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JOHANNESBURG, May 28 (Reuters) - South Africa's parliament has scheduled for Monday a meeting of ‌an impeachment committee that will further probe ‌allegations surrounding President Cyril Ramaphosa's "Farmgate" scandal, the Democratic Alliance party ​said on Thursday.

The meeting is the next stage in the impeachment process against Ramaphosa that was revived by the constitutional court earlier this month.

A ‌parliament spokesperson declined ⁠to comment, and Ramaphosa's spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request ⁠for comment.

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Ramaphosa has denied wrongdoing over the scandal, in which bundles of cash were stolen from ​a sofa ​on his farm in ​2020. An independent ‌panel found preliminary evidence he committed misconduct in 2022, but Ramaphosa's party the African National Congress blocked the impeachment process through a parliamentary vote that year.

This month the constitutional court declared that ‌vote invalid, effectively reviving the ​process.

On Tuesday, Ramaphosa filed ​court papers arguing ​the panel's findings against him were ‌flawed and should be set ​aside. He ​threatened to seek an urgent court order to halt impeachment proceedings if parliament moves ahead ​with the ‌process while his legal challenge is pending.

(Reporting ​by Anathi Madubela, Nilutpal Timsina and Sfundo ​Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Sweden on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on bilateral defense cooperation, the Ukrainian leader and the Swedish government said.

The two countries are preparing “a major defense package” and working on a deal to provide Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on social media.

The Ukrainian leader has sought to deepen defense cooperation with other countries by offering thedrone expertisehis country has built up over more than four years fighting againstRussia’s invasion.

Zelenskyy says Ukrainian specialists havehelped countries in the Middle East— specifically the Gulf Arab region — strengthen their air defenses amid theIran war. They have helped at American military bases in the Mideast as well, he says. Ukraine has also entered into joint drone production agreements with countries in the European Union, which fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has military ambitions beyond Ukraine.

Ukrainian drones that patrol the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line and strike deeper at supply routes have pinned back Russia's bigger army.

“Ukraine’s successful mid-range and front-line drone strike campaigns are limiting Russia’s ability to transport personnel to the front line and to supply and sustain front-line positions,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late Wednesday.

Russia has occupied about 20% of Ukraine so far. That includes the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014. The cost of capturing that land has been huge, with the head of U.K.’s GCHQ intelligence agency saying Wednesday that almost half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

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Russia, however, still has an edge in long-range ballistic missiles, which it has used throughout the war to damageUkraine’s power gridand hammer cities.

Russian forcesfired almost 90 missilesas well as hundreds of drones at Kyiv last weekend in an effort to overwhelm air defenses as part of its escalating long-range aerial campaign on civilian areas of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has written to U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress asking for more American-made air defense ammunition to counter Russian ballistic missiles, Kyiv officials said Wednesday.

Ukraine needs more U.S. Patriot PAC-3 missiles and other air defense systems, Zelenskyy said in the letter, warning that deliveries to Ukraine are falling dangerously short as the Iran war diverts U.S. stocks.

The Ukrainian capital is bracing for further heavy bombardments. But no foreign diplomats are known to have heeded Moscow’s recommendation to leave Kyiv ahead of what the Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier this week would be “systemic strikes” on Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that all diplomatic missions in the capital have continued operations.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish police are searching the headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party as part of an ongoing investigation into possible financial wrongdoing, the Civil Guard said Wednesday.

The raid on the office in central Madrid is another blow to the party ofPrime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose Socialists have been hammered by aseries of corruption scandals.

The Civil Guard told The Associated Press that the police were under judicial orders to find material relevant to a National Court probe into accusations of corruption against a former party member involved in a state-run company.

The police said the search is strictly limited to a probe led by National Court judge Santiago Pedraz into the possible wrongdoing of Socialist party member Leire Díaz.

The alleged case against Díaz started in 2025 when audio recordings appeared in Spanish media of her apparently being involved in attempts to discredit a member of the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit. Further reports linked her to alleged attempts to influence the work of state prosecutors.

The Socialist party said she was acting on her own.

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Diaz, who has left the party, has denied wrongdoing.

Last week a separate court said it was investigating former Prime Minister José LuisRodríguez Zapateroin connection with a government airline bailout. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Sánchez's wife and brother are being probed over allegations of influence peddling, which both have denied.

And, most damning for the Socialists, a former minister under Sánchez and a senior party official are both being investigated on allegations they played a part in a kickback ring that started during the COVID-19 pandemic, which they have denied.

Sánchez, who has been prime minister since 2018, has called the cases against his family a “smear campaign.” But the corruption case against his former cohorts led him toask the nation for “forgiveness”in 2025.

His minority government depends on the support of a junior coalition partner, which for now has stuck with it despite the judicial actions.

Sánchez, who has stood out on the international stage for hisprogressive stancesthat have earned the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, has not been directly linked to any of the scandals.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A group led by a Roman Catholic bishop in the Philippines launched a fact-finding body Wednesday to document accounts of witnesses and other details of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’sbloody anti-drugs crackdownthat the government can use to prosecute law enforcers.

Duterte, who ended his stormy six-year presidency in 2022, wasarrested last yearand taken to the Netherlands, where he is facing trial before theInternational Criminal Courtin The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity over the killings.

Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s loyal ally and his former national police chief, who first enforced the bloody crackdown, is wanted by the ICC as a co-perpetrator for some of the thousands of killings, which alarmed Western governments and human rights groups.

Dela Rosa has gone into hiding and is being hunted by Philippine authorities, who have vowed to enforce an ICC warrant for his arrest and turn him over to the global court.

Dela Rosa and the brash-speaking Duterte have denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, but the then president had repeatedly threatened suspects with death.

Many of the thousands of police officers directly involved in the brutal crackdown that leftthousands of mostly poor suspectsdead have not been thoroughly investigated, and very few have been convicted, according to human rights groups.

“This is long overdue,” Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David said in a news conference. The nongovernment “EJK Truth Commission” he helped organize will focus on helping victims, their families and even repentant law enforcers to finally find closure, David said.

“This is an opportunity for a catharsis … so we can recover our dignity as a country,” David said. “Ultimately, what we aspire for is healing not only for the victims but also our institutions.”

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Raul Pangalangan, a respected Philippine lawyer, who has served for years as an ICC judge, said the commission he will head “was created to ensure that the stories of victims, survivors and families are heard, verified and preserved.”

The commission plans to hold public hearings.

“These things happened because everybody looked the other way,” Pangalangan said. “It is almost a conspiracy of silence.”

Members of the commission said they will allow the government to use their findings to help authorities investigate, prosecute and seek accountability. Their periodic reports may be submitted to justice and human rights officials, they said.

David called on civil society, academic, religious and other groups to help the commission and said a large charity group in Germany has offered funding support.

Commission member Raquel Fortun, a forensic pathologist with the state-run University of the Philippines, told The Associated Press that the task of establishing facts years after the killings would be difficult. There were efforts by some law enforcers involved in the killings to evade accountability.

Death certificates of 13 drug suspects, whose remains were exhumed after Duterte stepped down from office, stated they died of natural causes, like heart attack and pneumonia, she said.

“When I examined the remains, I found that they were hit by gunfire,” Fortun said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more than 100 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, as the country’s foreign ministry noted that Moscow’s recentthreat to hit Kyiv especially hard from the airbrought nothing new.

Russia Ukraine War

Russia on Monday urged foreign citizens, including members of diplomatic missions, to leave the Ukrainian capital as quickly as possible and told residents to steer clear of military and government facilities. It said that “systemic strikes” on Kyiv were being prepared.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio by phone Monday that the U.S. should evacuate its diplomatic staff from Kyiv, a foreign ministry statement said. Rubio didn’t say whether the State Department would take that step, but expressed concern during a trip to India that the “terrible” war in Ukraine could escalate further.

The Trump administration hastried for more than a yearto stop the fighting that broke out after Russia’s February 2022invasion. But its efforts yielded no significant breakthrough and are now on ice as Washington focuses on theIran war.

No diplomats say they are leaving Kyiv

There were no announcements of diplomatic departures from Kyiv. The European Union, French and Polish delegations publicly said that they would not leave.

The level of security threats posed by Russia to Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities “remains the same as in previous years and months,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Monday.

Russia has continuously launched missile and drone attacks on the capital for more than four years, it pointed out, adding that Ukraine was prepared to assist diplomatic missions seeking additional security measures.

Russia said itsbiggest missile attack of the yearlast weekend was a response to Friday’s deadly Ukrainian drone strike on what Moscow said was acollege dormitoryin Starobilsk, a city in Ukraine’s Russia-occupied Luhansk region.

But the Ukrainian General Staff said that its strike in Starobilsk hit the local headquarters of the Russian military’s special drone unit.

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Ukraine remains short of air defense missiles

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that sophisticated American-made air defense systems that Ukraine needs to stop Russian ballistic missiles are in short supply due to the Iran war.

“Unfortunately, there has been no progress for a long time with America on expanding the production of anti-ballistic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Monday, adding that Kyiv is working with Europe to improve its own anti-ballistic capabilities in sufficient quantities.

He noted that Ukrainian battlefield gains in recent months have enabled it to “stabilize” the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, suggesting that Kyiv's forces are holding their own against Russia's bigger army.

Russia’s spring offensive is floundering as Ukraine’s midrange drone strikes disrupt its rear supply lines, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Moscow’s warning of major strikes aims to distract public attention from its “poor battlefield performance” and an economic pinch caused by war costs and international sanctions, the Washington-based think tank said late Monday.

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Elise Morton in London contributed.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Brussels — A train crashed into a school minibus in Belgium on Tuesday, leaving at least several "victims" in an unconfirmed condition, the country's interior minister said. Two sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the French news agency AFP that several people on the bus were killed in the collision.

The Reuters news agency also quoted a local source as saying several people were killed, but there was no immediate confirmation from police or other authorities.

"With great dismay, I learnt of the tragic accident in Buggenhout, where a school bus was struck by a train. My thoughts go out to the victims and their loved ones. I wish the injured much strength," minister Bernard Quintin wrote on X.

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Photos from the scene showed the minibus laying on its side near the railway road crossing, with serious damage seen to its front end.

"The impact was extremely violent," said Frederic Sacre, a spokesman for the Belgian rail network operator, describing the toll as "dramatic."

"It happened at around 8:08 am when a minibus was struck by a train that was due to stop at the next station, which was about a kilometer away," he said.

KAMPALA, May 25 (Reuters) - Uganda has detected two more confirmed cases of Ebola, ‌its health ministry said on Monday, ‌bringing the total number of cases reported in the ​country to seven.

The two new cases are health workers in a private health facility in the capital Kampala and both are Ugandans, ‌the ministry said ⁠in a statement.

"Both patients have been admitted to the designated treatment ⁠unit and are now receiving care," the ministry said, adding that response teams were ​tracing all ​those who had ​been in contact with ‌the two people.

Ugandan authorities confirmed three new Ebola cases on Saturday.

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The epicentre of the outbreak is in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province, which borders Uganda.

The World ‌Health Organization has declared the ​outbreak of the rare ​Bundibugyo strain ​of Ebola a public health emergency ‌of international concern.

WHO chief ​Tedros Adhanom ​Ghebreyesus said on Sunday that there had been more than 900 suspected cases in ​the outbreak ‌so far, including 101 confirmed cases.

(Reporting ​by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by George ​Obulutsa;Editing by Alexander Winning)