Asia Laos About $12 million in digital taxes from global technology companies have been collected under new law: foreign providers of online services must register with Lao tax authorities regardless of whether they have a physical presence in the country
Africa Senegal Incidents cast a shadow over the start of the election campaign in Senegal this weekend with violent clashes between supporters of presidential majority candidate Amadou Ba and those of opponent Bassirou Diomaye Faye
America Nicaragua Nicaragua has formally sued Germany at the International Court of Justice for funding Israel and cutting aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA
America Uruguay The Americas Act, a bipartisan US legislative proposal for trade and investment expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean, was welcomed with optimism by Foreign Minister Omar Paganini, considering Uruguay as a potential "pilot case"
Africa Burkina Faso Fespaco, Ouagadougou's African Film Festival, will charge a submission fee this year for films wishing to enter the competition for the first time in its history
Europe Albania According to critics, the government is not doing enough to protect Albanian textile exporters from the rapidly strengthening lek currency; most of the industry's employees are women who risk slipping into poverty
Europe Latvia After the attack on the Occupation Museum, plans are being made to speed up the creation of a comprehensive video surveillance network throughout Latvia; the Interior Minister will have a month to identify what is already in place and what can be used
America Panama Archaeologists have unearthed a 1.200-year-old tomb in Panama containing a trove of gold treasures and the remains of what could be human sacrifices
America Suriname Leaders of the Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Suriname Islamic Association achieved a historic moment of cooperation and interfaith, as they exchanged sacred scriptures, emphasizing shared values and the universal essence of spirituality
Europe Hungary Ferenc Krausz, experimental physicist, has been named person of the year 2023 by public media; he is a 2023 Nobel laureate for his experimental methods in producing attosecond pulses of light to study the movement of electrons within atoms
Africa Rwanda Paul Kagame is again a candidate in Rwanda's presidential election, to be held next July 15, in a choice made "uncontested" by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the party always led by Kagame, who is thus running for a fourth consecutive term
Africa Uganda The Parliament has to decide on a bill to restrict the use of surrogacy to women who are infertile or have health problems that prevent them from having children; the law provides for penalties of up to five years for doctors who oppose the new provisions
Europe Iceland Asylum applications dropped by 56% in the first two months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, with only 410 applications, compared to 925 in the same months of 2023
America Paraguay Inflation in February scored +0% remaining flat on January 2024 figures; on an yearly basis, February showed a -2,90% inflation rate on 2023