News in Brief

Date: 10 February 2025 - 22:37

News ID: ۱۳۶۷۵۰

BEIJING (Reuters) -- China hopes the current Dalai Lama could “return to the right path” and fully remedy his political propositions, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday. China is open to talks about the future of the current Dalai Lama as long as he can give up the position of splitting China, said Guo Jiakun, a foreign ministry spokesperson, at a regular news conference when asked to comment on the death of the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, Gyalo Thondup. Thondup previously acted as the unofficial envoy of the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Thondup died in his home in Kalimpong, India, on Sunday. He was 97. Since 2010, Beijing has not held official talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, branding him as a dangerous separatist.

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MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaragua’s government described the Vatican as “depraved” and “pedophile”, two days after an interview on Catholic television channel EWTN with exiled Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Alvarez, one of the fiercest critics of President Daniel Ortega. The comments are some of the Ortega government’s harshest attacks yet against the Vatican, after it accused Catholic institutions of seeking to undermine the government and expelled nearly 50 priests and nuns. Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry referred to the highest Catholic institution as the “depraved, pedophile Vatican State,” saying it “allies with forces of darkness, barbarism, genocide and evil,” adding that it was “very much guilty of crimes against humanity.”

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PRISTINA (AFP) -- Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s ruling party was on track to secure the most seats in Kosovo’s parliamentary polls, the election commission said Monday, but would lack the numbers to form a majority government. Sunday’s contest largely pitted Kurti’s quest to stamp out Serbian influence on Kosovo’s soil during his time as premier against the opposition’s vow to boost the economy in one of the poorest pockets of Europe. Without a party winning a clear majority in the 120-seat parliament, Kosovo was likely headed for days if not weeks of coalition talks and political horse trading before a government could form. Twenty seats in the legislature are reserved for minority parties, including 10 for Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs. Kurti’s Vetevendosje (“Self-Determination”) party (VV) was on course to win roughly 41 percent of the vote with around 90 percent of the ballots counted, according to commission’s data.

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PORT SUDAN, Sudan (AFP) -- The United Nations on Monday accused Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of blocking aid to the war-torn country’s famine-threatened Darfur region. The RSF, which has been at war with the regular army since April 2023, controls nearly all of Darfur, a western region the size of France. Since May, it has besieged North Darfur’s El-Fasher and attacked displacement camps nearby. Famine has been declared in five areas of North Darfur and is expected to spread to five more by May, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Nearly seven million people in Darfur are facing crisis levels of hunger. Nearly 25 million people are facing dire food insecurity across Sudan, according to the United Nations.

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SYDNEY (AFP) -- Australia must act to improve Indigenous people’s lives, the government said Monday, as an annual report highlighted their shorter lifespans, poorer health and higher incarceration rates. Living in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, the descendants of Australia’s original inhabitants -- comprising nearly four percent of the 27 million-strong population -- fare worse than their compatriots in multiple areas from life expectancy to education, housing, health and rates of imprisonment. Of 19 longstanding targets for improving Indigenous people’s lives, 11 show progress but only five are on track to be met, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told parliament as he presented the annual Closing the Gap report. Indigenous and other Australians’ stories are “intertwined”, the prime minister said. Among the disparities, official data show Indigenous people’s life expectancy is about eight years shorter than that of other Australians, incarceration rates are more than 10 times higher, and more children are living in care.

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BOGOTÁ (AFP) -- Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for his ministers and other senior officials to step down, as tensions soared in the government days after he lambasted his team on live television. The demand came after Petro on Tuesday subjected his cabinet to a five-hour public dressing down on state TV, in which he said the government had been underperforming. He accused several officials, including his trade, education and health ministers, of falling behind on the delivery of key projects. As of Sunday night, three ministers and two senior officials had resigned since the meeting. Earlier, Colombia’s environment minister Susana Muhamad had become the second cabinet member in a week to step down after the contentious meeting.