KAMPALA (Reuters) -- Two explosions in the center of Uganda’s capital killed at least two people and set several cars on fire on Tuesday, local television reported. NTV Uganda said “scores” had been injured and there had been two blasts - one very close to parliament and one near the central police station. Parliament was being evacuated, the television station reported. Ugandan soldiers are fighting al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab insurgents in Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping force. Al Shabaab has carried out several deadly bombings in Uganda. Last month, Daesh made its first claim of responsibility for a blast in Uganda. That bomb - packed with shrapnel - killed a waitress at a restaurant.

***
MIAMI (Reuters) -- Alex Saab, an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, has pleaded not guilty to a U.S. charge of conspiring to launder money, according to a court document filed on Monday, in a case that has strained already frayed relations between Washington and Caracas. U.S. prosecutors accuse Saab, a Colombia-born businessman and dealmaker for Maduro’s government, siphoned around $350 million out of Venezuela via the United States. But this month prosecutors asked that seven of the eight charges in the initial 2019 indictment be dropped to comply with assurances that officials made when seeking Saab’s extradition to Cape Verde, where he was detained last year. Maduro’s allies have characterized Washington’s pursuit of Saab as part of an “economic war” on Venezuela being waged by the U.S. government. They say Saab had been granted Venezuelan citizenship and had been named a diplomat to negotiate aid and fuel shipments from Iran.

***
KINSHASA (AFP) -- New carnage in the troubled east of the DR Congo has seen dozens killed in recent days, many with their throats slit or burned alive, despite a state of siege aimed at reining in marauding militia groups. The death toll from a gruesome attack last week in the North Kivu city Beni attributed to the ADF rebel group rose to 38. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) is the deadliest of scores of armed groups in the east of the country and the United States has formally linked it to Daesh. A Red Cross official said bodies were found tied up, with their throats slit by machetes. Elsewhere in the east of the vast central African country, a region rich in minerals and teeming with armed groups, assailants killed at least 17 civilians in Ituri province on Monday, local sources and KST said. That attack was gruesome as well, with fighters of the Patriotic and Integrationist Force of Congo (FPIC) leaving some victims to be burnt alive in their homes.

***
QUITO (AFP) -- Ecuador is “seriously threatened” by drug trafficking mafias who want to “take control of all the country’s prisons,” President Guillermo Lasso said, after the heads of the armed forces and the prison service quit following jail riots that left 68 people dead. Lasso said a “massive operation” was underway by the police and the army in the overcrowded prison in Guayaquil, where two days of fighting between inmates armed with guns, machetes and explosives claimed dozens of lives. he president said the country faced “one of the biggest crises in recent decades” and warned that the same drugs mafias “were bringing insecurity to our streets.” He promised joint action to end the repeated slaughters at the country’s prisons.

***
YANGON (AFP) -- Myanmar’s junta has charged ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi with committing electoral fraud during the 2020 polls, state media reported Tuesday. Myanmar has been in turmoil since a military coup in February sparked nationwide protests and a deadly crackdown on dissent. Detained since the putsch, Suu Kyi, 76, faces a raft of charges including illegally importing walkie talkies, sedition and corruption, and faces decades in jail if convicted. The latest charges entail “election fraud and lawless actions”, state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported, without giving details on when court proceedings would begin. Fifteen other officials -- including former president Win Myint and the former chairman of the election commission -- face the same charge, the report added.

***
WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The return of humans to the Moon, already postponed last week by NASA from 2024 to 2025, will actually take place in 2026 “at the earliest”, according to a government audit. The Artemis program to return Americans to the Moon is encountering “technical difficulties and delays heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic and weather events,” NASA’s auditing body, the Office of Inspector General, said in a report. “NASA’s goal to land astronauts on the Moon’s South Pole in late 2024 faces multiple significant challenges including major technical risks, an unrealistic development schedule, and lower-than requested funding levels,” the report said. First, the new space suits needed for the mission will not be ready “until May 2025 at the earliest,” it said, noting “technical challenges and lack of funding.” Secondly, the development of the “human landing system” or HLS, that has been entrusted to the company SpaceX will also “probably” suffer delays.