The EU introduced new plant and health safety requirements as ships were already at sea carrying hundreds of containers full of fruit to Europe, resulting in them being held up on arrival.

Millions of boxes of oranges have been spoiling in containers stranded at European ports as South Africa and the European Union lock horns in a dispute over import rules.

South Africa, the world's second largest exporter of fresh citrus after Spain, filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) last month after the EU introduced new plant and health safety requirements that orange farmers say threaten their survival.

The measures came into force in July as ships were already at sea carrying hundreds of containers full of South African fruit to Europe, resulting in them being held up on arrival, South Africa's Citrus Growers' Association (CGA) says.

The EU rules aim at tackling the potential spread of an insect called the false codling moth, a pest native to sub-Saharan Africa that feeds on fruits including oranges and grapefruits.

The new measures require South African farmers to apply extreme cold treatment to all Europe-bound oranges and keep the fruits at temperatures of two degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit) or lower for 25 days.

But the CGA says this measure is unnecessary as the country already has its own, more targeted way of preventing infestation.

'Discriminatory' measure

In its WTO complaint, South Africa argued that the EU requirements were "not based on science", more restrictive than necessary and "discriminatory".

South African citrus growers say the requirement puts undue extra pressure on an industry already in dire straits.

"This is going to add a lot of costs... and at the moment, that is what no grower in the world can afford," said Hannes de Waal, who heads of the almost 100-year-old farm Sundays River Citrus.

De Waal, whose company has orange, clementine and lemon trees straddling 7,000 hectares near the southeastern coast city of Gqeberha, said revenues were already squeezed by high shipping and fertiliser costs.

Freight costs have rocketed since Covid-19 struck, and so has the price of fertilisers due to the Ukraine conflict  — Russia being one of the world's largest producers.

Source: agencies

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during an official visit to Bangladesh, pledged to work continuously to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Bangladesh has sought cooperation from China to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar during a visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who promised better trade ties, investment and support for infrastructure development in the South Asian nations.

Yi arrived in Dhaka on Saturday evening and met with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen. 

They discussed bilateral and global issues before his departure on Sunday morning, said Shahriar Alam, Bangladesh’s junior minister for foreign affairs.

Alam said China pledged to work continuously to resolve the Rohingya crisis and quoted Yi as saying that the internal challenges in Myanmar were not only troubling Bangladesh but also other countries.

”Our foreign minister strongly reiterated that Chinese cooperation is needed. China has progressed on resolving the Rohingya issue and we need the situation to come to an end,” Alam said.

China had used its influence in Myanmar to broker a November 2017 agreement to repatriate about 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar in August that year. 

Despite attempts to send them back, the refugees refused, fearing danger in Myanmar, which was exacerbated by the military takeover last year.

Strong bilateral ties

Bangladesh has strong relations with China, which is a major trade partner mostly for raw materials. But maintaining close ties with Beijing is challenging for Bangladesh, which also balances diplomatic and trade relationship with both India and the United States, China's main rivals.

More than 500 Chinese companies are active in Bangladesh. China is involved in the country’s all major infrastructure projects such as seaports, a river tunnel and highways, and helped built its largest bridge over the River Padma at a cost of $3.6 billion.

Amid recent tensions between China and Taiwan, Bangladesh issued a statement reiterating its support for the “one-China” policy. 

After winning elections in 2008, Hasina’s administration closed the Taiwanese business representative office in Dhaka in response to a request from China, and since then China has increased its engagement in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s garment industry, which brings in more than 80 percent of foreign currency from exports, is heavily dependent on China for raw materials.

On Sunday, Yi told Hasina during a courtesy call that his country considers Bangladesh as a “strategic development partner” and would continue to support it, said Ihsanul Karim, the presidential press secretary.

The United News of Bangladesh agency reported that Yi also promised to stand beside Bangladesh “on all issues at international forums."

Alam said that Yi agreed to expand trade benefits by raising to 99 percent duty-free access of Bangladeshi products and services to Chinese markets.

On Sunday, Bangladesh and China signed or renewed four agreements and memorandums of understanding on disaster management, infrastructure and cultural exchanges.

Source: AP

Police have detained dozens of people in India-administered Kashmir as they dispersed Shia Muslims who attempted to participate in processions marking the Islamic month of Muharram.

Scores of Muslims defied severe security restrictions in parts of the main city of Srinagar on Sunday and took to streets chanting religious slogans. The restrictions include a ban on the Shia religious procession.

Muharram is among the holiest months for Shia Muslims across the world and includes large processions of mourners beating their chests while reciting elegies and chanting slogans to mourn the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein and 72 companions in the battle of Karbala in present-day Iraq.

Sunday’s procession marked the eighth day of Muharram, two days before its peak on the day of Ashura.

In 2020, dozens were injured as Indian forces fired shotgun pellets and tear gas to disperse the procession.

Ban on processions

Some main Muharram processions have been banned in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir since an armed insurgency broke out in 1989 demanding the region’s independence from India or its merger with neighbouring Pakistan. 

Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Kashmiri Muslims have long complained that the government is curbing their religious freedom on the pretext of maintaining law and order while promoting an annual Hindu pilgrimage to the Himalayan Amarnath Shrine in Kashmir that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The ongoing Hindu pilgrimage has drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors from across India amid massive security with tens of thousands of soldiers guarding the routes leading to the cave shrine.

Source: AP

Police in New Mexico’s largest city and federal agencies are trying to determine if the ambush shooting deaths of three Muslim men over the past nine months could be connected.

Police in the US state of New Mexico have said they are investigating the murders of three Muslim men that they suspect are related to a fourth homicide from last year.

The Albuquerque police department said in a statement on Saturday they had found the latest victim overnight the day before.

They did not identify him but said he was in his mid-20s, Muslim and "a native from South Asia."

"Investigators believe Friday's murder may be connected to three recent murders of Muslim men also from South Asia," the statement said on Saturday.

Two of the previous victims were Muslim Pakistani men, a 27-year-old whose body was found on August 1 and a 41-year-old who was found on July 26.

Detectives are now investigating whether these murders are connected to the death of a Muslim man from Afghanistan who was killed on November 7, 2021, outside of the business he ran with his brother in Albuquerque, the statement said.

'Targeted killings'

The police urged anyone with information to call a tip line and said the FBI was assisting with the investigation.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham expressed outrage at the attacks and solidarity with the southwestern state's Muslim community.

"The targeted killings of Muslim residents of Albuquerque is deeply angering and wholly intolerable," Lujan Grisham said on Twitter.

She said she was sending additional state police officers to Albuquerque to help with the investigation.

"We will continue to do everything we can to support to the Muslim community of Albuquerque and greater New Mexico," she said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest US Muslim civil rights group, said on Saturday it would offer a $10,000 reward to whoever provides information leading to the killer's arrest.

"This tragedy is impacting not only the Muslim community — but all Americans," CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

"We must be united against hate and violence regardless of the race, faith or background of the victims or the perpetrators."

Source: agencies

Brazil's federal police Saturday arrested five more men in an investigation into the killings of British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest in June.

Police said in a statement that seven arrest warrants were issued for illegal fishing in the Vale do Javari region, the remote area close to the border with Colombia and Peru where Phillips and Pereira disappeared June 5.

The region has been invaded by illegal fishermen, loggers and gold miners. Police say it is a key drug trafficking route.

Phillips, a freelance reporter who wrote for The Guardian and The Washington Post, was doing research for a book on the trip with Pereira, a former head of isolated and recently contacted tribes at the federal Indigenous affairs agency Funai.

Two of the seven suspects were already under arrest: Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, known as "Colombia," and fisherman Amarildo Costa de Oliveira, known as "Pelado" who was arrested in June as the primary suspect in the murder.

According to the police, Colombia would be the leader and financier of an armed criminal gang involved in illegal fishing that was smuggled out to the neighboring countries.

Three of the newly arrested men, whose names were not revealed, are relatives of Amarildo and were involved in concealing the bodies of Phillips and Pereira, the police said.

Pereira, the former senior official at the federal Indigenous affairs agency Funai, had previously clashed with Amarildo over illegal fishing within the Indigenous territory.

Federal prosecutors said that Phillips was killed so that he could not identify the killers.

Reuters

A fire started by a lightning strike at an oil storage facility raged uncontrolled Saturday in the city of Matanzas, where four explosions and flames injured nearly 80 people and left 17 firefighters missing, Cuban authorities said.

Firefighters and other specialists were trying to quell the blaze at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, where the fire began during a thunderstorm Friday night, the Ministry of Energy and Mines tweeted. The government said later that it had asked for help from international experts in "friendly countries" with experience in the oil sector.

Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said the U.S. government had offered technical help to put out the fire. On his Twitter account, he said the "proposal is in the hands of specialists for the due coordination."

Minutes later, President Miguel Díaz-Canel thanked Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile for their offers of help.

The official Cuban News Agency said lightning hit one tank, starting a fire, and the blaze later spread to a second tank. As military helicopters flew overhead dropping water on the blaze, a dense column of black smoke billowed from the facility and spread westward more than 100 kilometers toward Havana.

Roberto de la Torre, head of fire operations in Matanzas, said firefighters were spraying water on intact tanks trying to keep them cool in hopes of preventing the fire from spreading.

The Facebook page of the provincial government of Matanzas said the number of injured had reached 77, while 17 people were missing. The Presidency of the Republic said the 17 were "firefighters who were in the nearest area trying to prevent the spread."

Seven of the injured were taken to Calixto García Hospital in Havana, which has a prominent burn unit.

The accident comes as Cuba struggles with fuel shortages. There was no immediate word on how much oil had burned or was in danger at the storage facility, which has eight giant tanks that hold oil used to fuel electricity generating plants.

"I was in the gym when I felt the first explosion. A column of smoke and terrible fire rose through the skies," resident Adiel Gonzalez told The Associated Press by phone. "The city has a strong smell of sulfur."

Authorities said about 800 people were evacuated from the neighborhood closest to the fire, while Gonzalez added that some people decided to leave the Versailles district, which is a little farther from the tank farm.

Many ambulances, police and fire engines were seen in the streets of Matanzas, a city with about 140,000 inhabitants that is on Matanzas Bay.

Diaz-Canel traveled to the area of the fire early Saturday, officials said.

Local meteorologist Elier Pila showed satellite images of the area with a dense plume of black smoke moving from the point of the fire westward and reaching east to Havana.

"That plume can be close to 150 kilometers long," Pila wrote on his Twitter account.

Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, speaking in his capacity as special envoy to Myanmar of the 10-member ASEAN, described the executions of Myanmar dissidents as a “setback” to his mediation.

Efforts by Myanmar’s neighbours to help restore peace and normalcy to the strife-torn Southeast Asian nation have been hindered by the country’s recent executions of four political activists, Cambodia has said.

Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, speaking in his capacity as special envoy to Myanmar of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, warned on Saturday that further executions would force the regional grouping to reconsider how it engages with fellow member Myanmar.

Cambodia is the current chair of the regional grouping, and Myanmar is not welcome to send members of its ruling military government to ASEAN meetings because of its failure to cooperate with a plan agreed upon last year to work toward restoring peace.

ASEAN meeting’s final communique, issued on Friday, included a section criticising Myanmar for its lack of progress in ending violence there, but with weaker language than several countries had hoped for.

On Saturday, Prak Sokhonn  said the nine ASEAN members aside from Myanmar had “agreed to see how things will evolve in the coming weeks and months.”

He said “if more executions are conducted, then things will have to be reconsidered,” which suggested that ASEAN is prepared to downgrade its engagement with Myanmar’s military government.

Prak Sokhonn said progress has been made on providing humanitarian aid to Myanmar, but not on the other main points in ASEAN’s plan: stopping the violence and opening up a political dialogue among all the country’s contending parties.

“The only will I see now is to continue to fight,” he said. “Why? Because of the lack of trust and the execution of the activists, whether it is legal or illegal.”

“And without this trust, the fight will continue and the political process will never start because no one will come if they fear for their life,” he said.

Prak Sokhonn declined to say whether he had been in contact with the opposition group, but declared that he was free as special envoy to engage with anyone outside Myanmar.

ASEAN has been criticised by some of its own members as well as other countries for doing too little to pressure Myanmar to implement the five-point consensus.

Myanmar hits out at ASEAN

Myanmar’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement on Friday, saying it objected to a reference in the ASEAN joint statement to a “lack of progress” in implementing the five-point consensus because “it neglects Myanmar’s efforts on its implementation.”

It also said that the four men recently executed were not punished because they were political activists but because they were “found guilty of masterminding, inciting, supporting, arming and committing terrorist activities which caused tremendous loss of innocent lives.”

The opposition forces in Myanmar operate as an underground alternative administration, the National Unity Government, and its affiliated armed wing, the People’s Defence Force.

Myanmar’s military government has branded the groups as “terrorists” and even declared contact with them to be illegal.

“If ASEAN member states and external partners genuinely wish to help Myanmar in restoring normalcy, they should not encourage engaging with the terrorist groups such as NUG and PDF and should avoid any actions that could encourage terrorism,” said Friday’s statement from Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry.

Source: AP

The blast follows another attack which took place during a Shia community mourning gathering in Kabul and left at least eight people dead and 18 injured on Friday. Both attacks were claimed by Daesh.

A bomb blast has hit a busy shopping street in the western part of Afghanistan's capital Kabul, wounding 22 people.

The blast on Saturday took place at a district of the city where members of the Shia Muslim community regularly meet, witnesses said.

The Daesh terror group claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel.

Video footage posted online showed ambulances rushing to the scene which is also near bus stations.

On Friday, at least eight people were killed and 18 injured in a blast in Kabul that was also carried out by Daesh.

The attack took place during a Shia community mourning gathering in Kabul.

Taliban's fight with Daesh

The number of violent public attacks across Afghanistan has fallen since the Taliban returned to power in August last year, but Daesh has continued to target Shia Muslims, whom it views as heretics.

Taliban officials insist their forces have defeated Daesh, but analysts say the group remains a key security challenge.

Shia Muslims make up between 10 to 20 percent of Afghanistan's population of 38 million.

Source: Reuters