SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the U.S. conducted joint aerial resupply drills Tuesday to strengthen their ability to deliver military equipment and supplies when ground transport routes are disrupted during wartime, the allies’ combined forces said. Led by the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), the exercise focused on rapid airborne logistics operations using military transport aircraft, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a CFC statement. The drills involved airdropping heavy military equipment and lighter supplies from altitudes exceeding 3,000 meters (9,843 feet), including round-the-clock operations under varying conditions.

 

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PARIS (Reuters) - French authorities condemned on Tuesday acts of violence committed against teaching staff and officials as high school and university student unions vowed to keep up pressure for better conditions in institutions of learning. France has been buffeted for months by street protests. They began in September with students demanding the renovation of school buildings, more teachers and university reforms but then turned into broader cost-of-living protests, drawing in trade unions and political activists, and sometimes turning violent. In Chelles, near Paris, a local official was hit in the chest earlier on Tuesday with a bottle filled with gasoline in front of a high school.

 

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NEW YORK (AP) - Brazil must accelerate efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest, curb natural resource extraction, and expand circular economy practices, a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Zero Waste told Anadolu on Monday. Carlos Silva Filho, a Brazilian environmental expert and member of the advisory board, said the country has made progress in developing a national circular economy strategy but stressed that implementation must be accelerated to deliver tangible environmental benefits. “The challenges are huge because Amazon is huge,” Filho said on the sidelines of the UN climate summit COP31 in Antalya, Turkey.

 

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SEOUL, (Reuters) - North Korea expressed regret over comments by the UN secretary-general urging the two Koreas to ease tensions through dialogue following a landmine blast at the border, accusing him of taking Seoul’s side, state media reported on Tuesday. Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took a “prejudiced and irresponsible” attitude by echoing South Korea’s unilateral claim over the September blast. “The UN secretary-general’s behavior of echoing words of the provokers and patronizing them without having proper understanding of the fact is not helpful to the detente,” Kim said in a statement carried by the KCNA news agency.

 

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SOFIA (Reuters) - Eleven people died in a traffic accident involving dozens of vehicles on both sides of a foggy stretch of highway in eastern Bulgaria on Tuesday, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said. Police, firefighters and ambulance crews rushed to the scene on the A1 road that links the capital Sofia with the eastern city of Burgas. Images on local media showed cars and trucks piled up across six lanes of highway, many crushed, overturned, or veered off to the side. Fifty injured people were transported to hospital, according to the interior ministry. Radev described the accident as a “tragedy” in a statement during a visit to Bulgaria by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. He said that he had deployed aircraft to evacuate the wounded and planned to visit the scene.