Chae Hui Chol has been approved as ambassador to West African country

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Burkina Faso plans to resume diplomatic relations with North Korea, the country’s Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday.

The decision will allow the two countries "to maintain exemplary bilateral cooperation in several areas," Foreign Affairs Minister Olivia Rouamba said at the end of a Council of Ministers meeting.

The West African nation suspended relations with North Korea in 2017 to conform to UN Security Council sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Rouamba said the governments of Burkina Faso and North Korea will reportedly be focusing on military equipment, mining, healthcare, agriculture and research

The Burkinabe government has also approved the appointment of a North Korean ambassador to Burkina Faso.

Chae Hui Chol, has been approved as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to Burkina Faso, with residence in Dakar, Senegal, according to a statement from the Ministerial Council.

In the past, Burkina Faso has maintained "very good relations with this country, which was a privileged partner during the period of the August 1983 Revolution," said Rouamba.

The government officially cut off relations in 2017 using a provision recommended by the United Nations to all its member states in its sanctions resolution against Pyongyang.

Faced with a security crisis fueled since 2015 by terrorist attacks, Burkina Faso, under the leadership of Capt. Ibrahim Traore, the leader of the ruling junta, decided to diversify its partnerships to strengthen the fight against terrorism. In January, the transitional authorities broke a military agreement with France, its former colonist.

This is "a way of asserting its authority by contracting diplomatic relations with countries unconsidered by France," Regis Hounkpe, a pan-African expert in geostrategy, told Anadolu.​​​​​​​

The fight against terrorism and the need to face it by its own means or military cooperation is only an additional element of the distancing from France, he said.

The country is set to avoid a recession but Britons face the highest taxes since WWII, an official report shows

Britons are facing the biggest decline in living standards since records began in the 1950s, and the highest taxes since the World War II as the economy grinds to a halt this year, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, real household disposable income, a measure of real living standards, will drop by 5.7% over the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.

“While this is 1.4 percentage points less than forecast in November, it would still be the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956-57,” the report said.

A surge in energy and consumer goods prices triggered inflation, which currently stands above nominal wages and has led to a historic fall in disposable incomes, the OBR noted, adding that “this means that real living standards are still 0.4% lower than their pre-pandemic levels.”

According to the forecast, living standards will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2028 and the tax burden remains on course to be the highest since the Second World War.

The UK “continues to see the tax burden reach a post-war high of 37.7% of GDP at the forecast horizon in 2027-28, including the highest ratio of corporation tax receipts to GDP since the tax was introduced in 1965,” the watchdog said.

The British economy is expected to shrink by 0.2% this year despite claims by the government that the country is set to avoid a recession.

Moscow, Mar 15 (Prensa Latina) Russian forces today took control of the Zaliznyanskoye settlement and are expanding the encirclement of Artiomovsk in the Donetsk People's Republic, the head of the Wagner military company, Evgueni Prigozhin, said.

‘Wagner assault detachments are expanding the encirclement of Artiomovsk (Bakhmut for Ukrainians), after they liberated the small locality of Zaliznianskoye on Wednesday,’ Prigozhin reported on his Telegram channel.

Artiomovsk is located in the part of the Donetsk People’s Republic controlled by Kiev and is an important transport center for supplying Ukrainian troops in Donbas.

Over this important communications junction fierce battles have been raging since the summer of last year. On March 11, Prigozhin reported that Russian forces were 1.2 km from the administrative center of Artiomovsk, dominating all the surrounding heights.

In the city there are, according to intelligence estimates, between 10,000 and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, who are in danger of being encircled by Russian units.

Settlements between the countries could be arranged in local currencies or gold, an African politician has suggested

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The central banks of Russia and Zimbabwe should establish settlements in local currencies and look at opportunities for securing trade in gold reserves, the speaker of the Zimbabwean ruling party ZANU-PF, Christopher Mutsvangwa, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

The southern African country has been under Western sanctions for 22 years, the official noted, adding that curbs imposed on Russia should not handicap trade between the two countries.

Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia and countries in Africa were developing a cooperation strategy to replace the US dollar and the euro in settlements, adding that the parties were preparing documents on rearranging the mechanism of cooperation under Western sanctions.

“Our banks should find a way to make the Russian ruble and the Zimbabwean dollar freely convertible. Also, our countries both have rich gold reserves. We are among the top seven countries in terms of gold mining, and production volumes are growing. We are now mining 35 tons per year, but we could mine all 50. So we could think about securing our trade in gold reserves,” Mutsvangwa suggested.

The official went on to say that “nothing could derail” trade between Moscow and Harare, noting that China, India, and Middle Eastern nations were also moving towards abandoning the dollar in settlements.

The politician also proposed establishing more banks that use alternative payment systems to replace the West’s SWIFT messaging system. He noted that trade in dollars was “a limiting factor” adding that Russia and African nations should set up “more banks outside of the US-run global SWIFT banking system.”

Moscow has been steadily pursuing a policy of de-dollarization in foreign trade. In recent years, Russia and some of its trade partners, including India and China, have been ramping up the use of domestic currencies in mutual settlements in an effort to move away from the dollar and euro.

Links to Russia’s new trade partners in African countries, including Zimbabwe, have been quickly taking shape in recent years. In 2019, Russia hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, with participants outlining priority areas for economic cooperation, security, culture and science. The second summit is scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg in July.

Diplomatic ties with Taiwan have become a flashpoint in Central America, where Beijing is looking to deepen links.

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Honduras President Xiomara Castro has said she wants her country to open official diplomatic ties with China, in a move that would end its official relationship with the self-ruled island of Taiwan.

Castro, who said during her election campaign in 2021 that she would switch ties to Beijing before later backtracking, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night that she had instructed her foreign minister to begin the process of recognising the People’s Republic of China.

end of list The move was “a sign of my determination to comply with the Government Plan and expand borders freely,” she wrote.

“We have to look at things very pragmatically and seek the best benefit for the Honduran people,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina later told local television, according to the Reuters news agency.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had expressed serious concern to the Honduran government and urged it to consider its decision carefully and not “fall into China’s trap.”

While Xiomara did not mention Taiwan in her tweet, China does not allow countries to maintain formal relations with Taipei if they recognise Beijing.

Analysts said Honduras move was not unexpected given Xiomara’s campaign comments and recent discussions with China about financial assistance – in February Reina announced Beijing would provide the funding for another dam along the Patuka River.

“I think we are somewhat prepared, so I don’t think it’s going to be a big issue,” Yao-yuan Yeh, the director of the Taiwan and East Asia Studies Programme at the University of St Thomas in Texas told Al Jazeera. “But it could cause the public in Taiwan to have a little panic since we’ve been abandoned by another country again.”

China has been trying to deepen links with Taipei’s remaining allies since Tsai Ing-wen was first elected president of Taiwan in 2016. Several countries, including the Solomon Islands, have made the switch.

In Central America, a region that the United States has long seen as within its sphere of influence, Nicaragua broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2021. If Honduras does switch, only Belize and Guatemala will formally recognise Taiwan, which will be left with just 13 formal diplomatic allies around the world, compared with 22 when Tsai took office.

“Central American recognition of Taiwan is a legacy of the Cold War,” Bruno Binetti, a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and an expert in China relations in Latin America, told Al Jazeera in emailed comments. “Much has changed since then, including China’s spectacular economic rise. Decades ago Taiwan was actually a more appealing economic partner than China. That’s ancient history, Taiwan just can’t compete with China’s huge market.”

‘Borrowed time’ Tsai, viewed by Beijing as a ‘separatist’, has previously accused China of ‘dollar diplomacy‘ over the issue of diplomatic recognition, which has also seen Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China (ROC), excluded from international bodies such as the World Health Assembly and International Civil Aviation Organisation.

“When it comes to diplomatic allies, it seems Taiwan is on borrowed time,” said Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation in Taipei. “Since 2016, this has been China’s mission to shrink Taiwan’s international space and punish Taiwan.”

The ROC government was established in Taipei at the end of China’s civil war in 1949 when the Communists established the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. The government in Beijing claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory, with no right to state-to-state ties, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goals.

Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, noted that China had long been cultivating closer relationships with countries in Central America.

“Castro backed off on the idea of dropping Taiwan after she took office. In that sense, this decision is surprising. But maybe it shouldn’t be,” Freeman said in an email. “For years, China has been expanding its footprint in Central America, while U.S. administrations – Republican and Democrat – have worked intensively with governments in the region on migration, but only sporadically on other issues. Now, the bill is coming due for the lack of high-level attention.”

The manoeuvring for influence is taking place amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei, and a deterioration in the relationship between the US and China.

As Pacific nations have peeled away from Taiwan, and after the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with China, the US has stepped up engagement in the region.

US President Joe Biden last year hosted Pacific leaders at the White House for what was billed as an unprecedented summit that ended with generous US pledges of assistance and a commitment to tackling climate change — an existential issue for many Pacific states. Last month, the US reopened its embassy in Solomon Islands, which had been closed in 1993.

China’s interest in the region has also raised concern in nearby Australia and New Zealand, as well as within Pacific nations.

Last week, the outgoing leader of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), one of the world’s tiniest countries, accused China of bribing officials and making “direct threats” against his personal safety in relation to its efforts to secure control of Taiwan.

Panuelo, who will leave office in May, said China was trying to interfere in the FSM to ensure that the country would align with Beijing, or remain neutral, in the event of a war over Taiwan.

The FSM, which is home to fewer than 115,000 people and located about 2,900km (1,800 miles) northeast of Australia, is independent but receives financial assistance and defence guarantees from the US under a so-called compact of free association.

Monuments to “aggressors” may need to be taken down as “offensive,” new Welsh government guidance reportedly states

UK monuments erected to celebrate “older white men” can be taken down or relocated in order not to offend the public, according to new Welsh government guidance cited by the Telegraph on Saturday. The newspaper said the document is expected to be finalized this month.

The guidance claims monuments “can be offensive to people today who see them in a different light,” including as “aggressors who conquered peoples to expand the British Empire.”

The document reportedly argues that existing memorials project the “perception that the achievements that society considers noteworthy are those of powerful, older, able-bodied white men.”

According to the Telegraph, the statues of general Arthur Wellesley and admiral Horatio Nelson, hailed for their victories against Napoleon, could fall under this rubric. Both commanders have been accused by activists in the past of enabling colonialism and slavery.

The guidance advises authorities and other public institutions to “take action” to set “the right historical narrative,” according to the newspaper.

The options laid out include the destruction and relocation of “offensive and unwanted items.” Officials are also recommended to “discretely box monuments or enclose them creatively in new artworks,” as well as removing the names of streets and buildings that the public finds inappropriate.

Multiple statues have been toppled or defaced in Britain since 2020, when anti-racism protests and riots broke out in the US and other Western countries. The outrage was initially sparked by the killing of an African American man named George Floyd by the Minneapolis police.

Activists have insisted that some monuments glorify shameful parts of British history. In 2020, they tore down the statue of merchant, politician, and slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol. The monument to Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square was vandalized the same year during a Black Lives Matter protest.

The attacks on memorials prompted backlash from some government officials. Robert Jenrick, then the communities secretary, described the activists in 2021 as “a baying mob” trying to “edit or censor the past.”

One in five households reported skipping meals or not eating for a whole day in January, according to the Food Foundation

The number of children afflicted by food poverty in the UK nearly doubled in January from a year ago, The Guardian has reported, citing a survey by the think tank Food Foundation.

According to the findings, 22% of households polled reported either skipping meals or not eating for a whole day last month. In January 2022, the figure stood at only 12%. The overall number of British children suffering from a lack of food has now reached almost 4 million, data showed.

The alarming trend comes as the country suffers from record-high food inflation, spurred by soaring energy costs. The indicator now stands at 17.1%, according to the latest figures released by market researcher Kantar earlier this week, with milk, eggs, and margarine showing the fastest price growth. The cost-of-living crisis is further exacerbated by the government’s recent decision to cut back support for household energy bills.

The public is now urging the British authorities to expand free school meals across the country. A separate survey by the Food Foundation found that 80% of respondents were in favor of making all British children eligible for free meals in school. Currently, only households with an annual income under £7,400 qualify for free meals, leaving some 800,000 children living in poverty but ineligible for the benefit, according to Child Poverty Action Group.

“By extending free school meals to more children in England in the next budget, the government could deliver a policy change that is popular with voters, targeted and timely, and truly delivers on levelling up,” Anna Taylor, the CEO of Food Foundation, said, commenting on the findings.

READ MORE: Food costs in Britain jump 17%

According to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, free school meals could save families about £440 per child annually. Earlier this month, he announced that London schools would offer free meals to all primary school pupils for a year starting in September.

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Abdul and Mohammed Rabbani, arrested from Karachi in 2002, are the latest inmates to be released from US custody.

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Two Pakistani brothers held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay military prison for two decades have been freed by US officials and have returned home, officials said.

Abdul, 55, and Mohammed Rabbani, 53, will be reunited with their families after a formal questioning by Pakistani authorities, security officials and a Pakistani senator said on Friday.

The two brothers arrived at an airport in the capital, Islamabad, on Friday. Pakistani Senator Mushtaq Ahmed Khan, the chairman of the human rights committee in the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament, tweeted that the two brothers had reached Islamabad airport.

Khan said the men were “innocently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for 21 years”.

“There was no trial, no court proceedings, no charges against them. Congratulations on their release. Thank you Senate of Pakistan,” he wrote on Twitter.

Khan later told The Associated Press that the brothers were being sent to Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province, where they lived with their families. He said he hoped the men will be reunited with their families soon.

They were the latest inmates to be released from US custody as the country moves towards emptying and shutting down the prison.

The George W Bush administration set it up at a naval base in Cuba for suspects rounded up after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

The releases come months after a 75-year-old Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was freed from the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The two brothers were originally transferred to US custody after Pakistani officials arrested them in their home city of Karachi in 2002. US officials accused the two of helping al-Qaeda members with housing and other lower-level logistical support.

The brothers alleged torture while in CIA custody before being transferred to Guantanamo. US military records describe the two as providing little intelligence of value or recanting statements made during interrogations on the grounds they were obtained by physical abuse.

The US military announced their repatriation in a statement. It gave no immediate information on any conditions set by Pakistan regarding their return there.

“The United States appreciates the willingness of the Government of Pakistan and other partners to support ongoing US efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” the defence department said.

On Friday, a close family friend of the two brothers told the AP that Pakistani authorities had formally informed the brothers’ family about the release and their return to Pakistan.

The family friend, who is Pakistani and refused to be identified for security reasons, said the younger Rabbani learned painting during his detention at Guantanamo Bay, and that he was expected to bring with him some of those paintings.

He said Ahmed Rabbani frequently went on hunger strikes and prison officials fed him through a tube. He said the man remained on the nutritional supplements.

Guantanamo at its peak in 2003 held about 600 people whom the US considered “terrorists”. Supporters of using the detention facility for such figures contend it prevented attacks.

But critics say the military detention and courts subverted human rights and constitutional rights, and undermined US standing abroad.

Thirty-two detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay, including 18 eligible for transfer if stable third-party countries can be found to take them, the Pentagon said.

Many are from Yemen, a country considered too plagued with war and armed groups, and too devoid of services for freed Yemeni prisoners to be sent there.

Nine of the inmates are defendants in slow-moving military-run tribunals. Two others have been convicted.

NATO nations have reportedly looked to some ex-Warsaw Pact states to build USSR-standard munitions for Ukraine

The US and its NATO allies have been scouring behind the former Iron Curtain – searching in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries – to find factories that can build ammunition for Ukraine’s Soviet-standard weapons, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

Even as they send billions of dollars’ worth of modern weaponry to Kiev, Western bloc governments can’t build the Soviet-type artillery shells and other munitions on which Ukraine’s military still relies, the newspaper said. As a result, they have turned to Bulgaria and other countries that were formerly in the “Soviet orbit” to help produce the weaponry that Ukraine needs to battle Russian forces.

The search has required secrecy to avoid “political fallout and Russian retaliation” because, as in the case of Bulgaria, the local populations are largely pro-Russian, the Times said. Revelations last summer that Sofia was supplying weapons to Ukraine, despite strong opposition, ignited political uproar.

The report cited the addition of a new production line at a plant in Kostenets, Bulgaria, that will soon resume making 122-millimeter artillery shells for the first time since 1988. Another state-run Bulgarian arms factory, located in the small town of Sopot, will also be ramping up output to supply Ukrainian forces.

Brokers with US-supplied cash are also looking to plants in Serbia, Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina as possible suppliers of Soviet-type shells, according to the report. Luxembourg has tapped an arms maker in the Czech Republic to procure arms for Ukraine.

The scramble for Soviet weapons comes amid struggles by NATO members to produce ammunition fast enough to replace the shells that are being fired off each day in Ukraine. Kiev is burning through weaponry at a rate “many times higher” than its Western allies can produce it, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned earlier this month.

The UK government has formed a secret task force to find suppliers of Soviet-type weapons for Ukraine. Both the US and the UK have funded deals using brokers to help former Eastern Bloc manufacturers and their governments hide their involvement in the conflict, the Times said. In one case, the British paid a Romanian broker to buy artillery shells from a Pakistani arms maker. As it turned out, the Pakistani supplier failed to deliver the munitions.

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Bad weather and high energy costs may result in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers disappearing from shelves

The UK’s largest grocer, Tesco, has joined rivals Asda, Morrisons and Aldi by slapping limits on purchases of salad vegetables due to supply shortages, the company announced on Wednesday.

Tesco said it decided to limit the sales of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to three per person. The company noted that it was introducing these limits as a precautionary measure, in order to ensure that more people get the goods they need.

Budget supermarket chain Aldi has also placed a “temporary” three-item limit on these vegetables. Asda capped purchase limits to three per person on eight products, including broccoli and raspberries, while Morrisons limited purchases to two per person on four products, including broccoli.

Analysts say the current troubles stem from two reasons. Firstly, suppliers in Morocco and Spain, the UK's biggest sources of fresh vegetables in the winter, have been suffering from cold temperatures, rain and flooding over the past month, which disrupted harvests and halted deliveries. Secondly, the UK’s own farmers have been struggling to power their greenhouses due to rising energy prices.

According to the British Retail Consortium, which represents all the major UK supermarkets, supply constraints are likely to last a “few weeks,” until the growing season kicks off and shops find alternative suppliers. The UK’s secretary of state for environment, Theresa Coffey, suggested on Thursday that British shoppers should switch to turnips and other seasonal UK vegetables instead of pining for overseas tomatoes.

“A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce, and tomatoes and similar.

“But I’m conscious that consumers want a year-round choice and that is what our supermarkets, food producers and growers around the world try to satisfy,” she stated.

Meanwhile, industry experts warn there may be price increases as a result of the shortages in the coming weeks. It comes as food prices in the UK are already rising at their fastest rate in over 40 years, having jumped 16.8% year-on-year in December.

According to the poll, 7.2% of Americans identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or other than heterosexual doubled (3.5%) in 2012.

More than half of LGBTQ Americans in the poll identified as bisexual, accounting for 4.2% of all U.S. adults.

Another 1.4% of Americans said they identified as gay and 1% said they were lesbian, while 0.6% identified as transgender, according to the poll.

The increase in LGBTQ identification is largely being driven by younger generations. Nearly 20% of Generation Z adults — 19.7% — said they identified as LGBTQ in 2022, while 11.2% of millennials said the same.

The LGBTQ community, particularly transgender individuals, have become a frequent target of legislation in GOP-controlled statehouses across the country.

South Dakota became the sixth state in the nation to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths earlier this month, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year banned the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in Kindergarten through third grade classrooms, claiming the topics were “inappropriate.”

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