BRAZIL: Federal Police in Brazil carried out an operation on Wednesday to seize back more than 13 tons of gold mined illegally in the Amazon rainforest.

The police said they were also executing 27 search and three arrest warrants in seven states and the federal district related to the crackdown in the wake of the government announcing a health emergency for Yanomami indigenous people caused by prospectors.

UNITED STATES: One person was killed and three more wounded on Wednesday in a shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas.

Authorities said two people had been taken into custody but have provided no details of what led to the shooting.

Dozens of people have already been killed in mass shootings this year in the US.

PAKISTAN: A court in Pakistan acquitted on Wednesday the parents of exiled human rights activist Gulalai Ismail, a defence lawyer said, three years after the couple was arrested on charges of terror financing and sedition.

The 2019 arrests of Ms Ismail’s parents, Mohammad and Uzlifat Ismail, had drawn widespread international condemnation. 

Ms Ismail fled to the US in 2019 seeking asylum to avoid harassment by Pakistani security agencies over her investigations into alleged human rights abuses by soldiers.

SRI LANKA: China has expressed support for Sri Lanka ahead of a meeting on Friday of government lenders to poor economies.

Sri Lanka has a multibillion-dollar debt that has plunged the Indian Ocean nation into financial and political turmoil.

Beijing is one of Sri Lanka’s biggest creditors after extending them loans under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.