CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africans celebrate their “Freedom Day” every April 27, when they remember their country’s pivotal first democratic election in 1994 that announced the official end of the racial segregation and oppression of apartheid.

Saturday is the 30th anniversary of that momentous vote, when millions of Black South Africans, young and old, decided their own futures for the first time, a fundamental right they had been denied by a white minority government.

The first all-race election saw the previously banned African National Congress party win overwhelmingly and made its leader, Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president four years after he was released from prison.

Here’s what you need to know about that iconic moment and a South Africa that’s changing again 30 years on:

The 1994 election was the culmination of a process that began four years earlier when F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, shocked the world and his country by announcing that the ANC and other anti-apartheid parties would be unbanned.

Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was released from prison nine days later, setting him on the road to becoming South Africa’s first Black leader.

South Africa needed years to prepare and was still on a knife-edge in the months and weeks before the election because of ongoing political violence, but the vote — held over four days between April 26 and April 29 to accommodate the large numbers who turned out — went ahead successfully.

A country that had been shunned and sanctioned by the international community for decades because of apartheid emerged as a fully-fledged democracy.

Nearly 20 million South Africans of all races voted, compared with just 3 million white people in the last general election under apartheid in 1989.

Associated Press photographer Denis Farrell’s iconic aerial photograph of people waiting patiently for hours in long, snaking queues in fields next to a school in the famed Johannesburg township of Soweto captured the determination of millions of Black South Africans to finally be counted. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

“South Africa’s heroes are legend across the generations,” Mandela said as he proclaimed victory. “But it is you, the people, who are our true heroes.”

The ANC’s election victory ensured that apartheid was finally dismantled and a new Constitution was drawn up and became South Africa’s highest law, guaranteeing equality for everyone no matter their race, religion or sexuality.

Apartheid, which began in 1948 and lasted for nearly half-a-century, had oppressed Black and other non-white people through a series of race-based laws. Not only did the laws deny them a vote, they controlled where Black people lived, where they were allowed to go on any given day, what jobs they were allowed to hold and who they were allowed to marry.

Current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — a protege of Mandela — will lead Saturday’s 30th anniversary Freedom Day celebrations at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of government.

The ANC has been in government ever since 1994 and while it is still recognized for its central role in freeing South Africans, it is no longer celebrated in the same way as it was in the hope-filled aftermath of that election.

South Africa in 2024 has deep socio-economic problems, none more jarring than the widespread and severe poverty that still overwhelmingly affects the Black majority. The official unemployment rate is 32%, the highest in the world, while it’s more than 60% for young people aged 15-24.

Millions of Black South Africans still live in neglected, impoverished townships and informal settlements on the fringes of cities in what many see as a betrayal of the heroes Mandela referred to. South Africa is still rated as one of the most unequal countries in the world.

The ANC is now largely being blamed for the lack of progress in improving the lives of so many South Africans, even if the damage of decades of apartheid wasn’t going to be easy to undo.

The 30th anniversary of 1994 falls with another possibly pivotal election as a backdrop. South Africa will hold its seventh national vote since the end of apartheid on May 29, with all the opinion polls and analysts predicting that the ANC will lose its parliamentary majority in a new landmark.

The ANC is still expected to be the largest party and will likely have to enter into complicated coalitions with smaller parties to remain part of the government, but the overriding picture that is expected is that more South Africans will vote for other parties in a national election for the first time in their democracy.

South Africans still cherish the memory of Mandela and the elusive freedom and prosperity he spoke about in 1994. But the majority of them now appear ready to look beyond the ANC to attain it.

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HAVANA (AP) — Alejandro Fonseca stood in line for several hours outside a bank in Havana hoping to withdraw Cuban pesos from an ATM, but when it was almost his turn, the cash ran out. He angrily hopped on his electric tricycle and traveled several kilometers to another branch where he finally managed to withdraw some money after wasting the entire morning.

“It shouldn’t be so difficult to get the money you earn by working,” the 23-year-old told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Fonseca is one of an increasing number of frustrated Cubans who have to grapple with yet another hurdle while navigating the island’s already complicated monetary system — a shortage of cash.

Long queues outside banks and ATM’s in the capital, Havana, and beyond start forming early in the day as people seek cash for routine transactions like buying food and other essentials.

Experts say there are several reasons behind the shortage, all somehow related to Cuba’s deep economic crisis, one of the worst in decades.

Omar Everleny Pérez, a Cuban economist and university professor, says the main culprits are the government’s growing fiscal deficit, the nonexistence of banknotes with a denomination greater than 1,000 Cuban pesos (about $3 in the parallel market), stubbornly high inflation and the non-return of cash to banks.

“There is money, yes, but not in the banks,” said Pérez, adding that most of the cash is being held not by salaried workers, but by entrepreneurs and owners of small- and medium-size business who are more likely to collect cash from commercial transactions but are reluctant to return the money to the banks.

This, Pérez says, is either because they don’t trust the local banks or simply because they need the Cuban pesos to convert into foreign currency.

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners in Cuba have to import almost everything they sell or pay in foreign currency for the supplies needed to run their businesses. As a consequence, many end up hoarding Cuban pesos to later change into foreign currency on the informal market.

Converting those Cuban pesos to other currencies poses yet another challenge, as there are several, highly fluctuating exchange rates in the island.

For example, the official rate used by government industries and agencies is 24 pesos to the U.S. dollar, while for individuals, the rate is 120 pesos to the dollar. However, the dollar can fetch up to 350 Cuban pesos on the informal market.

Pérez notes that in 2018, 50% of the cash in circulation was in the hands of the Cuban population and the other half in Cuban banks. But in 2022, the latest year for which information is available, 70% of cash was in the wallets of individuals.

Cuban monetary authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s emailed request for comment.

The shortage of cash comes as Cubans grapple with a complex monetary system in which several currencies circulate, including a virtual currency, MLC, created in 2019.

Then, in 2023 the government announced several measures aimed at promoting a “cashless society,” making the use of credit cards mandatory to pay for some transactions — including purchases of food, fuel and other basic goods — but many businesses simply refuse to accept them.

Making things worse is stubbornly high inflation, meaning more and more physical bills are needed to buy products.

According to official figures, inflation stood at 77% in 2021, then dropped to 31% in 2023. But for the average Cuban, the official figures barely reflect the reality of their lives, since market inflation can reach up to three digits on the informal market. For example, a carton of eggs, which sold for 300 Cuban pesos in 2019, these days sells for about 3,100 pesos.

All while the monthly salary for Cuban state workers ranges between 5,000 and 7,000 Cuban pesos (between $14 and $20 in the parallel market).

“To live in an economy that, in addition to having several currencies, has several exchange rates and a three-digit inflation is quite complicated,” said Pavel Vidal, a Cuba expert and professor at Colombia’s Javeriana University of Cali.

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Andrea Rodríguez on X: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Violence against women is an “epidemic” in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday, as thousands attended rallies in Sydney and other major Australian cities urging tougher laws on gendered violence.

The rallies were spurred by a wave of violence against women that the government says has seen a woman killed every four days this year. The rallies also followed a mass stabbing in Sydney this month that killed six people, including five women.

Protesters demanding stronger criminal laws gathered in Sydney, capital of New South Wales state, for a rally and then a march that closed city streets. Some protesters carried signs that read “Respect” and “No More Violence”.

In South Australia’s capital Adelaide, it was estimated around 3,000 people rallied at the city’s parliament building.

Prime Minister Albanese said he would be part of a rally in the national capital Canberra on Sunday.

“I will walk with women across Australia to say enough is enough,” Albanese said on social media platform X.

“Violence against women is an epidemic. We must do better.”

In Adelaide, Greens Party Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said “a national emergency response” was needed to tackle the issue.

“Women are sick and tired of being told ‘yes it’s bad but there’s not much we can do,'” Hanson-Young said, according to a spokesperson.

Similar protests were scheduled across the weekend in state capitals Perth, Western Australia; Melbourne, Victoria; Hobart, Tasmania; and Brisbane, Queensland.

Gender-based violence is an ongoing issue in Australia, a nation of 26 million. In 2021, tens of thousands rallied over allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct in some of the nation’s highest political offices.

(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue)

tpMANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines on Saturday denied a Chinese claim that the two countries had reached an agreement over an escalating maritime dispute in the South China Sea, calling the claim propaganda.

A spokesperson at China’s embassy in Manila said on April 18 that the two had agreed early this year to a “new model” in managing tensions at the Second Thomas Shoal, without elaborating.

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said on Saturday his department was “not aware of, nor is it a party to, any internal agreement with China” since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr took office in 2022. Defence department officials have not spoken to any Chinese officials since last year, Teodoro said in a statement.

China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Teodoro’s comments outside office hours.

Beijing and Manila have repeatedly clashed in recent months at the submerged reef, which Philippines says is in its exclusive economic zone but which China also claims.

The Philippines had accused China of blocking manoeuvres and firing water cannons at its vessels to disrupt supply missions to Filipino soldiers stationed in a naval ship which Manila deliberately grounded in 1999 to bolster its maritime claims.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual ship commerce. Its claims overlap with those of the Philippines and four other nations. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague said China’s claims had no legal basis, a decision Beijing rejects.

Teodoro called China’s claims of a bilateral agreement “part of the Chinese propaganda”, adding that the Philippines would never enter into any agreement that would compromise its claims in the waterway.

“The narrative that unnamed or unidentified Chinese officials are propagating is another crude attempt to advance a falsehood,” he said.

(Reporting by Mikhail Flores; Editing by William Mallard)

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of politicizing human rights in the East Asian country, denouncing what it called political provocation and conspiracy.

Pyongyang will make stern and decisive choices to protect its sovereignty and safety in response to Washington using human rights as a tool for invasion and hostile, anti-North Korea behaviour, state media KCNA quoted a foreign ministry spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson cited a special envoy on human rights in the administration of President Joe Biden. The envoy on North Korean human rights issues, Julie Turner, visited Seoul and Tokyo in February to discuss North Korea.

An annual report this week by the State Department described “significant human rights issues” in North Korea.

It cited credible reports of “arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government authorities”.

North Korea also criticised the U.S. for urging it to stop launching missiles and other rockets for what Washington calls violations of U.N. resolutions, KCNA said, mentioning a South Korean satellite launch in April.

“We will carry out our critical mission as planned to enhance our space reconnaissance capabilities to ensure the security of our country,” KCNA said in a statement citing a spokesperson for North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration.

(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim; Editing by Sandra Maler and William Mallard)

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) – Hamas said it had received on Saturday Israel’s official response to its latest ceasefire proposal and will study it before submitting its reply, the group’s deputy Gaza chief said in a statement.

“Hamas has received today the official response of the Zionist occupation to the proposal presented to the Egyptian and the Qatari mediators on April 13,” Khalil Al-Hayya, who is currently based in Qatar, said in a statement published by the group.

After more than six months of war with Israel in Gaza, the negotiations remain deadlocked, with Hamas sticking to its demands that any agreement must end the war.

An Egyptian delegation visited Israel for discussion with Israeli officials on Friday, looking for a way to restart talks to end the conflict and return remaining hostages taken when Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns on Oct. 7, an official briefed on the meetings said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israel had no new proposals to make, although it was willing to consider a limited truce in which 33 hostages would be released by Hamas, instead of the 40 previously under discussion.

On Thursday, the United States and 17 other countries appealed to Hamas to release all of its hostages as a pathway to end the crisis.

Hamas has vowed not to relent to international pressure but in a statement it issued on Friday it said it was “open to any ideas or proposals that take into account the needs and rights of our people”.

However, it stuck to its key demands that Israel has rejected, and criticised the joint statement issued by the U.S and others for not calling for a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Friday he saw fresh momentum in talks to end the war and return the remaining hostages.

Citing two Israeli officials, Axios reported that Israel told the Egyptian mediators on Friday that it was ready to give hostage negotiations “one last chance” to reach a deal with Hamas before moving forward with an invasion of Rafah, the last refuge for around a million Palestinians who fled Israeli forces further north in Gaza earlier in the war.

Meanwhile, in Rafah, Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike on a house killed at least five people and wounded others.

Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages. Israel has sworn to annihilate Hamas in an onslaught that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Ahmed Tolba and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Sandra Maler and Rosalba O’Brien)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The family and supporters of a missing woman who may have been the first victim of a Mexico City serial killer protested Friday at the site where the bones and possessions of a half-dozen women were found last week.

Protesters covered the facade of the apartment building with placards after investigators found the bones, cell phones and ID cards of several women at rented rooms there, apparent mementos of the killer’s 12-year trail of victims.

Most of the placards taped to the non-descript apartment building on the city’s east side Friday asked variants of a single question: Why did it take prosecutors 12 years to investigate the disappearance of Amairany Roblero, then 18.

The high school student vanished in 2012 and her parents never heard from her — or investigators — until last week, a pattern all too familiar in missing persons cases in Mexico, where prosecutors often leave it up to relatives to investigate.

“The prosecutors had the case file, but they didn’t ever give any results to her parents,” said Alejandra Jiménez, a family friend who accompanied Amairany’s parents in their search and at Friday’s protest.

Her parents “printed up flyers, and they distributed them outside of her school” — the last place she was seen — “but her parents had nothing, nowhere to start, nor any directions to the end.”

In fact, prosecutors never caught the killer. It was neighbors and police who detained him last week after he allegedly broke into a neighbor’s apartment to kill his seventh victim, was interrupted and left a surviving witness.

The suspect — who was only identified by his first name, Miguel, according to Mexican law — apparently waited for a woman to leave her apartment last week and then rushed in and sexually abused and strangled her 17-year-old daughter.

The mother returned and saw the man leaving, but he slashed her in the neck and fled, authorities said. The mother survived but her daughter did not.

The suspect lived near the scene of the crime, and he was quickly identified and arrested. He has been ordered held over for trial on charges of murder and attempted murder, both related to the most recent victims.

While Mexico City authorities sought Thursday to downplay the case — city prosecutor Ulises Lara contended the killer was essentially unstoppable because “he showed no signs of violent or aggressive behavior in his daily life” — protesters weren’t buying those excuses.

“They (authorities) have all the means to look for missing people,” Jiménez said. “Instead of focusing on their political campaigns, they should help all the women who are looking for their children.”

This week, prosecutors finally called Amairany’s parents to tell them they had found unspecified “evidence” related to their daughter in a room the suspect rented.

Previously, investigators said they found blood stains, bones, a saw, cellphones and missing women’s ID cards, as well as other “biological material” in the rooms. They also found “a series of notebooks that may well be narrations of the acts that Miguel carried out against his victims.”

“But they haven’t shown her parents any belongings, no clothing, no photo, nothing,” said Jiménez. “This is wearing down her parents physically, mentally.”

Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, a lawyer who represents the family of another suspected victim, questioned why authorities didn’t investigate her disappearance earlier — acting only when evidence linked to her case showed up at the suspect’s apartment.

“Why was there never an investigation, why were people never interviewed, despite missing person reports being filed starting in 2015?” Gutiérrez said.

Without proper funding, training or professionalism, prosecutors in Mexico’s capital have routinely failed to stop serial killers until the number of victims reaches a point that can’t be ignored.

In 2021, a serial killer in a Mexico City suburb was only caught after years of alleged crimes — 19 bodies were found hacked up and buried at his house — because his final victim was the wife of a police commander. The commander burst into the suspect’s house with a bunch of other cops, only to find a scene of horror.

In 2018, a serial killer in Mexico City responsible for the deaths of at least 10 women was caught only when he was found pushing a dismembered body down the street in a baby carriage. He had dumped most of the bodies of his victims in vacant lots.

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ZEBALLOS, British Columbia (AP) — A young killer whale that was trapped for more than a month in a lagoon on Vancouver Island swam past a bottleneck at high tide early Friday, reaching an inlet that could take it to the open sea, officials said.

The Ehattesaht and Nuchatlaht First Nations said in a statement that a team monitoring the 2-year-old calf saw it swim past the area where its mother had died, pass under a bridge and head down the inlet “all on her own.”

The young orca still must leave the Little Espinosa Inlet to reach open ocean.

The calf had been stuck in the tidal lagoon near the British Columbia village of Zeballos about 450 kilometers (280 miles) northwest of Victoria since March 23, when its pregnant mother became trapped at low tide and died on a rocky beach.

“Today the community of Zeballos and people everywhere are waking up to some incredible news and what can only be described as pride for strength this little orca has shown,” Chief Simon John said in a release.

Officials said they hoped that once the whale reaches the open sea, it calls will be heard by its orca family.

John said officials and nation members were putting protective measures in place to ensure the whale has no contact with people or boats.

“Every opportunity needs to be afforded to have her back with her family with as little human interaction as possible,” he said.

An attempt in mid-April to free the whale involved using a net to corral her into a large fabric sling in shallow waters. The whale managed to dodge a 50-person rescue team that was using boats, divers and sophisticated underwater detection equipment.

In another effort, a woman tried to coax the whale out of the lagoon by playing her violin during high tide.

By Nailia Bagirova

AGDAM, Azerbaijan (Reuters) – The Russian and Turkish flags were lowered on Friday to mark the closure of a centre set up to monitor a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, as Russian peacekeepers ended a multi-year deployment in the strategic South Caucasus region.

Nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops were dispatched to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in November 2020 under a Moscow-brokered deal that halted six weeks of fighting between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces.

Despite the deployment, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh by force in September last year, a move which triggered an exodus of at least 100,000 ethnic Armenians living there and the arrest of the breakaway area’s ethnic Armenian leaders.

Armenia’s political leadership accused Moscow at the time of failing to protect Armenian interests, a charge Russia rejected.

Russia announced earlier this month that its peacekeepers were leaving Karabakh and other regions, ending a deployment that was set to run until 2025.

Military officials from Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan attended Friday’s ceremony at the monitoring centre, located near the ghost city of Agdam in a part of Karabakh controlled by Baku since 2020.

Dozens of Russian and Turkish peacekeepers dressed in military fatigues as well as Azeri soldiers sat in folding chairs under the open sky and watched a traditional Azeri dance performance.

Sergei Istrakov, deputy chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, praised the friendship between Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan in a speech to the assembled crowd.

“On behalf of the minister of defence and the chief of the general staff, I express my gratitude to the servicemen of Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, who worthily performed their military duty in the name of peace and tranquillity throughout the South Caucasus,” Istrakov said.

“The successful work of the centre, based on mutual respect and the primacy of international humanitarian law, made it possible to complete the peacekeeping operation ahead of schedule.”

Azerbaijan’s national anthem was then played before the Russian and Turkish flags were lowered to the sound of their own respective national anthems.

Nearly all of the Russian peacekeeping contingent has already left the region, and the rest are due to go by the end of May, a source at Azerbaijan’s defence ministry told Reuters.

All of their armoured vehicles, including 90 armoured personnel carriers (BTR82A) and 380 other vehicles, had already left Azerbaijan’s territory, the source added.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been inching towards a peace deal to end the conflict over Karabakh, which dates to 1988, three years before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Yerevan agreed to return several villages to Baku last week in what both sides said was an important milestone, although the move has proved unpopular in Armenia, where it triggered anti-government protests this week.

(Reporting by Reuters in Agdam; Writing by Lucy Papachristou in London; editing by Andrew Osborn and Mark Heinrich)

By Ahmed Tolba and Lisa Baertlein

CAIRO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Yemen’s Houthis said on Saturday their missiles hit the Andromeda Star oil tanker in the Red Sea, as they continue attacking commercial ships in the area in a show of support for Palestinians fighting Israel in the Gaza war.

U.S. Central Command confirmed that Iran-backed Houthis launched three anti-ship ballistic missiles into the Red Sea from Yemen causing minor damage to the Andromeda Star.

The ship’s master reported damage to the vessel, British maritime security firm Ambrey said.

A missile landed in the vicinity of a second vessel, the MV Maisha, but it was not damaged, U.S. Central Command said on social media site X.

Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarea said the Panama-flagged Andromeda Star was British owned, but shipping data shows it was recently sold, according to LSEG data and Ambrey.

Its current owner is Seychelles-registered. The tanker is engaged in Russia-linked trade. It was en route from Primorsk, Russia, to Vadinar, India, Ambrey said.

Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched repeated drone and missile strikes in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait and Gulf of Aden since November, forcing shippers to re-route cargo to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa and stoking fears the Israel-Hamas war could spread and destabilise the Middle East.

The attack on the Andromeda Star comes after a brief pause in the Houthis’ campaign that targets ships with ties to Israel, the United States and Britain.

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier sailed out of the Red Sea via the Suez Canal on Friday after assisting a U.S.-led coalition to protect commercial shipping.

The Houthis on Friday said they downed an American MQ-9 drone in airspace of Yemen’s Saada province.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler, Chris Reese and Muralikumar Anantharaman)