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Kathmandu (AFP) – A journalist and a protester were killed Friday as thousands of people gathered in Kathmandu demanding the restoration of the monarchy, police said, with security forces using live fire to disperse the rally.

Police said officers fired rubber bullets and live rounds into the air, after using tear gas and water cannons against the crowds.

Some demonstrators pelted stones at police, an AFP photographer saw.

"A protester has died of a gunshot wound," police spokesman Dinesh Kumar Acharya told AFP.

Acharya said that a journalist died after protesters set the building he was filming from on fire.

Thousands of demonstrators had gathered on Friday morning close to parliament, chanting that the king and country were "dearer to us than life".

Support for the restoration of the monarchy and re-enshrining Hinduism as the state religion has grown in tandem with popular dissatisfaction over political instability, corruption and lacklustre economic development.

During the rally several buildings and vehicles were vandalised, according to the Kathmandu Valley police station.

"Four police officers are also seriously wounded and are being treated," said station spokesman Shekhar Khanal.

Twenty-three demonstrators were wounded and 17 were arrested, he said, while authorities imposed a curfew in the area.

The Himalayan nation adopted a federal and republican political system in 2008 after parliament abolished the monarchy, as part of a peace deal that ended a decade-long civil war responsible for more than 16,000 deaths.

Before violence at the rally, protester Mina Subedi said "things have only deteriorated" in recent years.

"The country should have developed significantly. People should have had better job opportunities, peace and security and good governance. We should have been corruption-free," the 55-year-old told AFP.

Opposition parties had meanwhile marshalled thousands more people at a counter-demonstration elsewhere in the capital to "safeguard the republican system".

"Nepalis will not return to the past," said Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former guerrilla chief who led the decade-long Maoist insurgency before entering politics and has since served as prime minister three times.

"Maybe they have dared to raise their heads because us republic supporters have not been able to deliver as per the wishes and wants of the people."

Abdicated king Gyanendra Shah, 77, had largely refrained from commenting on Nepal's fractious politics, but recently made several public appearances with supporters.

Shah was crowned in 2001 after his elder brother king Birendra Bir Bikram Shah and his family were killed in a palace massacre that wiped out most of the royal family.

His coronation took place as the Maoist insurgency was raging in far-flung corners of Nepal.

Shah suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament in 2005, triggering a democratic uprising in which the Maoists sided with Nepal's political establishment to orchestrate huge street protests.

That eventually precipitated the end of the conflict, with parliament voting in 2008 to abolish Nepal's 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.

Tehran (AFP) – Large crowds took to the streets in the capitals of Iran, Iraq and Yemen on Friday for the annual show of support for Palestinians and denunciation of Israel.

Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemorations were launched in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, which has made support for the Palestinian cause a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The marches, which call for Jerusalem to be returned to the Palestinians, are traditionally held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Crowds gathered in the streets of Tehran after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Iranian people to protest against "the enemies' tricks".

Demonstrators waved Iranian and Palestinian flags, as well as those of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Many held placards reading "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", and chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans, an AFP journalist reported.

"I feel in the near future Gaza will be victorious and Israel, as history dictates, will face collapse and the flag of Islam's might will be hoisted in Gaza," Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, former commander of the army's ground forces, told AFP.

Keffiyeh-wearing 22-year-old student Fatemeh Mohebbi said she attended the event to "condemn the crimes that are happening".

Similar rallies were held across the country, state TV images showed.

"Your march on Quds Day will nullify all the enemies' tricks and false words," Khamenei said in a video message on Thursday.

The authorities had called on Iranians to come out in force for the demonstrations against arch foe Israel.

Palestinian militant group Hamas -- part of Iran's so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel and the United States -- said: "Jerusalem will remain at the heart of our battle against the occupation.

"The enemy will not succeed in breaking the will of our people, who are making sacrifices for their Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa," added the group, which has been at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.

Thousands also gathered in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, held by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, in demonstrations described by the rebels' TV channel as "the largest in the Arab and Islamic world".

Demonstrations were also held in several other cities, coming shortly after dawn air strikes by the United States hit six Yemeni provinces, including Sanaa, according to Huthi-affiliated media.

In the Iraqi capital, several hundred supporters of pro-Iran armed groups marched, waving flags in the colours of their factions, as well as Palestinian and Lebanese flags.

"The Iraqi Islamic Resistance tells Palestine and its people that its right to land and its right to resistance is a natural right," a leader of one of the armed groups, Qadhim al-Fartoussi, told the crowd.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem was due to give a speech that was called off after the cancellation of a demonstration scheduled to be held metres (yards) from a site struck by Israel on Friday.

Demonstrators had gathered on Thursday at the Burj al-Barajneh camp for Palestinian refugees south of Beirut, holding Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, as well as pictures of Qassem's predecessor Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last September.

A truce announced last week by AFC/M23 rebels in Walikale, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has collapsed after just a few days. The Congolese army now accuses the Rwandan-backed group of reinforcing its military positions in North and South Kivu provinces.

Walikale has become a strategic junction in the eastern DRC, where a long-running conflict between the army and rebel groups was reignited in December.

The town is now a key crossing point towards Kisangani, where the DRC's armed forces (FARDC) relocated their headquarters following the capture of Goma and Bukavu by the AFC/M23 earlier this year.

The announcement of a truce was taken seriously by Kinshasa, the FARDC and Kigali, but the withdrawal never materialised.

According to RFI's correspondents, the AFC/M23 fighters remain in the city, and tensions persist, particularly on the road to Kisangani, 400 kilometres to the west.

The FARDC are now accusing the Rwandan-backed AFC/M23 of strengthening its military positions in Walikale-centre as well as in South Kivu. On Thursday, the FARDC said the rebel movement is strengthening its troops and arsenal in all the areas it occupies.

On the humanitarian front, the situation in Walikale is increasingly critical.

The majority of the population has fled to the bush or other locations, leaving the town almost empty. Less than 40 patients remain in the local hospital, where a small medical team continues to operate.

Medicine stocks are being strictly rationed, Doctors without Borders, which is still present in the region, told RFI. "We don't know how long we can survive this situation," said one doctor.

A record 28 million people are facing acute hunger in the country, the United Nations said on Thursday, driven by the escalation of the conflict.

This has aggravated the longstanding humanitarian crisis in the DRC, with 2.5 million more people becoming acutely hungry since the most recent surge of violence in December, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint statement.

"The humanitarian situation in the DRC is deteriorating at an alarming rate. Families who were already struggling to feed themselves are now facing an even harsher reality," said the WFP's regional director Eric Perdison.

The agencies' latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis found "the highest number ever recorded of acutely food insecure populations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo".

Internally displaced people fleeing conflict are the most vulnerable. "The situation is particularly dire in the conflict-affected eastern provinces of DRC, where families have lost access to their livestock and livelihoods," the UN said.

The instability has also contributed to soaring food prices, with staples such as maize flour and palm oil subjected to price increases of up to 37 percent since December, the agencies said.

The DRC is also working towards a "safe, coordinated" exit of troops deployed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) from the east of the country, the foreign minister said on Thursday.

The 16-nation southern African regional bloc earlier this month decided to end its mission after a string of losses. It has announced a phased withdrawal from the area in which the M23 armed group has made major advances.

"The decision of SADC was a totally legitimate one and we fully respect it," said DRC foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, adding that her government was aware of the "extremely difficult conditions".

The conflict in the mineral-rich east of DRC threatens to draw in neighbouring countries, and southern and eastern African regional blocs have made numerous diplomatic efforts to find a solution.

(with newswires)

Hong Kong (AFP) – China's market regulator said it will review Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison's sale of Panama Canal ports to a US-led consortium, a Beijing-backed newspaper in Hong Kong reported on Friday.

The business empire built by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing offloaded its global ports business outside China -- including operations in the vital Central American canal -- this month to a group led by giant asset manager BlackRock for $19 billion in cash.

The State Administration for Market Regulation was "aware of this transaction and will conduct a review in accordance with the law, to protect fair market competition and public interest", a spokesperson for the regulator said, quoted by Beijing-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao.

The deal came after weeks of pressure from US President Donald Trump, who refused to rule out military intervention to "take back" the crucial waterway from alleged Chinese control.

The agreement was to be signed by April 2 but it came under fire from two Chinese government offices overseeing Hong Kong affairs, one based in Beijing and the other in the former British colony.

They reposted critical newspaper articles in recent weeks including an op-ed that blasted the move as "betraying and selling out all Chinese people".

On Friday night, those two offices republished the exchange between Ta Kung Pao and the regulator about the review.

The signing of the April 2 deal will now not go ahead as planned, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper reported on Friday, citing "a source close to Hutchison".

The Chinese regulator and CK Hutchison did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Jet Deng, a senior partner at the Beijing office of law firm Dentons, said China's antitrust laws can be applicable outside its borders, similar to those of the United States and the European Union.

Once a deal meets China's reportability threshold, a declaration is required even if the transaction takes place abroad, as long as the parties involved had substantial operations in mainland China, Deng told AFP before the regulator's announcement.

Firms that fail to declare may be fined for up to 10 percent of their operating income from the preceding year, he added.

CK Hutchison is registered in the Cayman Islands and the assets being sold are all outside China.

Hong Kong leader John Lee said last week that concerns about the sale "deserve serious attention", adding that the city will "handle it in accordance with the law and regulations".

The conglomerate has not publicly responded to criticism of the transaction.

French prosecutors have requested a seven-year jail sentence and a €300,000 fine for French former president Nicolas Sarkozy for allegedly taking millions of euros from late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to help his 2007 election campaign.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been on trial since January on charges of "concealing the embezzlement of public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime".

Sarkozy, president from 2007-2012, denies the charges.

On the final day of the trail on Thursday, financial prosecutor Sebastien de La Touanne called for a seven-year sentence describing the accusations against Sarkozy and the 12 other defendants as "high-intensity corruption".

"A very dark picture of a part of our republic has emerged," he told the court.

Referring to Moamer Kadhafi, De La Touanne said Sarkozy had concluded "a Faustian corruption pact with one of the most unsavoury dictators of the past 30 years".

Prosecutors also requested a five-year ban on Sarkozy running for office and exercising certain privileges.

Yeongdeok (South Korea) (AFP) – Overnight rain helped douse some of South Korea's worst-ever wildfires, authorities said Friday, as the death toll from the unprecedented blazes raging for nearly a week reached 28.

More than a dozen fires have ravaged large areas of the country's southeast, destroying an ancient temple, and forcing around 37,000 people to evacuate.

The flames blocked roads and knocked out communication lines, causing residents to flee in panic as fireballs rained down on cars stuck in traffic jams to escape the area.

The flames have been fanned by high winds and ultra-dry conditions, with the area experiencing below-average rains for months after South Korea experienced its hottest year on record in 2024.

But overnight Thursday it rained in the affected area, helping firefighters to contain some of the worst blazes.

"The rain that fell from the afternoon into the early morning aided the firefighting efforts," Korea Forest Service chief Lim Sang-seop said.

The rain "reduced the haze, improving visibility, and the cooler temperatures compared to other days create very favourable conditions for firefighting efforts", he said.

South Korea's interior ministry said a total of 28 people had been killed as of Friday morning, and 37 others were injured -- nine seriously.

The fatalities include a pilot in his 70s whose helicopter crashed Wednesday while trying to contain a fire, as well as four firefighters and other workers who lost their lives after being trapped by rapidly advancing flames.

Wakayama (Japan) (AFP) – Since his teenage years, Koji Hayashi has dreaded one thing: his stubborn, once-vivacious mother being hanged for murder after failing to win her long campaign for a retrial.

Left almost unchanged for a century, Japan's current retrial system is often labelled the "Unopenable Door" because the chances of being granted a legal do-over are so slim.

But hopes have grown of a change since a court last year overturned the wrongful conviction of the world's longest-serving death row prisoner Iwao Hakamada, whose case took 42 years to be reopened.

The government is asking legal experts to study the system, and some hope they will recommend revising the arduous retrial process to better safeguard the interests of convicts like Hakamada.

Masumi Hayashi, 63, is notorious in Japan for a crime she swears she didn't commit -- killing four people by putting arsenic into a pot of curry at a summer festival in 1998.

Koji isn't entirely convinced his mother is innocent, but "I think there's a good chance", he told AFP.

"All I want is the truth, and a retrial is the only way to get it," the 37-year-old truck driver said.

Since the Supreme Court upheld her death sentence in 2009 Masumi has applied for retrial several times, with her latest bid seeking to discredit a forensic analysis.

"The thought of a noose around my mum's neck, even as she insists on her innocence, terrifies me so much my hands shake," Koji said at his minimal-style apartment in western Japan's Wakayama region.

"But when I saw how long it took Hakamada to be exonerated, I accepted this is the kind of fight I'm up against. I will bury my emotions, and deal with it."

Wakayama's prosecutor's office declined to discuss Masumi's case when contacted by AFP.

Evidence against her is mostly circumstantial, and the motive remains unexplained for what the Supreme Court described as indiscriminate killings.

Masumi has however admitted to a history of conspiring with her husband to use arsenic to orchestrate insurance fraud -- testament, judges said, to her "deep-seated criminality".

Koji, whose first name is a pseudonym, sometimes imagines what life could have been: "getting married, having kids and building a house, you know, ordinary happiness."

In reality, being Masumi's son has entailed a lifetime of discrimination, from an annulled engagement to online messages wishing him dead and his older sister's suicide four years ago.

Only five retrials have been granted in Japan's post-war history for death row prisoners, all resulting in exoneration.

The latest was for 89-year-old Hakamada, who in September was acquitted of a quadruple 1966 murder, following decades in solitary confinement.

Hakamada's lawyers first sought his retrial in 1981 but a back-and-forth of legal appeals meant it did not materialise until 2023.

Japan is "significantly lagging behind the world" in ensuring swift retrials, said former judge Hiroaki Murayama -- who himself ordered Hakamada's landmark retrial.

Just one percent of around 1,150 retrial applications from all convicts, processed in Japan between 2017 and 2021, won approval

Judges and defence lawyers are denied access to a trove of prosecutor-held evidence, including material that could potentially prove someone innocent, Murayama told AFP.

And legal loopholes mean retrial applications can be ignored with impunity for years in a system "too snail-paced" to protect against judicial errors, he added.

Steps taken in other countries against wrongful convictions include banning prosecutors from appealing retrial orders and weakening their monopoly on evidence.

But Japan's 99.9 percent conviction rate -- conveying rock-solid trust to prosecutors -- leaves little room for guilty verdicts to be questioned..

Prosecutors say easier access to their evidence raises privacy concerns, and Tokyo prosecutor Kaori Miyazaki warned last year against giving the impression "that trials can be casually redone even after rulings are finalised".

"That would cause a major loss of trust in our criminal judiciary," she told a justice ministry panel.

Former prisoner Kazuo Ishikawa died this month aged 86 after spending over 30 years seeking a retrial for the 1963 murder of a schoolgirl.

That prospect looms over the Hayashi family, including Masumi's 79-year-old husband, Kenji.

"It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" but giving up their joint retrial fight "would crush my son", he said.

"I'm nearly 80 though -– my body is reaching its limit," said Kenji, who uses a wheelchair after a brain haemorrhage.

Koji, the son, believes Japan is better off without capital punishment.

But if a retrial found Masumi guilty, he would eventually "have to accept" that she must be executed.

Meanwhile Masumi lives in a solitary cell only three tatami mats wide.

The political party of South Sudan's First Vice President Riek Machar has warned that his arrest on Wednesday invalidates the country's 2018 peace deal.

First Vice President Riek Machar, South Sudan's opposition leader, is reportedly under house arrest.

Machar's Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) party said that it was trying to locate him, after that the defence minister and chief of national security "forcefully entered" Machar's residence and delivered an arrest warrant on Wednesday evening.

Machar was then held at his house overnight with his wife and two bodyguards.

He is accused of being implicated in fighting between the military and the White Army, an ethnic Nuer militant organisation, in Nasir, Upper Nile State this month, senior SPLM-IO official Reath Muoch Tang said in a statement.

The party added on Thursday that the arrest of Machar, long-time rival to President Salva Kiir, had invalidated the 2018 peace deal and risked plunging the country back into war.

Under the deal, which ended the 2013 to 2018 civil war between forces loyal to Machar on one side and Kiir on the other, South Sudan has five vice-presidents. Machar is currently serving as first vice-president.

The United Nations has warned that the recent clashes in Nasir between the army and the White Army, a militia with historical ties to Machar, along with a rise in hate speech, could reignite the civil war.

Machar's SPLM-IO party denies ongoing links with the White Army.

South Sudan's army and government spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Rumours of Machar's imminent arrest have been rife since early March, according to RFI's correspondent in the country, when the crisis in the Upper Nile region in the northeast of the country led to the arrest of several officials from his party in Juba.

The UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Wednesday called for "an immediate cessation of hostilities and urgent dialogue between the country’s leaders to de-escalate tensions and restore calm".

"To prevent a relapse into civil war, the parties must recommit to the Revitalised Peace Agreement by ceasing all hostilities and strictly adhering to the ceasefire, resolving grievances through dialogue, and reconvening as a truly unified government,” said the head of UNMISS, Nicholas Haysom, in a statement.

He warned that "a return to widespread conflict... will devastate not only South Sudan, but the entire region".

Earlier this month, Kiir's government detained several officials from Machar's party, including the petroleum minister and the deputy head of the army, in response to the clashes with the White Army in Upper Nile State.

The United States on Thursday called on Kiir to release his rival. "We are concerned by reports South Sudan's First Vice President Machar is under house arrest," Washington's Bureau of African Affairs wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

"We urge President Kiir to reverse this action and prevent further escalation of the situation. It is time for South Sudan's leaders to demonstrate sincerity of stated commitments to peace," the post continued.

The African Union also released a statement on Machar's arrest on Thursday, saying: "The chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, expresses deep concern over reports regarding the detention of the First Vice President of the Republic of South Sudan, Dr Riek Machar."

On Wednesday, the UN reported fighting between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar close to the capital Juba.

The 2013-2018 civil war, which was fought largely along ethnic lines, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the world's youngest nation.

(with newswires)

Beirut (Lebanon) (AFP) – Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has accused Israel of exploiting followers of his minority faith in Syria as part of a broader plan to divide the Middle East along sectarian lines.

Israel wants "to implement the plan it has always had... which is to break up the region into confessional entities and extend the chaos," said Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanese politics for more than four decades.

"They want to annihilate Gaza, then it will be the West Bank's turn... they are trying to destabilise Syria, through the Druze but also others," he told AFP in an interview Wednesday.

"It's a dangerous game."

Israel has been making overtures towards Syria's Druze community since Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December after more than 13 years of war.

Since then, Israel has sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone along the armistice line on the Golan Heights, and war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported regular Israeli incursions deeper into southern Syria.

The Druze faith has followers in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, including the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

They account for about three percent of Syria's population and are concentrated in the southern province of Sweida.

This month, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said 10,000 humanitarian aid packages had been sent to "the Druze community in battle areas of Syria" over the past few weeks.

"Israel has a bold alliance with our Druze brothers and sisters," he told journalists.

Israel also authorised the first pilgrimage in decades by Syrian Druze clerics to a revered shrine in Israel.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would not allow Syria's new rulers "to harm the Druze", following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in the suburbs of Damascus.

Druze leaders rejected Katz's warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria.

Druze representatives have been negotiating with Syria's new authorities on an agreement that would see their armed groups integrated into the new national army.

The talks had almost reached completion but "Israeli pressure" on some parties prevented the accord from being finalised, a source close to the negotiations told AFP, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.

Jumblatt noted that during the French mandate in the 1920s and 1930s, "Syria was divided into four entities: an Alawite state, a Druze state, the state of Damascus and the state of Aleppo", the latter two being Sunni Muslim.

"The Druze, with the other Syrian nationalists, were able to prevent the division of Syria" by launching a revolt and the plan later collapsed, he said.

He expressed hope that any new division of Syria could be avoided, appealing to Arab leaders to support interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Jumblatt in December was the first Lebanese official to meet Sharaa after his Islamist group spearheaded the offensive that ousted Assad.

Sharaa told Jumblatt that Syria would no longer exert "negative interference" in Lebanon, after Assad's dynasty was accused of destabilising Lebanon for years and assassinating numerous Lebanese officials, including Jumblatt's father.

Kamal Jumblatt, who founded the Progressive Socialist Party and opposed Assad's father Hafez over his troops' intervention in the Lebanese civil war, was killed near the Syrian border in 1977.

This month, Syrian security forces arrested former intelligence officer Ibrahim Huweija, suspected of numerous killings including that of Jumblatt's father.

"He's a big criminal, he also committed crimes against the Syrian people and should be tried in Syria," Jumblatt said.

Lebanon's new authorities have been under pressure since a devastating war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, an Assad ally, Jumblatt said.

"The Americans want Lebanon to normalise ties with Israel," he said.

Niger's ruling junta said there would be a five-year transition to constitutional rule starting from Wednesday, in an announcement during a signing ceremony for a new transition charter.

Junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani was sworn in as the country's transitional president on Wednesday.

A senior government official said Tiani will head the nation over a five-year "flexible" transition to constitutional rule.

The move effectively rebuffed attempts by the regional bloc to quicken the return to democracy.

The military in power in the Sahelian country staged a coup in 2023 and ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.

The five-year “flexible” transition period began on Wednesday, according to Mahamane Roufai, the secretary general of the government, who was speaking at a ceremony in the capital Niamey where the new transition charter recommended by a recent national conference was approved.

Tchiani, an army veteran, was also elevated to the country’s highest military rank of army general, cementing his grip on power.

The new president would have been in power for about seven years by the end of the transition period in 2030, following similar patterns of prolonged stints in power in Africa’s junta-led countries, including Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso.

The time frame announced on Wednesday was in line with recommendations made in February by a commission following national discussions.

Niger’s junta had initially proposed a three-year transition period right after the coup but that was rejected by Ecowas, which called it a provocation and threatened to intervene with the use of force.

Ecowas : West African economic group

Kingston (Jamaica) (AFP) – Jamaica on Wednesday rebuffed a push by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to sever a program that brings in Cuban doctors, who have become critical to health care in fellow Caribbean countries despite allegations of labor exploitation.

Donald Trump's top diplomat held talks on the sidelines of a Caribbean summit aimed in part at finding new ideas on violence-ravaged Haiti, with host Jamaica saying it would help the new US administration in a "global war on gangs."

But Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness made clear his differences with Rubio on the doctors, who are sent by Cuba around the world and have become a major source of revenue for the cash-strapped government.

Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous foe of the communist government in Havana, announced last month that the Trump administration would bar visas for foreign government officials who assist the program, which he characterized as human trafficking.

"Let us be clear, the Cuban doctors in Jamaica have been incredibly helpful to us," Holness said at a joint news conference with Rubio.

He said that the 400 Cuban doctors in the country filled a deficit as Jamaican health workers emigrated.

"We are, however, very careful not to exploit the Cuban doctors who are here. We ensure that they are treated within our labor laws and benefit like any other worker," Holness said.

"So any characterization of the program by others certainly would not be applicable to Jamaica."

Rubio promised to engage with Jamaica to have a "better understanding" of how it treats Cuban doctors.

"Perhaps none of this applies in the way it's handled here," Rubio said.

But Rubio said the United States remained opposed "in general" to the program.

"The regime does not pay these doctors, takes away their passports and basically, it is, in many ways, forced labor, and that we cannot be in support of," Rubio said.

The US special envoy on Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Caron, has also credited Barbados with taking steps to pay Cuban directors directly.

Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne earlier this month sharply denounced the US pressure, saying the absence of Cuban doctors would "literally dismantle our healthcare services and put our people at risk."

According to Cuban official figures, Cuba sent 22,632 medical professionals to 57 countries in 2023, with Cuba earning $6.3 billion in 2018 and $3.9 billion in 2020, in part in the form of oil from Venezuela.

Sydney (AFP) – An "unprecedented" mass bleaching event has been recorded off Australia's western coast, scientists said Wednesday, turning huge chunks of a celebrated reef system a sickly dull white.

A months-long marine heatwave had "cooked" the sprawling Ningaloo Reef, ocean scientist Kate Quigley said, part of a world heritage-listed marine park renowned for vibrant corals and migrating whale sharks.

Although environment officials were still verifying the scale of damage, data collected by Quigley and a team of scientists found it was on track to be the reef's worst mass-bleaching event in years.

"Warm oceans have just cooked the corals this year," Quigley told AFP.

"It wouldn't be amiss to throw in the word 'unprecedented'.

"It has gone deep, it's not just the top of the reef that is bleaching. Many different species of coral are bleaching."

Branching through shallow waters along Australia's western coast, the 300-kilometre (185-mile) Ningaloo Reef is one of the largest "fringing reefs" in the world.

The unfolding mass bleaching looked to be the worst since 2011, Quigley said.

Ocean waters lapping Western Australia have been as much as three degrees warmer than average over recent summer months, the government weather bureau said.

Rising temperatures shot past the "bleaching threshold" sometime in mid-January, according to monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bleaching occurs when warm waters trigger a biological response forcing coral to expel the colourful algae embedded in their tissues.

"Bleaching is a sickness, but it does not mean outright death," said Quigley, a research scientist with environment-focused charity Minderoo Foundation.

"But if it is bad enough, the corals will die."

Government data showed smaller patches of coral bleaching had also been spotted at the northern tip of the more famous Great Barrier Reef on Australia's east coast.

Quigley said the Ningaloo Reef and the Great Barrier Reef were shaped by different weather patterns -- and it was rare to see bleaching on both at the same time.

"What we're seeing is the level of ocean warming is so great, it's overriding the local conditions in some places.

"It's just shocking. When we take a national snapshot, it's extremely concerning."

The Great Barrier Reef, a popular tourist drawcard, has suffered five mass bleachings over the past eight years.

Quigley said the extent of damage on the Great Barrier Reef was not currently widespread enough to be considered "mass bleaching".

Global average temperatures were the hottest on record in 2024, with prolonged heatwaves in many of the planet's oceans causing alarm.

A prolonged global episode of heat-related bleaching impacted almost 80 percent of the world's coral reefs between 2023 and 2024, a leading US science agency found in October.

Warming seas, overfishing and pollution are threatening coral reef systems the world over, warned a major UN report in December.

The average sea surface temperature around Australia was the "highest on record" in 2024, an Australian National University study reported last week.

Australia sits on bulging deposits of coal, gas, metals and minerals, with mining and fossil fuels stoking decades of near-unbroken economic growth.

But it is increasingly suffering from more intense heatwaves, bushfires and drought, which scientists have linked to climate change.