World News

Fires resulting from the fighting in Sudan destroyed or damaged 72 villages and settlements last month, a U.K.-based rights group said Monday, highlighting the use of fire as a weapon of war in the conflict in the African country.

Investigators from Sudan Witness, an open-source project run by the nonprofit Center for Information Resilience, say that more blazes broke out than in any other month since the war started in mid-April 2023. The number also brings to 201 the total number of fires in Sudan since fighting broke out between Sudan's military and the rival paramilitary force.

The analysis didn't provide any casualty figures from the fires.

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In the war in Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have often used fire, setting entire villages ablaze, especially in Sudan's western Darfur region.

The Center for Information Resilience said the number of fires surged particularly in the north and west of el-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur state that faces an imminent attack.

El-Fasher saw intense fighting on Friday between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary RSF and their allies. At least 27 people were killed and dozens injured, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. More than 800 were displaced.

Sudan's military launched an airstrike the next day that hit close to a pediatric hospital in el-Fasher, killing two children and a caregiver, according to Doctors Without Borders.

In its analysis, the Center for Information Resilience estimated that 31 settlements — villages and towns — were affected by fires in April, with an over 50% destruction rate.

"We’ve documented the patterns of numerous fires and the continuing devastation to settlements around western Sudan, large and small," Anouk Theunissen, Sudan Witness project director, said in a news release.

"When we see reports of fighting or airstrikes coinciding with clusters of fires it indicates that fire is being used indiscriminately as a weapon of war. The trend is worsening and continues to lead to the mass displacement of Sudanese people," Theunissen said.

Sudan's conflict started when tensions between the Sudanese military and the RSF broke out into intense fighting in Khartoum, the country's capital in April last year. Clashes quickly spread to other parts of Sudan, including Darfur, which has been witnessing brutal attacks.

The Sudan Witness analysis also said that in the Sudan war, blazes have hit at least 51 settlements for displaced people more than once.

Investigators with the project examined the patterns of fires across the war-torn country by using social media, satellite imagery and NASA's public fire monitoring data.

Indonesian police raided what they said was a major drug lab hidden in a villa on the resort island of Bali, and arrested four people, authorities said Monday.

Police raided the house in the upscale resort area of Canggu early this month, said Wahyu Widada, head of the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Department, finding two drug labs in its basement.

He said one of the villa's labs was designed to produce the ingredients for ecstasy, and the other contained a hydroponic farm marijuana. Police were tipped off to the facility after an earlier raid on a Jakarta lab linked to Indonesia's most wanted drug lord.

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Police arrested an Indonesian man identified by his initial as LM, two Ukrainian men identified as IV and MV, and a Russian man identified as KK, during the raids.

The four men could face execution. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has strict laws against consumption of marijuana and other drugs, even for medical treatment.

Most of the more than 150 people on Indonesia’s death row were convicted of drug crimes, about one-third of whom are foreigners. The country’s last executions were in 2016, when one Indonesian and three foreigners were shot by a firing squad.

Widada said police were tipped off to the "clandestine" labs after interrogating a suspected drug trafficker arrested in an April raids in the capital, Jakarta, on a similar lab that police say was owned by drug lord Freddy Pratama.

Widada said one of the men arrested this month, LM, was Pratama’s accountant, and was involved in operating a drug lab in Jakarta before moving to Bali to avoid arrest. He was arrested at a rented house near Kuta, a popular tourist spot, with 13.2 pounds of crystal methamphetamine.

Widada said that IV and MV arrested as investors and drug makers at the Bali labs, while KK was accused of selling drugs for them, adding that police are searching for two more dealers, Ukrainian men identified as RN and OK.

Wearing orange detainee uniforms, the suspects were paraded with their hands tied at a news conference in Denpasar, the capital of Bali province.

Police seized hundreds of pounds of precursor chemicals for ecstasy and equipment for growing marijuana, including ultraviolet lighting and an automatic watering system.

Last year, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court rejected a judicial review of the country’s narcotics law that would have paved the way for legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

Kazakhstan's Supreme Court on Monday convicted a former government official of torturing and murdering his wife and sentenced him to 24 years in prison in a case that has gripped the Central Asian nation.

During the trial of Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, over the death of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova, thousands of people urged the authorities to adopt harsher penalties for domestic violence. Authorities adopted a bill toughening spousal abuse laws.

Kazakhstan largely remains a patriarchal society, and progress has been slow on issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment and disparities in employment.

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Bishimbayev’s trial was the first in the country of over 19 million people to be streamed online, and debates about it dominated social media.

Nukenova, 31, was found dead in November in a restaurant owned by one of her husband’s relatives. The 44-year-old Bishimbayev maintained his innocence before admitting in court last month that he had beaten her and "unintentionally" caused her death. His lawyers initially disputed medical evidence indicating Nukenova died from blows to the head.

Bishimbayev's relative, Bakhytzhan Baizhanov, was sentenced to four years in prison for helping Bishimbayev cover up the murder.

Days after Nukenova’s death, her relatives launched an online petition urging authorities to pass "Saltanat’s Law" to bolster protection for those at risk of domestic violence. It quickly got over 150,000 signatures. As the trial began, more than 5,000 Kazakhs wrote senators urging tougher laws on abuse, Kazakh media said.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has repeatedly spoken about strengthening protections for women. In January, he intervened after the Justice Ministry refused to consider the petition by Nukenova’s family.

According to a 2018 study backed by UN Women, about 400 women die from domestic violence each year in Kazakhstan, although many cases go unreported.

In 2017, Kazakhstan decriminalized beatings and other acts causing "minor" physical damage, making them punishable only by fines or short jail terms. Kazakhstan has since reversed its law, increasing penalties for assailants and introducing new criminal offenses, including harassment of minors.

Senate Speaker Maulen Ashimbayev said that properly implementing the new law adopted in the wake of the trial will require "a great deal of work," including educational campaigns in schools and the media as well as vigilance from civil society groups.

A curator at the American Museum of Natural History was detained in Istanbul on Monday while allegedly attempting to smuggle spider and scorpion samples, Turkish media reported. The curator said he had permits from the government to conduct his research.

Lorenzo Prendini, an expert on arachnids at the New York-based museum, was held by police at Istanbul Airport while allegedly trying to take about 1,500 samples out of the country, news outlets reported.

The state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Prendini was detained for allegedly attempting to smuggle species found in Turkey.

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Video published by the Demiroren News Agency showed officers searching hand luggage and removing plastic bags that appeared to be packed with dead spiders and scorpions.

In emailed comments to The Associated Press, Prendini said the police had disregarded permits from the Turkish government to conduct his research in collaboration with Turkish scientists.

"The police completely ignored this and relied on the testimony of an ‘expert’ who has a conflict of interest with my collaborators … and whose scientific research is highly questionable," he said.

"The police have completely violated due process, and it appears they would like to find me guilty in the court of public opinion."

The museum’s website lists Prendini as the curator of its spider, scorpion, centipede and millipede collections. It says his research into spiders and scorpions has taken him to more than 30 countries.

Residents of Ukraine's second-biggest city, Kharkiv, remained defiant despite fierce fighting raging in the region after Russian forces launched an armored incursion on a new front that may presage a broader push into the area.

As battles raged in the north and east of the Kharkiv region, the city itself enjoyed a rare moment of calm on Sunday, May 12.

Residents took to the streets and parks of the city, walking, shopping, taking children to playgrounds. Many attended Sunday church services.

ONLY A FEW HUNDRED REMAIN IN VOVCHANSK AS RUSSIAN ADVANCE INTENSIFIES IN NORTHEAST UKRAINE

The mood was upbeat, with most people saying Russia's incursion on the new front will not scare them to flee the city.

Many said they trusted Ukrainian forces to push Russians away. Others said that despite months of relentless rocket, drone and artillery attacks on the city, they were determined to stay in their homes and hoped their children would grow up in the city.

Kharkiv's governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Saturday there was no imminent danger to the city of Kharkiv and no need to begin evacuating its roughly 1.3 million inhabitants. Kyiv officials have repeatedly said they do not believe Russia has the forces available to capture the city.

Only a few hundred residents remain in the embattled town of Vovchansk in northeast Ukraine, where Kyiv's troops are locked in intense battles with the Russian army, according to local officials on Monday.

The town, whose pre-war population of 17,000 had dwindled to just 2,500 before Russia renewed its ground assault last week, has emerged as focus point as pitched battles engulf the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.

Ukrainian local officials said they feared Vovchansk's fate may mirror that of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Ukrainian cities where fierce fighting and scorched earth tactics forced Ukrainian withdrawals. Only 200-300 people remain in the town, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Suniehubov said, as Moscow’s troops advance in an effort to surround it from three directions.

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Poorly built fortifications and enduring ammunition shortages enabled Russia’s sweeping advance in the area last week, local officials and soldiers said.

In the span of two days, Moscow has captured some 40 square miles at least seven villages, most of them already depopulated, according to the open source monitoring project DeepState. It is a significant advance that could pin Ukrainian forces in the northeast while heavy fighting continues in the Donetsk region.

On Monday, Ukrainian troops were still locked in pitched battles in both regions, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Fighting is taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to hold back a significant Russian ground offensive.

"Defensive battles are ongoing, fierce battles, on a large part of our border area," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Sunday.

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The Kremlin’s forces are aiming to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses before a big batch of new military aid for Kyiv from the U.S. and European partners arrives on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, analysts say. That makes this period a window of opportunity for Moscow and one of the most dangerous for Kyiv in the two-year war, they say. It is unclear what of the promised aid has arrived to Ukraine.

The new Russian push in the northeastern Kharkiv region, along with the ongoing drive into the eastern Donetsk region, come after months when the roughly 620-mile front line barely budged. In the meantime, both sides have used long-range strikes to pursue what became largely a war of attrition.

Ukraine’s general staff said late Sunday that Russian forces had conducted at least 22 attacks over the previous 24 hours in two parts of the Kharkiv region and had "tactical success." The statement did not elaborate.

The Kharkiv incursion serves likely three purposes for Russia. First, the northeast operation will pin Ukrainian forces in the region and potentially draw in precious reserves away from heavy battles in the Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar areas of the Donetsk region, where Russia’s advance has been far more significant and strategically important.

Zelenskyy said fighting in the Donetsk area is "no less intense" than in Kharkiv. He said the Kremlin aimed to "spread our forces thin" by opening a second active front in Kharkiv.

Zelenskyy described the area around Pokrovsk region, just inside the Ukrainian border in Donetsk, as "the most difficult."

Pokrovsk was a town of around 60,000 people before the war and was until recently a two-hour drive from the front line. Now it is less than half that.

The capture of the Donetsk city of Avdiivka in February opened a door for the Kremlin’s troops to push westward, deeper into Donetsk. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022 shortly after it invaded Ukraine, and taking control of all of Donetsk is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.

Second, if Ukraine isn’t able to halt Moscow’s advance, it could create future conditions for a possible attack on Kharkiv City, Ukraine’s second largest.

Finally, it could create a "buffer zone" to protect Belgorod, where frequent Ukrainian attacks have embarrassed the Kremlin. In March, Russia announced plans to evacuate about 9,000 children from the Belgorod region because it was being shelled continuously.

Russian emergency services on Monday finished clearing the rubble in the region’s capital city of Belgorod, where a section of a residential building collapsed following what authorities said was Ukrainian shelling.

Fifteen bodies were pulled from the rubble, Belgorod regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said, and 27 other people were wounded.

Another three people in the city of Belgorod were killed by shelling late Sunday, he said.

Yevgeny Poddubny, a usually well-connected military correspondent for Russia’s state TV corporation VGTRK, said in a recent Telegram post that the Kharkiv assault marked the beginning of "a new phase."

"We’re pushing the enemy back from the border, destroying the enemy in order to deprive the Kyiv regime of the opportunity to use relatively cheap rockets to attack Belgorod," he said.

Mount Ibu, a volcano in Indonesia's North Maluku province, erupted on Monday, spewing thick gray ash and dark clouds 16,400 feet into the sky for five minutes, officials said.

"The volcanic earthquakes are still intense so there is a potential for a future eruption," Hendra Gunawan, chief of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said.

After an eruption on Friday, the center raised the alert level for the volcano from 2 to 3, the second-highest level, which widens the radius of the area which should be vacated. Local authorities have prepared evacuation tents, but no evacuation order has been reported yet.

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Officials advised residents and tourists not to conduct any activities within 3 miles of Mount Ibu's crater. More than 13,000 people live within a 3-mile radius of the northern side of the crater, Gunawan said.

The 4,347-foot volcano is on the northwest coast of the remote island of Halmahera.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.

A British climber and a Nepali guide have broken their own records for most climbs of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, hiking officials said on Sunday.

Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal's Department of Tourism, said Britain's Kenton Cool, 50, and Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa, 54, climbed the 29,032-foot peak for the 18th and 29th time, respectively.

They were on separate expeditions guiding their clients.

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"He just keeps going and going... amazing guy!" Garrett Madison of the U.S.-based expedition organizing company Madison Mountaineering said of the Nepali climber. Madison had teamed up with Kami Rita to climb the summits of Everest, Lhotse, and K2 in 2014.

K2, located in Pakistan, is the world's second-highest mountain and Lhotse in Nepal is the fourth-tallest.

Lukas Furtenbach of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures called Cool's feat remarkable.

"He is a fundamental part of the Everest guiding industry. Kenton Cool is an institution," Furtenbach, who is leading an expedition from the Chinese side of Everest, told Reuters.

Both climbers used the Southeast Ridge route to the summit.

Pioneered by the first summiteers, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, the route remains the most popular path to the Everest summit.

Kami Rita first climbed Everest in 1994 and has done so almost every year since, except for three years when authorities closed the mountain for various reasons.

He climbed the mountain twice last year.

Mountain climbing is a major tourism activity and a source of income as well as employment for Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks, including Everest.

Nepal has issued 414 permits, each costing $11,000 to climbers for the climbing season that ends this month.

Forty-nine employees of the Vatican Museums have filed a class-action complaint with the Vatican administration demanding better seniority, leave and overtime benefits in an unusual, public challenge to Pope Francis’ governance.

The complaint, dated April 23 and made public this weekend in Italian newspapers, also alleged that staff faced health and security risks due to cost-saving and apparent profit-generating initiatives at the museum, including overcrowding and reduced security guards to keep tourists at bay.

Neither the Vatican spokesman nor Cardinal Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, the president of the Vatican City State administration which controls the museums, responded to an email seeking comment.

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The complaint is the latest legal challenge to underscore how the Vatican’s laws, regulations and practices are often incompatible with Italian and European norms. Recently, civil and criminal cases have exposed how Vatican employees, especially lay Italian citizens, have little or no legal recourse beyond the peculiar justice system of the city state, an absolute monarchy where Francis wields supreme executive, legislative and judicial power.

In the class-action complaint, written and signed by veteran Vatican attorney Laura Sgro on behalf of the 49 employees, museum staffers cited the social teaching of the Catholic Church and Francis’ own appeals for employers to respect the dignity of workers in demanding better treatment.

Among other things, they demanded better transparency about how employees are able to advance, a restoration of seniority bonuses and insisted the Vatican follow Italian norms on sick days. Employees currently have to stay home all day, rather than a few hours, to await a potential visit to check that they aren’t merely taking the day off, the complaint said.

Under the Vatican's labor regulations, Verzaga has 30 days to respond to the complaint. If no talks begin, Sgro can take the claims to the Vatican's labor office to attempt a negotiated reconciliation, which could end up in the tribunal. However, the office can refuse to hear the case and, according to lawyers, often does, leaving the employees with no further recourse.

In recent cases before the Vatican tribunal, lawyers have signaled they may try to bring employees' complaints about the system to the European Court of Human Rights. The Holy See isn't a member of the court or a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. But some lawyers say the Vatican nevertheless committed to upholding European human rights norms when it signed onto the European Union monetary convention in 2009.

The Vatican Museums are one of the primary sources of revenue for the Vatican, subsidizing the Holy See bureaucracy, which acts as the central government for the Catholic Church. The museums, which suffered a big financial hit from COVID-19 closures and restrictions, increased the cost of a full-price ticket at the start of the year to $21.50.

Rescue teams in South Africa forged ahead Monday with efforts to find any survivors still trapped under rubble a week after an apartment building that was under construction collapsed.

Their hopes were boosted over the weekend when one of the construction workers was found alive after six days without food and water.

Authorities said 24 construction workers who were on the site when the unfinished five-story building came down have been confirmed dead, while another 28 are missing, raising the possibility that the death toll could ultimately be above 50.

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More than 600 emergency services and other personnel have been involved in the search for survivors in the wreckage of the building in the city of George on South Africa's south coast, which collapsed last Monday.

There were 81 workers on the site when it collapsed, and 29 have been pulled out alive, the city said. It said 13 of them remained in a hospital without giving details of their condition. The city has previously said that many of the survivors were in critical condition when they were found.

The disaster management team overseeing the emergency response maintained that the operation was still rescue rather than recovery, pointing to the survivor pulled out on Saturday.

The man, who was identified as 32-year-old Gabriel Guambe, was in stable condition in the hospital and "remarkably sustained only minor injuries," the city said. Guambe was trapped in the rubble for 118 hours, it said.

His survival underlined rescuers' hopes that there may be more people alive in what they called voids in the ruins of the building — areas where there are gaps between the concrete that might have allowed some workers to survive the collapse.

Rescue teams have been using cranes and other heavy machinery to move some of the thousands of tons of concrete in an attempt to reach deeper into the wreckage. Sniffer dogs were also being used and one was responsible for locating Guambe.

Many of the workers were foreign nationals from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi and authorities were calling for translators to help communicate with survivors. They also said it was making the identification of victims difficult.

Multiple investigations into the cause of the building collapse were underway, including by police, who declared the site a crime scene. The construction company responsible is being investigated to see if it followed proper safety protocols.

People began leaving flowers around the edge of the site as a mark of respect for the victims, while the city and the disaster response team issued a joint statement asking South Africans to observe a moment of silence at 2.09 p.m. on Monday, the exact time the building collapsed last week.

Despite the threat of dislocated fingers and strained muscles, over 150 Bavarian men came together Sunday to compete in Germany’s unique national championship of "Fingerhakeln," or finger wrestling.

The "finger wrestlers" met in a big beer tent in the small southern village of Bernbeuren. Around 1,000 visitors cheered on the all-male contestants as they gulped down their national beer and world-famous German sausages while Bavarian live music filled the air.

Finger wrestling, a well-known competitive sport in Germany’s Alpine region and neighboring Austria, originated as a way to settle disputes.

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In each round, two competitors sit on opposite sides of a solid table and each hooks one finger — usually the middle finger — through opposite sides of a small leather loop. As soon as a referee signals the start, a contestant tries to pull the other across the table swiftly. The whole thing usually lasts a few seconds, and digits put out of their joints are common. The winner moves to the next round.

"This tradition has been popular for a very long time in beer houses and pubs across the region," said Marie-Therese Eierstock, the head of the Fingerhakler Gau Auerberg association, founded in 1961 and organized this year’s championship.

Customarily, only men are allowed to participate in finger-wrestling competitions.

At Sunday’s tournament, the youngest competitor was 15 years old and the oldest 70, Eierstock said.

Georgia's parliament green-lit a final vote on a proposed law that critics see as a threat to media freedom and the country’s aspirations to join the European Union on Monday, a day after police dispersed the latest protests against it.

The bill would require media and nongovernmental organizations and other nonprofits to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad.

The opposition denounces the bill as "the Russian law," because Moscow uses similar legislation to crack down on independent news media, nonprofits and activists critical of the Kremlin.

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The bill is nearly identical to one that the governing Georgian Dream party was pressured to withdraw last year after street protests. Renewed demonstrations have rocked Georgia for weeks, with demonstrators scuffling with police, who used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

The government says the bill is necessary to stem what it deems as harmful foreign influence over the country’s politics and to prevent unspecified foreign actors from trying to destabilize it.

Huge crowds marched through Europe Square in the capital, Tbilisi, on Saturday, with demonstrators wrapped in Georgian and European Union flags and chanting "Georgia!" On Sunday, the protesters gathered in front of parliament for an overnight rally and tried to block entrances into the building, where a committee of lawmakers were expected to discuss the bill once again on Monday.

Police sought to disperse the demonstration, and by Monday morning, only hundreds remained near parliament. Georgia's Interior Ministry said 20 people were arrested in the morning, including three foreign citizens — two Americans and a Russian.

It took lawmakers less than a minute to give a green light to the third and final reading of the bill for Tuesday.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is increasingly at odds with the governing party, has vowed to veto the law, but Georgian Dream has a majority sufficient to override a presidential veto.

The legislature approved a second reading of the bill earlier this month, after protests that drew tens of thousands of people.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has described the parliament’s move as "a very concerning development" and warned that "final adoption of this legislation would negatively impact Georgia’s progress on its EU path."

A major fire broke out Sunday morning in a vast shopping complex in the Polish capital that housed some 1,400 shops and service outlets and where many of the vendors were from Vietnam.

Huge plumes of black smoke could be seen rising over the vast area. The fire department said that more than 80% of the Marywilska 44 shopping complex burned in the Bialoleka district of Warsaw, and that the roof caved in.

Police reported no injuries, but traders were in despair at the loss of their livelihoods. The Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported that some Vietnamese vendors wanted to enter to save their goods from the complex, but were blocked by security guards.

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The Association of Vietnamese Entrepreneurs in Poland said the blaze meant "great financial losses for merchants," calling it a "terrible tragedy for thousands of merchants and their families."

Chemical and environmental rescue specialists were among the large numbers of rescue officials who took part in the operation. Authorities sent a text message warning Warsaw residents about the fire, and telling them to stay home with the windows closed.

Mirbud, an industrial construction company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, owns the shopping center.

Warsaw police said it had begun investigating the blaze, which began at around 3:30 a.m. local time, but hadn't yet determined the cause.

The Warsaw city administration planned on Monday to discuss financial support for the small traders whose livelihoods were destroyed.

Shopping centers and large shops are usually closed on Sunday because of a ban on trade imposed by the previous government, which had close ties to the Catholic church. However, small business owners are exempt from the ban, and many of the small shops at the center worked on Sundays.

When Erdina Laca goes grocery shopping in Eichsfeld these days, she pulls out a special payment card that’s for asylum-seekers only.

She no longer pays in cash for her apples, eggs and fish — like most of the Germans standing in line with her at the register.

Laca, 45, came from Albania with her husband and three children and applied for asylum in Germany last September. The family lives in the county of Eichsfeld in the eastern state of Thuringia and has been one of the first in the country to receive half of their government benefits in the form of cashless payments on a plastic card.

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"With half the money that is on the card, I can buy groceries, and with the other half (in cash) I can buy in every shop whatever I need for me and my children," Laca said.

The new rule, which was passed by parliament last month, calls for asylum-seekers to receive their benefits on a card for use at local shops and to pay for services. They will only be able to withdraw limited amounts of cash and won't be able to transfer money outside Germany. The aim is to prevent migrants from sending money to family and friends abroad, or to smugglers.

Migrant advocates groups have criticized the new regulation as discriminatory — especially as it's being implemented in a country that's still much more cash-centric than many other European countries and where some businesses, especially restaurants, won't even accept card payments.

They say people fleeing war and persecution won't be deterred from coming to Germany just because their benefits will no longer be paid out in cash only. Instead, they claim that the payment cards will single out migrants and may possibly add to them being ostracized further.

"It has to be said quite clearly that people are coming because of civil war and persecution — they won't be deterred by a payment card," said Wiebke Judith from Pro Asyl. "The aim here is to create an instrument of discrimination and to bully refugees."

Germany has been trying to clamp down on migration for months, and this latest measure comes just weeks before the European Union election on June 9.

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, has been successfully exploiting Germans’ hardening attitudes toward migrants. AfD, which takes an anti-migration stance, is expected to make significant gains compared to the 10.3% that the party won during the last federal election in 2021.

Attitudes toward migration have hardened in Germany as large numbers of asylum-seekers have arrived, in addition to refugees from Ukraine, and local authorities have struggled to find accommodation.

The number of people applying for asylum in Germany last year rose to more than 350,000, an increase of just over 50% compared with the year before. The largest number of asylum-seekers came from Syria, followed by Turks and Afghans.

In January, lawmakers approved legislation intended to ease deportation of unsuccessful asylum-seekers. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly said that authorities need to speed up deportations.

Germany, like several other European countries, has also started classifying some countries, such as Moldova and Georgia, as "safe countries of origin" — meaning asylum-seekers from there can be quickly rejected and deported faster than in the past.

Eichsfeld, where Luca and her family live while their asylum plea is being processed, was one of the first counties to introduce the plastic payment cards, which look similar to ATM or credit cards. The small town started handing them out to asylum-seekers in December.

The legislation gives local authorities latitude to decide on exemptions and on how much cash asylum-seekers can withdraw. Eichsfeld decided to pay out about 50% of the monthly benefits for asylum-seekers in cash, with the other half going on the payment cards.

While Laca doesn't have any problems with the changes, county officials say that some migrants don't like the new cards.

"We have a lot of nationalities who grew up with cash — they don’t know how to pay by card," says Thomas Dreiling, who runs a local shelter for asylum-seekers. Still, he supports the new system because he thinks that having less cash available will be an incentive for migrants to look for work and thus get off government benefits.

Jihad Ammuri, a 20-year-old asylum-seeker from Damascus, Syria, said not all stores have been accepting his payment card and he’s been turned away from some places.

Dreiling said that of the about 400 asylum-seekers who were slated to get the payment cards in December, more than 50 said "no" to the card and left Germany — most of them citizens from North Macedonia and Georgia. Another 40 people have found work in the meantime and no longer receive government welfare payments.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency was justified in putting the far-right Alternative for Germany under observation for suspected extremism, a court ruled Monday, rejecting an appeal from the opposition party.

The administrative court in Muenster ruled in favor of the BfV intelligence agency, upholding a 2022 decision by a lower court in Cologne. The decision means the agency can continue to observe the party.

The court found that there was a sufficient legal basis for the designation, while stressing that the step doesn't inevitably lead to the party being designated a proven case of right-wing extremism.

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Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has strongly rejected the designation and portrayed it as a political attempt to discredit the party. Roman Reusch, a member of its national leadership, said the party will seek to appeal. Peter Boehringer, a deputy leader, complained that the court hadn't taken up "hundreds" of requests for evidence.

AfD was formed in 2013 and has moved steadily to the right over the years. Its platform initially centered on opposition to bailouts for struggling eurozone members, but its vehement opposition to then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in large numbers of refugees and other migrants in 2015 established the party as a significant political force.

AfD has been polling strongly in Germany in recent months as discontent is high with center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government. It hopes to emerge as the biggest party in three state elections in the formerly communist east, where it has its strongest support, in September.

However, its national ratings declined somewhat following a media report in January that extremists met to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that some figures from the party attended. The report triggered mass protests in the country against the rise of the far-right.

In Monday’s ruling, the court found there was a valid suspicion that "recognizing only a legally devalued status for German citizens with a migration background corresponds with the political objectives at least of a significant part of AfD." It didn’t elaborate on details but said there were indications of "discriminatory objectives."

It also pointed to widespread use in the party of derogatory terms toward refugees and Muslims and indications of anti-democratic aspirations, though it said the latter were not of the frequency and density surmised by the BfV.

The court said there were no indications that the intelligence agency acted out of improper political motives.

In an unrelated case, a verdict is expected Tuesday in the trial of one AfD's best-known figures, Björn Höcke, on charges of using a Nazi slogan. Höcke is the party's leader in the eastern region of Thuringia, where he plans to run for governor in September. Höcke says he is innocent.

Last month's arrest of an assistant to AfD's top candidate in the upcoming European Parliament elections on suspicion of spying for China also cast an unflattering light on the party, which already faced criticism for having Russia-friendly positions.

British police have charged three men with assisting the Hong Kong intelligence service amid growing concern that hostile states are trying to interfere with democracy and economic activity in the U.K.

The three men were among 11 people arrested earlier this month in Yorkshire and London by counterterrorism police using provisions of a new law that allows suspects in national security and espionage cases to be detained without warrant. The eight other suspects were released without charge.

Chi Leung (Peter) Wai, 38, Matthew Trickett, 37, and Chung Biu Yuen, 63, are also charged with foreign interference, the Metropolitan Police Service said. They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

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"A number of arrests were made and searches carried out across England as part of this investigation," Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's counterterrorism command, said in a statement. "While led from London, the Counter Terrorism Policing network has been crucial to disrupting this activity."

The announcement comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak prepares to deliver a speech on Monday in which he is expected to say that Britain is facing an increasingly dangerous future due to threats from an "axis of authoritarian states," including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Tensions with China flared last year after a parliamentary researcher was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing, charges that Chinese officials called a "malicious smear."

Hong Kong’s security bureau, Hong Kong police and the office of China’s foreign ministry in Hong Kong didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The British government last year passed a new national security act that gave police additional powers to tackle foreign espionage. The legislation was needed to combat the "ever-evolving" threat of foreign interference and in "response to the threat of hostile activity from states targeting the U.K.’s democracy, economy, and values," the government said.

The arrests in the current case were made on May 1 and 2. The investigation is continuing, police said.

A bus slammed into cars and motorbikes after its brakes apparently malfunctioned in Indonesia’s West Java province, killing at least 11 people, mostly students, and injuring dozens of others, officials said Sunday.

The bus carrying 61 students and teachers was returning to a high school in Depok outside Jakarta, the capital, late Saturday from the hilly resort area of Bandung after a graduation celebration, said West Java police spokesperson Jules Abraham Abast.

It sped out of control on a downhill road and crossed lanes, hitting several cars and motorbikes before it crashed into an electricity pole, he said.

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Nine people died at the scene and two others died later in the hospital, including a teacher and a local motorist, Abast said. Fifty-three other people were hospitalized with injuries, including some in critical condition, he said.

"We are still investigating the cause of the accident, but a preliminary investigation showed the bus's brakes malfunctioned," Abast said.

Local television footage showed the mangled bus in the darkness on its side, surrounded by rescuers, police and passersby as ambulances evacuated the injured.

Road accidents are common in Indonesia due to poor safety standards and infrastructure.

Last year, a tourist bus with an apparently drowsy driver slammed into a billboard on a highway in East Java, killing at least 14 people and injuring 19 others. In 2021, a tourist bus plunged into a ravine in the West Java hilly resort of Puncak after its brakes apparently malfunctioned, killing at least 27 people and injuring 39 others.

The far-flung coastal town of Santa Ana in the northeastern tip of the Philippine mainland has long been known by tourists mostly for its beaches, waterfalls, fireflies and a few casinos.

But that’s changing after the laid-back town of about 35,000 people, which still has no traffic light, became strategically important to America.

The United States and the Philippines, which are longtime treaty allies, have identified Santa Ana in northern Cagayan province as one of nine mostly rural areas where rotating batches of American forces could encamp indefinitely and store their weapons and equipment on local military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

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Thousands of U.S. forces withdrew from two huge Navy and Air Force bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War, ending nearly a century of American military presence in the country. In recent years, Washington has been reinforcing an arc of military alliances in Asia to counter an increasingly assertive China, which it now regards as its greatest security challenge.

That dovetails with Philippine efforts to bolster its external defenses after an alarming spate of territorial hostilities with Beijing in the South China Sea that started last year. The high seas confrontations have injured several Filipino navy personnel, damaged their boats and strained diplomatic ties.

The remote town of Santa Ana is caught in the geo-political rivalry between Washington and Beijing because of its strategic location. It lies across a sea border from Taiwan, the self-governing island that China regards as a renegade province to be reclaimed by force if necessary. The U.S. has vowed to defend the territory.

Some villagers in Santa Ana have expressed apprehension over the prospect of living near U.S. forces. Their governor, Manuel Mamba, has vehemently opposed the looming U.S. military presence, saying it would turn Cagayan into a military target of China.

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Other villagers say the Philippines needs the Americans as a crucial counterweight to China, which they say has been using its military might to threaten Manila’s territorial interests in the South China Sea.

"There’s no choice. If you compare the number of our forces with that of China, they have much, much more," Romeo Asuncion, a planning and economic development officer in Santa Ana, told The Associated Press. "If the Americans are here, they would protect us whatever happens."

There’s also the prospect of economic benefits and aid from the U.S. military presence.

"If they donate a school that will be good," Asuncion said.

Rowena Castillo, a consultant to the town's mayor, expressed hope the wider attention on Santa Ana would boost tourism. She recently handed out brochures promoting the town’s beach resorts, waterfalls, a historic lighthouse, a crocodile-shaped island and an area that teems with fireflies.

Some villagers acknowledged that even without the U.S. forces, the town would likely be affected in any major-power military showdown due to Santa Ana’s relative proximity to Taiwan.

Authorities and village leaders recently met at the initiative of the local military to discuss contingency plans, including the possibility of setting up emergency shelters for refugees, in case tensions between China and Taiwan flare into an armed conflict, Marion Miranda, Santa Ana’s disaster-mitigating officer, told The AP.

"One problem is where we could bring potential refugees and the budget for that," Miranda said.

In another rural Cagayan town southwest of Santa Ana called Lal-lo, part of the airport was designated as a possible encampment site for American forces.

Unlike the two massive military bases that American forces used to occupy, including a Navy base at Subic Bay that was about the size of Singapore and had a vibrant red-light district, the U.S. military is building a new presence in a much smaller area within Philippine camps.

During largescale combat drills called Balikatan — Tagalog for "shoulder-to-shoulder" — that ended Friday, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters carrying allied forces, their weapons and other supplies landed and took off at the Lal-lo airport and the navy camp in Santa Ana. A few journalists, including from The AP, were invited to witness the combat maneuvers.

"It’s an important location. It’s critical because it is an EDCA site so it’s a very big deal to both the United States and to the Philippines," U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Matthew Schultz told journalists at Lal-lo airport.

"One of the challenges that we have in this airfield now is there is not a lot of parking space or taxiways or additional apron space in order to facilitate a lot of aircraft," Schultz said.

The EDCA accord, which was signed in 2014, had an initial term of 10 years and has been automatically extended with both sides in agreement, Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez said by telephone from Washington.

The agreement allows rotating batches of U.S. forces to stay rent-free at the military sites and store their defense equipment — except nuclear weapons — there.

The U.S. has allocated more than $82 million for the construction of ammunition and fuel storage, an urban combat training facility, aircraft parking, runway repairs and warehouses for humanitarian response items in the first five EDCA sites.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. agreed to add four more EDCA sites where U.S. forces could stay, including the Philippine navy camp in Santa Ana and the Lal-lo airport, last year.

Marcos and other Philippine officials say the renewed U.S. military presence would bolster Philippine external defense and help Filipinos respond more rapidly to natural disasters and is not directed at any country.

China, however, has expressed alarm over the increased U.S. troop deployments in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia and said the EDCA sites in the northern Philippines could serve as surveillance outposts and staging grounds for U.S. forces to contain Beijing.

Such a display of combat readiness by the U.S. and the Philippines, according to Romualdez, aims to prevent a major conflict by making Chinese leader Xi Jinping realize the cost of a wrong move.

"We're precisely doing all of these things as a deterrence," Romualdez said. "We’re trying to tell Xi, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll tell yourself, ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ Not today, not tomorrow and hopefully never."

JERUSALEM – In a dramatic shift, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has revised its data pertaining to the number of Palestinian casualties in the seven-month-old Gaza war, reducing almost by half the number of women and children it previously said were killed in the hostilities between Israel and the Iranian-backed terror group Hamas.

According to an infographic published in OCHA’s daily report on May 6, the number of women killed in the fighting was said to be 9,500, while the organization, which admits to relying on figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, claimed that 14,500 children had been killed since the war began on Oct. 7. 

Two days later, in its May 8 report, the U.N. agency appeared to have cut the number nearly in half, showing instead that some 4,959 women and 7,797 children had been killed so far in the war, which began after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists infiltrated southern Israel from Gaza, slaughtering more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 people hostage. 

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While the numbers on both sides remain high – the overall death count in Gaza is said by the Hamas-controlled ministry of health to have almost reached 35,000, with more believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings – the sudden and unexplained change in numbers is alarming. 

Hamas’ death toll figures have been disputed by Israel, which claims more than a third of those killed are combatants, yet they have been widely and unquestioningly quoted by the international media, humanitarian organizations and world leaders, including President Biden. 

They have also been used as the basis to question whether the Israeli army may have violated international humanitarian law and to accuse the Israeli government of committing genocide, or, at the very least, of deliberately targeting civilians. The Israelis estimate that around 14,000 terrorists have been killed since the fighting in Gaza began.

President Biden, in his State of the Union address in March, quoted Hamas’s numbers, which at the time stood at 30,000. He also used the unverified data to commission a State Department inquiry into Israel’s conduct, resulting in a report that was published on Friday. 

The findings of the National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20), however, remained inconclusive, noting that while there were reasonable grounds to assess that Israel had "used U.S. supplied weapons in instances that were inconsistent with its international obligations," there was no outright evidence that Israel had violated the law.

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When asked to explain the sudden change in their statistics, Farhan Aziz Haq, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told Fox News Digital that the breakdowns were based on data from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, and that those figures "can vary based on their own verification process that they undertake."

"The United Nations teams on the ground in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities," the spokesman said. "It is for this reason that all figures used by the U.N. clearly cite the Health Ministry in Gaza as the source."

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The spokesman said that the U.N., which also uses the unverified numbers to formulate its policies and agenda, would only be able to "verify these figures to the extent possible when conditions permit."

"Israel has repeatedly said the numbers coming out of Gaza and which are being echoed by U.N. agencies are being manipulated by Hamas, are not accurate, and do not reflect the reality on the ground," an Israeli official told Fox News Digital. 

The official said Israel was still waiting for OCHA to acknowledge that an incident at a hospital early on in the war that killed nearly 100 civilians was actually caused by an errant rocket fired by one of the Gaza terror groups and to recognize that Hamas uses U.N. infrastructure for its terror activities. 

"All of these are consistently ignored in OCHA’s reports," the official said. 

"Parroting Hamas propaganda messages without any verification process has proven time and again as methodologically flawed and unprofessional," the official added. "We urge the international community to use more than a grain of salt when evaluating OCHA reports."

David Adesnik, a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who has been tracking the death toll data closely since Oct. 7, told Fox News Digital that while early on in the war the claim that Hamas’ figures could be accepted because in previous conflicts they were fairly accurate, the current chaos in the Palestinian enclave and the total collapse of the health system there has made counting the dead and verifying Hamas’ reports impossible. 

"U.N. agencies have consistently shown they prefer to trust the numbers coming out of Hamas-controlled sources rather than doing basic due diligence," he said, adding that the U.N.’s sudden revision last week of the death toll most likely indicated that "even Hamas-controlled sources have begun admitting that their numbers are based on incomplete data." 

"They [Hamas] don't even have the names of more than 10,000 of the individuals they count as dead," Adesnik said.

The change by the U.N., he said, was "a step forward for the U.N., even though it still has a long way to go, as do Western journalists, who are often the most vocal defenders of the numbers from Hamas-controlled sources."

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In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies Modern War Institute at West Point and an author of multiple books on the subject of urban warfare, said that in contrast to claims from Western leaders, including Biden, the "steps that Israel has taken to prevent casualties is historic in comparison to all these other wars." 

"Despite the numbers, Israel is setting the bar very high on civilian harm mitigation steps," Spencer, who is also host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast and serves as the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the New York-based Madison Policy Forum, told Fox News Digital in February. 

He outlined how the Israeli military took measures that no other military, including the U.S., had previously taken during war such as calling and texting individuals to warn them of a forthcoming air strike and sharing maps with plans for military maneuvers in certain areas. 

Biden, last week, threatened to halt some armaments deliveries to Israel if it decides to launch a full scale military offensive in the Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah, a maneuver Israel says is essential in order to wipe out the remaining Hamas battalions and end the war. 

Situated on the border with Egypt, Israel believes that most of Hamas’ top leadership is hiding in Rafah, shielded by more than 1.4 million civilians, many of whom fled the fighting in other parts of the Palestinian enclave. Israel also believes that many of the remaining 132 hostages are being held there. 

Over the weekend, the Israel Defense Forces said it had begun precise military operations in the area of eastern Rafah, after urging more than 300,000 Gazans to move into humanitarian safe zones away from the fighting. On Sunday, the army said in a statement that its troops operating in Rafah had located and dismantled a number of tunnel shafts and rocket launchers, which were used to fire towards Israel, including the crossing used to transport humanitarian aid into the Strip.

The world may end up breaking into tech alliances as a guiding political issue in the years to come, according to a retired American serviceman-turned-novelist as detailed in his new book. 

"I think for us, particularly with regards to the technology that we’re imagining and the incredible power it unleashes, it just becomes obvious that the real source of national power might not be military or even economic, but could quickly become technological power," Elliot Ackerman told Fox News Digital. 

"Whoever gets there first is going to so stratospherically outpace their rivals that they’ll be able to dominate as a nation," he said. 

Ackerman served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years, working as both an infantry and special operations officer with tours in the Middle East and Central Asia. Following the conclusion of his service, he pursued a career as a novelist, drawing on his experience to write acclaimed fiction. 

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A few years ago, Ackerman started working with retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who wanted to look at the future of war with their novel "2034: A Novel of the Next World War." The book examined how a naval battle between the U.S. and China could play out in (now) a decade’s time. 

Their newest collaboration, "2054," goes even further and looks at a world still recognizable but visibly and deeply transformed by technological advances, including artificial intelligence (AI) and burgeoning modern tech ideas such as gene manipulation. 

For example, the Japan of this future is one that "leveraged artificial intelligence, robotics, and quantum computing to compensate for a diminished workforce, often trading with India, which offered a vast market for its technologies" – clearly drawing on current concerns about population decline in East Asian nation. 

"AI can enhance decision-making processes, increase the speed and precision of operations, improve surveillance and reconnaissance, optimize logistics and resource management, and facilitate advanced simulations for training and strategizing," Retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis said in an interview about the book with El Blog. 

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However, he noted that "technical challenges include ensuring reliability and security from cyber threats" and that "legal and regulatory considerations regarding the use of AI in combat, and the challenge of maintaining a balance between machine autonomy and human oversight" remain key to the trajectory of the technology in human hands. 

The novel also focuses repeatedly on the quest to achieve the Singularity, defined by the novel as "an ‘intelligence explosion,’ the equivalent of thousands of years of biological evolution crammed into months or even weeks when machine and human learning integrated into a single consciousness." 

"It’s a story about great power competition, and that is the oldest story out there," Ackerman said. "Except, in our case, it’s not an arms race or even necessarily nation-versus-nation war – it’s a technological race and a nation versus nation race to get to the singularity first, so we wanted to tell a story that is both engaging with these very old themes but looking into the future." 

Ackerman explained that his time as a journalist meant that he always had "kind of one foot in the tech space" and another in the international and domestic political spaces. The novel "2054," therefore, provided a chance to fuse those interests and look at the way they would impact each other in the coming years. 

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Ackerman reiterated the general thought that the inclusion of AI will prove a "force multiplier for militaries" and will "fundamentally change the way that we fight wars, from targeting to command and control." 

However, he raised concerns about the ethical issues that will remain at the heart of AI use, especially regarding "who or what controls kinetic systems in the U.S. military." 

"Who gets to decide to pull the trigger?" Ackerman asked. "Who gets to decide who uses lethal force? Is it always going to be a human? Or, sometimes, will those authorities be delegated to algorithms and AI in order to speed up response times?"

"These are all really big questions that are being posed right now, and I think we’re living through an age of incredible change in the military as we speak," he added. "Look at what’s happening in Ukraine: There’s a very, very different war than the ones I fought in 10 years ago." 

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The novel contains a number of quality-of-life technological advances, such as the predominance of suborbital flight to speed up travel, allowing characters to traverse the world in only a few hours. The ideas may have provided plot convenience but create a strong sense of world-building and help connect the present to the future presented in the novel. 

"We spent a lot of time talking about how the book would feel: What are the nods we’re going to make towards technology that show the passage of time between now and the future, and what things are going to remain the same?" he explained. 

"It’s always this process of trying to extrapolate what the technological changes are going to be, but also doing it in a way that serves the story and doesn’t become a distraction," he added. 

Throughout the conversation, Ackerman dances along a line that betrays a central tension: The desire to find and provide answers that comes from his time as a journalist, against the novelist drive to pose questions and provoke thought. 

"I try to write the types of books that I enjoy reading, and the types of books that I enjoy reading often leave me when I shut the book asking myself questions, not being served up answers," Ackerman said.