United News of Bangladesh

The United Nations is racing to extend a deal that has allowed shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger, helping ease a global food crisis exacerbated by the war Russia launched more than a year ago. The breakthrough accord that the U.N. and Turkey brokered with the warring sides last summer came with a separate agreement to ease shipments of Russian food and fertilizer that Moscow insists hasn't been applied. Russia set a Thursday deadline for its concerns to be ironed out or it's bowing out. Such brinkmanship isn't new: With a similar extension in the balance in March, Russia unilaterally decided to renew the deal for just 60 days instead of the 120 days outlined in the agreement. U.N. officials and analysts warn that a failure to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative could hurt countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia that rely on Ukrainian wheat, barley, vegetable oil and other affordable food products, especially as drought takes a toll. The deal helped lower prices of food commodities like wheat over the last year, but that relief has not reached kitchen tables. “If you have a cancellation of the grain deal again, when we’re already at a pretty tight situation, it’s just one more thing that the world doesn’t need, so the prices could start heading higher,” said William Osnato, a senior research analyst at agriculture data and analytics firm Gro Intelligence. “You don’t see relief on the horizon.” U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told the Security Council on Monday that the deal was “critical” and talks were ongoing. Negotiators who gathered in Istanbul last week made little apparent headway. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the grain deal “should be extended for a longer period of time and expanded” to “give predictability and confidence" to markets. Moscow says it opposes broadening or indefinitely expanding the deal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that there's an “intense session of contacts” but that ”a decision is yet to be made.” Russia, meanwhile, is rapidly shipping a bumper harvest of its wheat through other ports. Critics say that suggests Moscow is posturing or trying to wrest concessions in other areas — such as on Western sanctions — and claim it has dragging its heels on joint inspections of ships carried out by Russian, Ukrainian, U.N. and Turkish officials. Average daily inspections — meant to ensure vessels carry only food and not weapons — have steadily dropped from a peak of 10.6 in October to 3.2 last month. Russia denies slowing the work, with shipments of Ukrainian grain also declining in recent weeks. “We cannot agree that the role of the Russian representative (inspector) should be reduced to automatic rubber-stamping, or approval, or appeals submitted by Kyiv,” Russia’s ambassador in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, told reporters last month. Asked whether a blockade of Ukraine's coast or more attacks on its ports could follow any withdrawal from the agreement, Gatilov said Russian authorities were “considering all possible scenarios if the deal is not extended.” Russia has five main asks, according to Gatilov: — A restoration of foreign supplies of farm machinery and replacement parts. — A lifting of restrictions on insurance and access to foreign ports for Russian ships and cargo. — Resumed operation of a pipeline that sends Russian ammonia, a key ingredient in fertilizer, to a Ukrainian Black Sea port. — An end to restrictions on financial activities linked to Russia's fertilizer companies. — Renewed access to the international SWIFT banking system for the Russian Agricultural Bank. The U.N. says it's doing what it can, but those solutions mainly rest with the private sector, where it has little leverage. The deal has allowed over 30 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain to be shipped, with more than half going to developing nations. China, Spain and Turkey are the biggest recipients, and Russia says that shows food isn't going to the poorest countries. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says Ukrainian corn for animal feed has headed to developed countries, while “a majority” of grain for people to eat has gone to emerging economies. Even if a “meaningful part” of the shipments goes to developed nations, that “has a positive impact to all countries because it brings prices down," Guterres told reporters in Nairobi, Kenya, this month. "And when you bring prices down, everybody benefits.” Osnato, the analyst, said markets aren't reacting to Russia’s threats to exit the deal, with wheat recently hitting two-year lows. If the agreement isn’t extended or negotiations drag on, the “loss of Ukraine grains wouldn’t be a disaster” for a month or two, he said. He says there is “bluster” coming from Russia to push for easing some sanctions because it's shipping record amounts of wheat for the season, and its fertilizers are flowing well, too. “It’s more about trying to get a little leverage, and they’re doing what they can to put themselves in a better negotiating position,” Osnato said. Trade flows tracked by financial data provider Refinitiv show that Russia exported just over 4 million tons of wheat in April, the highest volume for the month in five years, following record or near-record highs in several previous months. Exports since last July reached 32.2 million tons, 34% above the same period from last season, according to Refinitiv. It estimates Russia will ship 44 million tons of wheat in 2022-2023. The issue is more pressing with Ukraine’s wheat harvest coming up in June and the need to sell that crop in July. Not having a Black Sea shipping corridor in place at that point would “start taking another large chunk of wheat and other grains off the market,” Osnato said. Ukraine can send its food by land through Europe, so it wouldn’t be completely cut off from world markets, but those routes have a lower capacity than sea shipments and have stirred disunity in the European Union. Uncertainties like drought in places including Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria and East Africa — big importers of food — are likely to keep food prices high, and an end to the U.N. deal wouldn't help. “Any shock to the markets can cause massive harm with catastrophic ripple effects in countries balancing on the brink of famine," said Shashwat Saraf, emergency director for East Africa at the International Rescue Committee. “The expiration of the Black Sea Grain Initiative is likely to trigger increased levels of hunger and malnutrition, spelling further disaster for East Africa,” Saraf said.

The symbolism will be palpable when leaders of the world's rich democracies sit down in Hiroshima, a city whose name evokes the tragedy of war, to tackle a host of challenges including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions in Asia. The attention on the war in Europe comes just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy completed a whirlwind trip to meet many of the Group of Seven leaders now heading to Japan for the summit starting Friday. That tour was aimed at adding to his country's weapons stockpile and building political support ahead of a widely anticipated counteroffensive to reclaim lands occupied by Moscow's forces. Also Read: G7 finance leaders vow to contain inflation, strengthen supply chains but avoid mention of China “Ukraine has driven this sense of common purpose” for the G-7, said Matthew P. Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said the new commitments Zelenskyy received just ahead of the summit could push members of the bloc to step up their support even further. “There’s a kind of peer pressure that develops in forums like this,” he explained. G-7 leaders are also girding for the possibility of renewed conflict in Asia as relations with China deteriorate. They are increasingly concerned, among other things, about what they see as Beijing's growing assertiveness, and fear that China could could try to seize Taiwan by force, sparking a wider conflict. China claims the self-governing island as its own and regularly sends ships and warplanes near it. Also Read: South Korea and Japan use G-7 to push improvement in ties long marked by animosity Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also hopes to highlight the risks of nuclear proliferation during the meeting in Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing. The prospect of another nuclear attack has been crystalized by nearby North Korea’s nuclear program and spate of recent missile tests, and Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons in its war in Ukraine. China, meanwhile, is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal from an estimated 400 warheads today to 1,500 by 2035, according to Pentagon estimates. Concerns about the strength of the global economy, rising prices and the debt limit crisis in the U.S. will be high on leaders' minds. G-7 finance ministers and central bank chiefs meeting ahead of the summit pledged to enforce sanctions against Russia, tackle rising inflation, bolster financial systems and help countries burdened by heavy debts. Also Read: G7 countries should end supporting fossil fuels, accelerating transition to renewable energy: CPD The G-7 includes the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and Italy, as well as the European Union. That group is also lavishing more attention on the needs of the Global South — a term to describe mostly developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America — and has invited countries ranging from South American powerhouse Brazil to the tiny Cook Islands in the South Pacific. By broadening the conversation beyond the world's richest industrialized nations, the group hopes to strengthen political and economic ties while shoring up support for efforts to isolate Russia and stand up to China's assertiveness around the world, analysts say. “Japan was shocked when scores of developing countries were reluctant to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine last year," said Mireya Solís, director of the Center for East Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution. “Tokyo believes that this act of war by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council is a direct threat to the foundations of the postwar international system.” Getting a diverse set of countries to uphold principles like not changing borders by force advances Japan's foreign policy priorities, and makes good economic sense since their often unsustainable debt loads and rising prices for food and energy are a drag on the global economy, she continued. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also be attending. His country, which is overtaking China as the world's most populous and sees itself as a rising superpower, is playing host to a meeting of the much broader group of G-20 leading economies later this year. For host Kishida, this weekend's meeting is an opportunity to spotlight his country’s more robust foreign policy. The Japanese prime minister made a surprise trip to Kyiv in March, making him the country's first postwar leader to travel to a war zone, a visit freighted with symbolism given Japan's pacifist constitution but one that he was under domestic pressure to take. Another notable inclusion in Hiroshima is South Korea, a fellow U.S. ally that has rapidly drawn closer to its former colonial occupier Japan as their relations thawed in the face of shared regional security concerns. U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to hold a separate three-way meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Sung-Yoon Lee, an East Asia expert at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said that meeting sends a message to China, Russia and North Korea of “solidarity among the democracies in the region and their resolve to stand up to the increasingly threatening autocracies.” Biden had been expected to make a historic stop in Papua New Guinea and then travel onward to Australia after the Hiroshima meeting, but he scrapped those latter two stops Tuesday to focus on the debt limit debate back in Washington. The centerpiece of the Australia visit was a meeting of the Quad, a regional security grouping that the U.S. sees as a counterweight to China’s actions in the region. Beijing has criticized the group as an Asian version of the NATO military alliance. The decision to host the G-7 in Hiroshima is no accident. Kishida, whose family is from the city, hopes the venue will underscore Japan's “commitment to world peace” and build momentum to “realize the ideal of a world without nuclear weapons,” he wrote on the online news site Japan Forward. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people, then dropped a second on Nagasaki three days later, killing another 70,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, effectively ending World War II and decades of Japanese aggression in Asia. The shell and skeletal dome of one of the riverside buildings that survived the Hiroshima blast are the focal point of the Peace Memorial Park, which leaders are expected to visit.

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss warned of the economic and political threats to the West posed by China during a visit Wednesday to Beijing's democratic rival Taiwan. Truss is the first former British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher in the 1990s to visit the self-governing island republic that China claims as its own territory, to be conquered by force if necessary. Still a sitting member of the House of Commons, Truss follows a growing list of elected representatives and former officials from the U.S., EU nations and elsewhere who have visited Taiwan to show their defiance of China’s threats and attempts to cut off the island and its high-tech economy from the international community. “There are those who say they don’t want another Cold War. But this is not a choice we are in a position to make. Because China has already embarked on a self-reliance drive, whether we want to decouple from their economy or not," Truss said in an address to the Prospect Foundation at a hotel in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei. “China is growing its navy at an alarming rate and is undertaking the biggest military build-up in peacetime history,” she said. "They have already formed alliances with other nations that want to see the free world in decline. They have already made a choice about their strategy. The only choice we have is whether we appease and accommodate — or we take action to prevent conflict,” Truss said. Elsewhere, Truss praised her successor, Rishi Sunak, for describing China as “the biggest long-term threat to Britain” in comments last summer and for urging the closure of Chinese government-run cultural centers known as Confucius Institutes, which have been criticized as outlets for Communist Party propaganda. Such services could instead be provided by people from Taiwan and Hong Kong who come to the United Kingdom of their own volition. In Beijing, spokesperson for the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office Mao Xiaoguang accused Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party of "spending the tax money of the Taiwanese people to bribe some anti-China politicians who have stepped down from office to stage a farce of seeking external support for independence in Taiwan." Ma also renewed China's military threats against Taiwan, a day after the Chinese Defense Ministry condemned U.S. military assistance to the island. “If they continue to challenge and force us, we will have to take decisive measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ma told reporters at a biweekly news conference. “No one should underestimate our strong determination, unwavering will and strong ability.” Next year is seen by some as a crucial period for tense relations between the sides, with U.S. and Taiwanese voters going to the polls. Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen has served the maximum two terms and Vice President Lai Ching-te, a strong independence supporter, will be running for the DPP. Meanwhile, the main opposition Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, on Wednesday nominated local politician Hou Yu-ih as its candidate in the January election. Hou rose to prominence as a top police official but has relatively little experience dealing with China and Taiwan's international partners. Taiwan will also elect a new legislature, which is currently controlled by the ruling party. China's relations with Britain and most other Western democracies have been in steep decline in recent years, largely as a result of disputes over human rights, trade technology and China's aggressive moves toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Beijing's relations with London have been especially bitter over China's sweeping crackdown on free speech, democracy and other civil liberties in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was promised it would retain its freedoms after the handover to Chinese rule in 1997. China has said a key previous bilateral agreement on Hong Kong no longer applies and has rejected British expressions of concern as interference in China's domestic political affairs. China has also been angered by a joint Australian-U.S.-British agreement known as AUKUS that would provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines in part to counter the perceived rising threat from China. Truss, who served an ill-fated seven weeks as prime minister last year, also said China could not be trusted to follow through on its commitments in areas from trade to protection of the environment. And she praised Taiwan as “an enduring rebuke to totalitarianism” whose fate was a "core interest" to Europe. “A blockade or invasion of Taiwan would undermine freedom and democracy in Europe. Just as a Russian victory in Ukraine would undermine freedom and democracy in the Pacific," Truss said. "We in the United Kingdom and the free world must do all we can to back you,” she said. Truss' remarks also stood in stark contrast to published comments from French President Emmanuel Macron last month that elicited doubts about whether Macron’s views were in line with other European countries on Taiwan’s status. “The question we need to answer, as Europeans, is the following: Is it in our interest to accelerate (a crisis) on Taiwan? No,” Macron was quoted as saying in the interview. “The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.” Shortly afterward, Macron denied any change on France's views toward Taiwan, saying, “We are for the status quo, and this policy is constant.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out a so-called Quad summit taking place in Sydney without President Joe Biden, saying the four leaders will talk at the Group of Seven meeting this weekend in Japan. Albanese said Wednesday he understands why Biden pulled out of the summit to focus on debt limit talks in Washington since they are crucial to the economy. The summit including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had been scheduled for May 24. “The blocking and the disruption that’s occurring in domestic politics in the United States, with the debt ceiling issue, means that, because that has to be solved prior to 1st June — otherwise there are quite drastic consequences for the U.S. economy, which will flow on to the global economy — he understandably has had to make that decision,” Albanese told reporters. Biden “expressed very much his disappointment” at being unable to come to the Sydney summit and to the national capital Canberra a day earlier to address Parliament, Albanese said. The four leaders will soon be together in Hiroshima, Japan, for the Group of Seven summit and are planning to meet there, he said. Also Read: Quad voices deep concern at "deteriorating situation" in Myanmar “The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend," Albanese said. He said Modi will visit Sydney next week, noting the Indian leader was scheduled to give an address to the Indian diaspora at a sold-out 20,000-seat stadium on Tuesday. But Kishida will not visit. Also Read: Quad FMs, wary of China’s might, push Indo-Pacific option “Prime Minister Modi will be here next week for a bilateral meeting with myself. He will also have business meetings, he’ll hold a very public event ... in Sydney,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “I look forward to welcoming him to Sydney,” Albanese said. “Prime Minister Kishida of Japan was just coming for the Quad meeting. There wasn’t a separate bilateral program.” Also Read: Beijing wants Dhaka not to join Quad Albanese said it was “disappointing” that Biden decided he could not come. “The decision of President Biden meant that you can’t have a Quad leaders’ meeting when there are only three out of the four there,” Albanese said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for caution when deploying large language model tools (LLMs) generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In a statement released Tuesday, WHO said it was imperative for the risks of LLMs to be carefully examined. LLMs are used to improve access to health information, as decision-support tools, and to enhance diagnostic capacity in under-resourced settings. WHO has warned that the caution normally exercised for new technologies is not being consistently applied to LLMs. WHO notes that precipitous adoption of untested systems could lead to errors by healthcare workers, cause harm to patients, and erode trust in AI. This could undermine or delay the potential long-term benefits of such technologies. Therefore, WHO has called for rigorous oversight of LLMs, to ensure they are used in safe, effective, and ethical ways. As technology firms work to commercialize LLMs, policy-makers must ensure patient safety and protection, WHO noted. Clear evidence of the benefits of LLMs must be measured before they can be used on a large scale in routine healthcare and medicine - whether by individuals, care providers or health system administrators and policy-makers. The WHO's guidance on the ethics and governance of AI for health, released in June 2021, emphasizes the importance of applying ethical principles and appropriate governance when designing, developing, and deploying AI for health. 

Gunmen attacked villages in troubled north-central Nigeria, killing 29 people and razing houses, survivors and authorities said Tuesday. Many villagers remained unaccounted for Tuesday evening after the attack in Plateau state, residents said. It was the latest incident in a spiral of violence mainly targeting remote communities in the West African nation. The gunmen targeted three villages in Plateau state’s Mangu local government area late Monday night and killed several people either with gunfire or after setting their houses ablaze, resident Philip Pamshak said. “As I am talking to you, they are still attacking people. The tension is still high and there are places the bandits still control, so people are not able to go and check if there are others killed,” Pamshak said. Also read: Gunmen kill 15 people, abduct 5 aid workers in north Nigeria Plateau Gov. Simon Lalong said he was disturbed by the attack and directed security forces to search for the suspects and prosecute them, according to a statement issued by his spokesman. “He (the governor) describes this as yet another attempt by crises merchants and criminals to return the state to the dark days of pain and agony,” said Makut Macham, Lalong’s spokesman. Such attacks have become rampant in many parts of Nigeria’s northern region, where several armed groups target villages with inadequate security, either killing or abducting residents and travelers for ransom. Arrests are rare in such attacks, for which no group typically takes responsibility. However, authorities have in the past identified many of the attackers as former pastoralists who took up arms after decades of conflict with farmers over limited access to land and water. The security crisis has led to thousands of deaths and defied several government and security measures in the last year. After the latest killings in Plateau, Lalong directed the emergency response agency to visit the affected communities “to bring succor” to victims and their families, many of whom have either fled the area or have lost their homes, adding to Nigeria’s worsening humanitarian crisis.  

State media reports that a Chinese fishing boat operating in the Indian Ocean has sunk and all 39 crew members on board are missing. Broadcaster CCTV said the sinking happened around 3 a.m. Tuesday. The crew includes 17 from China, 17 from Indonesia and five from the Philippines, the report said. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Qiang have ordered Chinese diplomats abroad, as well as the agriculture and transportation ministries, to assist in the search for survivors. The Lupenglaiyuanyu No. 8 was based in the eastern province of Shandong, operated by the Penglaiyingyu Co. Ltd. Also read: Cement-laden vessel sinks in Barishal river China is believed to operate the world’s largest fishing fleet. Many of them stay at sea for months or even years at a time, supported by Chinese state maritime security agencies and a broad network of support vessels. No word was given on the cause of the sinking. Recovery efforts are underway in Myanmar and Bangladesh after a powerful cyclone smashed into their coastlines, causing widespread destruction and at least 21 deaths, with hundreds of others believed missing. Chinese squid fishing ships have been documented using wide nets to illegally catch already overfished tuna as part of a surge in unregulated activity in the Indian Ocean, according to a report released in 2021 by a Norway-based watchdog group that highlights growing concerns about the lack of international cooperation to protect marine species on the high seas. The U.S. Coast Guard was also involved in a dangerous confrontation with Chinese vessels not far from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands in 2022 during a mission to inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing.

The gunman who killed three people and wounded six others as he fired randomly while roaming his northwestern New Mexico neighborhood was a local high school student and his victims include a 97-year-old woman and her daughter, police said Tuesday. Investigators were still trying to determine a motive for the attack by Beau Wilson, 18, in the Farmington neighborhood where he lived. They say he opened fire Monday, killing Gwendolyn Schofield, her 73-year-old daughter, Melody Ivie, and 79-year-old Shirley Voita. Voita had worked as a nurse and was a devoted parishioner at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, said former state Rep. James Strickler, who was her friend. “She was just a dynamite lady. She was well-loved and I’m still shocked over it,” said Strickler, who heard gunfire ring out on Monday before learning the circumstances of Voita's death. Witnesses and police say Wilson walked through the neighborhood a short drive from downtown Farmington spraying bullets until police arrived within minutes and fatally shot him. Two police officers were among the wounded. “The amount of violence and brutality that these people faced is unconscionable to me,” Deputy Police Chief Kyle Dowdy said. Deputy Police Chief Baric Crum said Wilson was indiscriminately shooting at vehicles, but that some rounds also hit homes. Dowdy said investigators do not believe Wilson knew anyone he shot. Also read: Police: 8 killed in Texas mall shooting, gunman also dead “We’ve discovered nothing that leads us to believe that the suspect knew" the victims, he said. “We’re pretty confident in that this was completely random.” Bryan Brown and Brandi Dominguez were home Monday morning with their five children when the shooting began. Their doorbell camera captured yelling and the repeated pops of gunfire. Brown said it was loud and sounded as if it were coming from two different directions. Brown was among those who ran into the street to help the victims. He said one woman had gunshot wounds to the leg and head. She asked for help and he said he tried to stop the bleeding. “I feel bad for her family,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t even know, this kind of stuff is just uncalled for.” Before Brown came outside, he told Dominguez and the kids to stay inside and stay down. Bullets hit the family’s home and vehicle. Brown said his teenage son knew Wilson from school and had texted him, knowing that he lived down the street. It was only later they found out that authorities identified Wilson as the shooter. “It just goes to show you never really know somebody until something happens,” Brown said. “He seemed like an OK kid.” In November, after he turned 18, Wilson legally purchased at least one gun used Monday, police said. He carried three firearms in the attack, including an assault-style weapon. Four officers fired a total of 16 rounds at Wilson, including one of the wounded officers, said San Juan County Sheriff Shane Ferrari. Mayor Nate Duckett said Tuesday that the Farmington officer and state police officer were treated for their wounds and released from a hospital. Authorities began receiving reports of gunshots at 10:57 a.m. and the first officer arrived at 11:02 a.m., police Chief Steve Hebbe said Monday in a video statement. Three minutes later, the gunman had been killed. Joseph Robledo, a 32-year-old tree trimmer, said he rushed home after learning that his wife, Jolene, and their year-old daughter had sought shelter in the laundry room when gunshots rang out. A bullet went through his daughter’s window, without hitting anyone. Jolene Robledo said they had just finished breakfast when she heard “pop, pop, pop, pop," which she first thought was a car backfiring. She said they were going to run out the back door until she heard a man curse right outside, so she quietly shut the door and hid with her daughter between the washing machine and dryer. “I mean it was crazy. I called my husband and he could hear the gunshots over the phone,” she said. “He was freaking out and I was like, ‘don’t hang up, don’t hang up!’” Joseph Robledo said he jumped a fence to get in through the back door. Out front, he found an older woman in the street who had been wounded while driving by. She appeared to have fallen out of her car, which kept rolling without her, he said. “I went out to see because the lady was just lying in the road, and to figure just what the heck was going on,” Robledo said. He and others began to administer first aid. Neighbors directed a police officer toward the suspect. “We were telling (the officer), ‘He’s down there.’ … The cop just went straight into action,” Robledo said. Robledo’s own family car was perforated with bullets. “We’ve been doing yard work all last week. I just thank God that nobody was outside in front,” he said. “Obviously, elderly people — he didn’t have no sympathy for them." Downtown Farmington, a short drive from the neighborhood, has undergone a transformation of sorts in recent years, with cafes and breweries cropping up alongside decades-old businesses that trade in Native American crafts from silver jewelry to wool weavings. On Tuesday, orange circles of spray paint still marked the ground where police had collected evidence. Authorities were using metal detectors to search the grass in front of one of the churches along the street where gunfire erupted. As night approached Monday, dozens of people gathered at Hills Church, a few miles (kilometers) from the attack scene, to pray at the base of a tall metal cross. Lead pastor Matt Mizell talked about living in a “dark and broken world” but told the crowd there was still hope and asked God to provide them strength. New Mexico enacted a red-flag law in 2020 that can be used to seize guns from people who pose a danger to others or themselves. Dowdy said relatives expressed concern about Wilson’s mental health when interviewed by police but that he didn’t have enough information at this time to further elaborate.

Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech, nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat in his lifetime. Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening. Organizers said the honor "acknowledges the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the ongoing threats they face." He said that "we live in a moment, I think, at which freedom of expression, freedom to publish has not in my lifetime been under such threat in the countries of the West." "Now I am sitting here in the U.S., I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries, and books for children in schools," he said. "The attack on the idea of libraries themselves. It is quite remarkably alarming, and we need to be very aware of it, and to fight against it very hard." Rushdie, 75, was blinded in one eye and suffered nerve damage to his hand when he was attacked at a literary festival in New York state in August. His alleged assailant, Hadi Matar, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder. Rushdie spent years in hiding with police protection after Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over the alleged blasphemy of the novel "The Satanic Verses." In his speech, Rushdie also criticized publishers who change decades-old books for modern sensibilities, such as large-scale cuts and rewrites to the works of children's author Roald Dahl and James Bond creator Ian Fleming. He said publishers should allow books "to come to us from their time and be of their time." "And if that's difficult to take, don't read it, read another book," he said.  

Amid the high-level efforts to deal with a raft of global emergencies, this weekend's Group of 7 summit of rich democracies will also see an unusual diplomatic reconciliation as the leaders of Japan and South Korea look to continue mending ties that have been marked for years by animosity and bickering. At first glance the two neighbors would seem to be natural partners. They are powerful, advanced democracies and staunch U.S. allies in a region beset with autocratic threats. The continuing fallout, however, from centuries of complicated, acrimonious history, culminating in the brutal 1910-1945 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula, has resulted in more wariness than friendship. Also Read: Japan leader expresses sympathy for Korean colonial victims A big part of the sudden recent shift in tone is a shared focus on China's growing aggressiveness, t he threat of North Korea's fast-improving arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles — and deep worry about how Russia's war in Ukraine is influencing both issues. Some diplomatic nudging by Washington, which provides military protection for both its allies and wants them to more strongly counter China's rising global influence, has also helped. Tokyo and Seoul “understand that their survival, both nationally and politically, depends on subordinating themselves to the U.S. President Joe Biden administration’s global and regional priorities,” according to Daniel Sneider, an East Asia lecturer at Stanford University. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's invitation for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to be a guest at the G-7 talks in Hiroshima is only the most recent sign of these reset ties. It follows back-to-back summits by the leaders, which hadn't happened in years. Japan also agreed to South Korea's request to send an experts’ team later this month to visit the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant to view preparation for a planned release into the ocean of treated but still slightly radioactive wastewater. Also Read; South Korea, US, Japan hold anti-North Korea submarine drill The G-7 summit, which runs Friday through Sunday, will allow the leaders to deepen their burgeoning relationship — Kishida, Yoon and Biden plan to meet on the sidelines — while also working to persuade the world's most powerful leaders to tighten defense cooperation as China and North Korea expand their military postures in the region. History issues have long harried Seoul and Tokyo. Ties worsened in 2018, for instance, after South Korean court rulings ordered two Japanese companies to compensate a group of Korean plaintiffs who the companies had used for wartime slave labor. Disagreement over the rulings later spilled over to trade and military cooperation issues. Japan insists all compensation issues were settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations. Yoon’s summits with Kishida came after his government announced a domestically unpopular plan in March to use South Korean corporate funds to compensate the forced laborers. The move was aimed at preventing the courts from liquidizing the Japanese companies’ local assets, which would cause a further diplomatic rupture. Kishida agreed to a resumption of defense, trade and other talks in his meetings with Yoon, and Japan recently announced that it is negotiating an agreement with Washington and Seoul on sharing real-time data on North Korean missile launches. Seoul and Tokyo are both worried about the geopolitical uncertainty created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has raised fears about similar Chinese aggression in the South and East China Seas and against Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own. North Korea also used the global focus on the invasion to ramp up its tests of nuclear-capable missiles. Japan is one of many nations in Asia that has territorial disputes with China, something that has strongly figured into Kishida's push to distance Japan from its post-World War II principle of self-defense only. Last year, Tokyo adopted a new national security strategy that includes the goals of acquiring preemptive strike capabilities and cruise missiles to counter threats from North Korea, China and Russia. Alarmed by the growing North Korean threat — Pyongyang has test-launched around 100 missiles since the start of 2022 — Yoon may be using better relations with Japan as a way to forge a stronger alliance with the United States. Yoon’s government has expanded its combined military exercises with the United States, which also included three-way drills with Japan, while seeking greater assurances from Washington that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons to protect its allies in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack. “There’s growing recognition (in both Tokyo and Seoul) that the region’s various security issues are becoming increasingly interconnected,” which is leading the countries to reassess their importance to each other, said Jin Chang Soo, an analyst at South Korea’s Sejong Institute. During a recent meeting in Washington, Yoon and Biden agreed to a declaration that includes more nuclear information-sharing and regular visits to South Korea by a U.S. nuclear-powered sub. The Biden administration may now be pushing for an extended deterrence dialogue among Washington, Seoul and Tokyo that “would convey a formidable response both to North Korea and to China, and even to a potential Chinese–Russian military axis,” Sneider recently wrote. Hiroshima, the first target of a nuclear weapon in history, could provide a symbolic backdrop for Kishida and Yoon to raise awareness about the North Korean threat while underlining goals for nuclear non-proliferation. In another trust-building gesture, Kishida and Yoon plan to pay their respects at a Hiroshima memorial for Korean atomic bomb victims. Despite the improving ties, however, there's no certainty how long reconciliation will last. After decades of poverty and dictatorship following the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea has become a developed economic and military power. But there are large policy swings between conservative governments, like the one in power now, and liberal governments that are more wary of stronger ties with Japan and the United States. And then there are the historical issues, including continuing court hearings on forced labor, which remain “buried like landmines, not far from the surface and ready to be set off,” Sneider said.