TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — In a campaign ad for Taiwan’s president-elect Lai Ching-te, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen was shown driving with Lai in the passenger seat, exchanging reflections on their years governing together. Tsai later turned over the driving to Lai, who was joined by running mate Bi-khim Hsiao.

The message was clear: Lai would steer the island in the direction set by Tsai, who after eight years in power was barred from running again.

Lai, 64, will take office Monday. Continuing Tsai’s legacy means aiming to strike a balance between cultivating Taiwan’s unofficial alliance with the United States and maintaining peace with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be retaken by force if necessary.

Lai is also expected to build on some of Tsai’s domestic reforms, despite political gridlock. Lai and Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party has lost the majority in the legislature, making it hard for Lai to push through legislation, including the approval of crucial national defense budgets.

Tsai, 67, has been Taiwan’s first female president and one of Asia’s few female leaders who didn’t hail from a political dynasty. Her legacy will be tied to defending the island’s sovereignty from China while refashioning it as a credible partner for the U.S. and other democracies. She will also be remembered for overseeing the legalization of same sex-marriage, steering Taiwan through the COVID years and kickstarting the island’s military modernization.

She leaves office with high approval ratings. A recent poll by broadcaster TVBS showed 42% of respondents were satisfied with her eight-year performance. Her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, left office with approval ratings of around 23%.

Tsai’s popularity partly reflects a shift in Taiwan’s identity. A vast majority of residents now identify as Taiwanese as opposed to Chinese and want to be governed separately from Beijing. Taiwan and China have had different governments since a civil war in 1949 saw the Nationalists flee to the island while China’s Communist Party took control of the mainland.

Tsai veered from the more China-friendly policies of the previous ruling party, the Kuomintang. By the end of Ma’s tenure, the frequent exchanges with Beijing were making many Taiwanese nervous, said Shelley Rigger, a Taiwan expert at Davidson College.

Beijing called Tsai a separatist after she refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, an agreement which says Taiwan is part of “One China.” While pulling away from Beijing, however, Tsai left a door open for communication.

“President Tsai has always said that Taiwan, under her leadership, is happy, willing and eager to have dialogue with Beijing, just not on terms unilaterally imposed by Beijing,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow with Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council.

China has not only declined to speak to Tsai but also ramped up military and economic pressure on the island, sending warships and military jets near it daily.

Beijing prevents countries it has diplomatic relations with from having formal ties with Taipei. During Tsai’s tenure, it intensified a campaign to lure away the island’s few diplomatic partners. During Tsai’s years in office, China poached almost half of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, bringing the remaining number to 12.

Tsai pushed back by diversifying trade relationships and increasing military spending including submarine development. She also elevated Taiwan’s standing on the international stage, said outgoing Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.

“Her leadership style is very moderate, but at the same time very firm in dealing with any kind of international pressure,” he said.

“She strengthened awareness of Taiwan around the world and its ties with the international community,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Lai, who served as vice president during Tsai’s second term, came across as more of a firebrand earlier in his career. In 2017, he described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan’s independence,” drawing Beijing’s rebuke. He has since softened his stance and now supports maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and the possibility of talks with Beijing.

“Lai has spent the last two-plus years trying to convince the world that he is Tsai Ing-wen 2.0,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor at National Chengchi University.

Lai will build on Tsai’s efforts to strengthen ties with the U.S., which doesn’t formally recognize Taiwan as a country but is bound by its own laws to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

By some measures, Lai’s greatest uncertainty on the foreign policy front might come from Washington. A new Donald Trump administration could throw off whatever balance Tsai has achieved in Taipei’s relations with Washington and Beijing, Nachman said.

During Tsai’s tenure, Taiwan became the first society in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, though critics say she skirted political responsibility by leaving the decision up to the Supreme Court and a series of referendums.

She oversaw a controversial pension and labor reform and extended the military conscription length to one year. She also kickstarted a military modernization drive, including a program for building indigenous submarines at more than $16 billion each.

Tsai’s leadership during the COVID pandemic split public opinion, with most admiring Taiwan’s initial ability to keep the virus largely outside its borders but criticizing the lack of investment in rapid testing as the pandemic progressed.

Tsai’s mixed success on the domestic policy front contributed to historically poor results for the DPP in local elections, said Sung with the Atlantic Council. The party’s poor performance in the 2022 elections led to Tsai resigning as party chairwoman. And while Lai won the presidential election, DPP lost its majority in the legislature.

“Much of President Tsai’s government’s success comes from the foreign policy and related international outreach fronts, and in terms of making inroads on the much more grassroots party machinery level, for example, those still have room for improvement,” Sung said.

JEBENIANA, Tunisia (AP) — Hundreds of Tunisians marched through the streets of Jebeniana on Saturday to protest the presence of sub-Saharan migrants who have found themselves stranded as the country ramps up border patrol efforts.

Anti-migrant anger is mounting in impoverished towns like Jebeniana along the Tunisian coastline that have emerged as a launchpad for thousands of people hoping to reach Europe by boat.

Chanting slogans to oppose settling migrants in Tunisia, protesters demanded the government act to assist agricultural communities dealing with thousands of migrants living in tarpaulin encampments among their olive groves.

“You brought them here and it’s your responsibility to send them back to their home countries,” Moamen Salemi, a 63-year old retiree from nearby El Amra, said at the protest. “There is a shortage of food throughout the city of El Amra, including sugar, flour, bread and many other items.”

A final stop for many who dream of a better life in Europe, Jebeniana and El Amra reflect the compounding problems facing Tunisia, a key transit point for migrants from Syria, Bangladesh and a variety of sub-Saharan African nations.

Law enforcement has expanded its presence in the two agricultural towns, where roughly 83,000 Tunisians live among a growing number of migrants from around the world.

Protesters say they have borne the cost of Tunisia’s effort to prevent migrants from reaching the European Union less than a year after the country brokered an anti-migration pact with the 27-country bloc to better police its sea border and receive more than $1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in aid.

The Tunisian Coast Guard has said it has prevented more than 21,000 migration attempts by land or sea this year. Fewer than 8,000 successfully traveled by boat from Tunisia to Italy in the first four months of 2024, a threefold decrease from 2023, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

More Tunisians have traveled by makeshift boat to Italy this year than migrants from sub-Saharan African countries.

Anti-migrant protests erupted in the city of Sfax last year, months after Tunisian President Kais Saied called for measures to address violence and crime he said were caused by illegal immigration. But they are a new development in Jebeniana and El Amra, where a similar protest took place earlier this month.

Encampments sprung up and expanded on the outskirts of the two towns after local authorities started increasingly clearing them from Sfax last year.

The International Organization for Migration’s Tunisia office has said roughly 7,000 migrants are living near Jebeniana and El Amra, though residents estimate the number could be much higher.

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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from his own War Cabinet and his country’s closest ally over postwar plans for Gaza, even as the war with Hamas shows no sign of ending.

On Saturday, Benny Gantz, a member of the War Cabinet and Netanyahu’s main political rival, said he would leave the government on June 8 if it did not formulate a new war plan including an international, Arab and Palestinian administration to handle civilian affairs in Gaza.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the third member of the Cabinet, has also called for a plan for Palestinian administration, and said in a speech this week that he wouldn’t agree to Israel governing Gaza itself.

The United States has meanwhile called for a revitalized Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza with assistance from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states ahead of eventual statehood. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is expected to push those plans when he visits Israel on Sunday.

So far, Netanyahu has brushed them all off. But Gantz’ ultimatum could reduce his margin for maneuver.

Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, saying he plans to hand civil responsibilities over to local Palestinians unaffiliated with it or Hamas. But he has also said that it’s impossible to make any such plans until Hamas is defeated because it has threatened anyone who cooperates with Israel.

Netanyahu’s government is also deeply opposed to Palestinian statehood.

In a statement issued after the ultimatum, Netanyahu said Gantz’ conditions would amount to “defeat for Israel, abandoning most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and establishing a Palestinian state.”

Netanyahu added, however, that he still thought the emergency government was important for prosecuting the war, and that he “expects Gantz to clarify his positions to the public.”

Gantz’ departure would leave Netanyahu even more beholden to his far-right coalition allies, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who could more easily bring down the government if he doesn’t meet their demands.

They have called for Israel to reoccupy Gaza, encourage the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the territory and reestablish Jewish settlements that were removed in 2005.

Critics of Netanyahu, including thousands who have joined weekly protests in recent months, accuse him of prolonging the war for his own political survival. Gantz, who brought his centrist party into the government days after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, warned Netanyahu not to “choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation to the abyss.”

Netanyahu denies such accusations, saying he is focused on defeating Hamas and that elections would distract from the war effort.

Polls indicate Netanyahu would be driven from office if new elections were held, with Gantz most likely to replace him. That would probably mark the end of Netanyahu’s long political career and expose him to prosecution over longstanding corruption charges.

Israeli media have reported growing discontent within the country’s security establishment over the course of the war, with officials warning that the lack of any such planning was turning tactical victories into strategic defeat.

With no one else to govern Gaza, Hamas has repeatedly regrouped, even in the hardest-hit areas that Israel previously said it had cleared. Heavy fighting has erupted in recent days in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and the Zeitoun neighborhood on the outskirts of Gaza City.

Israeli troops are meanwhile pushing into parts of the southern city of Rafah in what they say is a limited operation. The fighting there has displaced some 800,000 people, many who had already fled from other areas, and severely hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Indirect talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt aimed at a cease-fire and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas meanwhile appear at a standstill, with many of the hostages’ families and their supporters blaming the Israeli government.

“Something has gone wrong,” Gantz said in his address. “Essential decisions were not taken. Acts of leadership required to ensure victory were not carried out. A small minority has taken over the command bridge of the Israeli ship and is leading it toward a wall of rocks.”

FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta (AP) — Residents who were ordered out of Canada’s oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, due to a nearby wildfire are clear to return home, authorities said Saturday.

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo lifted the evacuation order for the Abasand, Beacon Hill, Prairie Creek and Grayling Terrace neighborhoods on the city’s southern edge.

About 6,600 residents of those neighborhoods were forced to hastily leave their homes on Tuesday when the fire was still deemed out-of-control, but a statement from the municipality said firefighters made considerable progress since then.

The statement said recent rainy weather has helped tamp down the blaze and reduce its intensity, allowing those fighting it to bring it under control and erect fireguards at its northern edge.

The municipality said local highways were open in both directions and emergency social services, including food and accommodation, will remain available until noon on Sunday.

The partial evacuation was familiar terrain for the Albertan city, which survived a catastrophic blaze in 2016 that destroyed 2,400 homes and forced more than 80,000 people to flee.

Elsewhere, the Parker Lake and Patry Creek wildfires continue to threaten the northeastern British Columbia town of Fort Nelson, which remained under an evacuation order.

BANGKOK (AP) — A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military government in the country’s western state of Rakhine claimed Saturday to have seized a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the latest in a series of victories for foes of the country’s military government.

Members of the state’s Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, targets of deadly army-directed violence in 2017, appear to have been the main victims of fighting in the town of Buthidaung, where the Arakan Army claims to have chased out forces of the military government.

There are contradictory accounts of who is to blame for the reported burning of the town, compelling its Rohingya residents to flee.

The competing claims could not be verified independently, with access to the internet and mobile phone services in the area mostly cut off.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press by text message from an undisclosed location that his group had seized Buthidaung after capturing all the military’s outposts there.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It is also a member of an armed ethnic group alliance that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast on the border with China.

The group said in a Saturday statement on the Telegram messaging platform that fighting was ongoing on the outskirts of Buthidaung as its troops chased after the retreating army soldiers and local Muslims it said were fighting alongside them.

Khaing Thukha said the Arakan Army’s troops were caring for Muslim villagers fleeing the fighting.

He denied allegations by Rohingya activists on social media that the Arakan Army had set fire to the town, which is mostly populated by Rohingya.

Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, but they are widely regarded by many in the country’s Buddhist majority, including members of the Rakhine minority, as having illegally migrated from Bangladesh. The Rohingya face a great amount of prejudice and are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights.

The Rohingya were the targets of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign incorporating rape and murder that saw an estimated 740,000 flee to neighboring Bangladesh as their villages were burned down by government troops in 2017.

Ethnic Rakhine nationalist supporters of the Arakan Army were also among the persecutors of the Rohingya minority. However, the 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi shifted political alignments, with a resistance movement against military rule — a position shared by the Arakan Army –counting the Rohingya population among its allies.

Lingering tensions between the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the more than 600,000 Rohingya are still living in Rakhine flared when the government in February recruited Rohingya living in displacement camps to do military service. Both coercion and promises of citizenship were reportedly employed to get them to join.

Nay San Lwin, a co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition group based outside of Myanmar, said in a Friday email to the AP that the Arakan Army had warned Buthidaung’s Rohingya residents to evacuate the town by 10 a.m. on Saturday, and that more than 200,000 Rohingya seeking refuge there in houses, government buildings, a hospital, and schools, were in an extremely dangerous situation.

He also alleged that the Arakan Army had fired on a school and a hospital where displaced Rohingya are sheltering, resulting in deaths and injuries.

Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya who is deputy minister for human rights in the resistance movement’s shadow National Unity Government, wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday that Buthidaung had been burned to “a pile of ash” and that its residents had fled to rice fields outside of town.

He did not clearly lay blame for the arson, but said the situation was dire for those who fled.

“A comprehensive and impartial investigation needs to be carried out and those responsible must be held accountable,” he wrote. “Revolution against the military dictatorship is not a license to do anything you want. ‘War has rules.’”

The Arakan Army’s Khaing Thukha described the allegations his group was responsible were baseless, claiming the houses caught fire due to the airstrikes by the military government. He also said retreating army troops and what he called their allies in “terrorist organizations” — meaning Rohingya guerrilla groups — and local Muslims inducted into the military also set fire to houses as they retreated.

The military government has a well-established record of burning down villages as it battles pro-democracy and ethnic separatist groups opposed to military rule

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Tony O’Reilly, the Irish media tycoon and former H.J. Heinz Co boss who first rose to prominence as a record breaking British and Irish Lions rugby player, died on Saturday at the age of 88.

For decades one of Ireland’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, O’Reilly built a media group spanning from the Pacific through India and South Africa to Ireland but eventually went bankrupt after it crumbled during the global financial crisis of 2008.

He died in a Dublin hospital following a short illness, national broadcaster RTE quoted a spokesperson for the businessman as saying.

“Mr. O’Reilly was a giant of sports, business and media and left permanent legacies in all three. He was a trailblazer and forged a path that many other international business figures from Ireland would follow,” Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said in a statement.

Harris said O’Reilly’s philanthropy had a “transformative effect” on the island of Ireland through his establishment of The Ireland Funds at the height of Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence in the 1970s that has raised hundreds of millions of euros from US donors for reconciliation projects.

Born in Dublin in 1936, O’Reilly won his first of 29 rugby caps on the wing for Ireland at the age of 18.

His six test tries on two British and Irish Lions tours in the 1950s remains the all-time record, as does his 37 tries in all games for the Lions, a touring team selected every four years from the best of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

At 26, while still playing rugby for Ireland, he took on a moribund state body, the Irish Dairy board, and created Kerrygold butter, which remains one of Ireland’s most successful international brands.

About a decade later he became president and chief operating officer of food giant H.J. Heinz. By 1987 he had succeeded the son of Heinz’s founder to become the first non-family member to serve as chairman.

The smooth talking O’Reilly drove revenue at H.J. Heinz, now Kraft Heinz, from $908 million to $11 billion during his 18-year reign. By the time he retired in 1994, he was Ireland’s first billionaire.

That wealth included his Independent News & Media empire that included the UK Independent and other newspaper titles and radio stations around the world. Its share price had plunged to a fraction of the price of its newspapers, as its debts mounted, when O’Reilly handed the reins to his son in 2009.

The family lost control of the company three years later.

O’Reilly, who at one time served on the boards of General Electric, The Washington Post, Mobil Corporation – now ExxonMobil – and the New York Stock Exchange, also saw hundreds of millions of euros of investments disappear as Irish luxury tableware maker Waterford Wedgwood collapsed in 2009.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Franklin Paul)

CARACAS (Reuters) – Iran on Saturday said it will send experts to its ally Venezuela to help with medical accelerators in hospitals it said had been stopped due to Western sanctions.

Venezuela requested Iran’s help, according to a message on the social media platform X by the Iranian government attributed to the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

“Venezuela has a number of accelerators in its hospitals that have been stopped due to the embargo,” the message said.

Medical accelerators are used in radiation treatments for cancer patients.

Venezuela is also an ally of Russia and China.

The return of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry has made its alliance with Iran critical to keeping its lagging energy sector afloat. Washington last year temporarily relaxed sanctions on Venezuela’s promise to allow a competitive presidential election. The U.S. now says only some conditions were met.

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago; Writing by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisia recovered the bodies of four migrants off the country’s coast on Saturday, the national guard said, amid an increase in migrant boats heading from Tunisia toward Italy in recent weeks.

The force said the coast guard separately rescued 52 migrants.‮ ‬The national guard arrested nine smugglers, and boats were seized.

At least 23 Tunisian migrants were missing‮ ‬after setting off in a boat for Italy, the national guard said‮ ‬earlier on Saturday.

Tunisia is facing a migration crisis and has replaced Libya as the main departure point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East in the hope of a better life in Europe.

(Reporting By Tunisian newsroom and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

CAIRO (AP) — Clashes between government-allied militias rocked a coastal town in western Libya, trapping families inside their homes and forcing the closure of schools Saturday, officials said. At least one civilian was killed.

The latest bout of violence in the chaos-stricken Mediterranean nation broke out early Saturday in the town of Zawiya, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Tripoli, health officials said.

The Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency Services reported that at least one civilian was killed and at least 22 others were wounded in the clashes which were centered in the southern part of the town. A number of families have been evacuated during a short pause in the fighting, it said.

The Libyan Red Crescent, which helped evacuate the trapped families, appealed to the parties involved to open safe corridors for the remaining families in the area where fighting took place.

The Health Ministry said the clashes subsided by mid-day Saturday thanks to tribal elders in the town. “The situation is now quiet” in southern Zawiya, it said.

The clashing sides are allied with the government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, which is based in the capital of Tripoli. A spokesman for Dbeibah’s government didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The cause of the fighting was not immediately clear. Local media, however, reported that the clashes erupted when security forces attempted to arrest a man suspected of murder earlier this year.

The clashes also came after security authorities found three young men and a woman dead on a roadside in the town. The circumstances of their killing were not immediately clear.

The fighting was the latest bout of violence to rock western Libya, which is controlled by an array of lawless militias allied with Dbeibah’s government. In August last year, a 24-hour period of fighting between rival militias in Tripoli killed at least 45 people.

The oil-rich North African country has been wrecked by conflict since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The country has been divided for years between rival administrations in the east and west, each backed by armed groups and foreign governments. The country is now governed by Dbehiba’s government in Tripoli and the administration of Prime Minister Ossama Hammad in eastern Libya.

In the eastern town of Benghazi, lawmaker Ibarhim al-Darai went missing after a robbery of his home earlier this week, the Interior Ministry of Hamad’s government said late Friday. The ministry said it was investigating al-Darsi’s disappearance.

Al-Darsi’s disappearance recalled the case of another lawmaker, Sigam Sergiwa, who was abducted in Benghazi in July 2019.

Sergiwa was taken from her home by gunmen wearing military uniforms on July 17, hours after she criticized a failed offensive in 2019 by east Libya forces of powerful commander Khalifa Hifter to seize Tripoli, according to Amnesty International.

Benghazi is the stronghold of Hifter’s forces, which control eastern and southern Libya, and back Hammad’s government.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Former South African President Jacob Zuma Saturday lamented the high levels of poverty among black South Africans and promised to create jobs and tackle crime as he launched his new political party’s manifesto ahead of the country’s much anticipated elections.

He told thousands of supporters who gathered at Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg that his party would build factories where many people would be employed and provide free education to the country’s youth.

“We want our children to study for free, especially those from poor households because the poverty we have was not created by us. It was created by settlers who took everything, including our land. We’ll take all those things back, make money and educate our children,” he said.

He has also pledged to change the country’s Constitution to restore more powers to traditional leaders, saying their role in society has been reduced by giving more powers to magistrates and judges.

Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party, known as the MK Party, has emerged as a significant player in South Africa’s upcoming elections after it was launched in December last year.

He is currently involved in a legal battle with the country’s electoral authority, the Independent Electoral Commission. He has appealed against a court judgment which barred him from standing in the election because of his criminal record.

Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for defying a court order to appear before a judicial commission of inquiry which was probing corruption allegation in government and state-owned companies during his presidential term from 2009 to 2018.

In 2018, he was forced to resign as the country’s president following wide-ranging corruption allegations, but he has made a political return and is now seeking to become the country’s president again.

“When they talk about unemployment, they are talking about us, there is nobody else. When they talk about people who leave in shacks, that is us, there is nobody else who lives in shacks except us,” Zuma told his supporters, many of whom had travelled from other provinces like Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, where he still enjoys significant support.

Poverty among black people is the reason behind South Africa’s high levels of crime, according to the former president.

“Our hunger and poverty is what creates a perception that we are criminals, we don’t have a brain, we have nothing. That time is over, because we are good people who are giving, but some people are pushing us towards criminality,” he said.

Zuma said his party was aiming to get more than 65% of the national vote in the upcoming elections as it would allow them to change many laws in the country’s constitution.

Recent polls and analysts have suggested that the ruling African National Congress might get less than 50% of the vote and would need to form a coalition with smaller parties to remain in power.

South Africans will go to the polls on May 29.