Uganda president holds talks with South Sudanese leaders to try to avoid civil war

News

Uganda president holds talks with South Sudanese leaders to try to avoid civil war

2025-04-04 21:30 Last Updated At：21:41

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni was expected to meet South Sudanese officials on the second day of his trip to the capital, Juba, as the U.N has expressed concern of a renewed civil war after the main opposition leader was put under house arrest.

Museveni, who is among the guarantors of a 2018 peace agreement that ended a five-year civil war, held closed-door discussions with President Salva Kiir on Thursday. South Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdallah Goc said that the country’s leadership had assured Museveni of its commitment to implement the peace agreement.

South Sudan’s political landscape remains fragile and recent violence between government troops and armed groups allied to the opposition has escalated tensions.

Uganda last month deployed troops to South Sudan to support the government, but it was criticized by South Sudan’s main opposition party SPLM-IO, whose leader Riek Machar is under house arrest on charges of incitement.

In early March, an armed group loyal to Machar attacked a U.N helicopter that was on a mission to evacuate government troops from the restive northern Upper Nile State.

Western countries including Germany and Norway have temporarily closed their embassies in Juba while the U.S and the U.K. have reduced embassy staff.

Swollen rivers are flooding towns in the US South after a prolonged deluge of rain

2025-04-07 23:16 Last Updated At：23:21

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Days of unrelenting heavy rain and storms that killed at least 18 people worsened flooding as some rivers rose to near-record levels Monday and inundated towns across an already saturated U.S. South and parts of the Midwest.

Cities ordered evacuations and rescue crews in inflatable boats checked on residents in Kentucky and Tennessee, while utilities shut off power and gas in a region stretching from Texas to Ohio.

“I think everybody was shocked at how quick (the river) actually did come up,” said salon owner Jessica Tuggle, who was watching Monday as murky brown water approached her business in Frankfort, Kentucky, the state capital along the swollen Kentucky River.

She said that as each new wave of rain arrived over the weekend, anxious residents hoped for a reprieve so they could just figure out how bad things would get. She and friends packed up her salon gear, including styling chairs, hair products and electronics, and took it to a nearby tap house up the hill.

“Everybody was just ‘stop raining, stop raining’ so we could get an idea of what the worst situation would be,” she said.

Officials diverted traffic and turned off utilities to businesses in the city as the river was expected to approach a record crest Monday.

Ashley Welsh and her husband and four children had to quickly depart their Frankfort home along the river Saturday evening, leaving a lifetime of belongings later submerged by floodwaters.

When she awoke to water coming into their house early Saturday, Welsh woke everyone up and they packed their truck. They alerted guests to leave an Airbnb they own down the road, packed up the Airbnb and then helped her sister, who lives next to the Airbnb, evacuate. After they took a short nap at their house, the water had risen.

“By the time we woke up, there was already three feet of water that we had to wade through to get out,” she said.

They packed a suitcase and escaped from the rising water and went to a local hotel. One daughter carried two cats through water to safety and their black Labrador dog had to swim, as they stayed close to make sure no one got swept away.

The water rose up to their second floor. By Sunday morning, she checked her house's cameras.

“My stuff was floating around in the living room. I was just heartbroken. Our life is up there,” Welsh said.

The 18 reported deaths since the storms began on Wednesday included 10 in Tennessee. A 9-year-old boy in Kentucky was caught up in floodwaters while walking to catch his school bus. A 5-year-old boy in Arkansas died after a tree fell on his family’s home, police said. A 16-year-old volunteer Missouri firefighter died in a crash while seeking to rescue people caught in the storm.

The National Weather Service warned Sunday that dozens of locations in multiple states were expected to reach a “major flood stage,” with extensive flooding of structures, roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure possible.

In north-central Kentucky, emergency officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Falmouth and Butler, towns near the bend of the rising Licking River. Thirty years ago, the river reached a record 50 feet (15 meters), resulting in five deaths and 1,000 homes destroyed.

The Kentucky River was cresting at Frankfort Lock at 48.27 feet (14.71 meters) on Monday morning, just shy of the record of 48.5 feet (14.78 meters) set there on Dec. 10, 1978, according to CJ Padgett, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Louisville, Kentucky, office. While other areas are in major flood stage, the forecasted crest for this location is closest to its record.

Carroll County Deputy Judge-Executive Michael Humphrey in Kentucky has ordered mandatory evacuations in some places, warning that a “significant flooding event of which history has never seen” is expected.

More than 100 structures were destroyed in McNairy County, Tennessee, where a tornado tore through the town of Selmer with winds estimated up to 160 mph (257 kph), local emergency management officials said. State officials have confirmed five people were killed by the severe weather in the county of roughly 26,100 residents.

The storms come after the Trump administration cut jobs at NWS forecast offices, leaving half of them with vacancy rates of about 20%, or double the level of a decade ago.

Forecasters attributed the violent weather to warm temperatures, an unstable atmosphere, strong winds and abundant moisture streaming from the Gulf.

The NWS said 5.06 inches (nearly 13 centimeters) of rain fell Saturday in Jonesboro, Arkansas — making it the wettest day ever recorded in April in the city. Memphis, Tennessee, received 14 inches (35 centimeters) of rain from Wednesday to Sunday, the NWS said.

Rives, a northwestern Tennessee town of about 200 people, was almost entirely underwater after the Obion River overflowed.

Domanic Scott went to check on his father in Rives after not hearing from him in a house where water reached the doorstep.

“It’s the first house we’ve ever paid off. The insurance companies around here won’t give flood insurance to anyone who lives in Rives because we’re too close to the river and the levees. So if we lose it, we’re kind of screwed without a house,” Scott said.

In Dyersburg, Tennessee, dozens of people arrived over the weekend at a storm shelter near a public school clutching blankets, pillows and other necessities. Just days earlier the city was hit by a tornado that caused millions of dollars in damage.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in New York; Kimberlee Kruesi and Jonathan Mattise, in Nashville, Tennessee; Sarah Brumfield in Cockeysville, Maryland; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Arkansas; Adrian Sainz in Memphis; Tennessee; Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Obed Lamy in Rives, Tennessee; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago.