Santo Domingo (AFP) – Teams continue to work at the Jet Set nightclub as authorities announce the death toll has climbed to 218, the Dominican Republic’s worst disaster in decades. IMAGES
Kinshasa (AFP) – THE HERDS, an international public art and climate action project which is taking life-size animal puppets on a journey through major cities in Africa and Europe, begins it’s trek in DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa. The epic journey which ends in the Arctic Circle aims to highlight the impact of climate change on animals.
Beijing (AFP) – US tariffs go “against the whole world” and have “seriously impacted the stability of the global economic order” says Beijing, after President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 125-percent levy on China.
Cairns (Australia) (AFP) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says that it is “quite clear” that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs “doing harm to the United States”.
Taipei (AFP) – Stocks on the Taiwan Stock Exchange surge in early trading, tracking global markets higher, after US President Donald Trump suspended his highest trade tariffs, except for those on China. “I believe Taiwan has a very high chance of benefiting” from a US-China trade war, stock analyst Alex Lin tells AFP.
Wolfsburg (Germany) (AFP) – Veteran auto workers who spent decades at the plants of German giant Volkswagen in Wolfsburg fear the worst for their city since US President Donald Trump’s ramping up of import tariffs, sparking global market turmoil. Volkswagen, a 10-brand group which also includes Audi and Porsche as well as Seat and Skoda, sold just over one million vehicles in North America last year, 12 percent of its sales by volume.
Dundalk (Ireland) (AFP) – For an Irish whiskey producer in the town of Dundalk, near the UK border with Northern Ireland, tariffs of 20 percent on EU alcoholic drinks are an unexpected “curve ball”. But for competitors across the border, the tariff rate is just 10 percent. “Distilleries in the north of Ireland have an advantage. And in business, when you have an advantage, you take advantage,” says whiskey producer Tony Healy.
London (AFP) – In an era where computer algorithms automate trading at breakneck speeds, a dwindling number of London’s metal traders still conduct business in-person by shouting orders across Europe’s last so-called open-outcry trading floor. The nearly 150-year-old tradition takes place in a circle, or pit, of red-leather benches, called the ‘Ring’, where the daily global prices of copper, nickel, aluminium and other metals are set at the London Metal Exchange (LME). “All the shouting and screaming that we do here is used by the whole world,” says Giles Plumb, a veteran financial services trader.
Athens (AFP) – Protesters take to the streets of Athens to demand wage increases amid rising cost of living in Greece. More than 15,000 people have taken to the streets in demonstrations, according to police, part of the second 24-hour general strike in the country this year.
Images of rescue teams rushing to find survivors as the death toll in the collapse of the roof of a packed nightclub in the Dominican Republic increases to 124, according to emergency services. Rescue workers are pressing on with the search effort, now limited more to recovering bodies from the rubble over a day after the roof caved in. IMAGES
Panama City (AFP) – The United States does “not seek war with China” but will act to deter Chinese “threats” in the Americas, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warns in Panama. “We do not seek war with China…But together, we must prevent war by robustly and vigorously deterring China’s threats in this hemisphere,” Hegseth says on the second day of his visit to Panama, whose canal is at the center of a row between China and the United States. SOUNDBITE
Beijing rejects as “absolutely groundless” claims by Kyiv that “many” Chinese citizens are fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine. Zelensky told reporters including AFP on 8 April that Ukrainian troops had captured the two Chinese citizens fighting with Russian forces in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president said there was evidence that “many more Chinese citizens” were fighting with Russian forces, which China, which presents itself as a neutral party in the conflict, rejects.
