WORLD

WASHINGTON | Xinhua |  The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will lay off 1,600 employees in the United States and place the majority of the remaining staff on administrative leave, the agency said Sunday. “As of 11:59 p.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time) on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025, all USAID …

BERLIN | Xinhua |  Germany’s conservative bloc, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), has taken the lead in the country’s 2025 federal election, preliminary results have showed. The election will determine the composition of the next Bundestag, or the lower house of the parliament. CDU/CSU secured …

LOS ANGELES | Xinhua | NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than next Friday, Feb. 28, to launch two new missions on one single rocket — one to study more than 450 million galaxies, and the other to observe the sun’s corona, according to a NASA update on Friday. …

VATICAN CITY | CNS |  Pope Francis experienced “an asthmatic respiratory crisis of prolonged magnitude, which also required the use of oxygen at high flows” Feb. 22, said the daily medical bulletin released by the Vatican. In addition to needing more oxygen, which was administered through a nasal cannula, the …

  Secretary to the Treasury, Ggoobi meets multinational coffee merchant Tamari in 2-day visit to Geneva Geneva, Switzerland | THE INDEPENDENT | Secretary to the Treasury, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development  Ramathan Ggoobi has expressed gratitude to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for its continuous support to Uganda. He highlighted the …

WASHINGTON | Xinhua | The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Caleb Vitello, was removed from his post, due to the Trump administration’s frustration with the slower-than-expected pace of deportations of illegal immigrants, U.S. media reported Friday. The administration is “shaking up the leadership” at ICE and …

ROME | TASS | Pope Francis may resign like his predecessor Benedict XVI if he is unable to cope with his duties for health reasons, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said. However, Ravasi noted in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper that Francis wanted to see through the 2025 Jubilee Year …

BEIJING | XINHUA |  Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, on Monday urged efforts to promote the healthy and high-quality development of the country’s private sector. Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks when attending a symposium …

  Xinhua is willing to work with partners from Chinese and Japanese media outlets and think tanks to tell moving stories of enhancing mutual trust and cooperation between China and Japan, and continue to record the history of mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples, said Xinhua’s President Fu …

TOKYO | Xinhua |  President of Xinhua News Agency Fu Hua met with Katsuhiko Sakai, president of Japan’s Jiji Press, in Tokyo on Tuesday, and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to advance media cooperation. Noting that the media is an important bridge for political exchanges, economic cooperation and cultural …