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China's foreign minister arrives in Tonga on Pacific tour

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Tonga on Tuesday as he continued his regional island-hopping tour a day after failing to ink an ambitious deal with 10 South Pacific nations. While Wang didn't manage to get consensus on the multilateral security and economic plan at a meeting in Fiji after several nations voiced concerns, he has been notching up smaller wins by signing bilateral agreements with the countries he's been visiting, and he signed more deals in Tonga. His tour comes amid growing international concerns about Beijing’s military and financial ambitions in the region. Tonga is continuing to recover from a massive volcanic eruption and tsunami in January which killed three people locally and destroyed hundreds of homes. The tsunami also cut the nation's internet connection to the rest of the world when it severed an undersea cable which took five weeks to repair. In Tonga, Wang met with King Tupou VI and Prime Minister Siaosi...
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Live updates | Mayor says half of Sievierodonetsk captured

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KYIV, Ukraine -- The mayor of Sievierodonetsk says Russian forces have taken around half of the city in eastern Ukraine. Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday that heavy fighting is ongoing and artillery bombardments threaten the lives of the thousands of civilians still sheltering in the ruined city. “Half of the city has been captured by the Russians and fierce street fighting is under way,” Striuk said. “The situation is very serious and the city is essentially being destroyed ruthlessly block by block.” He added that “the Ukrainian military continues to resist this frenzied push and aggression by Russian forces.” Striuk estimated that around 13,000 people remained in the city out of a pre-war population of around 100,000 but said it was impossible to keep track of civilian casualties amid round-the-clock shelling. He said more than 1,500 people in the city who died of various causes have been buried since the war began in February. Evacuation effo...
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