GABORONE, May 25 (Reuters) - Botswana will not back down on demands for a bigger share of rough diamonds from its joint venture with De Beers, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said on Thursday, upping the stakes as talks for a new sales deal appear to be stalling.

Botswana and De Beers mine the precious stones through their equally owned, 54-year-old mining venture, Debswana Diamond Co. The current diamond sales deal, in place since 2011, has been extended three times since 2020 but is set to expire next month.

MANILA, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on Thursday pushed for resumption of negotiations for a Philippine-European Union (EU) free trade agreement (FTA), saying his country is ready to comply with "vital international obligations" as determined by the European bloc.

COLOMBO, May 25 (NNN-XINHUA) – SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka, said that, it has launched a loyalty programme, with a host of benefits for foreign employment agencies.

SriLankan Airlines has been the choice airline for many foreign employment agencies, booking passengers to the Middle East, given the airline’s extensive coverage of the region, and the airline now hopes to give back to loyal agencies through the programme, said the airline, in a statement.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Lawmakers in several states are embracing legislation to let children work in more hazardous occupations, longer hours on school nights and in expanded roles including serving alcohol in bars and restaurants as young as 14.

The efforts to significantly roll back labor rules are largely led by Republican lawmakers to address worker shortages and in some cases run afoul of federal regulations.

Child welfare advocates worry the measures represent a coordinated push to scale back hard-won protections for minors.

ULAN BATOR, May 25 (NNN-XINHUA) – More than 290,000 heads of livestock have died, in the eastern Mongolian provinces of Sukhbaatar and Khentii, due to recent dust and snow storms, local media reported today, citing these provinces’ departments of food and agriculture.

The number of dead animals is not final and is expected to increase, since many livestock are still unaccounted for, relevant authorities said.

Heavy blizzards and intense dust storms swept through Sukhbaatar and Khentii provinces, late last week, causing severe damage.

25 May 2023; MEMO: As part of racist electoral campaigns being witnessed in Turkiye ahead of Sunday's presidential election, Gacrux Game Studio launched the Zafer Tourism game, which is named after the extremist Turkish Zafer (Victory) Party.

The game, available on smartphones, focuses on throwing refugees who are trying to enter an unspecified country into trucks to take them back to the country they came from.

Kanpur: The Kanpur Zoological Park has reportedly postponed the plan to set free the crane to its natural habitat for the time being.

The stork still searches for human company. The crane habituated to having cooked food was earlier taking noodles, khichadi, rice and daal. But over some time, the stork has begun taking raw food.

NASH, Texas (AP) — Authorities in east Texas have jailed an 18-year-old man on capital murder charges in the shootings of his parents, sister and brother.

Police in the small town of Nash, Texas, say officers responding to a report that a man had harmed his family and was threatening to kill himself on Tuesday found Cesar Olalde barricaded inside a home. They were told that multiple people were dead inside.

Olalde later called police, saying “he had pulled the trigger, and shot his family,” according to a probable cause affidavit by Nash Police officer Craig Buster.

LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - The director of a top Russian science institute, arrested on suspicion of treason along with two other hypersonic missile technology experts, stands accused of betraying secrets to China, two people familiar with the case told Reuters.

Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia's Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017, the sources said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump on Tuesday asked for a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland as a Justice Department investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents shows signs of winding down.

23 May 2023; MEMO: Extremist Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, will struggle to arrange meetings with senior French officials during his planned visit to Paris next month, Israeli media has warned, saying this is a result of his denial of the existence of the Palestinian people during his visit to Paris two months ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Like the blue and yellow flags that popped up around the U.S. when Russia invaded Ukraine 15 months ago, U.S. popular support for Washington’s backing of Ukraine has faded a little but remains widespread, a survey by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and NORC shows.