MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has rebuked calls from some U.S. lawmakers advocating military action in Mexico against drug cartels, describing the proposals as threats to Mexican sovereignty. “We are not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene,” Lopez Obrador said during a regular news conference. The kidnapping of four Americans - two of whom were killed - in a northern border state intensified calls from Republican lawmakers in Washington to take a tougher line on organized crime.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Reported sexual assaults at U.S. military academies shot up during the 2021-22 school year, and one in five female students told an anonymous survey that they had experienced unwanted sexual contact, The Associated Press has learned. U.S. officials said student-reported assaults at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies jumped 18% overall compared with the previous year. The increase was driven largely by the Navy, which had nearly double the number of reported assaults in 2022, compared with 2021. It’s unclear whether the phasing out of COVID-19-related restrictions contributed to the increase, including at the U.S. Naval Academy, which is directly adjacent to bars in downtown Annapolis, Maryland.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Australia will purchase U.S.-manufactured, nuclear-powered attack submarines to modernize its fleet, a European official and two people familiar with the matter said Thursday. The purchase agreement for up to five Virginia-class submarines will be announced Monday when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego for talks on the 18-month-old nuclear partnership known by the acronym AUKUS. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of the announcement.

 

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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Former Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was charged on Friday with abuse of power and money laundering over projects launched under his premiership, accusations that he said were politically motivated.  The charges come just three months after Muhyiddin lost a closely fought and divisive general election to Anwar Ibrahim, and are likely to increase political tension in Malaysia ahead of regional polls this year. Muhyiddin, who led the country for 17 months between 2020 and 2021, becomes the second Malaysian leader to be charged with crimes after losing power. At a Kuala Lumpur sessions court, the prosecution alleged that Muhyiddin abused his position as prime minister to receive bribes of 232.5 million ringgit ($51.44 million) in a bank account belonging to his party, Bersatu. The former premier and opposition leader was charged with four counts of abuse of power and two counts of money laundering. 

 

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PARIS (AFP) - Nearly 130,000 people in the Greater Horn of Africa are “staring death in the eyes” from catastrophic hunger, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday. Some 48 million people in the Greater Horn -- Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda -- are facing crisis levels of food insecurity, the WHO said. That means households skipping meals and depleting savings and assets in order to eat. Of those, six million are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, and 129,000 are at the worst level -- catastrophe.