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  • Seven killed in latest Ecuador pool hall shooting

    Seven killed in latest Ecuador pool hall shooting

    Gunmen shot dead at least seven people at a pool hall in the Ecuadoran city of Santo Domingo, police said Sunday, in the country’s latest gruesome massacre amid soaring gang violence.

    “Seven people died from gunshot wounds” at a pool hall in the nightlife district of Santo Domingo, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of the capital Quito, national police said in a WhatsApp group with reporters.

    Purported security camera footage of the massacre circulating online showed several attackers wearing black masks open fire on two men standing at the entrance to the pool hall, sending pedestrians scrambling away.

    The gunmen then entered the hall and continued shooting, fleeing before a police vehicle approached.

    AFP has not yet independently verified the footage.

    A similar pool hall massacre took place last month in the southwestern tourist city of General Villamil Playas, leaving at least nine dead.

    Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

    Drug trafficking organizations have been multiplying in Ecuador, where the homicide rate rose from six per 100,000 residents in 2018 to 38 per 100,000 in 2024.

  • Air Canada suspends plan to resume flights as union vows to continue strike

    Air Canada suspends plan to resume flights as union vows to continue strike

    Air Canada on Sunday suspended its plan to resume flights over a strike by flight attendants that has effectively shut down the airline and snarled summer travel for its passengers around the world.

    The announcement came despite the country’s industrial relations board ordering an end to the strike by around 10,000 flight attendants, which had prompted the airline to say it would resume flying on Sunday.

    “Air Canada… has suspended its plan to resume limited flying by Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge,” citing a decision by the union representing the workers to continue with striking, despite the government directive.

    “The airline will resume flights as of tomorrow evening,” the flag carrier said in a statement.

    Earlier, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) “directed Air Canada to resume airline operations and for all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants to resume their duties by 14:00 EDT on August 17, 2025,” the airline said.

    Air Canada cabin crew walked off the job early Saturday after rejecting an updated contract proposal.

    Hours later, Canada’s labor policy minister, Patty Hajdu, invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.

    “The directive, under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, and the CIRB’s order, ends the strike at Air Canada that resulted in the suspension of more than 700 flights,” the Montreal-based carrier said.

    The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which is representing the workers, sought wage increases as well as to address uncompensated ground work, including during the boarding process.

    In a statement on Sunday, CUPE’s Air Canada unit said the strike would continue.

    “CUPE National President Mark Hancock made it loud and clear that our members will NOT be returning to work until such time as the government orders Air Canada back to the bargaining table where we can reach an attempted agreement that our members can vote on,” it said.

    “We will not have our rights and protections removed.”

    The union urged passengers not to go to the airport if they had a ticket for Air Canada or its lower-cost subsidiary Air Canada Rouge.

    CUPE earlier slammed the Canadian government’s intervention as “rewarding Air Canada’s refusal to negotiate fairly by giving them exactly what they wanted.”

    “This sets a terrible precedent,” it said.

    The union also pointed out that the chairwoman of CIRB, Maryse Tremblay, previously worked as legal counsel for Air Canada.

    Tremblay’s ruling on whether to end the strike was “an almost unthinkable display of conflict-of-interest,” the union posted on Facebook.

    On Thursday, Air Canada detailed the terms offered to cabin crew, indicating a senior flight attendant would on average make CAN$87,000 ($65,000) by 2027.

    CUPE has described Air Canada’s offers as “below inflation (and) below market value.”

    In a statement issued before the strike began, the Business Council of Canada warned an Air Canada work stoppage would exacerbate the economic pinch already being felt from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

    Canada’s flag carrier counts around 130,000 daily passengers and flies directly to 180 cities worldwide.

  • European leaders to join Zelensky in Trump meeting

    European leaders to join Zelensky in Trump meeting

    European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a Monday visit to Washington to see President Donald Trump in a collective bid to find a way to end to Moscow’s invasion, with the US offering security guarantees for Kyiv.

    The meeting follows a summit in Alaska between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that failed to yield any breakthrough on an immediate ceasefire that the US leader had been pushing for.

    Trump, who pivoted afterwards to say he was now seeking a peace deal, on Sunday posted “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!” on his Truth Social platform, without elaborating.

    Trump’s Russia envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Trump and Putin had agreed in their summit on “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine.

    But Zelensky, on a Brussels visit on Sunday hosted by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, rejected the idea of Russia offering his country security guarantees.

    “What President Trump said about security guarantees is much more important to me than Putin’s thoughts, because Putin will not give any security guarantees,” he said.

    Von der Leyen hailed the US offer to provide security guarantees modelled on — but separate from —  NATO’s collective security arrangement, known as Article 5.

    “We welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine, and the coalition of the willing, including the European Union, is ready to do its share,” von der Leyen said.

    Hopes for ‘productive meeting’ 

    Trump’s pivot to looking for a peace deal, not a ceasefire, aligns with the stance long taken by Putin, and which Ukraine and its European allies have criticised as Putin’s way to buy time with the intent of making battlefield gains.

    Zelensky also said he saw “no sign” the Kremlin leader was prepared to meet him and Trump for a three-way summit, as had been floated by the US president.

    The leaders heading to Washington on Monday to appear alongside Zelensky call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.

    They include British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron,, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and von der Leyen.

    Also heading to Washington will be Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubbs, who get on well with Trump.

    On Sunday they all held a video meeting to prepare their joint position.

    Speaking to US broadcaster CNN, Witkoff said: “I’m hopeful that we have a productive meeting on Monday, we get to real consensus, we’re able to come back to the Russians and push this peace deal forward and get it done.”

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to NBC on Sunday, warned of “consequences” — including the potential imposition of new sanctions on Russia — if no peace deal is reached on Ukraine.

    Territorial ‘concessions’

    European leaders have expressed unease from the outset over Trump’s outreach to Putin, who has demanded Ukraine abandon its ambitions to join the EU or NATO. They were excluded from Trump’s summit with Putin.

    Witkoff, in his CNN interview, said the United States was prepared to provide “game-changing” security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a process that would involve territorial “concessions”.

    According to an official briefed on a call Trump held with Zelensky and European leaders as he flew back from Alaska, the US leader supported a Putin proposal that Russia take full control of two eastern Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others.

    Putin “de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas,” an area consisting of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which Russia currently only partly controls, the source said.

    In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control.

    Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them.

    “The Ukrainian president refused to leave Donbas,” the source said.

    Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine rages on, with both Kyiv and Moscow launching attack drones at each other Sunday.

  • Israeli drone strike on Gaza hospital kills seven

    Israeli drone strike on Gaza hospital kills seven

    Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 18 Palestinians on Sunday, including seven people shot dead while waiting to collect food aid.

    Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that seven people were killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit a hospital courtyard in Gaza City, in the territory’s north.

    There was no comment from the Israeli military, which is preparing a broader offensive in Gaza City and has sent ground forces to the city’s Zeitun neighbourhood in recent days.

    After more than 22 months of war, UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in and convoys have been repeatedly looted.

    Witnesses on Sunday reported Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into the morning.

    Bassal said four people were killed in a strike that hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis.

    The civil defence spokesman said Israel continues its intense bombardment of Gaza City’s Zeitun, where troops have carried out a ground operation for the past week.

    He said there were many casualties, but civil defence crews were facing “enormous difficulties reaching those trapped under the rubble” due to the ongoing violence and lack of equipment.

    Israel on Saturday hinted at an approaching call to push civilians from Gaza City ahead of the new offensive demanded by the security cabinet.

    A defence ministry statement said that “as part of the preparations to move the population from combat zones to the southern Gaza Strip for their protection, the supply of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza will resume.”

    Hamas later slammed the move, saying the announcement was part of a “brutal assault to occupy Gaza City”.

    On the ground on Sunday, Bassal said six people were killed by Israeli gunfire near an aid distribution point in the south.

    Another person was killed near an aid site in central Gaza, Bassal added, with a nearby hospital saying the body had been taken there.

  • More than 150 missing in Pakistan’s flood-hit northwest: PDMA

    More than 150 missing in Pakistan’s flood-hit northwest: PDMA

    PESHAWAR: More than 150 people are missing in northwest Pakistan, the head of the provincial disaster management authority said Sunday, after flash floods that have killed at least 344 people in the country.

    Thousands of rescuers were battling rain and knee-deep mud, digging homes out from under massive boulders in a desperate search for survivors.

    “In Buner, at least 150 people are still missing. They could be trapped under the rubble of their homes or swept away by floodwaters,” Asfandyar Khattak, head of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority, told AFP.

    “Separately, in Shangla district, dozens of people are also reported missing,” he added.

    The ongoing rain was making rescue operations extremely difficult, Khattak said.

    “There is no electricity or mobile signal in Buner, as power lines and mobile towers were damaged in the flash floods,” he added.

    In hardest-hit Buner district, at least 208 people were killed and “10 to 12 entire villages” partially buried, a provincial rescue spokesman told AFP.

    “The operation to rescue people trapped under debris is ongoing,” said Bilal Ahmed Faizi of the province’s rescue agency.

    He said around 2,000 rescue workers were engaged in recovering bodies from the debris and carrying out relief operations across nine districts, where rain was still hampering efforts.

  • Iraq starts work on IS mass grave thought to contain thousands

    Iraq starts work on IS mass grave thought to contain thousands

    BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of the Islamic State (IS) group near Mosul city, the project’s director told AFP on Sunday.

    The first phase, which was launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, director Ahmed al-Assadi said.

    An AFP correspondent visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand.

    Khasfa is located near Mosul, where IS had established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate” before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017.

    Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there — one of dozens of mass graves IS left behind in Iraq — but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely the country’s largest.

    Official estimates put the number of bodies buried at the site at at least 4,000, with the possibility of thousands more.

    The project director said the victims buried there include “soldiers executed by IS”, members of the Yazidi minority and residents of Mosul.

    Exhuming the bodies from Khasfa is particularly difficult, Assadi said, as underground sulphur water makes the earth very porous.

    The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification of victims, he added.

    Assadi said further studies will be required before his team can dig deeper and exhume bodies at the site — a sinkhole about 150-metre (nearly 500-foot) deep and 110-metre wide.

    Iraqi authorities said it was the site of “one of the worst massacres” committed by IS jihadists, executing 280 in a single day in 2016, many of them interior ministry employees.

    In a lightning advance that began in 2014, IS had seized large swathes Iraq and neighbouring Syria, enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law and committing widespread abuses.

    The United Nations estimates the jihadists left behind more than 200 mass graves which might contain as many as 12,000 bodies.

    In addition to IS-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.

  • Protests held across Israel calling for end to Gaza war, hostage deal

    Protests held across Israel calling for end to Gaza war, hostage deal

    TEL AVIV: Demonstrators took to the streets across Israel Sunday calling for an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to release hostages still held by militants, as the military prepares a new offensive.

    The protests come more than a week after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to capture Gaza City, following 22 months of war that have created dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory.

    The war was triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, during which 251 were taken hostage.

    Forty-nine captives remain in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

    A huge Israeli flag covered with portraits of the remaining captives was unfurled in Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostage Square — which has long been a focal point for protests throughout the war.

    Demonstrators also blocked several roads in the city, including the highway connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where demonstrators set tires on fire and caused traffic jams, according to local media footage.

    Protest organisers and the main campaign group representing the families of hostages also called for a general strike on Sunday.

    “I think it’s time to end the war. It’s time to release all of the hostages. And it’s time to help Israel recover and move towards a more stable Middle East,” said Doron Wilfand, a 54-year-old tour guide, at a rally in Jerusalem.

    However, some government members who oppose any deal with Hamas slammed the demonstrations.

    Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich decried “a perverse and harmful campaign that plays into the hands of Hamas”.

    APTFV footage showed protesters at a rally in Beeri, a kibbutz near the Gaza border that was one of the hardest-hit communities in the Hamas attack, and Israeli media reported protests in numerous locations across the country.

    Israeli plans to expand the war into Gaza City and nearby refugee camps have sparked an international outcry as well as domestic opposition.

    UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.

    According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, Israeli troops shot dead at least 13 Palestinians on Saturday as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites.

    Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

    Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,897 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza which the United Nations considers reliable.

  • Hurricane Erin intensifies offshore, lashes Caribbean with rain

    Hurricane Erin intensifies offshore, lashes Caribbean with rain

    WASHINGTON: Hurricane Erin rapidly strengthened offshore to a “catastrophic” Category 5 storm on Saturday, as rain lashed Caribbean islands and weather officials warned of possible flash floods and landslides.

    The first hurricane of what is expected to be a particularly intense Atlantic season, Erin is expected to drench Caribbean islands with rain and strong winds but not make landfall.

    “The center of Erin is expected to move just north of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico through Sunday, and pass to the east of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas Sunday night and Monday,” the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest report.

    The storm’s maximum sustained winds were blowing at 150 miles (241 kilometers) per hour, the report said.

    Hurricane Erin was located about 160 miles (257 kilometers) northwest of Anguilla in the northern Leeward Islands, an area that includes the US and British Virgin Islands.

    Tropical storm watches were in effect for St Martin, St Barthelemy, Sint Maarten and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

    “Erin is now a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane,” the NHC announced earlier Saturday, denoting highly dangerous storms with sustained wind speeds above 157 mph.

    The storm reached the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale just over 24 hours after becoming a Category 1 hurricane, a rapid intensification that scientists say has become more common due to global warming.

    The storm could drench the islands with as much as six inches (15 centimeters) of rain in isolated areas, the NHC said.

    “Continued rapid strengthening is expected today, followed by fluctuations in intensity through the weekend,” the agency said in an earlier report.

    It also warned of “locally considerable flash and urban flooding, along with landslides or mudslides.”

    Climate hazard

    Swells generated by Erin will affect portions of the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and the Turks and Caicos Islands through the weekend.

    Those swells will spread to the Bahamas, Bermuda and the US East Coast early next week, creating “life-threatening surf and rip currents,” the NHC said.

    The hurricane is expected to turn northwest on Saturday night, then turn northward early next week. It is expected to weaken from Monday.

    While meteorologists have expressed confidence that Erin will remain well off the US coastline, they said the storm could still cause dangerous waves and erosion in places such as North Carolina.

    The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June until late November, is expected to be more intense than normal, US meteorologists predict.

    Several powerful storms wreaked havoc in the region last year, including Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people in the southeastern United States.

    Human-driven climate change — namely, rising sea temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels — has increased both the possibility of the development of more intense storms and their more rapid intensification, scientists say.

  • 8 dead, 4 missing in north China flash flood: state media

    8 dead, 4 missing in north China flash flood: state media

    BEIJING: A flash flood in Inner Mongolia killed eight people and left four missing, Chinese state media said Sunday.

    A group of 13 people were camping outdoors in Inner Mongolia’s Urat Rear Banner when a flash flood occurred around 10 pm (1400 GMT) on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua said.

    As of Sunday morning, one person had been rescued and search and rescue operations for the missing are ongoing, Xinhua added.

    The Ministry of Emergency Management has ordered full-scale rescue efforts, verification of the status of the missing, and dispatched a working group to the scene, state broadcaster CCTV said.

    Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer, when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heat.

    The death toll from flash floods and mudslides in northwest China in early August was at least 13, state media said in August.

    Heavy rain in Beijing in the north also killed 44 people last month, with the capital’s rural suburbs hardest hit and another eight people killed in a landslide in nearby Hebei province.

    Scientists have shown that human-driven climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely.

  • US cancels India trade talks scheduled for August

    US cancels India trade talks scheduled for August

    New Delhi: A planned visit by U.S. trade negotiators to New Delhi from August 25-29 has been cancelled, delaying talks on a proposed bilateral trade agreement, Indian business and financial news network NDTV Profit reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.

    Meanwhile, China’s top diplomat will visit India next week for talks about their shared boundary, Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, as the two countries consider resuming border trade after a five-year halt, AFP reported.

    Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit India on Delhi’s invitation from Monday until Wednesday for “the 24th special representatives meeting on the China-India border issue”, a spokesperson said in a statement.

    Read More: Trump slaps India with 50% tariff

    Past trade between the neighbours across icy, high-altitude Himalayan border passes was usually small in volume, but any resumption is significant for its symbolism.

    It stopped following a deadly 2020 clash between border troops.

    Indian media reported this week that Wang was expected for talks in New Delhi on Monday.

    He will meet Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval, New Delhi’s foreign ministry confirmed in a statement on Saturday.

    Wang will also hold talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who visited Beijing in July, the statement said.

    The two major economic powers have long competed for strategic influence across South Asia.

    However, they have moved to mend ties after being caught up in global trade and geopolitical turbulence triggered by US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz.

    Chinese and Indian officials have said in recent weeks that the two countries were discussing the resumption of border trade.

    Agreements to resume direct flights and issue tourist visas have also been seen as part of an effort to rebuild their relationship.