Briefly

UNITED STATES

Tariffs on Mexico, Canada delayed

US President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Thursday to grant a one-month exemption from tariffs on Mexico and Canada under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. About half of goods coming into the US from Mexico would fall under the exemption and around 38 percent of goods from Canada would qualify, the NBC News quoted a senior administration official as saying. When signing the executive orders at the White House, Trump told reporters that the policy adjustments would help US automakers during the "short-term transition" from now until April 2, when wide-ranging "reciprocal tariffs" will be announced.

SpaceX's Starship explodes again

SpaceX's massive Starship spacecraft exploded in space on Thursday minutes after lifting off from Texas, in the second straight failure this year for Elon Musk's Mars rocket program. The explosion caused the Federal Aviation Administration to halt air traffic in parts of Florida. The failure of the eighth Starship test comes just over a month after the seventh also ended in an explosive failure. The 123-meter rocket system is central to Musk's plan to send humans to Mars as soon as the turn of the decade. SpaceX described the failure in technical terms.

UGANDA

Ebola cases rise to 14 as new cluster appears

Uganda's Ebola caseload increased to 14 in the past week, Africa's top public health agency said on Thursday, with a new cluster emerging from a 4-year-old child who recently died of the infectious disease. Three of five new cases have been confirmed as Ebola, with two cited as probably Ebola, Ngashi Ngongo of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters. The Africa CDC reported that there was no direct epidemiological link between the new cluster and another one accounting for nine previous Ebola cases, including the first victim of the outbreak.

Agencies - Xinhua