NEW YORK, 05 June 2022, (TON): Two UN peacekeepers were killed when their armored personnel carrier hit an improvised explosive device in central Mali in the sixth incident in less than two weeks targeting the UN mission in the West African nation that has faced a decade-long Islamic insurgency.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said “he device that killed the Egyptian peacekeepers and wounded one other was planted on a road outside the town of Douentza in the Mopti region.”

He said “their APC was escorting a civilian convoy and was on its way from Douentza to Timbuktu when it hit the device.”

Dujarric said “the intent is to disrupt the lives of the Malian people, to disrupt transport, to disrupt security.”

“These roads are used by civilians, civilian trucks, civilian buses, but also by the security forces, whether it’s the Malian army or UN peacekeepers have been victims over and over again of improvised explosive devices.”

SEOUL, 05 June 2022, (TON): North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast, a day after South Korea and the US wrapped up their first combined military exercises involving an American aircraft carrier in more than four years.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said “North Korea had fired an unknown missile, without elaborating.”

Japan’s government also reported that the North had launched a suspected ballistic missile.

The launch also followed a visit to Seoul by the US point man on North Korean affairs, US Special Representative Sung Kim, who departed.

He met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim Gunn and Takehiro Funakoshi to prepare for all contingencies amid signs North Korea was preparing to conduct a nuclear test for the first time since 2017.

SEOUL, 05 June 2022, (TON): The reclusive state’s foreign ministry said “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sent a message of congratulations to Queen Elizabeth.”

Friday marked the second of four days of pomp, parties and parades to celebrate the 96-year-old monarch’s record-breaking 70 years on the throne.

Kim said in a message “I extend my congratulations to you and your people on the occasion of the National Day of your country, the official birthday of Your Majesty.”

Britain and North Korea established diplomatic relations in 2000.

North Korea is one of the few countries that the queen, who is also head of state of 14 other nations including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, has never visited during her long reign.

BEIJING, 05 June 2022, (TON): The country’s China Manned Space Agency said “China is preparing to launch a new three-person mission to complete work on its permanent orbiting space station.”

The Shenzhou 14 crew will spend six months on the Tiangong station, during which they will oversee the addition of two laboratory modules to join the main Tianhe living space that was launched in April 2021.

The agency said “their spaceship is due to blast off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert on Sunday morning at around 10:44 a.m. local time.”

Commander Chen Dong and fellow astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe will assemble the three-module structure joining the existing Tianhe with Wentian and Mengtian, due to arrive in July and October.

KYIV, 05 June 2022, (TON): A ship sent to load metal and ship it to Russia has entered the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, TASS news agency reported, the second vessel to arrive in the southeastern city since Russia completed its capture last month.

The ship has arrived and is in the port.

Earlier this week, a ship left Mariupol for Russia with a cargo of metal.

Ukraine said “the shipment from the port, whose capture gave Moscow an overland bridge linking mainland Russia and pro-Russian separatist territory to annexed Crimea, amounted to looting.”

BRUSSELS, 05 June 2022, (TON): NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has met with Finland’s prime minister and spoken to Turkey’s president as he seeks to overcome Turkish resistance to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance.

Stoltenberg, who visited Washington this week, tweeted “he met with Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin while there and discussed the need to address Turkey’s concerns and move forward” with the Finnish and Swedish membership applications.”

Russia’s war in Ukraine pushed the Nordic countries to apply to join NATO, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses Sweden and Finland of supporting Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists.

TEHRAN, 05 June 2022, (TON): Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that Iran took the oil from two Greek tankers last month in helicopter-launched raids in the Arabian Gulf.

The confiscations were in retaliation to Greece’s role in the US seizure of crude oil from an Iranian-flagged tanker the same week in the Mediterranean Sea over violating Washington’s harsh sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Khamenei said “they steal Iranian oil off the Greek coast, then our brave men who don’t fear death respond and seize the enemy’s oil tanker.”

The seizures ratcheted up tensions between Iran and the West already simmering over Iran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran has been enriching more uranium, closer to weapons-grade levels than ever before, causing concern that negotiators won’t find a way back to the accord and raising the risk of a wider war.

LONDON, 05 June 2022, (TON): British police said “they had briefly evacuated London’s Trafalgar Square, close to where celebrations are to be held later to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, but said the security alert had concluded shortly afterwards.”

Police said on Twitter “the incident has now been concluded and the square will reopen in due course.”

A police spokesman said earlier lots of checks were being carried out in the area, which is a short distance from where a concert is to be staged outside Buckingham Palace later in the day.

DHAKA, 05 June 2022, (TON): To unlock the true potential of Bangladesh’s e-commerce market, trends and practices, Bangladesh Brand Forum organised the country’s first-ever Bangladesh E-commerce Summit 2022.

A press release said “the summit took place at the sky ballroom of the Le Meridien hotel in Dhaka.”

The summit explored the continued rise of e-commerce and how pandemic changed the landscape for the e-commerce industry in Bangladesh.

The summit brought together a large and diverse community of change-makers, e-commerce experts and established retailers altogether and engaged with the foremost leaders, global experts, retailers and brands.

KABUL, 05 June 2022, (TON): The Taliban-controlled News Agency released a photo of a delegation led by Mawlawi Atiqullah Azizi, the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, leaving for Doha to attend a series of important meetings.

The delegation traveled to Doha, Qatar’s capital, for a number of important events, according to a tweet from Bakhtar News Agency.

The news agency did not provide any additional information about the trip, but it appears that a Taliban delegation traveled to Doha to meet with the group’s political leaders.

Qatar is one of the countries where the political office of the Taliban is still operating and the group’s officials are present in Doha.