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Afghanistan's Taliban face criticism over their human rights record at a U.N. meeting on Monday, with Washington accusing them of systematically depriving women and girls of their human rights.

However, in an awkward first for the U.N. Human Rights Council, the concerned country's current rulers will not be present because they are not recognized by the global body.

Afghanistan will instead be represented by an ambassador appointed by the previous U.S.-backed government, which the Taliban ousted in 2021.

AFGHANISTAN'S TALIBAN LEADERS ISSUED DIFFERENT MESSAGES FOR EID. EXPERTS SAY THAT SHOWS TENSIONS

In a series of questions compiled in a U.N. document ahead of the review, the United States asked how authorities would hold perpetrators to account for abuses against civilians, "particularly women and girls who are being systematically deprived of their human rights"?

It also called for the promotion of the rights of LGBTQ persons, noting an "escalation of threats and abuse" since the Taliban takeover.

Britain and Belgium also raised questions about the Taliban's treatment of women. In total, 76 countries have asked to take the floor at the meeting.

The Taliban say they respect rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law.

Since they swept back into power, most girls have been barred from high school and women from universities. The Taliban have also stopped most Afghan female staff from working at aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed travel for women in the absence of a male guardian.

Under the U.N. system, states' human rights records are subject to peer review in public meetings of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, resulting in a series of recommendations.

While non-binding, these can draw scrutiny of policies and add to pressure for reform. The U.N. Human Rights Council, the only intergovernmental global body designed to protect human rights worldwide, can also mandate investigations whose evidence is sometimes used before national and international courts.

World Central Kitchen (WCK) said it would resume operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, a month after seven workers of the U.S.-based charity were killed in an Israeli air strike.

Prior to halting operations, WCK had distributed more than 43 million meals in Gaza since October, representing by its own accounts 62% of all international NGO aid.

The charity said it had 276 trucks with the equivalent of almost 8 million meals ready to enter through the Rafah Crossing and will also send trucks into Gaza from Jordan.

WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN PAUSES GAZA OPERATIONS AFTER 7 AID WORKERS KILLED BY ‘UNFORGIVABLE’ ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE

"The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire," said the charity's chief executive officer Erin Gore. "We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding as many people as possible."

The April 1 deaths triggered widespread condemnation and demands from Israel's allies, including the U.S., for an explanation.

Israel said its inquiries had found serious errors and breaches of procedure by its military, dismissing two senior officers and reprimanding senior commanders.

WCK is demanding an independent investigation.

Israel's six-month war against Hamas in Gaza followed an Oct. 7 attack by the militant group in southern Israel when more than 250 hostages were seized and some 1,200 people killed, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's offensive has killed more than 34,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and caused a humanitarian disaster for the enclave's more than 2 million inhabitants.

"We have been forced to make a decision: Stop feeding altogether during one of the worst hunger crises ever...Or keep feeding knowing that aid, aid workers and civilians are being intimidated and killed," Gore said.

"These are the hardest conversations, and we have considered all perspectives when deliberating. Ultimately, we decided we must keep feeding, continuing our mission of showing up to provide food to people during the toughest of times."

NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg told Ukrainians on Monday that his alliance’s members had failed to live up to their promises of military aid in recent months, but said the flow of arms and ammunition would now increase.

In an unannounced visit to Ukraine, the secretary general of the transatlantic military alliance held talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and was due to address Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada.

His visit – the third since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 - comes at a difficult time on the battlefield for Ukraine. After a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive last year, Russian forces have gained the initiative – at least in part due to a dearth of arms and ammunition from Kyiv’s Western partners.

KEY NATO ALLY SHOCKS WITH ITS 'SINGLE LARGEST' PLEDGE TO UKRAINE: 'THEY NEED OUR SUPPORT'

"I will also be very honest with President Zelenskiy and also with the Rada that NATO allies have not delivered what we have promised over the last months," Stoltenberg said on the train taking him into Kyiv on Monday.

"The United States spent six months to agree a package and European allies have not delivered the ammunition we promised. But now I’m confident that things will change," he said.

Stoltenberg pointed to the U.S. Congress now having approved a Ukraine aid package worth more than $60 billion, swiftly signed into law by President Joe Biden, and an announcement last week by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of a "record high" commitment to Kyiv.

He also noted Germany had agreed to provide a new Patriot air defense system to Ukraine and the Netherlands had boosted its aid to Kyiv. He said he expected other "new commitments to come".

"This will make a difference – as the lack of support made a difference," he said, alluding to Ukrainian setbacks on the battlefield.

He said the Russians had paid "a high price for marginal territorial gains" and Ukraine could still turn things around.

"It's not too late for Ukraine to prevail. But that’s why it's so urgent that NATO allies now actually do what we had promised and that we turn those commitments into real deliveries of weapons and ammunition and I’m now confident that will now happen."

The public prosecutor general's office in Munich on Monday took over the investigation into the stabbing deaths of two Ukrainian men in southern Germany because of a possible political motivation for the crime, German news agency dpa reported.

The two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed at a shopping center in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria. Shortly after the slayings on Saturday evening, police arrested a 57-year-old Russian on suspicion of murder, dpa reported.

The public prosecutor general's office usually takes over investigations from regular prosecutors if there is a possibility that a crime was politically motivated. The Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism is also involved in the investigation of the killings, dpa reported.

TRIAL BEGINS FOR 9 IN GERMANY OVER ALLEGED COUP PLOT

The Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that it appeared the two men were military servicemen undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany.

The names of the victims and the suspect weren’t released in line with German privacy rules. The motive for the killings isn't yet known, authorities said.

According to an initial investigation, the three men knew each other, but further details need to be verified, local police spokesperson Stefan Sonntag told dpa. There were also indications that all three men had consumed alcohol.

"We have clear evidence that the suspect was under the influence of alcohol," Sonntag was quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday expressed concern about the killings.

"This is a worrying incident, no question about it. The circumstances must now be investigated more closely," Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.

"We can only speculate about the motives at the moment," he added. "But it is clear that we cannot tolerate such a thing on German soil anyway and that the Ukrainians, Ukrainians who have fled to us from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, must now be safe."

More than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have come to Germany since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany is also home to a significant Russian immigrant community and 2.5 million Russians of German ancestry who mostly moved to the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Russia may respond to any U.S. confiscation of its currency reserves frozen in the West by seizing the assets, including property and cash, of U.S. citizens and investors in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Saturday.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the Biden administration to confiscate Russian assets held in American banks and transfer them to Ukraine, something the Kremlin has said would be illegal and trigger retaliation.

In response to Russia's war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia's central bank and finance ministry and blocked about $300 billion of sovereign Russian assets in the West, most of which are in European not American financial institutions.

RUSSIA HAS GROUNDS TO SEIZE WESTERN ASSETS AFTER US LEGISLATIVE MOVE, TOP LAWMAKER SAYS

The Group of Seven (G7) major democracies is also looking at what it may be able to do around the frozen Russian assets.

Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said on Saturday that Russia would not be able to retaliate in kind against any U.S. seizure of its reserves.

"The reason is clear - we do not have a significant amount of American state property, including money, rights and other US assets. Therefore, the answer can only be asymmetrical. It is not a fact that it will be any less painful," Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram channel.

"We are talking about the foreclosure, for example by a court decision, on the property of private individuals located in the jurisdiction of Russia (money, real estate and movable property in kind, property rights)."

"Yes, this is a complex story, since these individuals usually acted as investors in the Russian economy," Medvedev said. "And we guaranteed them the inviolability of their private property rights. But the unexpected happened - their state declared a hybrid war on us. This must be answered."

He said the law in Russia would need to be changed to allow such asset seizures in favour of the Russian state.

Russian Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Friday Moscow would defend its legitimate interests in the event that its assets were confiscated, but did not disclose the strategy and tactics.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that vital U.S. weapons were starting to arrive in Ukraine in small amounts. 

He said that the process needed to move faster.

This is the result of advancing Russian forces trying to take advantage.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: UKRAINE’S ZELENSKYY OPENS UP ON US AID, ISRAEL, TRUMP

Zelenskyy spoke during a joint news conference in Kyiv alongside visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

During the conference, he said the situation on the battlefield directly depended on the speed of ammunition supplies to Ukraine.

"Timely support for our army. Today I don't see anything positive on this point yet. There are supplies, they have slightly begun, this process needs to be sped up," he said.

A bus crash on the outskirts of Mexico City killed 18 people on Sunday, while another 32 were injured, according to the state of Mexico's civil protection agency.

The accident happened in Malinalco in the southern region of Mexico state, which surrounds the capital on three sides. 

A bus traveling from San Luis de la Paz, in Guanajuato State in central Mexico, to the Chalma sanctuary south of Mexico City, overturned on the highway.

SIX DEAD, 15 INJURED IN OHIO CRASH INVOLVING BUS CARRYING BAND STUDENTS

14 people were killed instantly, while another four died later in the hospital, according to the state of Mexico's secretary of security.

Local media circulated images of people providing water and blankets to the relatives of crash victims.

The state prosecutors' offices of Mexico and Guanajuato said they were assisting the bereaved families.

Emboldened by his party’s recent election win, South Korea’s opposition leader pressured President Yoon Suk Yeol to accept special investigations into allegations involving top officials and his wife, as they met Monday for talks on bipartisan cooperation.

The meeting was their first since Yoon took office in 2022 after defeating Lee Jae-myung in the country’s closest presidential election race. During their 2022 campaigns, Yoon, Lee and their supporters demonized each other and filed dozens of lawsuits against one another.

Yoon proposed the meeting as he faces growing calls to cooperate with Lee’s Democratic Party, whose victory in the April 10 parliamentary election allows it to extend its control of the single-chamber National Assembly until after Yoon’s single five-year term ends in 2027.

NORTH KOREA ISSUES NUCLEAR 'WARNING SIGNAL' TO US, SOUTH KOREA

In his lengthy opening remarks, Lee said the election results mean "the people’s stern demand for correcting wrong government administrations," addressing economic troubles and restoring democratic rules.

Lee urged Yoon to accept independent probes into the 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 159 people, and the 2023 death of a marine who drowned during a search-and-rescue operation for flood victims. Lee’s party has accused Yoon of ignoring public demands and retaining top officials and military commanders responsible for the deadly incidents.

Lee also asked Yoon to resolve "diverse suspicions involving his family" that "poses a big burden on government operations." That was apparently a reference to first lady Kim Keon Hee, who faces an allegation of involvement in a stock price manipulation and other scandals.

"I’d say it would be good for you, as president, to respect the National Assembly and consider the opposition party as a partner for government operations," Lee said.

KIM JONG UN THREATENS ATTACKING, 'OCCUPYING' SOUTH KOREA IN EVENT OF CONFLICT

While listening to Lee's statement, Yoon nodded several times and said he had expected Lee to make such comments but didn’t elaborate.

In a briefing after the meeting, senior presidential adviser Lee Do-woon said that Yoon told Lee that he won’t oppose a special law to investigate the Halloween deaths but noted some potential legal concerns over an ad-hoc investigation committee. He didn’t mention Yoon’s responses to demands for other probes.

During the meeting, Lee also asked Yoon to accept his contentious idea of the government giving about $180 to all South Koreans as a way to boost the economy, a step that Yoon’s party has called a populist measure. Lee Do-woon, the presidential adviser, said Yoon said that he prefers selectively supporting those in need.

In a separate briefing, Democratic Party spokesperson Park Sung-joon accused Yoon of lacking the resolve to revive public livelihoods. Park cited Lee as suggesting he was disappointed at the meeting’s results though the start of direct communication with Yoon would still be meaningful.

No agreement was reached, but Yoon’s office said the president and Lee agreed to meet frequently without setting a date for their next meeting.

In one positive news for bipartisan cooperation, Lee told Yoon that his party would support the government’s high-stakes push to increase medical school students, which prompted thousands of young doctors to walk out of the job in February. The government recently suggested it’s open to halving its target medical school enrollment increase to 1,000 per year from the previously proposed 2,000, but doctors say they can’t accept any increase in students.

Yoon has said South Korea needs to create more doctors as it has one of the world’s most rapidly aging populations and its doctors-to-patient ratio is among the lowest in advanced economies. Doctors say schools can’t deal with a too steep increase in students, but critics say they simply worry the supply of more doctors would eventually result in lowering their income.

The parliamentary election was seen as a litmus test of Yoon, who has been struggling with low approval rating and an opposition-controlled parliament that has limited his policy agenda since his inauguration. Critics say the election defeat was largely attributable to the government’s failure to suppress rising prices and other economic problems and Yoon’s personal management and leadership styles.

Despite the election defeat, Yoon’s major foreign policy agendas will likely remain unchanged as they mostly don’t require parliamentary endorsements. Yoon has pushed hard to boost trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan to cope with North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats and other challenges.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit France, Serbia and Hungary next week as Beijing appears to seek a larger role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that has upended global political and economic security.

The visit by Xi, China’s president and head of the ruling Communist Party, is his first to Europe in five years and will "inject new momentum to the peaceful development of the world," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing on Monday.

China claims neutrality in the Ukraine conflict, but Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared their governments had a "no limits friendship" before Moscow’s February 2022 attack on Ukraine. China has refused to call the Russian assault an invasion and has been accused of bolstering Russia's financial and technological ability to continue producing weapons for use against Ukraine, which is awaiting tens of billions of dollars in military aid to counter Russia's aggression.

CHINA IS RAPIDLY EXPANDING ITS INFLUENCE IN OUR BACKYARD AND US MUST ACT NOW

The Foreign Ministry said Xi's visits will begin April 5 and end April 10 but gave no further details.

The visits will be closely watched in Washington for any signs of diminishing support for key U.S. foreign policy goals.

French President Emmanuel Macron prompted concerns in Washington during a visit to China last year after saying that France wouldn’t blindly follow the U.S. in getting involved in crises that are not of its concern, an apparent reference to China's demands for unification with Taiwan.

China has built strong relations with Serbia, including making a semi-secret delivery of an anti-aircraft missile system to the former Yugoslav republic in 2022.

The government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delayed Sweden’s entry into NATO for months. NATO expansion has been cited by China as provoking Putin to invade Ukraine.

Orbán, a right-wing populist who has forged close ties with Russia, has said that criticism of Hungary’s governance by Swedish politicians soured relations between the two countries and led to reluctance among lawmakers in his Fidesz party to support Sweden's NATO entry.

The visits come after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Friday with Xi in Beijing and stressed the importance of "responsibly managing" the differences between the United States and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues.

Also on Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu hailed military cooperation with China during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Dong Jun, in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana.

He said the cooperation is important as "new hotbeds of tension are emerging and old ones are exacerbating. In essence, this is the result of geopolitical adventures, selfish neo-colonial actions of the West."

Solomon Islands pro-Beijing Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Monday withdrew from the contest to remain head of the strategically important South Pacific island nation’s government following general elections two weeks ago that are central to the U.S.-China rivalry in the region.

Sogavare has been re-elected to the parliament. But he told a press conference in the capital Honiara on Monday he would not be nominated as a candidate when the 50 newly elected lawmakers vote on Thursday for the prime minister, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Sogavare had hoped to become the first Solomons prime minister to maintain power in consecutive four-year terms following the April 17 election. During his previous term, China’s influence increased more in the Solomons than anywhere else in the South Pacific.

SOLOMON ISLANDS NATIONAL ELECTION COUNT BEGINS, CLOSELY WATCHED BY US, CHINA

Sogavare switched diplomatic allegiances from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region.

Sogavare said in his press conference he had been "vilified by media" and his family had been subjected to "unprecedented abuse," the ABC reported.

Sogavare’s Ownership, Unity and Responsibility Party, known as the Our Party, won 15 seats in the election, more than any other party. The party’s candidate to become prime minister will be Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele.

A prime minister needs the support of at least 26 lawmakers in the 50-seat chamber.

Observers expect China to have secretly backed more candidates than Sogavare at the election in a bid to ensure the government change does not diminish Beijing’s influence.

Sogavare could again return to power during the current four-year term. He was elected prime minister after the last election in 2019. But he has served as prime minister three times before 2019 because his predecessors had quit or were ousted by fellow lawmakers in a precarious political system.

A Greek court convicted five former firefighting and disaster response officials on Monday over the deadliest wildfire in the country's history, with more than 100 people killed outside the capital. But some survivors were outraged when they were fined and let go.

The 2018 fire swept through the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens. Residents and vacationers, many trapped in their cars, were killed as they tried to escape.

The officials, including a former fire chief, received sentences of between 15 and 111 years for multiple counts of criminal negligence resulting in injury and loss of life. But the presiding judge ordered that sentences could be served concurrently, capping jail time at five years.

WILDFIRE RESPONSE PLANS OVERHAULED IN GREECE AHEAD OF SUMMER FIRE SEASON

All five convicted officials were let go and allowed to pay fines in lieu of serving their sentences. Under Greek law, payment can be deferred pending an appeal.

A sixth defendant, the owner of the property where the fire started, received a three-year sentence for negligence and was also let go. Fifteen other firefighting officials, police, civil protection and local government officials were cleared of all charges.

Irini Maroupa, one of the lawyers representing the victims, told reporters outside the courthouse that her clients were bitterly disappointed.

"All sense of shame has been lost," she said. "The victims of this fire who died in horrific circumstances, and those injured who will suffer for the rest of their lives — and this was clearly illustrated in court — will never have the opportunity to find peace in their soul." During the trial, fire officials described the overwhelming circumstances as the fire swept through Mati and neighboring Nea Voutsa, with high temperatures and gale-force winds, and noted that the blaze blocked many potential evacuation routes.

More than 1,500 homes and structures were destroyed, along with some 300 cars. The panel of three judges ruled that the response, including a large sea evacuation, was poorly coordinated. Theofanis Hatzistamou, whose son and wife suffered severe injuries, said he felt abandoned by the state. "I’m lucky because I have a child who lived — child now 11 years old, with scars all over his body and soul, who for the last five years hasn’t slept properly," he said. Hatzistamou added: "I am going to tell him that Greece has abandoned him for a second time."

Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, resigned on Monday rather than face a no-confidence vote just days after he torpedoed a coalition with the Green Party by ditching a target for fighting climate change.

Yousaf, whose Scottish National Party has been weakened by a campaign finance scandal and divisions over transgender rights, stepped down after failing to strike a deal with a breakaway nationalist party whose single seat could have given him a majority in Scotland’s devolved regional parliament.

With no prospect of victory, Yousaf quit rather than face defeat later this week when Scottish lawmakers were scheduled to vote on motions of no confidence in Yousaf and his government.

CONSERVATIVES' ATTEMPT TO REPEAL HATE SPEECH LAW THAT MADE SCOTLAND AN ‘INTERNATIONAL MOCKERY’ FAILS

"After spending the weekend reflecting on what is best for my party, for the government and for the country I lead, I’ve concluded that repairing our relationship across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm,'' he told reporters. "I have therefore informed the SNP’s national secretary of my intention to stand down as party leader."

The debacle in Scotland adds to the fevered political climate in the broader United Kingdom, where concerns about immigration, health care and government spending have undermined support for the ruling Conservative Party.

The Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party had proposed separate no-confidence motions as they sought to weaken the SNP before a U.K.-wide parliamentary election expected to take place later this year. The SNP has been the dominant party in Scottish politics for almost two decades and currently holds 43 of the country’s 59 seats in the U.K. parliament.

On Thursday, England and Wales will hold local elections that are seen as barometer of support for the government.

In an effort to save his government, Yousaf had written to all of the party leaders asking for separate meetings to discuss their concerns "in a hopefully constructive spirit."

With all the other parties lined up against him, the tight electoral math in Scotland meant that Yousaf’s fate hinged on the upstart Alba Party, which holds just one seat in the Scottish parliament. The SNP has 63 of the 128 voting lawmakers, leaving Yousaf one vote short of what he needed to eke out a victory.

The father and former coach of Olympic champion runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen has been charged with abusing one of his other children, his lawyer said Monday, escalating an ongoing conflict involving one of Norway's most prominent sporting families.

Ingebrigtsen won the 1,500-meter race at the Tokyo Olympics and has emerged as one of Europe's biggest track-and-field stars after being coached since childhood by his father Gjert Ingebrigtsen. But he and two of his brothers — who are also top-level runners — previously accused their father of using "physical violence and threats as part of our upbringing."

Police launched an investigation into Gjert Ingebrigtsen after that, and on Monday charged him with having physically and mentally abused another of his younger children. Norwegian newspaper VG, citing the indictment, reported that the abuse took place during a four-year period and included threats, coercion and hitting his child with a wet towel on at least one occasion.

AHEAD OF OLYMPIC GAMES, PARIS GRAPPLES WITH SECURITY, TRANSPORTATION PREPARATIONS

Monday’s charges did not relate to the 23-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen or his older brothers Henrik and Filip, the three prominent runners. Police did not disclose the identity of the child.

Terese Braut Våge, head of police in southeastern Norway, told The Associated Press that cases involving five other alleged victims had been dismissed "on the basis of the evidence" and in one case because of a statute of limitations.

Gjert Ingebrigtsen's lawyer John Christian Elden said his 58-year-old client "disagrees with the presentation of the events" and "consequently does not admit criminal guilt."

Gjert Ingebrigtsen was named the Norwegian sports coach of the year in 2018 after Jakob, Henrik and Filip all won medals at major events that year. The family had also been the subject of a TV documentary series, "Team Ingebregtsen," that was aired by public broadcaster NRK for five season between 2016-21 leading up to the Tokyo Olympics.

But on Oct. 19 last year, the three brothers published an op-ed in Norwegian newspaper VG detailing their father's behavior and said he "had been very aggressive and controlling" and violent and abusive during their childhoods.

They said "the same aggression and physical punishment struck again" two years ago toward someone else, and that was "the straw that broke the camel’s back."

The three brothers broke ties with their father and Gjert Ingebrigtsen has since started coaching another Norwegian runner, Narve Gilje Nordås. However, Tore Øvrebø, the head of the organization that oversees Olympic sports in Norway, said Ingebrigtsen would not be allowed to be part of the Norwegian staff at the Paris Games this summer. He was also denied an accreditation for the 2023 world championships in Budapest, where Jakob won gold in the 5,000 meters.

Thailand’s foreign minister abruptly resigned in dissatisfaction over a Cabinet reshuffle that removed him as one of the country's deputy prime ministers.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Monday confirmed the report of the resignation of Parnpree Bahiddha-Nugara, saying that he respected the decision, and that he has already started looking for a replacement.

Srettha said it was normal that some people would be upset by the reshuffle, adding that he already sent a message to Parnpree, apologizing and thanking him for his work.

THAI FOREIGN MINISTER URGES BURMA'S MILITARY TO AVOID VIOLENT ATTACK ON BORDER TOWN ITS ARMY LOST

"For his work that has been in the good interest of the country, I believe that the new minister will continue these good efforts," he said, but did not say when the next appointee would take up the post.

On Sunday, Srettha’s government, which took office less than a year ago, announced its first Cabinet shuffle. Shortly afterwards, the media circulated a document said to be a letter of resignation from Parnpree, dated Sunday, indicating his dissatisfaction that he was removed from the position of deputy prime minister and only remained foreign minister.

Ministers in Thailand are allowed to hold multiple Cabinet positions, and it is common for senior ministers to also be appointed as deputy prime ministers.

Srettha said that the intention behind Parnpree being dropped as deputy prime minister was to allow him to concentrate on his role as foreign minister.

In an interview with the public broadcaster Thai PBS on Sunday, Parnpree said the letter was authentic but denied that he was unhappy. He said the prime minister had the authority to make this decision, but said it was "a little unusual" and argued that it would become harder for him to work as foreign minister if he did not also hold the title of deputy prime minister.

Parnpree, who was first appointed in August, engaged in several diplomatic efforts, including a visit to the Middle East to negotiate the release of Thai workers in Israel held hostage by Hamas, and the first humanitarian aid initiative to Thailand's war-torn neighbor, Myanmar, where millions have been displaced by violence that followed the military coup in 2021.

As part of the Cabinet shuffle, Prime Minister Srettha, a former CEO of Thailand’s leading property developer, lost his seat as finance minister. He is replaced by Pichai Chunhavajira, who until recently was a chairman of energy conglomerate Bangchak and chairman of the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Pichai has also been appointed as a deputy prime minister.

Kenya has postponed the reopening of its schools by one week due to ongoing flooding caused by heavy rains, as flood-related deaths since mid-March in the East African country neared 100.

Some schools remained "adversely affected" by the flooding, the Education Ministry said Sunday night. Local media reported that more than 100 schools were flooded, some with collapsed walls and roofs blown away.

All schools were set to reopen on Monday but will now open on May 6.

40 CONFIRMED DEAD AFTER DAM COLLAPSES IN WESTERN KENYA, POLICE SAY

Ninety-three people have died in the flooding in Kenya and that number is expected to rise after a boat capsized in the northern Garissa county on Sunday night. The Kenyan Red Cross said it had rescued 23 people from the boat, but more than a dozen people were still missing.

Heavy rains have been pounding the country since mid-March and the Meteorology Department has warned of more rainfall.

The East African region is experiencing flooding due to the heavy rains, and 155 people have reportedly died in Tanzania while more than 200,000 people are affected in neighboring Burundi.

The highest number of deaths in Kenya have been reported in the capital, Nairobi, according to police records.

Kenya's main airport was flooded on Saturday, forcing some flights to be diverted, as videos of a flooded runway, terminals and cargo section were shared online.

The airport's manager, Henry Kegoye, said the flooding was from ongoing refurbishment work that was due to be completed in June. Heavy rains had overwhelmed a temporary drainage system set up by the contractor.

More than 200,000 people across the country have been affected by the floods, with houses in flood-prone areas submerged and people seeking refuge in schools.

President William Ruto had instructed the National Youth Service to provide land for use as a temporary camp for those affected.

Israeli officials are growing concerned that the International Criminal Court could soon issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials over charges related to the war in Gaza, reports say. 

The court may accuse the senior government figures of pursuing an excessively harsh military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the New York Times is reporting, citing Israeli and foreign officials.  

The newspaper reports that any warrants issued by the ICC would "probably be seen in much of the world as a humbling moral rebuke" and cited an official as saying that the possibility of them has factored into Israeli decision-making in recent weeks. 

Such warrants could pose travel obstacles for the Israeli officials and they may be issued against Hamas leaders as well, according to the New York Times. 

KIRBY: US REMAINS HOPEFUL FOR ‘6 WEEKS OF PEACE’ WITH HOSTAGE DEAL THAT ‘HAMAS HAS NOT FULLY REJECTED’ 

The developments come after Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that "We expect the court to refrain from issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli political and security officials," Reuters reports. 

"We will not bow our heads or be deterred and will continue to fight," Katz reportedly added, warning Israeli embassies to step up security over the risk of a "wave of severe antisemitism." 

On Friday, Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X that "While the ICC will not affect Israel’s actions, it would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression." 

HAMAS’ SEXUAL VIOLENCE ON OCT. 7 REVEALED IN NEW DOCUMENTARY 

"Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense," he added. "The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it." 

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said in October that the court has jurisdiction over potential war crimes that are committed in the Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.  

The news agency reports Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction, but the Palestinian territories were admitted with member status in 2015. 

The ICC says on its website that it "investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression." 

Nine people charged with terrorism in connection with an alleged far-right plot to topple the German government went on trial Monday in one of three linked cases.

The trial opening in Stuttgart is the first to open in relation to the purported conspiracy, which came to light in late 2022. It is focused on those defendants of the Reich Citizens group who allegedly were part of its so-called military arm, German news agency dpa reported.

Federal prosecutors in December filed terrorism charges against a total of 27 people, one of whom has since died.

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Nine other suspects, among them a self-styled prince and a former far-right lawmaker, will go on trial on May 21 at a Frankfurt state court in the most prominent of the three cases. The other eight will go on trial in Munich on June 18.

The Frankfurt case includes Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, whom the group allegedly planned to install as Germany’s provisional new leader; Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany party; and a retired paratrooper.

The proceedings of the three cases are expected to last well into 2025.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on ZDF public television that the trial "shows the strength of our rule of law that the largest terrorist network of Reich Citizens to date (...) has to answer for its militant plans to overthrow the government."

Prosecutors have said that the accused believed in a "conglomerate of conspiracy myths," including Reich Citizens and QAnon ideology, and were convinced that Germany is ruled by a so-called deep state.

Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement, or Reichsbuergerbewegung in German, reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.

According to prosecutors, the group planned to storm into the parliament building in Berlin and arrest lawmakers. It allegedly intended to negotiate a post-coup order primarily with Russia, as one of the allied victors of World War II.

The nine defendants at the Stuttgart trial are accused of membership in a terrorist organization and "preparation of a high treasonous enterprise." One of the defendants is also on trial for attempted murder, dpa reported.

Most of the nine suspects in the Frankfurt trial are also charged with membership in a terrorist organization and "preparation of high treasonous undertaking." The other eight alleged members of the group have been charged in separate indictments at the court in Munich.

A dam collapsed in western Kenya early Monday, killing at least 40 people after a wall of water swept through houses and cut off a major road, police said.

The Old Kijabe Dam, located in the Mai Mahiu area of the Great Rift Valley region that is prone to flash floods, collapsed and water spilled downstream, police official Stephen Kirui told The Associated Press.

Ongoing rains in Kenya have caused flooding that has already killed nearly 100 people and caused the opening of schools to be postponed.

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Heavy rains have been pounding the country since mid-March and the Meteorology Department has warned of more rainfall.

The East African region is experiencing flooding due to the heavy rains, and 155 people have reportedly died in Tanzania while more than 200,000 people are affected in neighboring Burundi.

Kenya’s main airport was flooded on Saturday, forcing some flights to be diverted, as videos of a flooded runway, terminals and cargo section were shared online.

More than 200,000 people across Kenya the country have been affected by the floods, with houses in flood-prone areas submerged and people seeking refuge in schools.

President William Ruto had instructed the National Youth Service to provide land for use as a temporary camp for those affected.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers marked the two-year anniversary of Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza’s imprisonment by calling for his immediate release. 

Kara-Murza, who lives in solitary confinement in a Siberian maximum-security prison, was sentenced to 25 years last April for treason and other related charges as Russian authorities continue their crackdown on domestic dissent.

The Moscow City Court claimed Kara-Murza was guilty of "high treason" for "disseminating knowingly false information about the Russian Armed Forces" when he delivered a speech to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2022 that criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

His sentence is the longest term handed down to a political prisoner in the post-Soviet era.

Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., co-led a group of 80 bipartisan lawmakers urging the Biden administration to declare the Russian dissident as "unlawfully and wrongfully detained."

Fox News Digital obtained a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Cardin and other lawmakers demanding Kara-Murza’s release and the aforementioned designation.

"There is little time left to end the ongoing and unjust detention of U.S. Legal Permanent Resident and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza," the letter read in part. "Mr. Kara-Murza’s family has grave concerns that he may not survive much longer. His situation is even more perilous following the killing of Alexei Navalny. Mr. Kara-Murza is the most prominent imprisoned democracy activist still alive in Russia."

The State Department referred Fox News Digital to spokesperson Matthew Miller’s remarks on Kara-Murza's two-year imprisonment anniversary but did not provide specifics when asked about efforts to give the Russian opposition leader the designation sought by U.S. lawmakers.

"The Department of State continuously reviews the circumstances surrounding the detentions of U.S. nationals overseas, including those in Russia, for indicators that they are wrongful. When making assessments, the Department conducts a legal, fact-based review that looks into the totality of the circumstances for each case individually," a spokesperson said.

Russian human rights lawyer and the Center for European Policy Analysis’ Democracy Fellow Grigory Vaypan told Fox News Digital that Kara-Murza is now Russia’s "prisoner number one." 

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"He's definitely political prisoner number one on Putin's list, and his life is certainly in danger now that we see with the murder of Navalny that Putin's regime demonstrates to the world that it's willing to kill political prisoners in Russia," Vaypan said. 

He added that Kara-Murza, who was reportedly poisoned twice in 2015 and 2017 by agents of the Russian state, is essentially on "Putin’s death row." 

"His health is deteriorating. He has never fully recovered from the effects of those two poisonings. Now, he is not only in prison, he's on solitary confinement, which is basically indefinite. He can be in his tiny prison cell for many months, and with the effects of those two poisonings, his health is getting worse," Vaypan explained. "This is why it would be fair to say that he's essentially on Putin's death row now."

Memorial, Russia's oldest human rights group, counts roughly 700 political prisoners in Russia today. 

Political prisoners are further isolated and punished in an effort to prevent them from continuing to speak out against the Russian authorities. They can be put into solitary confinement, deprived of food, mail, phone calls with relatives or family visits. 

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"There's a wide array of those measures that the Russian prison authorities can resort to. And we're increasingly seeing that, especially after the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion [of] Ukraine, we've seen more people jailed for exercising their right to free speech," Vaypan told Fox News Digital. "And we've seen an increasing number of people being further harassed and pressured even while in prison."

Kara-Murza’s wife, Evgenia, reflected on the deaths of other Russian opposition figures like Alexei Navalny and Boris Nemtsov at the hands of the Putin regime.

"[They] target the most courageous, the most principled, those Russians who risk not only their freedom but very often their lives to show you that Russia can be different," she said at an event on Capitol Hill.

"As my husband put it, and I quote, ‘It is my hope that when people in the free world today think and speak about Russia, they will remember not only the war criminals who are sitting in the Kremlin but also those who are standing up to them because we are Russians too.’"

All new cars and trucks sold within the European Union and Northern Ireland after July 6, 2024, will be mandated to have safety technology activated to let drivers know they are speeding by beeping, vibrating or even slowing the vehicle down, to prevent car crashes.

The United Kingdom has chosen not to require intelligent speed assistance (ISA) to be used on its roads, though the safety feature will still be installed on vehicles and drivers will have the option to activate the technology each day.

ISA technology uses a camera on the front of the vehicle that can read speed limit signs. The information from the signs, along with GPS mapping data in the vehicle’s software, help the car with knowing which speed limit is in place where the vehicle is traveling.

Once the driver breaks the speed limit, ISA will either beep or vibrate the speed limit to let the driver know they are speeding.

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If the driver does not slow down, the technology will then take over and reduce the speed of the vehicle to the posted speed limit.

The Telegraph reported that Ford and other manufacturers have been offering ISA as an option since 2015, and since 2022, all new cars in Europe have required ISA to be installed.

The European Transport Safety Council estimates that ISA will reduce collisions by 30% and deaths by 20%.

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According to the safety council’s website, the technology will also help drivers avoid speeding tickets.

Leeds University said in a study that the U.K. could see a 12% decline in injuries caused by vehicle crashes, with ISA in place.

The European Union moved to require vehicles to have ISA technology in 2018.

It estimated at the time that every year, 25,000 people died on the roads, adding it was up to the EU to take action to reduce the number of deaths.