WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration has reportedly started deporting Myanmar and Vietnamese migrants to South Sudan, despite a court order prohibiting such removals to third countries, media reported, citing court documents filed by the migrants’ attorneys. Deportees from several countries told the judge that U.S. immigration authorities “may have sent” them to Africa, according to the US media report. As some countries refuse to accept deportees from the United States, the Donald Trump administration has made deals with other nations, such as Panama, to take them in.

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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Massive fires fueled by climate change led global forest loss to smash records in 2024, according to a report issued on Wednesday. Loss of tropical pristine forests alone reached 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres), an 80% spike compared to 2023 and an area roughly the size of Panama, mainly because Brazil, the host of the next global climate summit in November, struggled to contain fires in the Amazon amid the worst drought ever recorded in the rainforest. A myriad of other countries, including Bolivia and Canada, were also ravaged by wildfires.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese farm minister Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday after remarks he made about rice triggered a firestorm of criticism from voters and lawmakers, posing a fresh challenge to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s embattled government. Eto has been in hot water since media reports exposed comments, he made at a weekend political fundraising party that he had “never had to buy rice” thanks to gifts from supporters. The comment led to a frenzy of criticism from voters, already angry about the historically high price of the staple food due to a poor harvest and elevated demand from a boom in tourism. “I made an extremely inappropriate remark at a time when citizens are suffering from soaring rice prices,” Eto told reporters after handing in his resignation at the prime minister’s office.

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SYDNEY (AFP) - Fast-moving floodwaters rose Wednesday in eastern Australia, inundating homes and leaving residents stranded on their roofs overnight, as authorities warned more rain was expected in coming days. Storms have already dumped more than four months of rain in just two days in parts of New South Wales, engulfing homes, businesses and roads in muddy waters, authorities said. “We have a situation where the rain has been falling quite heavily and hard and it has not been moving away. Part of that is because the ground is saturated and the rivers are swollen,” the state’s emergency minister Jihad Dib told reporters. 

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BERLIN (AP) - German authorities on Wednesday arrested five adolescents suspected of forming a far-right terrorist group and said the charges included attempted murder and severe arson. The arrests follow arson attacks on a community center and a refugee shelter. Federal prosecutors said in a statement the five were male culpable minors who formed a group which styled itself as the “last wave of defense” to protect the “German nation”.  They listed eight German members of the group, disclosing their first names and the initial of their last names, including three who had been previously arrested. Their ages were not disclosed.