*** The Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) denounced Wednesday that an armed group assassinated social leader Wilson Bomba, in the municipality of Caldono, located in the department of Cauca, in southwestern Colombia. In a message posted on its official Twitter account, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) said that Bomba was "a recognised leader, current councillor and traditional authority in the position of chief commissioner of the Resguardo de San Lorenzo", municipality of Caldono. It explained that the 31-year-old activist "was killed when armed men attacked a commission of the Indigenous Guard. In the same incident, the coordinator of the Guard, César Peña, was also wounded".
*** Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is willing to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan if he withdraws his troops from northern Syria, he said in an interview published in Russian media on Thursday. A meeting with Erdogan would be possible "when Turkey is ready to withdraw completely from Syrian territory in a clear and unequivocal manner", Assad told Russia's Nia Novosti news agency, according to a translation of his remarks. It would also be necessary for Ankara to "cease all support for terrorism", he added, referring to Turkey's support for rebel groups fighting the Damascus regime. Having come to power in the 2000s, Erdogan and Assad established cordial relations after tensions between their countries, but the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011 drove them apart.
*** The President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz Canel, supported the decision proposed by the President of China, Xi Jinping, in the context of the second High Level Dialogue, who bets on the global civilisation of the Asian country, the President of the island, ratified his support through his account on the social network Twitter. At the opening of the event, the CCP secretary also emphasised that tolerance, coexistence, exchanges and mutual learning between different civilisations play an irreplaceable role in advancing the process of modernisation of humanity. He also called for respect for the right of each nation to explore its own path towards modernisation, without abandoning cooperation and global solidarity to ensure equitable access to growth opportunities. In this sense, he referred to China's goal of becoming a modern socialist state by the middle of the century and the CCP's commitment to strengthen exchanges with other parties to establish a new model of international relations. The Chinese giant is hosting a summit between the CCP and other political organisations from around the world on Wednesday to discuss their role in China's modernisation plans.
*** To recover the downed US drone in the Black Sea on Tuesday, Washington should enlist the help of the private Ukrainian group recently named by several US media as the perpetrator of explosions in the Nord Stream pipeline system last year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has advised. The spokeswoman commented on her Telegram channel on statements by White House National Security spokesman John Kirby, who was sceptical about the possibility of recovering the fragments of the drone, for whose loss the US blamed Moscow. "John, ask The New York Times for the phone number of the private Ukrainian company that, according to US propaganda, blew up the Nord Stream pipelines deep in the Baltic Sea. Judging by their papers, they are deep-water experts. They will succeed," Zakharova said. The US military said on Tuesday that two Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted the drone "in a risky manner", with one of the planes "colliding" with the MQ-9, hitting it in the propeller and sending it plunging into international waters in the Black Sea.
*** The World Cup to be held in 2026 at the venue shared by Mexico, the United States and Canada will be the first to have a 48-team format, according to an announcement by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Council. Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, ahead of the 73rd FIFA Congress, the Council of the sporting association explained that the 48 teams participating in football's top tournament will be divided into 12 groups of four teams. The first proposal was for 16 groups of three teams, but was amended to 12 groups of four with the top two and the eight best third-placed teams advancing to a round of 32.
*** North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Thursday, Seoul said, its third launch this week as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol heads to Japan to strengthen ties and confront Pyongyang's growing aggression. "Our armed forces detected a long-range ballistic missile fired from around Pyongyang's Sunan area," said South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, which told AFP that it was an ICBM. Japan's defence ministry confirmed the launch, noting on Twitter that the missile would fall "outside Japan's exclusive economic zone, about 550 km east of the Korean peninsula". The Japanese coast guard issued an alert to ships to be on the lookout for falling objects. The missile, fired at 7.10 a.m. (23:10 CET Wednesday) from Pyongyang, flew about 1,000 km on a high trajectory, the South Korean military said. Meanwhile, the Japanese military said the intercontinental ballistic missile appears to have flown more than 6,000 km for about 70 minutes.
*** The US space agency (NASA) on Wednesday unveiled the new suit that will be worn by the first astronauts to set foot on the moon 53 years after the Apollo 17 mission, as part of the Artemis 3 mission to be launched in 2025. Alongside space agency officials at the event were spokespersons from Axiom Space, the company that developed the suits for $228 million. "NASA selected Axiom Space to supply the moonwalk system, including the spacesuit, for the mission. Called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or AxEMU, the spacesuit is based on NASA's spacesuit prototype developments and incorporates the latest technology, enhanced mobility and added protection from hazards on the Moon," the agency said in a press release. Artemis III will carry astronauts to the Moon, including the first woman, to advance lunar exploration and long-term scientific discovery and inspire the Artemis Generation, according to NASA. The spacesuit, developed by Axiom Space for the Artemis III mission, was unveiled during an event hosted by the company at Space Center Houston in South Texas.
*** A Barcelona examining magistrate's court has authorised the prosecution's complaint against Fútbol Club Barcelona (Barça) and several former directors of the sports club, for the payment of more than 7 million euros to former referee José María Enríquez Negreira, when he was vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), according to Spanish media El Confidencial, on Wednesday. The magistrate Silvia López Mejía accepted most of the proceedings requested by the prosecutors and charged them with the crimes of unfair administration, corruption in business dealings and false documentation. According to the judge, who agrees with the criteria of the Public Prosecutor's Office, there is strong evidence that the payments, which took place over a period of 20 years, were intended to guarantee good refereeing services for the Catalan team. In addition to the sporting entity as a legal entity, the former Blaugrana presidents Sandro Rosel and Josep María Bartomeu, as well as the former directors Albert Soler and Óscar Grau, and the former referee Enríquez Negreira himself, are also charged. The first measure ordered by the magistrate is for the Guardia Civil to analyse the documentation relating to the companies of Enríquez Negreira and his son, after the Tax Office located a network of seven companies through which payments were made to the then vice-president of the referees' governing body.
*** A group of Swedish and Norwegian palaeontologists have discovered remains of the oldest known ichthyosaur to date on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, forcing scientists to rethink long-held theories about the evolution of these marine reptiles. The results of their study were published Monday in the journal Current Biology. Until now, it was thought that the ancestors of these marine reptiles first ventured into the open ocean after the end-Permian mass extinction, also known informally as the Great Mortality, which devastated marine ecosystems and ushered in the age of dinosaurs nearly 252 million years ago. Over time, these species "turned their limbs into fins, developed a fish-like body shape and began to give birth to live young, breaking their last link to land by no longer needing to come ashore to lay eggs," explains the statement released Tuesday by Uppsala University in Sweden.
*** Economists at investment bank Goldman Sachs raised their forecasts for the likelihood of the United States slipping into recession over the next 12 months because of the risk to the country's economy from the current turmoil in the banking sector, Bloomberg reports. Goldman Sachs raised its assessment by 10 percentage points to 35 %. The growth indicators on which the investment bank relies show that economic data remain positive. However, the rate of layoffs has risen slightly but remains low, and the gap between jobs and workers has also narrowed. Analysts say the latter is necessary to "rebalance the labour market". The firm's new forecast is below the expectations of Bloomberg or Reuters, which put the probability of the US economy slipping into recession this year at 60 per cent.
