Ontario considering buying back Highway 407, Premier Doug Ford says

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Thursday said 224 political prisoners in Belarus must be freed urgently, and called on Western countries to negotiate their release with the Belarusian authorities.

Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent in response to mass protests that broke out after an election that handed him his sixth term in office and was denounced by the opposition and the West as rigged.

More than 65,000 people have been detained since then as repressions continued unabated, according to the Viasna human rights group. The group has designated over 1,300 currently behind bars as political prisoners.

Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020 and was forced to leave the country shortly after the vote, said Thursday that the opposition and human rights advocates identified 224 political prisoners who should be immediately released — “minors, the elderly, those with serious medical conditions or mothers of multiple children.”

“These people need to be released immediately and without conditions,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a statement.

The list includes Viasna founder Ales Bialiatski, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova, whose health is rapidly deteriorating in prison, according to her family.

According to Tsikhanouskaya, 29 of those on the list are in critical condition and “are basically dying in prison.” She said six political prisoners have died behind bars since 2020.

Lukashenko, who has run the country with an iron fist for 30 years and will seek re-election next year, denies that there are political prisoners in Belarus. At the same time, in recent months he has pardoned 115 people who suffered from medical conditions, applied for clemency and publicly repented.

Tsikhanouskaya welcomed the pardons and said “these steps should continue. At the same time, hundreds (more) have been arrested and 142 more people have been designated as political prisoners.”

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Tesla is recalling more than 27,000 Cybertrucks because the rearview camera image may not activate immediately after shifting into reverse, the fifth recall for the vehicle since it went on sale late last year.

Tesla has released a free software upgrade to address the issue and owner notification letters are expected to be mailed Nov. 25.

Cybertruck owners have had to deal with a series of recalls since the vehicle went on sale in November. In June, there was a recall to fix problems with trim pieces that can come loose and front windshield wipers that can fail. Two months before that, some Cybertrucks were recalled because the accelerator pedal could stick.

In the most recent recall, the company notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the display screens in effected trucks may remain blank for up to 8 seconds after a driver shifts to reverse. The U.S. requires those screens to activate with a rearview within 2 seconds of shifting into reverse.

Elon Musk’s Tesla delivered the first dozen or so of its futuristic Cybertruck pickups to customers in November, two years behind the original schedule.

Owners may contact Tesla customer service at 1-877-798-3752 or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or go to www.nhtsa.gov.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Rescuers searched Thursday for dozens of migrants from Africa still missing after smugglers apparently forced them out of two boats in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti earlier this week, the Djiboutian coast guard said.

At least 48 people were earlier reported to have drowned. The boats had departed from Yemen, across the Red Sea on the Arabian Peninsula, carrying 310 people, the International Organization for Migration said.

It was not known why the migrants were forced off the boats while still at sea.

Initially, the IOM said the two boats with migrants had capsized but later made no mention of that, saying instead that the smugglers forced the people off the boats and told them to swim.

Djibouti’s coast guard said the tragedy struck some 150 meters (about 500 feet) off a beach in the East African nation’s northwestern region of Khor Angar. It said 115 survivors had been rescued.

Moktar Abdi, a member of the Djiboutian coast guard, told The Associated Press over the phone on Thursday that the search operation was now focusing on deep-sea areas and nearby beaches. He said the coast guard would later share an update on the number of recovered bodies.

On Wednesday, the IOM said 111 people were still missing while the Djiboutian coast guard put the number at 61.

“One woman drowned, but her 4-month-old infant survived along with 98 others from the first boat,” said the U.N. agency, which was assisting search and rescue efforts.

Thousands of migrants from African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking a better life in Europe attempt irregular migration every year. Smugglers pack vessels full of desperate people willing to risk their lives to reach continental Europe.

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sanaa and much of the country’s nort h, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states entered the conflict the following year to back the government forces.

Over the past years, the war has become mostly stalemated along established front lines while efforts to find a negotiated solution have stalled.

___

Follow AP’s global migration coverage at:

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.