WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The FBI investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was based on flimsy evidence and seriously flawed, an independent U.S. prosecutor said in a report published Monday. Special Counsel John Durham was appointed in 2019 by then-president Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr to address allegations -- made most prominently by Trump himself -- that the Russia investigation was a political “witch hunt.” Durham’s more than 300-page report follows a four-year investigation that continued under Barr’s successor, Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden. The long-awaited report was highly critical of the origins of “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s probe into allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the report said.

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TOKYO (AFP) -- Japan and China used a new military hotline for the first time on Tuesday, their defense ministries said, following years of negotiations to set up the communication channel. Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada held a 20-minute call with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu, Tokyo’s ministry said in a statement. Beijing confirmed the call, saying the air and maritime hotline would “contribute to further maintaining regional peace and stability”. The hotline, launched on March 31, had been mooted by both sides for over a decade as a way to avert unexpected clashes in the East China Sea. A territorial dispute over islets in the area known as the Senkaku by Tokyo and the Diaoyu by Beijing has long fuelled tensions between the countries.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Joe Biden continues to hold an edge over potential Republican challengers Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis as the 2024 U.S. presidential election draws closer, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. But there are potential hazards ahead for Biden should the situation at the U.S. southern border worsen, the poll shows. Among registered voters, Biden led Trump, his predecessor as president, by six percentage points in a hypothetical match-up, 44% to 38%, holding an advantage that has opened up in recent few months. In a mid-March Reuters/Ipsos poll, Biden led Trump by five points after trailing him by three points in February. The latest poll collected responses nationwide from 4,410 U.S. adults. For registered voters, it had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of two percentage points.

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DRESDEN, Germany (AFP) – A German court on Tuesday sentenced five gang members to up to six years in prison for snatching priceless 18th-century jewels from a Dresden museum in what has been dubbed the biggest art heist in modern history. The thieves made off with a haul worth more than 113 million euros ($123 million) from the Green Vault museum in 2019. Some, but not all, of the loot was recovered in exchange for four of the defendants confessing in court. The convicted men are members of the “Remmo clan”, an extended family mostly based in Berlin known for a web of ties to organised crime in Germany. The court in Dresden handed down three sentences ranging from just under to just over six years for armed robbery, aggravated arson and grievous bodily harm for the November 25, 2019, heist. Two of the men, who were minors at the time of the crime, received juvenile sentences of five years and four years and four months respectively. A sixth defendant was acquitted because he produced a credible alibi -- an emergency surgery at a Berlin hospital.

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NAIROBI (AFP) -- The world must halve single-use plastics and slash throwaway consumption to stem the tide of environmental pollution, according to a UN report on Tuesday that warns the next few years are critical. Concern is growing about the impacts of microplastics -- produced when plastic products break down in the environment -- which have been found from the deepest oceans trenches to top of Mount Everest. In humans, they have been detected in blood, breast milk and placentas. The report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) comes two weeks before negotiators from nearly 200 countries meet in Paris for a new round of negotiations aimed at reaching a legal agreement next year to end plastic pollution. It lays out a three-pronged plan based on reuse, recycling and diversifying the materials used -- to help slash plastic pollution 80 percent by 2040 overall and cut single-use plastic production by half. The report cited research estimating plastic could emit 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) -- A fire at a hostel in New Zealand killed at least six people on Tuesday and officials said they believe the toll could rise with 11 people still missing. The blaze broke out on the top floor of Loafers Lodge in the Wellington neighborhood of Newtown just after midnight, police said, causing major structural damage that is hampering recovery efforts. “There is a significant amount of debris from the roof collapse but at this stage we have located six people,” Bruce Stubbs, the incident commander from Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) told a news conference. The cause of the fire is not known, but emergency services were treating the incident as suspicious.