World

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has failed to make any dent in its oil spill or gas flaring woes, despite nascent promises of environmental clean-up by President Nicolas Maduro’s government, according to people within the company, industry sources and an internal company document seen by Reuters.

KIHEI, Hawaii,  (Reuters) – Maui County Emer-gency Management administrator Herman Andaya, criticized by local residents and media over the island’s response to the deadly wildfires that killed at least 111 people, resigned yesterday, officials said.

BOGOTA,  (Reuters) – A strong earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck the Colombian capital Bogota yesterday, according to the U.S.

MOSCOW,  (Reuters) – A Ukrainian drone attack damaged a building in central Moscow last night, causing a blast that was heard across the business district of the Russian capital, Russian officials said.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The United States has approved sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands to defend against Russian invaders as soon as pilot training is completed, a U.S.

BEIJING,  (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping will attend the BRICS leaders’ meeting and visit South Africa on Aug.

BRASILIA,  (Reuters) – A jailed personal aide to Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro will confess his involvement in crimes related to the alleged sale of jewelry gifted by foreign governments, a report from Veja magazine said on Thursday, citing his lawyer.

BRASILIA, (Reuters) – A Brazilian hacker told a congressional inquiry yesterday that former Presi-dent Jair Bolsonaro asked him to tamper with an electronic voting machine to show Brazil’s electoral system was vulnerable to fraud during last year’s presidential campaign.

(Reuters) – Haitian aid groups backed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) are temporarily shutting down operations, including some mobile health clinics, following days of extreme violence in parts of the Caribbean nation’s capital Port-au-Prince.

ACCRA/NIAMEY,  (Reuters) – The West African bloc ECOWAS stands ready to intervene militarily in Niger should diplomatic efforts to reverse a coup there fail, a senior official told army chiefs who were meeting in Ghana on Thursday to discuss the details of a standby force.

JOHANNESBURG,  (Reuters) – BRICS leaders meet in South Africa next week to discuss how to turn a loose club of nations accounting for a quarter of the global economy into a geopolitical force that can challenge the West’s dominance in world affairs.

IBADAN, Nigeria,  (Reuters) – Amateur dancer Omowunmi Otunuyi, who is deaf, delighted an audience in the Nigerian city of Ibadan, as she performed with her dance troupe in a show intended to challenge preconceptions about deafness.

(Reuters) – A Nicaraguan judge has ordered the confiscation of all assets belonging to a prestigious Jesuit-run university, the college announced, as the government’s crackdown on Catholic clergy and church-affiliated institutions intensifies.

NEW DELHI/CHENNAI,  (Reuters) – Burger King has scrapped tomatoes from its wraps and burgers in many Indian outlets after prices more than quadrupled, the latest symptom of surging food inflation that is hitting consumers hard across the world’s most populous nation.

SYDNEY,  (Reuters) – Australia’s plans to constitutionally recognise the country’s Indigenous people in a referendum should be called off, an independent Aboriginal senator said yesterday, calling it ‘window dressing’ that won’t help empower First Nations people.

SYDNEY,  (Reuters) – Australia’s plans to constitutionally recognise the country’s Indigenous people in a referendum should be called off, an independent Aboriginal senator said today, calling it ‘window dressing’ that won’t help empower First Nations people.

WELLINGTON,  (Reuters) – A jury in New Zealand found a South African woman guilty today of murdering her three young daughters, with media saying she faced a life sentence for each killing.

(Reuters) – More than 1 million people have fled Sudan to neighbouring states and people inside the country are running out of food and dying due to lack of healthcare after four months of war, the United Nations warned yesterday.

ABUJA,  (Reuters) – Google plans to train 20,000 Nigerian women and youth in digital skills and provide a grant of 1.2 billion naira ($1.6 million) to help the government’s create one million digital jobs in the country, its Africa executives said yesterday.

HOUSTON/CARACAS, (Reuters) – Negotiators and officials representing Venezuela are opposing a court-ordered auction of shares in a parent of oil refiner Citgo Petroleum to pay creditors claiming more than $10 billion from expropriations and debt defaults.