CALI, Colombia: Three officers were killed and seven other people injured after an attack on a police station in troubled southwestern Colombia on Friday, a local official told AFP.
“It was an attack on the police station with cylinders placed on a ramp that sadly leaves us three dead and seven wounded at the moment,” city secretary Jaime Asprilla said, referencing the use of explosive gas tanks.
Asprilla attributed the violence to armed groups operating in the troubled department of Cauca, and not to ongoing protests against President Ivan Duque.
Dissidents of the former FARC guerrilla movement who rejected the 2016 peace agreement, as well as the country’s last rebel National Liberation Army (ELN), and gangs of narcotics traffickers are fighting for control of Cauca.
The region, which is an epicenter of targeted killings, has extensive drug plantations and is a strategic narcotics route to the United States.
Three police dead in Colombia police station attack
Three police dead in Colombia police station attack
- The attack was not related to ongoing protests against the President Ivan Duque
- The region has extensive drug plantations and is a strategic narcotics route to the United States
EU proposes suspending a duty-free sugar import scheme
- The IPR scheme allows companies to import sugar at zero duty and without limits
- White sugar imports under the IPR totalled 155,000 tons in 2024/25, up 5 percent year-on-year
PARIS: The European Commission proposed suspending a scheme allowing some duty-free sugar imports into the bloc, aiming to ease pressure on European producers facing falling prices and increased competition.
“I will propose a temporary suspension of the sugar inward processing regime to ease pressures on sugar producers,” European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen said on X late on Monday.
The IPR scheme allows companies to import sugar at zero duty and without limits, provided the sugar is refined or processed into food products and then re-exported outside the European Union.
Raw sugar imported into the EU under the IPR in the 2024/25 marketing year totalled 587,000 metric tons, up 19 percent on the previous year, of which 95 percent came from Brazil, European Commission data showed.
White sugar imports under the IPR totalled 155,000 tons in 2024/25, up 5 percent year-on-year, of which 43 percent came from Brazil, followed by Morocco, Egypt and Ukraine, the data showed.
European sugar beet producers have raised concerns about unfair competition and the potential impact of a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries which includes a larger sugar quota.
Producers say imports have contributed to a supply glut that led EU sugar prices to slump to their lowest in at least three years.
The European sugar beet growers lobby CIBE expressed strong support for the decision, calling it timely and necessary.
“It will provide the right signal and some relief on a very depressed EU sugar market,” the group said on X.
