UN Chief Calls for ‘Unconditional and Immediate’ Ethiopian Ceasefire

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the media at the end of his visit to mark five years since the signing of a peace deal between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government in Bogota, Colombia November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the media at the end of his visit to mark five years since the signing of a peace deal between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government in Bogota, Colombia November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
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UN Chief Calls for ‘Unconditional and Immediate’ Ethiopian Ceasefire

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the media at the end of his visit to mark five years since the signing of a peace deal between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government in Bogota, Colombia November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the media at the end of his visit to mark five years since the signing of a peace deal between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government in Bogota, Colombia November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for an end to fighting in Ethiopia while in Colombia's capital Bogota, urging Ethiopian leaders to follow the Andean country's example of peace.

Guterres, who was visiting Colombia to mark the five-year anniversary of the peace deal between the government and the demobilized leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, called for an immediate end to hostilities, Reuters reported.

"The peace process in Colombia today inspires me to make an urgent call to the protagonists of the conflict in Ethiopia for an unconditional and immediate ceasefire," Guterres said during a joint address with Colombia's President Ivan Duque.

War in Ethiopia broke out in November 2020 in the country's Tigray region between Ethiopian federal troops and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. In July, the conflict spread into two neighboring regions in northern Ethiopia.

Ending fighting in Ethiopia would allow a dialogue to take place between Ethiopians, Guterres said, permitting the country to once again contribute to the stability of the region.

"I would very much like Colombia to be the example followed by the leaders in Ethiopia," Guterres added.

Guterres also urged Colombian lawmakers to ratify the ratify Escazu Accord, an agreement among Latin American and Caribbean countries that enshrines protections for those working on environmental causes.

According to advocacy group Global Witness, Colombia is the most dangerous country for environmental defenders in the world, with a record 65 killed in 2020.

Colombia's government has blamed crime gangs and leftist rebels involved in drug trafficking for the rise in activist killings.



Ukraine Says Starlink’s Global Outage Hit Its Military Communications 

A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
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Ukraine Says Starlink’s Global Outage Hit Its Military Communications 

A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)
A man stands at the broken windows of his house after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 21, 2025. (AP)

Starlink systems used by Ukrainian military units were down for two and a half hours overnight, a senior commander said, part of a global issue that disrupted the satellite internet provider.

Ukraine's forces are heavily reliant on thousands of SpaceX's Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and some drone operations, as they have proved resistant to espionage and signal jamming throughout the three and a half years of fighting Russia's invasion.

Starlink experienced one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline.

"Starlink is down across the entire front," Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine's drone forces, wrote on Telegram at 10:41 p.m. (1941 GMT) on Thursday.

He updated his post later to say that by about 1:05 a.m. on Friday the issue had been resolved. He said the incident had highlighted the risk of reliance on the systems, and called for communication and connectivity methods to be diversified.

"Combat missions were performed without a (video) feed, battlefield reconnaissance was done with strike (drones)," Brovdi wrote.

Oleksandr Dmitriev, the founder of OCHI, a Ukrainian system that centralizes feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, told Reuters the outage showed that relying on cloud services to command units and relay battlefield drone reconnaissance was a "huge risk".

"If connection to the internet is lost ... the ability to conduct combat operations is practically gone," he said, calling for a move towards local communication systems that are not reliant on the internet.

Although Starlink does not operate in Russia, Ukrainian officials have said that Moscow's troops are also widely using the systems on the frontlines in Ukraine.