WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is moving some of its troops from a base in Niger’s capital Niamey – where rebel officers seized power in a July coup – to another in the Agadez area, the Pentagon said Thursday.
The Defense Department “is repositioning some of our personnel and some of our assets from Air Base 101 in Niamey to Air Base 201 in Agadez,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists. Singh said “some non-essential personnel and contractors” had departed the country weeks ago.

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HOUSTON (AFP) - Special Counsel David Weiss plans to ask a grand jury to indict Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, over gun charges by the end of this month, the U.S. Justice Department said. “The Speedy Trial Act requires that the Government obtain the return of an indictment by a grand jury by Friday, Sept 29, 2023, at the earliest,” the office of Weiss said in a court filing. “The Government intends to seek the return of an indictment in this case before that date,” the office added.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro will visit China from Friday, Beijing said, marking renewed engagement between the two countries as China’s ties sour with Western capitals. Energy investment and debt repayment issues are likely to be a focus of the Sept. 8-14 visit. China, the world’s largest importer of crude oil, is Venezuela’s largest creditor and a major player in the country’s oil industry, which has the world’s largest proven reserves. Maduro’s arrival will follow meetings between a Venezuelan delegation, including the country’s vice president and oil minister, and Chinese officials including Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice President Han Zheng in Beijing and Shanghai earlier this weekaccording to China’s foreign ministry. The two countries “closely coordinate and cooperate in international and regional affairs, firmly support each other, and jointly oppose hegemonism and unilateralism,” China’s Vice President Han Zheng told the Venezuelan delegation, according to a report from Chinese state media outlet CCTV on Friday.

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PARIS (AFP) - Hong Kong was flooded by the heaviest rainfall in nearly 140 years on Friday, leaving the city’s streets and some subway stations under water and forcing its schools to close. Just across the border, authorities in China’s tech hub Shenzhen recorded the heaviest rains since records began in 1952. Climate change has increased the intensity of tropical storms, experts say, with more rain and stronger gusts leading to flash floods and coastal damage. The heavy rainfall in Hong Kong started on Thursday and in the hour leading up to midnight, the city’s weather observatory recorded hourly rainfall of 158.1 millimetres at its headquarters, the highest since records began in 1884.

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MOSCOW (Xinhua) - The upcoming joint U.S.-Armenian military exercises do not contribute to the stabilization of the situation in the region, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. Peskov said that these exercises are also not conducive to fostering an atmosphere of mutual trust in the region. Moscow continues to work with both Armenia and Azerbaijan amid an escalation of tensions, he added. During a cabinet meeting on Thursday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, “the military-political situation in the region had worsened significantly.”