Maple syrup or nutella? PM Carney calls Canadian Artemis astronaut

Nepal's ex-prime minister KP Sharma Oli offered a defiant message on Thursday after he was released from custody following questioning over his alleged role in a deadly 2025 crackdown on protesters.

Oli and former interior minister Ramesh Lekhak were arrested on March 28, a day after Prime Minister Balendra Shah took office following the first elections since the September uprising brought down Oli's government.

Lekhak was also released from custody on Thursday, police said. Neither man has been formally charged, and both deny responsibility for the violence.

"Although the government filed a criminal case with prejudice and vindictiveness and illegally detained me... I have finally been released after not having enough grounds and evidence to prosecute," 74-year-old Oli said in a statement posted on social media.

The arrests came after an inquiry commission recommended prosecuting Oli -- a four-time prime minister -- and other officials for failing to stop security forces from opening fire on demonstrators.

The commission's report said statements given by the two men suggesting they did not know about the violence were part of a bid to shift responsibility and amounted to "criminal negligence".

Oli was taken to hospital soon after his arrest for what police described as a procedural check-up, adding that he suffers from heart and kidney problems.

"Due to my health condition, I will remain in the hospital for a few more days for treatment," Oli added.

"At this moment, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all party leaders, cadres, and well-wishers for their goodwill and support."

- 'Vengeful' -

After their arrests, their wives filed habeas corpus petitions at the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of their detentions.

"Both former prime minister KP Sharma Oli and the former home minister have been released today on the condition that they will present themselves to the police when required," Kathmandu Police spokesperson Pawan Kumar Bhattarai told AFP.

Oli's CPN-UML party has described the arrests as "a vengeful act" and called for protests.

The youth-led uprising in September began in Kathmandu and was triggered by a brief social media ban.

It spread countrywide the following day, fuelled by longstanding frustration over corruption and economic hardship.

Protesters set fire to the parliament building and offices and eventually toppled the government.

In a separate case, Nepal has issued an arrest warrant for former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba for alleged corruption, officials said Thursday.

Deuba, 79, is abroad for medical treatment and said that "an investigation on money laundering has been initiated against me and my family". He rejected the accusation of corruption.

"False propaganda is being spread concerning my family's property," he said in a statement on social media.

Authorities also issued a warrant for Deuba's wife, former foreign minister Arzu Rana Deuba, court officials in Kathmandu told AFP, following a request from the Department of Money Laundering Investigation.

Deuba said he and his wife were "currently abroad for long term medical treatment", without giving further details.

Former energy minister Deepak Khadka was also arrested last month as part of a money laundering investigation.

aoj-pjm/mjw

Buffeted by six weeks of war in the Middle East, airlines have scrambled to trim routes and costs as fuel bills explode and wary clients think twice about their travel plans, a situation that could persist even if a fragile truce holds.

Carriers have largely halted flights in the Gulf region, with Air France announcing this week that it was extending its suspensions until May 3 -- a decision a source said was made before this week's ceasefire between the United States and Iran.

With no certainty that jet fuel prices will return to pre-war lows, chief executives are having to rethink expansion plans and plane orders.

"The airline sector is being hit with two simultaneous shocks: the steep rise in fuel prices, which is the biggest or second-biggest expense for a carrier, and a demand shock, with passengers deciding to wait and see," said Paul Chiambaretto, a professor and aviation expert at the Montpellier Business School in France.

Jet fuel, which cost around $830 a ton before the war erupted, surpassed $1,800 a ton in early April, and was still at $1,786 on Wednesday.

"It's absolutely colossal," Pascal de Izaguirre, president of the French aviation federation (FNAM), told business daily La Tribune published Tuesday.

He said fuel usually represents 25 percent to 30 percent of an airline's operating costs, but at current prices it now accounts for 45 percent.

- Sticky surcharges? -

To maintain profitability, ticket prices have been hiked and some routes where planes are not routinely full have been suspended or scrapped indefinitely.

Vietnam Airlines went so far as to cancel around 20 domestic flights per week starting in April, because of a lack of jet fuel.

Many airlines have already imposed fuel surcharges that could prove sticky, especially if they do not lead to marked declines in ticket sales in the coming months.

De Izaguirre said that while fuel surcharges so far are "far too low" to offset the higher costs, "airlines are afraid of a negative impact if the increases become too excessive".

But Hong Kong aviation giant Cathay Pacific has raised its surcharges several times since February, even as it announced extra flights to Europe for what it called an "upsurge in market demand".

Industry executives are wondering if the Middle East turmoil will prompt people to change their travel plans over the longer term, possibly balancing out the impact of regional route suspensions.

Some carriers say they do not plan on resuming flights to the Middle East until October. 

And if oil prices stay high and lead to widespread inflation that crimps spending power, both businesses and individuals could decide to limit spending on airline tickets. 

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary said last month that flying habits are already shifting. 

"I think the people who were originally planning to either go to the Middle East or overfly the Middle East for their Easter school holidays are switching now and coming back to Portugal, Spain, South France, Italy, Greece," he told AFP at a European airline association meeting in Brussels.

- A new normal? -

The outbreak of war also wreaks havoc on the business model of massive hubs in the Middle East, which rely on a steady stream of passengers on long-haul flights to and from the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Airports in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi have been forced to close because of Tehran's retaliatory strikes across the region, resulting in tens of thousands of flights cancelled, affecting millions of passengers.

Before the war, Dubai was the world's second-biggest airport in terms of passengers transiting, after Atlanta, while Doha had passenger levels rivalling those of Hong Kong or Frankfurt.

Since then, European and Asian carriers that have long-distance planes available have started direct flights between the two regions, bypassing Gulf hubs altogether.

Even after reopening, the airports are unlikely to return to full capacity anytime soon, and only if fuel prices recede as hoped.

Willie Walsh, director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), warned this week that if the ceasefire succeeds, it will still take months for jet fuel supplies and prices to normalise.

"I don't think it's going to happen in weeks," Walsh said.

fmp/js/st

An Australian couple has moved house, literally, after realising it was placed on the wrong plot of land.

Melanie and David Moor said they set up their home to "relax" at a five-acre block two hours' drive west of Melbourne.

They put up the pre-fabricated house in March 2024, including installing the plumbing and electricity, for a new life in rural Victoria.

Five months later, they got the bad news.

"We got the call from the council to say that we had to stop works because it was on the wrong block -- and we actually owned the block next door," Melanie Moor told AFP on Thursday.

"It's just been a nightmare."

The couple said the plot's boundaries were unclear and they had relied on the local council and the real estate agent for the right advice. 

A spokesperson for the Corangamite Shire Council declined to comment.

AFP was unable to reach the real estate agent.

The couple moved their house about 100 metres (330 feet) by truck to the right plot on April 2.

They are now living in a caravan while the home is secured to the correct site.

They also need to connect the house's power, water and septic amenities -- at a heavy financial cost.

Melanie Moor has an autoimmune disease, and her husband has liver disease, the couple said.

"The idea was that I could actually relax a little bit and work from home," David Moor said.

Under an agreement with the owners of the plot where the house was originally put, the couple said they have until May 2 to restore that land to its original state.

But they are thankful their home is now in the right place.

"It was a relief seeing the truck take the house across the property," Melanie Moor said.

sp-djw/lga

Russia is expected to label the Nobel Prize-winning human rights group Memorial "extremist" on Thursday, a designation that will make it easier to prosecute the group's supporters and those who work with it.

Russia had already liquidated the group's operations in 2021, forcing it to work largely in exile.

Here's what we know about the history of Russia's most prominent rights group and its work over the past 35 years:

- What does Memorial do? -

Memorial was founded in the late 1980s to document victims of Soviet-era political repression, during which millions of people perished in the Gulag penal system.

Its first chairman was the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and the group established the largest publicly available database on Gulag victims.

A symbol of hope during Russia's chaotic transition to democracy in the early 1990s, it has since documented the country's slide into authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin.

It has compiled a list of hundreds of political prisoners in modern Russia, among them critics of Putin and opponents of the Ukraine war.

Memorial has also documented rights violations linked to Russia's brutal wars in Chechnya and Syria, the plight of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia, as well as kept a list of prisoners persecuted for their religion -- among them more than 200 Jehovah's Witnesses.

It counts more than 1,000 political prisoners held in Russian jails as of 2026 -- up from 46 in 2015, as Moscow has intensified its crackdown on dissent amid the Ukraine war.

- Banned in Russia -

As Russia's most prominent human rights group, it has repeatedly found itself in the government's crosshairs.

It was put on the government's register of "foreign agents" in 2015.

The label, akin to being an enemy of the state, requires individuals or groups to disclose sources of funding and mark all publications -- including social media posts -- with a tag.

Then in 2021, Russia's Supreme Court liquidated Memorial for failing to properly identify itself as a "foreign agent" and for justifying "terrorist and extremist" activities.

Memorial described claims it broke the law or supported "terrorist and extremist" groups as "absurd".

Formally designating the group "extremist" would harden the legal punishments that could be laid out to any Russian to cooperate with the organisation's network in exile or donate money to it.

- Nobel Peace Prize -

The group received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 -- months after Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine -- for its work, alongside jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and Ukraine's Centre for Civil Liberties.

Hours later a court in Moscow ordered Memorial's headquarters to be seized and took the premises into state ownership.

The Nobel Committee said the group, along with its co-winners, had "made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power".

- Staff persecuted -

Memorial's crusading work at home has come at a huge personal cost to those involved.

Natalya Estemirova, one of the group's main employees in Chechnya, was found dead in 2009 with gunshot wounds hours after she was seen being bundled into a car outside her home.

Another Memorial employee, Yury Dmitriyev, who spent decades locating mass graves in the northwestern region of Karelia, was jailed in 2020 on a controversial child sex charge.

Supporters say the 70-year-old historian was targeted for his work.

The group's co-chair Oleg Orlov was jailed in 2024 for protesting the war in Ukraine. He was released in a prisoner exchange with the United States several months later.

- Work in exile -

The group, whose bank accounts have been frozen, has since outsourced its work to satellite offices across Europe and the world.

Russia declared the international arm of Memorial an "undesirable organisation" in February -- outlawing Russians from working with or donating to the group. 

bur/yad

A week after astronaut Jeremy Hansen blasted off on the historic Artemis II mission to the Moon, his wife Catherine recalled the anxiety and thrill of witnessing the journey from afar.

The Canadian obstetrician-gynecologist told AFP that she has closely followed the mission carrying her husband among a crew of four, hanging onto every update during family phone calls and from NASA mission control.

"It's incredible to me to know that they were up close," said Catherine, wearing rocket-shaped earrings during a video call.

Lifting off from Florida, Hansen became the first non-American to journey toward the Moon as the crew reached a record-breaking distance of 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth.

Catherine and her children followed the lunar flyby from NASA mission control in Houston on Monday, and later heard Hansen share his observations in a family call.

"Jeremy was describing... the fact that it looks so three-dimensional, like this globe outside the window," recalled his wife.

"He certainly will continue to describe to us and everyone else what it felt like to be that close to that celestial body."

- 'Emotional' -

Catherine said, before liftoff, her husband gave her a pair of powerful binoculars to follow the space voyage.

"Our family would lie down and look at various places on the Moon that he would identify based on his mapping and his study guides," she said.

Some of those sites were later observed up close by the Artemis II crew.

As the astronauts flew on the far side of the Moon, they lost connection with Earth for some 40 minutes during an expected communications blackout.

That was the moment Catherine got especially anxious. "I wanted to be there for that, because as someone who has never flown in space, I wanted to make sure they actually reacquired signal."

As onlookers held their breath, she was surprised by the "energy in mission control."

"There was no stress or anxiety. Everyone just trusted that this is what's going to happen: they're going to lose signal and come back again," she said.

"It has been a very emotional week."

Catherine and their three children also recorded videos that Jeremy was able to watch near the Moon.

"When you're out in deep space by the Moon, and you are listening to a video they recorded for you before you launch. That's something," the Canadian astronaut told a press conference.

- 'Get him home safely' -

"There's been a lot of happiness and excitement, a lot of joy" but also "some anxiety and some wanting to get him home safely," Catherine said.

She is now preparing for the moment when the crew splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, expected for Friday.

The Artemis II, the first mission to carry humans around the Moon in more than 50 years, was considered a risky first spaceflight for Jeremy.

Described by NASA as a "test mission," the flight aimed to verify the reliability of the rocket and Orion capsule, which had not carried humans before.

At the moment of liftoff, Catherine was with her children and the other astronauts' families near the launch pad in Florida.

"It was absolutely incredible. And I think everyone is sort of at a loss for words," she recalled.

"I don't think anyone was quite prepared."

cha/ms/aks/hol

A shallow 4.9-magitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia overnight, damaging dozens of homes and injuring multiple people, an official said Thursday. 

The jolt struck at a depth of 10.4 kilometres (6.46 miles), some 104 kilometres east of Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, shortly before midnight on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. 

Two villages on the small island of Adonara felt the biggest impact, with more than 100 houses damaged and at least 20 people injured, according to local official Ismail Daton Ban. 

Indonesia and neighbouring countries experience frequent earthquakes due to their location in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" -- an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

A 9.1-magnitude quake struck the westernmost Aceh province in 2004, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.

Shallow quakes tend to be more damaging, with seismic waves travelling a shorter distance through the ground and reaching the surface with more energy.

str/dsa/mlr/lga

Nepal's ex-prime minister KP Sharma Oli and former interior minister Ramesh Lekhak have been released from custody after questioning for their alleged role in a deadly 2025 crackdown on protesters, police said Thursday.

Oli and Lekhak were arrested on March 28, a day after Prime Minister Balendra Shah took office following the country's first elections since the September uprising brought down Oli's government.

"Both former prime minister KP Sharma Oli and the former home minister have been released today on the condition that they will present themselves to the police when required," Kathmandu Police spokesperson Pawan Kumar Bhattarai told AFP.

Neither man has been formally charged, and both deny responsibility for the violence.

"Both of them have been handed over to their relatives," Bhattarai added.

The arrests came after an inquiry commission recommended prosecuting Oli -- a four-time prime minister -- and other officials for failing to stop security forces from opening fire on demonstrators.

The commission's report said statements given by the two men suggesting they did not know about the violence were part of a bid to shift responsibility and amounted to "criminal negligence".

Oli, 74, was taken to hospital since soon after his arrest for what police described as a procedural check-up, adding that he suffers from heart and kidney problems.

After their arrests, their wives filed habeas corpus petitions at the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of their detentions.

On Monday, Supreme Court spokesperson Arjun Prasad Koirala said that the petitions were dismissed but that the court had ordered authorities to complete the investigation without granting any additional extensions of detention.

Oli's CPN-UML party has described the arrests as "a vengeful act" and called for protests.

The youth-led uprising in September began in Kathmandu and was triggered by a brief social media ban.

It spread countrywide the following day, fueled by longstanding frustration over corruption and economic hardship.

Protesters set fire to the parliament building and offices and eventually toppled the government. 

aoj/pjm/fox

They took thousands of photographs and documented copious observations on their voyage around the Moon, but as they sped closer to home the Artemis astronauts said Wednesday they have barely started processing the extraordinary experience they shared.

"Human minds should not go through what these just went through," said NASA's Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman during a press conference from space.

"It is a true gift. And we have a lot that we just need to think about and journal and write, and then we'll get the full feeling of what we just went through."

The four astronauts -- Americans Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen -- set a record for distance from Earth during their lunar flyby.

The astronauts were speaking to news media less than two days before they are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of their 10-day mission around the Moon.

"I haven't even begun to process what we've been through," Glover said. "We've still got two more days, and riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well."

"I'm going to be thinking about and talking about all of these things for the rest of my life."

Wiseman said the solar eclipse was particularly poignant: "I'm actually in chills right now just thinking about it, my palms are sweating."

- 'Fragile planet' -

Asked what they would miss about celestial life, Koch said "camaraderie."

"I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission, getting to work on it hard every day across hundreds of thousands of miles with a team on the ground," she said. 

"This sense of teamwork is something that you don't usually get, like, as an adult," Koch added. "I mean we are close like brothers and sisters. That is a privilege we will never have again."

But she said even though they've been sharing a small space -- and a malfunctioning toilet -- for more than a week now, "I don't think there's anything I would say... that I'm just ready to be over."

"This whole thing is a package. We can't explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient, unless we're making a few sacrifices, unless we're taking a few risks," she said.

"Those things are all worth it."

Koch said the team has "loved living in Orion," their spacecraft, even though it was tight quarters.

"It is bigger in microgravity," she said, but "we are bumping into each other 100 percent of the time."

Hansen said he witnessed things "I just had never even imagined" while flying around the Moon's far side.

But he said his perspective on life remains rooted: "We live on a fragile planet in the vacuum and the void of space."

"Our purpose on the planet as humans is to find joy... and lifting each other up by creating solutions together instead of destroying," Hansen told journalists from his vantage point cruising far above home.

"When you see it from out here, it doesn't change it. It just absolutely reaffirms that."

mdo/hol

Facing daily barrages of Russian drones and missiles, Ukraine has invited private companies to get their own air-defence systems in a bid to ease the burden on its military.

In an interview with AFP, a senior Ukrainian military official detailed the plan -- involving state authorisation and integration into the air force coordination system -- that has already attracted over a dozen companies.

The goal is to give businesses "the possibility, at their own expense and with their own employees, to protect themselves against aerial threats," Yuriy Myronenko, 48, inspector general at the Ukrainian defence ministry and the main architect of the project, told AFP.

Since it invaded in 2022, Russia has regularly launched hundreds of long-range Shahed drones, originally Iranian-designed but now mass-produced in Russia, at Ukraine.

Cheap but lethal, the drones target residential areas and critical infrastructure, sometimes hundreds of kilometres from the front line.

The largest attack since the start of the invasion came at the end of March, when Russia fired nearly 1,000 drones in 24 hours, along with missiles.

Ukraine's air-defence system -- which includes thousands of mobile anti-drone teams -- is fairly effective but cannot cover the entire country.

That is why the defence ministry has opted to partly outsource the task to private actors, including energy companies, frequently targeted by Russian strikes, logistics firms and security groups to protect their sites.

For now, the Ukrainian authorities have released few details of the plan.

But Myronenko told AFP that 16 firms have received the necessary authorisation and "some companies are already shooting down Shaheds".

- Interceptors -

"I think we are the first in the world to create such a system," Myronenko said, referring to the plan he said was already yielding results. 

"The first shoot-downs were two weeks ago," added the lieutenant-colonel who used to command a drone unit.

In the northeastern Kharkiv region, near the front line, one company -- unnamed for security reasons -- used heavy machine guns mounted on remote-controlled turrets to intercept several Russian drones.

After the defence ministry published a statement on the matter, "dozens" of other groups contacted the authorities to enquire about the scheme, Myronenko said.

"We don't expect private air defence to solve all our problems," he conceded. "We are forced to take this step because every opportunity to shoot down one, two, three, four, five Shaheds helps."

Companies wanting to take part must undergo a special authorisation process, including to rule out any Russian ties, before they can purchase weapons and train their staff.

They must also integrate into the air force's real-time coordination system, a key element of the sophisticated network that manages thousands of air-defence teams.

The special software allows commanders to see "who is shooting down what, with which systems, which teams," and to locate incoming targets, said Myronenko.  

For him, the future of private air defence lies in drone interceptors -- small unmanned aircraft designed to destroy incoming drones mid-air.

Under the pressure of relentless attacks, Ukraine has already developed around 50 different interceptor models, an industry that barely existed a year ago.

- No limits -

Intense competition is pushing manufacturers to improve effectiveness while slashing costs, sometimes to less than $1,000 per unit, making them "affordable", Myronenko said.

In the longer term, private companies could even be allowed to acquire weapons capable of downing cruise missiles that Russia frequently uses against Ukraine, such as man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS), he added.

"We don't limit what protective means they can buy," he said, adding: "because we understand that the war will change in three months, six months."

The main goal set by defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov -- appointed in January -- for this year is to "detect 100 percent of all air targets", both drones and missiles, and "shoot down 95 percent of them," up from around 80 percent currently.

Myronenko called the target "absolutely realistic," citing the surge in interceptor production, with tens of thousands now being delivered to the army each month.

"We must clearly demonstrate (to Russia) that terrorising our population and civilian infrastructure will not work."

ant/blb/asy/mmp/rh

The Oklahoma City Thunder secured the Western Conference top seed and best record in the NBA with a 128-110 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday.

Center Chet Holmgren poured in 30 points and pulled down 14 rebounds, and NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 20 points and 11 assists for the reigning champion Thunder, who notched a seventh straight victory to improve to 64-16 with two games left in the regular season.

Oklahoma City snagged the West's top seed for the third year running, and with the best overall record they'll have home court advantage throughout the playoffs.

"It's extremely important," said Holmgren, who added five assists, two steals and four blocked shots. "Just knowing that in the event of a game seven it's always going to be at home. We saw that in the playoffs last year twice, so it's extremely important.

"It's great to see that the hard work has paid off in one way, and now we've got more to do," Holmgren added.

OKC's win means the surging San Antonio Spurs are locked into the second seed in the West.

San Antonio cruised past the Portland Trail Blazers 112-101 despite the absence of superstar Victor Wembanyama -- who sat out with a bruised rib -- and Stephon Castle.

De'Aaron Fox scored 25 points to lead a balanced Spurs attack. Keldon Johnson scored 20 points off the bench and rookie reserve Carter Bryant contributed 17.

The Denver Nuggets tightened their grip on third place in the West, beating the Memphis Grizzlies 136-119 behind a triple-double of 14 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists from Nikola Jokic.

Three-time MVP Jokic posted his 34th triple-double of the season, the 198th of his career, to help Denver win their 10th straight -- their first double-digit win streak of his tenure.

Jamal Murray scored 26 points to lead eight Nuggets players to score in double figures as Denver edged further ahead of the injury-hit Los Angeles Lakers for the third seed.

Eastern Conference top seeds Detroit welcomed star guard Cade Cunningham back to action with a 137-111 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Cunningham, who had missed 11 games with a collapsed lung, scored 13 points and handed out 10 assists in just under 26 minutes on court.

Jalen Duren scored 21 points to lead the Pistons, who had seven players score in double figures.

The Pistons have locked up the top seed and home court advantage throughout the Eastern Conference playoffs, but coach J.B. Bickerstaff said the return of Cunningham and teammate Isaiah Stewart, sidelined since March 13 with a calf strain, was a welcome opportunity to build their fitness before the playoffs start on April 18.

"There is no way to replicate NBA basketball," Bickerstaff said.

- Cavs hold off Hawks -

In Cleveland, Donovan Mitchell scored 31 points, Evan Mobley added 22 points and 19 rebounds and James Harden chipped in 21 points as the Cavaliers held off the Atlanta Hawks 122-116, denying the Hawks' bid to clinch a playoff berth.

The Cavs, who notched a fourth straight win, are assured of a top-four seed in the East and are chasing the New York Knicks for third.

The Hawks are fifth in the East, but they are just half a game ahead of sixth-placed Toronto and could still slip into the play-in tournament that will see the seventh- through 10th-placed teams battle for the last two playoff spots.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker scored 25 points and Jonathan Kuminga added 24 off the bench for Atlanta, who cut an 18-point fourth quarter deficit to two but could get no closer.

The Orlando Magic kept their hopes of escaping the play-in alive with a fourth straight win, beating the Minnesota Timberwolves 132-120.

bb/lga