CALIFORNIA (Xinhua) – More than 100,000 homes and businesses across California were left in the dark as a heavy winter storm continued lashing the most populous state in the United States. According to PowerOutage.US, a website that tracks, records and aggregates power outages across the country and updates its data every 10 minutes, about 116,000 California customers were without electricity as of 10.00 am local time Friday. The storm, which first rolled into the state on Thursday with rain, hail and snow, continued to bring unusually heavy snow as well as cold, strong winds, and it will last into weekend, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. The NWS released a blizzard warning for the Ventura County and Los Angeles County mountains from Friday to Saturday, the first blizzard warning for the Southern California mountains since from 1989. The Sierra Avalanche Centre also issued an avalanche warning for parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains from Friday morning until Saturday morning. In total, about 3 million Californians received a winter storm warning. According to social media posts from local agencies, besides of power outages, the weather resulted in multiple road and highway closures after snow and ice accumulated on the surfaces.

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NEW DELHI (AFP) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited India on Saturday seeking to deepen business and military ties between the two economies and jumpstart progress on an EU trade deal despite differences over Ukraine. “We want to further strengthen our bilateral relationship with India and our cooperation on global issues, such as mitigating climate change and transforming our economies in a just, green and sustainable way,” Scholz told the Times of India in an interview. “There is huge potential for intensified cooperation, in sectors such as renewables, hydrogen, mobility, pharma, digital economy, and many more,” Scholz told the paper. Scholz, accompanied by executives from big German firms like Siemens, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi and was due to head to Bengaluru to visit German software firms including SAP. Officials said Scholz would press for progress towards a trade deal between the European Union and India that has long been held up by disagreements on tariffs and access for Indian workers to Europe.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Two Pakistani brothers who were held at the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba have been set free after nearly 20 years in jail without charge. According to the Pentagon, Abdul and Mohammed Ahmed Rabbani operated an al-Qaeda safe house and organized travel and funds for the group’s leaders. Both men were approved for release in 2021, but it is unclear why they remained imprisoned. Both brothers, who have now been repatriated to Pakistan, said that they were tortured by CIA officers before being transferred to Guantanamo. The Guantanamo Bay military camp prison facility, which is based within a U.S. Navy military base, was established by then-President George W Bush in 2002 to hold foreign terrorism suspects following the 9/11 terror attacks in New York. “The United States appreciates the willingness of the Government of Pakistan and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Pakistan’s security services first detained the brothers who were captured in the city of Karachi in September 2002. After about two years they were transferred to Guantanamo prison after originally being held at a CIA black site known as “the salt pit” outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

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LIMA (Al Jazeera) – Peru’s President Dina Boluarte has ordered the “definitive removal” of the country’s ambassador to Mexico after rebuking Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for again voicing his support for her overthrown predecessor. The move comes after Lopez Obrador told a news conference that “Mexico will continue to support [Castillo] who was unjustly and illegally removed from office”. Lopez Obrador, who has been one of Castillo’s most fervent supporters along with leftist leaders in Bolivia, Argentina and Colombia, also referred to Boluarte as a “spurious president”. Castillo was impeached and arrested on December 7 last year after seeking to dissolve Congress. He was replaced by then-vice president Boularte the same day. Announcing the ambassador’s withdrawal in a televised address, Boularte said “diplomatic relations between Peru and Mexico are formally reduced to the level of charge d’affaires”. She added that Lopez Obrador has “decided to support the coup d’etat carried out by the now former president Pedro Castillo on December 7, 2022”. “I strongly reject the remarks made today by the president of Mexico on Peru’s internal affairs and his repeated unacceptable questioning of the constitutional and democratic origins of my government,” she said. Peru had already expelled the Mexican ambassador to the country at the end of December, after Mexico granted political asylum to Castillo’s wife and two sons.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AFP) – The African Union has condemned remarks by Tunisia’s president directed at migrants in his country from elsewhere on the continent and warned against “racialized hate speech” that could bring harm. President Kais Saied sparked an outcry this week after saying “hordes” of sub-Saharan African migrants were causing crime and posed a demographic threat in Tunisia. Saied later sought to reassure “legal” migrants they were welcome but doubled down on claims that those illegally in Tunisia were changing the composition of the country. In a statement, the AU Commission said it had called Tunisia’s representative for an urgent meeting to register “deep shock and concern at the form and substance” of the remarks on behalf of the continent-wide bloc. “The Chairperson of the African Union Commission H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat strongly condemns the shocking statement issued by Tunisian authorities targeting fellow Africans which go against the letter and the spirit of our Organization and founding principles,” read the statement.

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LONDON (The Telegraph) – UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been accused of a “cynical” plan to “abuse” the King’s position by using him to promote the Government’s Brexit deal with the EU on Northern Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said that an aborted plan to get the monarch to meet Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, reflected either “naivety or desperation”. It was understood that Downing Street had planned for the King to meet Mrs Von der Leyen on Saturday as part of the choreography to unveil a deal struck with the EU on changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol. It was also understood that the pair were to meet at Windsor Castle and that the deal could even have been called the Windsor Agreement. However, the meeting did not go ahead amid concerns about dragging the monarch into political matters. Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman in the House of Commons, said that his party was “totally amazed” when it got wind of the planned meeting.