SEOUL (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his North Korean counterpart that their countries were working to establish a “new and righteous world order”, after Pyongyang helped Moscow to drive Ukrainian forces from a Russian region last year. In a message to North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, Lavrov also reaffirmed Moscow’s pledge to boost cooperation in all areas and contribute to regional and international security, North Korea’s KCNA news agency said on Tuesday. 

 

***

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday that jailed former prime minister Imran Khan be moved to hospital for medical checks, after a petition by his lawyers over claims of poor health. Justice Shahid Waheed said 73-year-old Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges, will be shifted in the next two days to Shifa International hospital in the capital Islamabad. Khan and his wife and spiritual guide Bushra Bibi were both sentenced late last year to 17 years behind bars. There was no immediate information about the details of Khan’s health concerns included in his lawyers’ petition. He received eye treatment at a hospital this year, with his family and lawyer saying at the time that he had lost most of the vision in his right eye. Secretary general Salman Akram Raja of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) told media outside the court, in a video shared on Facebook, that Tuesday’s ruling was “a major step, a major decision, a great blessing”.

 

*** 

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A high school student carrying two pistols shot to death a fellow student before killing himself Tuesday in an attack in a southern Philippine high school campus that he livestreamed using a body-worn camera, police and other officials said. It was the second fatal school shooting in the country in just two months. Hundreds of students were evacuated after shots rang out in the high school building of the Ateneo de Zamboanga university campus in the southern port city of Zamboanga. Two other people were injured, police and city officials said. The suspect, identified by police as grade 9 student Mohammad Mael Jalani, fired at a teacher sitting in front of a class but apparently missed. He then shot a student on the fourth floor of the building before going up one floor and killing himself, police said in an initial report.

 

*** 

MOGADISHU (Xinhua) - Somalia and its humanitarian partners have intensified flood preparedness across high-risk areas to counter potential El Nino impacts, with peak weather risks anticipated between September and December, the United Nations (UN) relief agency said on Tuesday. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), core measures focus on risk analysis, contingency planning, resource mapping and early warning messaging in designated hotspots. “The forecast points to an increased risk of riverine and flash flooding, reinforcing the need for early preparedness actions, anticipatory interventions, community awareness, and the pre-positioning of humanitarian supplies before October,” OCHA said in its latest humanitarian update.

 

*** 

GENEVA (Reuters) - Ecuadorean diplomat Ivonne Baki has joined the race to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations, the eighth candidate to replace Portugal’s Antonio Guterres next year, documents showed on Tuesday. Baki, who has served as an Ecuadorean government minister and as ambassador to France, Qatar and the United States, was nominated by the Pacific island nation of Tonga and is the second candidate from Ecuador. Guterres’ successor faces the task of revitalizing an organization in crisis and declining stature amid pressure to reform what critics say is a bloated, costly bureaucracy and reduce duplication across its agencies. In his nomination letter, Tonga’s UN ambassador, Viliami Va’inga Tone, said the United Nations “is at a critical point of transition and requires leadership that is experienced, principled and unifying to navigate this period.”

 

*** 

LUSAKA (AP) – Incumbent President Hakainde Hichilema has won re-election in Zambia’s presidential poll, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) announced early Tuesday. ECZ Chairperson Mwangala Zaloumis declared the official results at the National Election Results Center in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, announcing Hichilema, candidate of the ruling United Party for National Development, as the winner. According to data released by the commission, Hichilema received more than 2.9 million valid votes, or over 50 percent of the total, meeting the constitutional requirement for an outright victory without a run-off. Although results from a few constituencies had yet to be announced, they will not change the outcome of the one-day election held on Thursday, according to the ECZ.