World News Roundup: Equatorial Guinea VP loses appeal against French embezzlement verdict; Risking China's anger, Blinken meets representative of Dalai Lama in India and more

The judiciary, widely seen in Tunisia as independent from politics, said its investigation started 10 days before the president's moves, but it will add to the pressure on the parties - the moderate Islamist Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia. Iran's Khamenei blames "cowardly" U.S. for pause in nuclear talks Iran's supreme leader on Wednesday declared Tehran would not accept Washington's "stubborn" demands in talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal and said the United States had failed to guarantee that it would never abandon the pact again.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs.

Equatorial Guinea VP loses appeal against French embezzlement verdict

France's highest appeal court on Wednesday upheld a guilty verdict against the son of Equatorial Guinea's president for embezzlement, paving the way for the potential return of tens of millions of dollars to the country's people. Teodoro Obiang Mangue, who is also the vice president of the Gulf of Guinea nation, was handed a three-year suspended sentence and a 30 million euro ($33 million) fine at the end of his trial in absentia in 2020. Luxury assets seized in France during the investigation were ordered to be confiscated.

Risking China's anger, Blinken meets representative of Dalai Lama in India

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met a representative of the Dalai Lama in New Delhi on Wednesday, a move likely to anger Beijing which considers the Tibetan spiritual leader a dangerous separatist. Blinken met briefly with Ngodup Dongchung, who presented him with a scarf from the Dalai Lama, a senior State Department official said. Dongchung serves as a representative of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), also known as the Tibetan government in exile.

Tunisia investigates parties as political crisis simmers

Tunisia's judiciary said on Wednesday it was investigating the two biggest parties in parliament, which have both accused the president of launching a coup after he cited emergency powers on Sunday to seize governing control and freeze parliament. The judiciary, widely seen in Tunisia as independent from politics, said its investigation started 10 days before the president's moves, but it will add to the pressure on the parties - the moderate Islamist Ennahda and Heart of Tunisia.

Iran's Khamenei blames "cowardly" U.S. for pause in nuclear talks

Iran's supreme leader on Wednesday declared Tehran would not accept Washington's "stubborn" demands in talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal and said the United States had failed to guarantee that it would never abandon the pact again. "The Americans acted completely cowardly and maliciously," state TV quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying.

Thailand builds COVID-19 hospital in Bangkok airport amid surge in cases

Thai volunteers on Wednesday turned a cargo warehouse at Bangkok's Don Muang Airport into a 1,800-bed field hospital for COVID-19 patients with less severe symptoms, as the country deals with its biggest outbreak to date. The Southeast Asian nation reported a daily record of 16,533 new cases, plus 133 new deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total accumulated cases to 543,361 and 4,397 deaths.

Amid pandemic, Argentine couples ask 'can I bring a child into this world?'

In the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, a city famed for its passionate tango dancing and romance, the pandemic is putting a dampener on couples making babies, with birthrates down by a quarter since COVID-19 struck early last year. Claudia Becerra and her boyfriend Agustín Cacciola have long dreamt of having a child, but strict quarantines and economic malaise from the impact of the virus have made them put off their plans.

Senegalese plant circular gardens in Green Wall defence against desert

Every night Moussa Kamara works at his bakery preparing hundreds of loaves but at sunrise, instead of going home to sleep, he now starts a second back-breaking job - hoeing the earth and tending newly sown seeds in a specially designed circular garden. Kamara, 47, believes the garden will prove even more important than the bakery in the future for feeding his extended family, including 25 children, and other residents of Boki Dawe, a Senegalese town near the border with Mauritania.

Kremlin says Biden is wrong to say that Russia only has nuclear weapons and oil

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that U.S. President Joe Biden's assessment of Russia as only having nuclear weapons and oil was wide of the mark and betrayed a lack of knowledge about the country. Biden made the remark on Tuesday during a speech in which he warned that if the United States ended up in a "real shooting war" with a "major power" it could be the result of a significant cyber attack on the country, highlighting what Washington sees as growing threats posed by Russia and China.

Italy arrests 18 for illegal fishing of protected shellfish

The Italian coastguard arrested 18 people on Wednesday for illegal fishing of a rare mollusc, breaking up what police said was a criminal organisation that had been destroying a stretch of protected coastline south of Naples. The arrests followed a three-year investigation into the group which had allegedly been harvesting date mussels, a protected species, using hammers to get them out of the rocks near the seaside beauty spot of Sorrento.

Russia's Abramovich didn't buy Chelsea for Putin, court hears

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is not President Vladimir Putin's "cashier" and nor did he buy Chelsea FC as a vehicle to corrupt the West, his lawyer told England's High Court in a defamation hearing over a book about Putin's Russia. In the 2020 book, British journalist Catherine Belton chronicles Putin's rise to power and how many of his associates from the former Soviet spy services rose to positions of wealth and influence after he won the top Kremlin job in 1999.