Briefly

UNITED STATES

Biden ends military support for Yemen war

US President Joe Biden announced on Thursday the country was ending support for a grinding five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen that has deepened suffering in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country. "This war has to end," Biden told diplomats in his first visit to the State Department as president, saying the conflict had created a "humanitarian and strategic catastrophe". The Yemen reversal is one of a series of steps Biden laid out on Thursday that he said would mark a course correction for US foreign policy. Biden also said the US is freezing troop withdrawal from Germany. The administration of his predecessor Donald Trump announced a repositioning plan for nearly 12,000 US troops stationed in Germany last summer, a move that drew criticism from home and abroad.

BRAZIL

Vale to pay $7b for deadly dam collapse

Brazilian mining giant Vale said on Thursday it had agreed to pay $7 billion in damages over the 2019 collapse of a mining waste dam that unleashed a flood of toxic sludge and killed 270 people. It is the largest damages agreement in Latin America, according to the government of Minas Gerais, the southeastern state where the disaster sent millions of tons of ironore mining waste gushing over houses and farmland. Vale, one of the world's biggest mining companies, agreed to compensate victims and their families, fund socioeconomic programs for the hard-hit region around the town where the dam was located, Brumadinho, and also fund projects to repair the blighted environment.

JAPAN

Sexism row adds to heat on Games boss

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Friday the Olympic Games were facing a "major issue" after the head of the organizing committee made sexist remarks, with criticism of his comments showing no sign of abating. Yoshiro Mori, 83, set off a firestorm on social media both at home and abroad this past week with comments that women talked too much, remarks made in a meeting with the Japan Olympic Committee that he later retracted and apologized for but refused to resign over. The row casts an additional shadow over the Tokyo Games, postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, especially with less than half a year left before the opening ceremony.

ETHIOPIA

Africa adds 16,000 km of roads in four years

The African Union Commission on Thursday said that the African continent added 16,066 kilometers of roads through the first Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa, or PIDA. The commission said in its End of Term Report for 2017 to 2021 published on Thursday that the AU pursued the implementation of the PIDA Priority Action Plan (2012-20) that resulted in an increase of 16,066 km of roads, 4,077 km of railways, as well as 3,506 km of power transmission lines. According to the AU, the initiative has also led to 17 more member states connected with regional fiber optic cables.

Agencies - Xinhua