victory to Israel,” Macron wrote in his letter to Netanyahu. “On the contrary, they will reinforce the isolation of your country, fuel those who find pretext for antisemitism, and endanger Jewish communities around the world.”
More than 140 countries already recognize a Palestinian state in what is a mostly symbolic move.
“The world will be the same the day after,” said Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza political analyst and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
Still, it adds diplomatic pressure on Israel, he stressed. Heavyweight Western nations demonstrating strong support for a two-state solution “shatters the illusion that Netanyahu is trying to sell to the Israelis and to the international community that mass population transfer or depopulation is the only way to solve the Palestinian issue,” Shehada said.
Strengthening moderate Palestinians
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot insisted this week that diplomatic efforts led by France and Ƶ also resulted, for the first time, in highly significant condemnation of the Hamas attacks against civilians by all 22 members of the Arab League.
During a July conference co-hosted by France and Ƶ at the UN, Arab League nations agreed in their New York Declaration that “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.”
Shehada expects the move to strengthen the camp of moderate Palestinians, including by demonstrating to the public that the Palestinian Authority is gaining weight in negotiations.
He said it may weaken the most violent leadership in Hamas by “creating a diplomatic track that provides Palestinians with an alternative to violence, sending a message that diplomatic engagement will pay off and will lead to a Palestinian state, whereas violence will not take you anywhere.”
The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Hamas drove out the PA when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the PA was left with administering semiautonomous pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Pacifist Japan struggles to boost troops as China anxiety grows
Japan fears that China could attempt a forceful takeover of Taiwan potentially triggering a conflict with Washington that could drag in Tokyo as well
But it has been hard to convince enough young Japanese to enlist, discouraged by dangerous duties, low pay and a young retirement age of around 56
Updated 31 August 2025
AFP
NAHA, Japan: Sporting dark face paint and clutching a gun, teenage soldier-in-training Takuma Hiyane crawls across a field on Japan’s Okinawa, the front line of the nation’s defense as anxiety grows over China’s territorial ambitions.
As the world marks the 80th anniversary of World War II, Japan — which has been officially pacifist since its defeat — is trying to lure more talent into its armed forces.
Tokyo began upping its military spending in 2023 and aims to make it two percent of its gross domestic product by the end of the 2027 fiscal year, but has come under pressure from Washington to boost it even further.
Japan fears that China could attempt a forceful takeover of Taiwan — the self-governed island it claims — potentially triggering a conflict with Washington that could drag in Tokyo as well.
But it has been hard to convince enough young Japanese to enlist.
Hiyane, a 19-year-old former high school badminton player who signed up after his graduation in March, was swayed by the idea of helping victims of natural disasters, he said.
“I thought this was a job that I could contribute to my country and be proud of, so I decided to join,” he told AFP, carefully dodging questions on the sensitive topic of national defense.
Tokyo wants a beefed-up military in southwestern regions such as Okinawa, home to some 70 percent of US military facilities in Japan and seen as strategically important for monitoring China, the Taiwan Strait and the Korean peninsula.
In 2023, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) aimed to hire almost 20,000 people, but recruited just half that number, according to the defense ministry.
Dangerous duties, low pay and a young retirement age of around 56 are off-putting for young Japanese, officials and experts say.
Japan’s low birth rate, shrinking population and tight labor market are also complicating recruitment, leaving around 10 percent of the force’s 250,000 positions unfilled.
Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) taking part in an exercise at JGSDF Camp Naha in Okinawa Prefecture on June 9, 2025. (AFP)
On Okinawa, Hiyane and his fellow trainees braved scorching heat to stage a line formation, before dashing forward to capture a mock enemy fort.
“I find training here very physical and hard, but I am used to it in a way since I played sports at school,” he said.
“I find it more exhausting and nerve-racking when I have to shoot guns.”
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in June that increasing SDF numbers was “a top priority” given Japan’s worsening security environment.
Kazuyuki Shioiri, who helps manage an infantry regiment in Okinawa where Hiyane trains, said increased defense expenditure was gradually making troops’ lives better through various upgrades including air conditioning, cleaner bathrooms and more privacy in dormitories.
“We have been able to improve conditions,” he said.
Before the extra funds, Japanese troops had complained that they lacked bullets and basic supplies.
They used to strip old tanks and jets for parts to repair newer equipment, the defense ministry said.
But it’s not simply “muscular troops with high combat capabilities” that the force wants, said Toshiyuki Asou, an SDF recruiter on Okinawa.
“We are looking for a wide range of personnel now as national security involves everything from cybersecurity, space defense, electromagnetic warfare, and of course intelligence work,” he added.
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) battle tanks take part in a live fire exercise at East Fuji Maneuver Area in Gotemba. (AFP file photo)
Despite the government’s defense push, Japanese citizens have traditionally kept their distance from the subject, with some still carrying bitter memories of the nation’s militarist past.
Japan’s constitution, which was drafted by the US after World War II and enjoys wide public support, bans Tokyo from using force and does not recognize the SDF as a formal military.
While the troops are highly respected, the public have loudly opposed any attempt to amend the constitution to grant them that status.
In a Gallup International survey released last year, only nine percent of Japanese respondents said they would fight for the country if there was a war, while 50 percent said they would not.
That compares with greater willingness in some other countries, with 46 percent of South Koreans, 41 percent of Americans and 34 percent of Canadians saying they would fight.
Ryoichi Oriki, the former head of the Joint Staff of the SDF, said during a recent press briefing that he wished for “greater understanding among the public about the reality of national defense.”
In the field, new recruits said they were excited about launching their military careers despite the geopolitical turbulence.
“I have learned the spirit and skills of Self-Defense Force personnel,” said Hiyane, who is about to complete his initial training. “I feel I have grown.”
Trump says he will order voter ID requirement for every vote
Trump has long questioned the US electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud
Updated 31 August 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he will issue an executive order to require voter identification from every voter.
“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military,” he added.
Trump has long questioned the US electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. The president and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs.
For years, he has also called for the end of electronic voting machines, pushing instead for the use of paper ballots and hand counts — a process that election officials say is time-consuming, costly and far less accurate than machine counting.
Earlier in August, Trump pledged to issue an executive order to end the use of mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. However, federal elections are administered at the state level and it is unclear whether the president has the constitutional power to enact such a measure.
The Nov. 3, 2026, elections will be the first nationwide referendum on Trump’s domestic and foreign policies since he returned to power in January. Democrats will be seeking to break the Republicans’ grip on both the House of Representatives and the Senate to block Trump’s domestic agenda.
The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. (AP)
Updated 31 August 2025
Reuters
Trump moves forward on plans for a Department of War, WSJ Reports
“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology
Updated 31 August 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration is advancing plans to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing a White House official, after US President Donald Trump raised the prospect on Monday.
Restoring the Department of War name for the government’s largest department would likely require congressional action, but the White House is exploring alternative methods to implement the change, the report said.
Republican Representative Greg Steube of Florida filed an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would change the name of the department, indicating some Republican support in Congress for the change.
The White House gave no details, but underscored Trump’s comments this week emphasizing the US military’s offensive capabilities.
“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, using the initials DEI to refer to programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion.
Trump raised the idea of rebranding the Defense Department as the “Department of War” while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, saying it “just sounded to me better.”
“It used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound,” Trump said. “We want defense, but we want offense too ... As Department of War we won everything, we won everything and I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
The War Department became the Department of Defense through a gradual process, beginning with the National Security Act of 1947, which unified the Army, Navy, and Air Force under a single organization called the National Military Establishment.
An amendment to the law passed in 1949 officially introduced the name “Department of Defense,” establishing the structure in place today.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been working to promote a more aggressive image of the military while making a spate of other changes, including purging top military leaders whose views have been seen as being at odds with Trump.
The Trump administration has also sought to bar transgender individuals from joining the US military and remove all who are currently serving. The Pentagon says transgender people are medically unfit, something civil rights activists say is untrue and constitutes illegal discrimination.
