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US Ambassador Laura Dogu arrived in Caracas on Saturday to reopen the American diplomatic mission in Venezuela after seven years of severed ties. The move comes almost one month after a military action ordered by US President Donald Trump removed the South American country's then-leader Nicolas Maduro from office. "My team and I are ready to work," Dogu said in a message posted by the US Embassy in Venezuela 's account on X. It also posted pictures of her upon her landing at Maiquetia airport. Venezuela and the United States broke off diplomatic relations in February 2019 in a decision by Maduro and closed their embassies mutually after Trump gave public support to lawmaker Juan Guaido in his claim to be the nation's interim president in January of that year. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, one of Venezuela's most powerful politicians and a Maduro loyalist, said earlier in January that reopening the US embassy would give the Venezuelan government a way to oversee the treatment
President Donald Trump promised West African leaders a pivot from aid to trade during a White House meeting on Wednesday as the region reels from the impact of sweeping US aid cuts. Trump said he sees great economic potential in Africa as the leaders of Liberia, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau boasted of their countries' natural resources and heaped praise on the US president, including their thanks for his help in settling a long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump described the nations represented at the meeting as all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, and great oil deposits, and wonderful people a definite shift from his first term, when he used a vulgar term to describe African nations. The meeting comes amid a shift in US global and domestic priorities under Trump's leadership. Earlier this month, US authorities dissolved the US Agency for International Development and said it was no longer followi
The Congress on Wednesday took a swipe at the Modi government over reports that Pakistan Army Chief Gen Asim Munir would be having lunch with US President Donald Trump, and said Indian diplomacy is being "shattered" and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "totally silent". Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh also said President Trump himself has "trumpeted" 14 times that he brought about a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, meaning he ended Operation Sindoor. "Field Marshal Asim Munir, the man whose inflammatory, incendiary and provocative remarks were linked directly to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attacks, is having lunch today with President Trump in the White House," Ramesh said. Is this why President Trump abandoned the G7 Summit a day early denying Mr. Narendra Modi a "huge hug", he asked. "Gen. Michael Kurilla, the US Central Command Chief calls Pakistan a 'phenomenal' partner in counter-terrorism operations. This is triple jhatka to Howdy Modi
Chinese diplomats threatened to cancel a summit and called top officials in two African countries to pressure lawmakers to quit an international parliamentary group critical of China, officials from the group told The Associated Press. It's an example of how far China will go to influence politicians overseas, and how that pressure can succeed behind closed doors. In the past year, lawmakers from Malawi and Gambia withdrew from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 38 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing, according to letters, messages and voice recordings obtained by The Associated Press. Founded in 2020, the group has coordinated sanctions on China over rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and rallied support for Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic island Beijing claims as its territory. African politicians and experts say it's an escalation of Chinese diplomatic pressure in Africa, where Beijing's influence
Leaders of India and China exchanged congratulatory messages on Tuesday marking the 75th anniversary of bilateral relations amid the efforts to reset the ties after over four years of freeze due to the eastern Ladakh military standoff. Today marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a media briefing here answering a question. President Xi Jinping and his Indian counterpart Droupadi Murmu besides Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Prime Minister Narendra Modi exchanged congratulatory messages respectively, he said. Both countries are ancient civilisations, major developing countries and important members of the Global South and both are in a crucial stage of modernisation, Guo said.