The world at a glance

Alexandria, Virginia

Isis killer jailed: One of the four Islamic State militants known as “the Beatles” has been sentenced to eight life terms by a court in Virginia. Alexanda Kotey pleaded guilty last September to charges relating to the abduction, torture and execution of hostages. He will serve the first 15 years of his sentence in a US jail, but under the terms of his plea deal, he could then be moved to one in the UK. Kotey, 38, was born in London to a Ghanaian father and Greek Cypriot mother, and converted to Islam in his 20s. His fellow “Beatle”, El Shafee Elsheikh, was convicted last month; he will be sentenced in August.

Washington DC

Rwanda lawsuit: Relations of Paul Rusesabagina – the hotel manager whose life-saving actions during the Rwandan genocide were described in the film Hotel Rwanda – have filed a $400m lawsuit in the US against the Rwandan government, accusing it of conspiring to abduct, torture and imprison him. After the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina, now 67, left Rwanda for a new life in Belgium and the US, where he became a prominent critic of President Paul Kagame. His family say that in 2020 he was tricked into leaving his home in Texas, on the promise of a job in Burundi. Instead, he was taken to Rwanda, where, the lawsuit says, Kagame’s security agents abducted and tortured him. He was then tried on allegedly trumped-up charges, and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

Miami, Florida

Drug charge: The elected premier of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) has been arrested in a sting operation in Miami and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. According to US officials, Andrew Fahie had flown to Miami thinking he was going to meet Mexican drug traffickers, who wanted to arrange the transport of cocaine through the Caribbean islands; in fact, the supposed members of the Sinaloa cartel were undercover DEA agents. The BVI’s director of ports, and her son, have also been charged. Last year, the UK set up an inquiry into misgovernance in the British Overseas Territory, which is home to 30,000 people. At the time, Fahie said that there was no evidence of corruption.

Bogotá

Foam horror: Residents of a town outside the Colombian capital have been contending with vast cloud-like blobs of pungent white foam – which are believed to have been generated by detergents dumped in a local river. Pictures of the scene in Mosquera showed drifts of the foam burying pavements and towering over residents. “The smell is terrible, we have had to put up with the smell for a long time, and now with this big foam we are afraid that we will be in danger,” a local resident, Luz Mariela Diaz, told AFP. “God forbid someone falls in there, we won’t be able to find them.”

Guayaquil, Ecuador

Emergency measures: Ecuador’s president has declared a 60-day state of emergency in three provinces. Guillermo Lasso said the measures in Guayas, Manabí and Esmeraldas – which include 11pm to 5am curfews in some areas, and the deployment of thousands of security personnel – were needed to “enforce peace and order” following a sharp increase in drug-related violence. “Our peace will never be sacrificed to criminal gangs,” he said. The government has blamed the spike in violent crime on gangs with links to Mexican cartels, which it says are using the country as a transit route for cocaine that is being trafficked to the US. In the town of Durán, one of the places where a curfew is now in place, two bodies were recently found strung from a bridge, a form of killing often used by Mexican gangs.

Washington DC

Roe v. Wade “egregiously wrong”: The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined a woman’s right to an abortion, a leaked document suggests. The nine justices have been considering a case brought by the state of Mississippi; they are not due to publish their ruling until late June or early July, but this week Politico published a draft opinion describing the original ruling as “egregiously wrong” and saying decisions about access to abortion should be returned to states’ elected representatives. The court says the draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, does not reflect its final opinion; but pro-choice campaigners are braced for a bombshell ruling that would lead to abortion being banned or heavily restricted in about half of the 50 US states immediately or within weeks. President Biden responded to the leak by vowing to codify abortion rights into law.

Brasília

Twitter barbs: President Jair Bolsonaro has hit back at Leonardo DiCaprio for urging young Brazilians to register to vote in October’s presidential election. “Brazil is home to the Amazon and other ecosystems critical to climate change,” said the actor in a tweet. “What happens there matters to us all and youth voting is key in driving change for a healthy planet.” Bolsonaro, who is accused of dismantling environmental protections in the Amazon, tweeted back sarcastically: “Thanks for your support, Leo! It’s really important to have every Brazilian voting in the coming elections. Our people will decide if they want to keep our sovereignty on the Amazon or to be ruled by crooks who serve foreign special interest. Good job in The Revenant!”

New Delhi

Blistering spring heatwave: Millions of people in India and Pakistan are suffering in an extreme heatwave, before summer has even started. In April, northwest and central India recorded average maximum temperatures of 35.9°C and 37.78°C, the highest since records began 122 years ago. In Delhi, the mercury hit 40°C for seven days in a row last month, while in Jacobabad, in southeastern Pakistan, it reached 47°C. Across the region, dozens of people are believed to have died from heatstroke, and India has been forced to row back on its policy to reduce coal imports to cope with the pressure on electricity supplies caused by a surge in the use of air conditioning. Schools have closed in some states, and with high temperatures expected to continue, there are fears that this year’s wheat crops will fail.

Pretoria

Damning verdict: South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma “readily opened” doors to enable his cronies to “help themselves to the money and assets of the people”, a judicial inquiry has found. Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s 1,000-page report, delivered last week, detailed the findings of the fourth in a series of inquiries into “state capture”. Focusing on corruption at Eskom, the state utility firm which supplies more than 90% of the nation’s power, it found that Eksom had struck irregular deals worth 14.7bn rand (£743m), and concluded that Zuma was involved in the wholesale looting of the business in conjunction with the Indian businessmen Atul, Ajay and Rajesh Gupta. It is estimated that, in total, Zuma-era corruption cost South Africa £69bn.

Colombo

Political vacuum: Sri Lanka’s beleaguered president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has urged protesters to stop their regular demonstrations against his government – and join forces with him in a “pro-people struggle”. The island nation is in the throes of a devastating economic crisis, but Rajapaksa, whose brother Mahinda is prime minister, continues to resist intense pressure to step down. Last week, millions of workers joined a one-day general strike – the country’s first for 40 years – aimed at forcing the brothers to quit. The president has reshuffled his cabinet and proposed a national unity government in an attempt to calm public anger, but opposition parties are refusing to join a government headed by the Rajapaksas, who have dominated national politics for years, and who are accused of extreme mismanagement.

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Best of friends: Turkey’s President Erdogan publicly embraced Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on a visit to Jeddah last week, signalling that the rift between the two countries, caused by the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has been repaired. At a symbolic meeting, the two leaders made no mention of the tensions caused by the murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Erdogan, who is keen to attract foreign investment to help Turkey’s ailing economy, said he hoped to “open the doors to a new era” in relations, increasing political, economic and military cooperation.

Naypyidaw

Prison sentence: Aung San Suu Kyi, the former civilian leader of Myanmar, has been found guilty of corruption at a closed trial, and sentenced to a further five years in jail. She had previously been given six years for various lesser offences. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the new conviction, on “bogus” charges, reflects the military regime’s determination to silence her for good. “Destroying popular democracy in Myanmar also means getting rid of [her], and the junta is leaving nothing to chance,” said HRW’s deputy Asian director.

Tokyo

Defence budget doubled: Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has outlined plans to double the nation’s defence budget to about $86bn over the next five years, in the face of the increased threat posed by China, Russia and North Korea. Under Japan’s postwar pacifist constitution, defence spending has traditionally been kept to about 1% of GDP. A doubling to 2% – a course long urged by the US, a key ally – would take Japan to the benchmark set by Nato members.

Auckland, New Zealand

Tourists back: Last month, New Zealand reopened its borders to Australians; now, after a Covid shutdown lasting more than two years, it is welcoming tourists from more than 50 countries, including the UK. On Monday, there were emotional scenes at Auckland airport as the first visitors arrived, many for longed-for family reunions. Until 2020, three million tourists visited each year. Their return will provide a welcome economic boost, but there have been calls for measures to be taken to stop the country’s beauty spots becoming as crowded as they were before the pandemic.