YANGON (AFP) -- Nearly 1,600 tonnes of teak from Myanmar were exported to American companies last year, circumventing U.S. sanctions imposed to deny the junta millions of dollars in profits, an activist group said Tuesday. Teak imports to the United States were supposed to be barred under targeted sanctions, but activist group Justice for Myanmar found that nearly 1,600 tonnes of timber reached American companies between February and the end of November last year. “The timber arrived in 82 different shipments... largely consisting of teak board and scantling that are used for shipbuilding, outdoor decking and furniture,” the group said, citing figures from global trade database Panjiva. “It is likely that even more teak is being exported to the US via third countries such as China,” the report said. Besides wood, resource-rich Myanmar is replete with jade and gold mines, where the revenues have long been overseen by military-affiliated enterprises that funnel profits towards the powerful army.

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BEIJING (AP) — A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a COVID-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people. The lockdown of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, was announced late Monday after two cases of the omicron variant were reported. Residents are not allowed to go out and stores have been ordered shut except those selling necessities. Another 13 million people have been locked down in Xi’an for nearly three weeks, and 1.1 million more in Yuzhou for more than a week. It wasn’t clear how long the lockdown of Anyang would last, as it was announced as a measure to facilitate mass testing of residents, which is standard procedure in China’s strategy of identifying and isolating infected people as quickly as possible. The lockdowns are the broadest since the shutting down of Wuhan and most of the rest of Hubei province in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Since then, China’s approach has evolved into one of targeting smaller areas hit by outbreaks for lockdowns.

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BRUSSELS (AFP) – EU flags were flown at half-mast in tribute to European Parliament speaker David Sassoli, who died Tuesday aged 65. Sassoli died in the early hours of Tuesday in the hospital where he had been admitted on December 26 for what his spokesman had said was “a serious complication due to a dysfunction of the immune system”. “David Sassoli passed away at 1.15am (0015 GMT) on 11 January at the CRO in Aviano, Italy, where he was hospitalized,” the spokesman, Roberto Cuillo, tweeted. The parliament’s acting speaker is now its highest-ranking vice-president, Roberta Metsola, a Maltese politician who was already tipped to succeed Sassoli. The 705-seat European Parliament is one of the more important of the EU’s main institutions. But the work of the European Council, which represents the 27 member states’ governments, and of the European Commission, which serves as the EU executive, is seen as more influential outside Brussels. Under the EU treaties, the official seat of the parliament is in the French city of Strasbourg, but its MEPs spend most of their time and do much of their work in Brussels, where they have offices and use another chamber.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- An Ethiopian drone strike has killed 17 civilians in the country’s Tigray region on the day that President Joe Biden during a call with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed expressed concern about such attacks in the ongoing war, local authorities say. A report by the zonal administration said women at a flour-grinding mill made up most of those killed in the Monday drone strike near Mai Tsebri, a source who saw the report told The Associated Press. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it to reporters. Such drone strikes have been reported almost daily in Tigray, a humanitarian worker in the town of Shire told the AP, with an attack over the weekend on a displaced persons camp in Dedebit killing at least 57 people and wounding more than 130, many of them children. The aid worker shared photos of partially charred bodies and small corpses laid out on the ground.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s only electricity distribution company says it’s restoring power to parts of the country after a widespread blackout in East Africa’s economic hub after towers collapsed on a major transmission line. Kenya Power said in a statement on Tuesday that the collapse occurred on the Kiambere-Embakasi power line. The statement didn’t say what caused the collapse or when power would be restored across the country of some 55 million people. Already power has returned to parts of the capital, Nairobi.

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JOHANNESBURG (AFP) -- A man suspected of starting a fire that gutted South Africa’s parliament made a second court appearance on Tuesday to face a new charge of terrorism, in addition to robbery and arson accusations. Zandile Christmas Mafe, 49, was arrested around the parliament complex in Cape Town after the fire broke out on January 2 and appeared in court three days later. Magistrate Zamekile Mbalo granted prosecutors a month’s delay to determine Mafe’s mental state and “if he is fit for trial” following a diagnosis that he was schizophrenic. Mafe was initially charged with breaking into parliament, arson and intention to steal property, including laptops, crockery and documents, before the terrorism charge was added.