BEIJING, Sept 5 (Reuters) – One person has been confirmed dead and 11 others remain missing after torrential rains triggered a mudslide early Saturday morning in a town in China’s Jiangxi Province, local authorities said.

Due to heavy rainfall brought by Typhoon Saudel, the mudslide struck around 4 a.m. (2000 GMT Friday) Saturday in Gaoping Town of Jiangxi’s Suichuan County, damaging 12 houses, the county said in a statement.

State broadcaster CCTV also reported more than 10 people were trapped after the landslide hit the same town, state broadcasters CCTV reported.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by William Mallard and Shri Navaratnam)

SYDNEY, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Australia’s most populous city Sydney baked in a burst of sweltering spring heat on Saturday, raising the risk of bushfires and prompting authorities to issue a ban on lighting fires.

The heat comes as a powerful El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific, expected to be among the strongest in decades, drives hotter and drier conditions across southern Australia during the September-November spring season.

On Saturday, the nation’s weather forecaster said temperatures in the New South Wales capital, home to 5.6 million people, were set to hit 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit), nearly 13C above average.

At Sydney Airport, the temperature was already 28.6C (83.48F) at 11:30 a.m. (0130 GMT)local time, more than seven degrees above the September mean maximum temperature, according to forecaster data.

“Fresh to strong and gusty northwesterly winds developing during the morning, combined with dry, unseasonably warm conditions, will result in elevated fire dangers across the Greater Sydney Region today,” the forecaster said.

State fire authorities issued a total fire ban for Sydney where they rated fire risk as “extreme”, the second highest danger rating.

Climate change is causing extreme heat and fire weather to become more common in Australia, a bushfire-prone country of around 27 million. In January, thousands of firefighters battled bushfires in the southeast that razed homes, cut power to thousands of homes and burned swathes of bushland.

(Reporting by Sam McKeith in SydneyEditing by Shri Navaratnam)

By Dave Sherwood

HAVANA, Sept 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. embassy in Havana issued a health alert for Cuba on Friday, warning travelers and residents of a spike in intestinal illnesses and diarrhea caused by failing water and electricity supply, even as the Trump administration continued to hold back fuel shipments necessary for power generation on the island.

“The U.S. Embassy has noted a significant increase in diarrheal illness across Cuba, associated with the continuing degradation of the water and energy infrastructure,” the alert stated. “This degradation affects water supply, and food storage and temperature control.”

The U.S. warning comes nine months after the Trump administration imposed a fuel blockade on the communist-run island, contributing to a sharp spike in power cuts and complicating refrigeration and sanitary measures in homes and businesses.

U.N.-appointed human rights experts have called the Trump fuel blockade a violation of international law. A team of U.N. experts in August warned of a growing risk of disease outbreaks on the island as the U.S. has tightened sanctions.

“The humanitarian consequences are already unfolding into a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development,” the experts said.

The Trump administration says sanctions are necessary to force a change in the island’s government, a decades-long aim of the U.S. following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Trump has called Cuba a national security threat to the United States.

Residents throughout Cuba have for months complained of rampant illnesses that cause several days of diarrhea, fever and body aches, leaving many bedridden.

During the Caribbean’s sultry summer, sleep without air conditioning or a fan often becomes impossible, as does food preservation without refrigeration. Blackouts spanning days have become commonplace amid the U.S. fuel blockade.

The U.S. health alert on Friday advised travelers and residents in Cuba to “be cautious of … perishable foods that may have been inadequately stored,” and warned against eating “foods that appear to have been sitting at room temperature for extended periods.”

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Tom Hogue)

By Mike Stone, Erin Banco and David Jeans

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) – The White House has reviewed candidates to potentially replace Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, three people familiar with the discussions told Reuters, a sign that more leadership change could come for a Pentagon already facing unusually high staff turnover.

The effort, which was under way in June, has included conversations with senior lawmakers in the Senate about whether the administration’s picks would have enough support to be confirmed, said two of the people, one of whom added that the review was still going on as of late August. Reuters could not determine when the White House began considering candidates.

The three sources said no decision had been made to remove Feinberg from his post. They did not say why the White House was reviewing potential replacements and did not specify which candidates the White House was considering.

“These so-called anonymous ‘sources’ have no idea what they are talking about,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.

“President Trump appreciates the work of Secretary Hegseth, Deputy Secretary Feinberg, and the entire Department of War, whose record of success in Operation Epic Fury, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Midnight Hammer speaks for itself,” she said, referring to U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

The Pentagon denied a process was under way to replace Feinberg. Asked for comment by Reuters, Hegseth said in a statement that Feinberg has his full support and “isn’t going anywhere.”

The Pentagon did not provide a comment from Feinberg and declined to make him available for an interview.

A departure by Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, would be the most senior staff change for a department that has already seen a string of high-profile departures under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned this week following months of tension with Hegseth, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Army has declined to comment on the reasons for his departure. Navy Secretary John Phelan and several senior Army leaders have also departed in recent months.

Feinberg, who vowed to accelerate U.S. munitions production, has not yet met that goal, according to analysts who say that the U.S. industrial base cannot ramp up quickly. Some defense industry executives say his task has been complicated by the slow pace of Congress appropriating funds despite immense pressure from the administration.

Feinberg “has worked tirelessly to rebuild our Defense Industrial Base and ensure our military has everything it needs to win, and I look forward to continuing to work with him,” Hegseth said in his statement to Reuters, adding, “He’s doing a tremendous job for President Trump, for the Department, and for our warfighters.”

FRUSTRATION OVER THE IRAN WAR

Trump has increasingly expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the six-month-old Iran war, which has settled into a costly standoff between the U.S. and Iran.

One of the costs has been a drawdown of U.S. weapons stockpiles. Reuters has reported that the U.S. military faces significant shortages of certain munitions, which have alarmed Congress and military leaders.

Trump has dismissed the concerns, saying the U.S. has “far more munitions than anyone in the world.”

But in an exchange with Trump at Camp David earlier this month, according to the Washington Post, Hegseth blamed Feinberg for letting stockpiles of long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors shrink. 

The White House has called the report “fake news.” In a statement to Reuters, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said: “Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg.”

Appointed by Trump last year, Feinberg has attempted to reshape the Pentagon by ramping up the U.S. military’s direct investments in companies and delivering loans to military contractors through multiple offices inside the department, including the Office of Strategic Capital and the newly created Economic Defense Unit.

In an August 18 memo he sent to defense firms and seen by Reuters, Feinberg called on contractors to speed up production and provide more transparency around pricing. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the memo.

Feinberg has also come under scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has raised concerns about whether his former firm Cerberus could benefit from the Pentagon’s spending on its Golden Dome missile defense program.

“There are no conflicts of interest between Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg and Cerberus,” said Parnell. “He has completely divested from Cerberus and has recused himself from any conversations or business relationships between the Executive Branch and Cerberus.”

Cerberus did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, Erin Banco in New York, and David Jeans in New York; Editing by Don Durfee, Joe Brock and Edmund Klamann)

LA PAZ, Sept 4 (Reuters) – At least 10 people were killed and dozens more injured on Friday after an explosion at a military barracks in the Bolivian municipality of Viacha, about 30 km (19 miles) from La Paz, local authorities said.

The blast occurred at around 2:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) local time in an area used to store pyrotechnic material, authorities said.

While the cause has yet to be established, officials said the blast originated from the defense ministry’s fireworks stockpile.

Viacha health director Rita Nebraska told local television that between 10 and 15 people were believed to have died in the incident, while 62 people were injured. Fourteen of the wounded were transferred to hospitals in La Paz, including a girl with third-degree burns, she said.

Police said more than 50 people were injured and dozens of homes damaged, largely by windows shattered in the blast.

Ambulances, medical teams and police were deployed to the military complex to assess the damage and evacuate the wounded to health centers.

Nebraska said firefighters had warned that a heat source remained at the site, raising the risk of another explosion, and urged residents to stay at least 150 meters away.

(Reporting by Daniel Ramos; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by William Mallard and Shri Navaratnam)

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday endorsed a new world map that represents Africa more accurately in its larger size, a culmination of a recent campaign led by African countries and advocacy groups.

Friday’s resolution, which was sponsored by Togo and backed by members of the African Union, was passed with 164 member states voting in favor. Only the U.S. voted against it while six other countries — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine — abstained.

The vote encourages governments and institutions around the world to replace the traditional Mercator map, commonly used since the 16th Century, with the Equal Earth projection that advocates and geographers say shows locations more accurately.

The Mercator projection shows Greenland and Africa as appearing to be about the same size whereas in the Equal Earth projection that shows continents in their true proportions, Africa is 14 times larger than Greenland.

Friday’s resolution does not ban the Mercator projection or impose a replacement, but only encourages the use of the Equal Earth projection, the U.N. said in its report.

“Maps shape our understanding of the world,” the global body quoted Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey as saying before the vote. “They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.”

Africa No Filter, one of the lead campaigners for the adoption of the new map, hailed the resolution, adding: “We want to see accurate maps in schools, textbooks, newsrooms, businesses and on the digital platforms billions of people use every day.”

Several countries hailed the adoption and urged the adoption of the Equal Earth map. “Changing the map obviously doesn’t change the world. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on X after the vote.

The Mercator map was designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to help European navigators at sea, but advocates say it distorted landmasses by enlarging regions near the poles such as North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.

The 2018 Equal Earth projection, on the other hand, follows the Earth’s curvature and shows continents in their true proportions.

Geographers say the traditional map is only useful for navigation.

“Outside of that very narrow navigation application, there is no point in using it,” according to Mark Monmonier, a Syracuse University professor of geography.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s Supreme Court plunged further into an institutional crisis on Friday, with two of its best known justices now requesting major sanctions against each other.

Justice Alexandre de Moraes, 57, became a household name after leading the case that put former President Jair Bolsonaro in prison last year for an attempted coup. His colleague Andre Mendonca, 53, is the court’s first evangelical member, appointed by Bolsonaro.

Their recent animosity stems from a sprawling federal investigation into the financial fraud surrounding the collapsed Banco Master and its disgraced owner, Daniel Vorcaro, a topic that has also ensnared some politicians ahead of October’s elections.

Mendonca reportedly wants de Moraes suspended while the court decides whether he should be investigated in a potential graft case. De Moraes wants Mendonca investigated by the court and potentially impeached by the Senate for investigating him in an unauthorized proceeding.

They sit next to each other in the court, whose benches align according to who was named first.

Mendonca on Tuesday unsealed a part of the federal police investigation revealing dozens of intercepted messages from Vorcaro showing he often sought advice from de Moraes.

The new findings added to suspicions about de Moraes after federal police found his wife provided legal services to Banco Master as part of a 130 million reais ($25 million) contract. The revelations this week triggered a wave of pressure from politicians, the media and legal experts for de Moraes to resign.

“I am grateful to you for my life,” Vorcaro said in one message. “For the love of God, see if you can block all these evil (measures against Banco Master),” the banker said in another.

Even presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who has also been implicated in the Banco Master scandal for receiving about $21 million to fund a film on his father’s life, came out to urge the Supreme Court justice to leave his position.

On Wednesday, the crisis at the Supreme Court deepened after Brazilian media showed Mendonca had also privately met with Vorcaro last year. The judge said in a statement he only listened to what the then bank owner had to say, in a “similar dialogue with other members of the Supreme Court to discuss the same matter.”

And then Mendonca confirmed Thursday he had indeed had a more recent meeting with Vorcaro. Earlier this month, he questioned the jailed banker without authorization from the full court as required to investigate one of its members and without the presence of any federal police agents or prosecutors.

Mendonca replied he did so because Vorcaro claimed he had been mistreated by police, an accusation that Brazil’s attorney general has already tossed out.

Late on Thursday, de Moraes took swift and unexpected action. He asked the court’s Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin to investigate his colleague’s conduct, calling it politically driven, and said in his request that Mendonca committed an impeachable offense for interviewing Vorcaro under those secretive conditions.

Brazil’s Senate, which is the body that has the authority to impeach Supreme Court justices in Brazil, has dozens of requests for impeachment proceedings against de Moraes, and only a few against Mendonca for now.

Brazilian media reported Friday that Mendonca also asked Fachin to suspend de Moraes from the court due to the revelations from earlier this week.

The chief justice said Friday he will ask for clarifications from Mendonca, de Moraes, Attorney General Paulo Gonet, who also appears in Vorcaro’s messages, and federal police director Andrei Rodrigues.

Fachin said Friday morning at a ceremony in Brazil’s presidential palace with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who also asked for no one to be spared from investigations, that he will do “what is right, in the time and in the shape that the legal order requires,” without naming the crisis between his two peers.

“The institutions of the Republic must be preserved, overall in moments of the biggest tension,” he said.

De Moraes and Mendonca did not exchange words in the two sittings of the Brazilian Supreme Court on Wednesday and Thursday. Next week they will meet again.

NIAMEY, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Niger has blamed France for inciting an attack on a key military airbase by mutinous soldiers last week, according to a government statement read on TV on Friday.

• Mutinous soldiers in the West African country attacked the airport and the presidency in the capital, Niamey, on August 29, the latest threat to the rule of Abdourahamane Tiani, who seized power in a 2023 coup.

• Explosions and gunfire also rang out at a military airbase, but Niger’s army, backed by Russian paramilitary forces, regained control over it the next day.

• The Council of Ministers on Friday concluded that the attack had been incited by a vast network of accomplices led by France, according to the statement.

• “A substantial body of evidence has been compiled regarding this attack, and Niger reserves the right to bring the matter before international courts,” the government said in the statement.

• The attack highlighted tensions within Niger’s armed forces, which have suffered repeated battlefield losses while fighting a jihadist insurgency.

• Tiani blamed France and other West African countries for unrest in the capital earlier this year, without providing evidence.

(Reporting by Niger newsroom; Writing by Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Tom Hogue)

VIENNA (AP) — The United States, Britain, France and Germany have drafted a resolution for possible consideration by the Board of Governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog that seeks to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for failure to comply with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, diplomats say.

Under those obligations, which are part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is legally bound to declare all nuclear material and activities and allow inspectors of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency to verify that none of it is being diverted from peaceful uses.

The diplomatic move has been under consideration since June 2025 when the IAEA board found Iran officially in noncompliance with its nonproliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years — one day before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites.

The possible referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council shifts the responsibility to a higher authority that is able to enact further legally binding measures, including sanctions or asset freezes.

But specific punitive measures by the U.N. are unlikely in this case since Iran’s allies Russia and China hold a veto power on the U.N. Security Council.

The draft resolution, which was seen by The Associated Press and reported earlier by Reuters, requests the IAEA director general Rafael Grossi “to transmit this resolution and the previously adopted resolutions … to all Members of the Agency and to the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the IAEA Statute.”

The resolution also “stresses its support for a diplomatic solution to the challenges posed by the Iranian nuclear programme and its implications for regional peace and stability leading to an agreement that addresses all international concerns related to Iran’s nuclear activities, and encourages all parties to constructively engage in diplomacy.”

Diplomats say that the resolution is still under negotiation and has not yet been formally submitted to the board. The text of the draft resolution may therefore still change, as board members still have the opportunity to suggest amendments.

Once formally submitted, it will be put to a vote during next week’s IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna.

Referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council had been stalled to allow a final push for diplomacy, according to a senior Western diplomat, who wasn’t authorized to comment about the sensitive matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The IAEA board now has to follow its mandate and act because not only has Iran not cooperated, but even communication is no longer happening, the official said.

Since Israel and the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear sites during the 12-day war in June 2025, Iran hasn’t given IAEA inspectors access to nuclear sites that were affected by the strikes — even though Tehran is legally obliged to cooperate with the watchdog under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The agency also has been unable to verify the status of the stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium since the June bombing. Of course, that has been made much more difficult by more than six months of war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28, including strikes that have been carried out by both Washington and Tehran this week.

The IAEA warned in Tuesday’s confidential report, seen by the AP, that continued denial by Iran to allow IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear sites and to verify the nuclear material constitutes a “proliferation risk” that needed to be “addressed with the utmost urgency.”

According to the IAEA, Iran maintains a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA chief Grossi warned in an interview last year with the AP. He said that it doesn’t mean that Iran has such a weapon.

The IAEA also reported in its confidential report on Tuesday that there has been no progress in its long-running investigation into uranium traces detected by inspectors at various undeclared sites in Iran.

Western officials suspect that the uranium traces could provide further evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program until 2003.

Iran says that it’s not pursuing nuclear weapons, and its program is entirely peaceful.

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A long-lost Italian portrait looted from a prominent Jewish art dealer during World War II was set to be returned to his heir after an Argentine court on Friday approved a deal under which the daughter of a fugitive Nazi official agreed to give up her claim rather than face trial.

The agreement paves the way for the long-sought return of “ Portrait of a Lady ” to Marei von Saher, the sole surviving heir of Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, whose celebrated collection was sold under duress to Nazi officials after Adolf Hitler’s Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940.

Patricia Kadgien, the daughter of the late high-ranking Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, were charged with aggravated cover-up last year after authorities said they hid the 18th-century painting despite knowing it was being sought by Argentine and international investigators.

Under the agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the couple agreed to give up any claim to the work and consent to its return to von Saher in exchange for avoiding a criminal trial and spending two years under court supervision. During that time, they must make payments to a hospital in Argentina’s coastal city of Mar del Plata, where they live, and keep authorities informed of their whereabouts.

The deal ends a generations-long search for the missing portrait and a yearlong legal saga that began in August 2025. Dutch reporters investigating Friedrich Kadgien, a fugitive Nazi financial official who fled to Argentina after World War II, spotted “Portrait of a Lady” hanging above a green velvet couch in an online real estate listing for his daughter’s rustic home in Mar del Plata.

The listing disappeared within hours of the Rotterdam-based newspaper Algemeen Dagblad publishing its findings. Police raided the home several times but failed to find the painting. More than a week later, Kadgien’s lawyer turned it over to authorities.

For decades, the portrait had been identified as a work by the Italian Baroque painter Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi. It appeared under that attribution in Goudstikker’s collection records and was exhibited as a Ghislandi in Amsterdam before the war. But a court-ordered examination by Argentina’s National Academy of Fine Arts reached a different conclusion, attributing the work to the Italian artist Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti.

Experts authenticated the painting as part of Goudstikker’s collection and estimated its value at about 250,000 euros ($290,000).

Goudstikker was one of Europe’s leading art dealers before World War II, known for a collection that included works by Rembrandt and Vermeer. He died in a shipwreck while fleeing Amsterdam with his family as German forces swept into the Netherlands in May 1940.

An estimated 1,100 works from his collection were illegally sold to Hermann Göring, known as Hitler’s right-hand man, who amassed a vast art collection during the war. It remains unclear exactly how “Portrait of a Lady” came into the possession of Kadgien, Göring’s financial adviser, who handled foreign currency, precious metals and the sale of confiscated property for the Nazi regime.

Kadgien fled Europe after Germany’s defeat, first for Switzerland and later Argentina. He died in the South American country in 1978 without having been arrested or charged with war crimes.

Lawyers for von Saher, who now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, and spent decades trying to recover her family’s looted art, said she has agreed to let the painting be exhibited in Argentina before being returned to her.

During last year’s raids on homes owned by Kadgien and her sister in Mar del Plata, Argentine police also seized two 19th-century paintings, along with other prints and engravings. Authorities are still investigating whether any of them may also have been looted during World War II.

___

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.