At least 15 people died and more than 100 were injured after a roof fell at a nightclub in the capital of the Dominican Republic early Tuesday, authorities said.

Crews were searching for potential survivors in the rubble at Jet Set in Santo Domingo, said Juan Manuel Méndez, director of the Center of Emergency Operations.

“We presume that many of them are still alive, and that is why the authorities here will not give up until not a single person remains under that rubble,” he said.

Among the injured is merengue singer Rubby Pérez, who was performing when the roof collapsed, officials said.

President Luis Abinader wrote on X that all rescue agencies are “working tirelessly” to help those affected.

“We deeply regret the tragedy that occurred at the Jet Set nightclub. We have been following the incident minute by minute since it occurred,” he wrote.

Abinader arrived at the scene and hugged those looking for friends and family, some with tears streaming down their faces. He did not speak to reporters.

An official with a megaphone stood outside the club imploring the large crowd that had gathered to search for friends and relatives to give ambulances space.

“You have to cooperate with authorities, please,” he said. “We are removing people.”

At one hospital where the injured were taken, an official stood outside reading aloud the names of survivors as a crowd gathered around her and yelled out the names of their loved ones.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the roof to collapse.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Two Chinese citizens fighting in the Russian army have been taken prisoner in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday.

Zelensky said Ukrainian forces obtained the Chinese nationals’ documents, bank cards and personal data.

“We have information that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just two. We are now finding out all the facts,” Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. “I have instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to immediately contact Beijing and find out how China is going to react to this.”

“Russia’s involvement of China in this war in Europe, directly or indirectly, is a clear signal that Putin is going to do anything except end the war. He is looking for ways to continue fighting,” Zelensky added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

García would not discuss any specifics around the deportees beyond confirming they are in his facility. But when pressed, he said “there are no privileges.”

Some 278 men have been deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, accused of being members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang or Salvadorans who are said to be part of MS-13.

But they also include Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a sheet metal worker and father-of-three from Maryland, who was mistakenly removed from the US through an “administrative error.”

His case is now with the US Supreme Court, which extended the deadline of a lower court judge requiring the administration to get him back by midnight on Monday.

García said he was not familiar with the specifics of any individual deportee and could not comment further.`

They are removed from their communal cell by armed personnel and taken to a room with video conference facilities. Monitors showed court proceedings in progress, apparently with lawyers and judges present.

Cecot houses both convicted criminals and those still going through El Salvador’s court system. With many constitutional rights suspended under El Salvador’s years-long state of emergency, some people have been detained by mistake, President Nayib Bukele has admitted; several thousand of them have already been released.

Where the lights are always on

Each of the eight sectors is fully self-contained with these conference rooms as well as a medical clinic, with the intention that inmates never step outside their warehouse-like building.

They are watched through the bars constantly and the lights are always on, García said. There are even guards on catwalks above the cells.

Looking down through the metal-grille ceiling into a cell, the deliberate harshness of the life for the Salvadoran inmates — whether convicted or awaiting trial — is clear. They are allowed no personal possessions; they must use an open toilet and there’s a cement basin for washing and large jug for drinking water.

Still, there are checks for contraband when the inmates are “extricated” from the cells. The men have their hands cuffed behind them and then run to sit in a designated spot, stretching their legs around those of the man in front in what becomes a human herringbone pattern.

When Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited CECOT last month, she recorded a video message to say to undocumented immigrants in the US: “This is one of the consequences you could face.”

“First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed, and you will be prosecuted,” she said. “But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

It is busier inside now, with more men in each cell.

Last year, García would say only between 10,000 and 20,000 inmates were being held. Now he says it’s getting closer to its 40,000 maximum population, but once again declined to give a specific number, citing security precautions. The growth would include the deportees from the US, but be mostly Salvadorans rounded up under the emergency situation introduced by Bukele.

A thousand or more armed guards rotate duties at the prison, built in just seven months and opened in January 2023. The prison is also ringed by multiple electric fences and 19 watchtowers.

For critics, Cecot is a sign of how quickly rights can disappear. But for many in El Salvador it is proof of effective control and a return to security in what was once the “murder capital of the world.”

South Sudan has reversed its decision to deny entry to a man it said was a Congolese national deported by the United States after Washington imposed a blanket visa ban on South Sudanese citizens.

In a dramatic U-turn on Tuesday, South Sudan’s foreign ministry said the government had chosen to admit the deportee, identified as Makula Kintu, “in the spirit of the friendly relations between South Sudan and the United States.”

US President Donald Trump has heavily cracked down on immigration since his return to power in January and has launched a series of deportation actions in recent months.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that visas held by South Sudanese citizens were being revoked and no new visas would be granted to people from the country over their government’s failure to receive deportees “in a timely manner.”

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation and one of its poorest is already troubled by armed conflict in its northern region that threatens to plunge it back into another civil war.

On Monday, the South Sudanese foreign ministry clarified that Kintu arrived at the Juba International Airport in the country’s capital on Saturday with a travel document that was not his.

According to the ministry, he presented “a South Sudanese travel document under the name Nimeri Garang” to immigration officials.

However, a series of verifications revealed that he was not Garang and instead identified him as Kintu — a citizen of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“He (Kintu) was not admitted (into South Sudan) and was subsequently returned to the sending country (the US) for further processing,” it added.

The ministry explained it was awaiting the arrival of the actual Garang, whom it said the South Sudanese embassy in Washington had been notified by the US State Department of his deportation and scheduled arrival in Juba next month.

US authorities are yet to comment on the nationality discrepancy.

The South Sudanese foreign ministry cited information on Kintu’s travel history supplied by the US Department of Homeland Security which stated that he initially arrived in the US in 2003 “and voluntarily departed for the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2009.”

It added that Kintu “re-entered the United States illegally on July 10, 2016” and that while he was being questioned Saturday by immigration officials at the Juba airport, Kintu “stated that he hails from the Ema tribe of the Northern Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and added that he was brought to South Sudan against his will.”

In its latest communication Tuesday, the ministry noted that Kintu would nonetheless be allowed to enter South Sudan when he arrives again on Wednesday.

“The Government of the Republic of South Sudan remains committed to supporting the return of verified South Sudanese nationals who are scheduled for deportation from the United States,” the foreign ministry said.

The Asian democracy and longtime US ally faces 25% tariffs as part of Trump’s global tariffs rollout this week, which could hammer an export-led economy that fills American homes and roads with brands like Samsung, LG and Hyundai and drive up the cost of those goods for consumers.

Acting President Han Duck-soo, who stepped into the role after his predecessor was ousted over a martial law crisis that is still reverberating across the country, said South Korea “clearly would like to negotiate” with the US and praised the two countries’ “very strong alliance.”

When asked whether South Korea might band together with other countries like Japan or China to push back against the US tariffs, his answer was clear: “We will not take that route.”

“I don’t think that kind of fighting back will improve the situation dramatically,” he said, downplaying the significance of a recent meeting between the trade ministers of the three Asian nations. “I don’t think it will be really profitable for the three of us, and especially for Korea.”

The comments came as China doubled down on its condemnation of Trump’s trade war, describing his latest tariff threats as a “mistake upon a mistake” and reiterating its vow to “fight to the end.”

Veteran politician Han, 75, was tapped as acting president in December after former leader Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, for which he had his powers suspended, was impeached and ultimately removed from office.

But Han himself was impeached just two weeks later over his refusal to fill a vacant seat in one of the country’s top courts and was only reinstated to the role in late March.

He’d occupied the role for only nine days when Trump unveiled a raft of tariffs hitting dozens of nations, despite a free trade agreement between Washington and Seoul.

The latest measures follow an earlier 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, imposed last month, which will hit South Korea hard as the fourth-largest exporter of steel to the US. That’s in addition to a separate 25% levy on US imports of cars and auto parts, an industry the country excels in.

The litany of tariffs poses a particular challenge for the country as it navigates its upcoming election after months of political upheaval, deep uncertainty and economic strain. In the end, Han may only remain in office for a few more months until a new leader is chosen in June.

‘Not everything will be solved in a day’

During the interview, Han described the US tariffs as “a pity,” acknowledging that “not everything will be solved in a day or two” and that South Korean businesses should brace for impact. However, he also voiced optimism – saying he believed the two countries can reach a resolution before factory lines start closing across Korea.

Much like Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba – who spoke to Trump Monday night – Han seeks an off-ramp, not retaliation.

“I think we should, in a very cool way, assess what this kind of 25% means for us, and we should, in a very cool way, negotiate with them,” he said, adding he had already dispatched his trade minister to Washington.

A fluent English speaker, Han has been working in the government since the 1970s, with deep expertise on economics. His dissertation for his Harvard University economics PhD – appropriately for the current moment – was about how South Korea’s economy could weather external shocks.

He then took on various roles in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, before briefly serving as prime minister and then as the Korean ambassador to the United States. It was during that time that he played a key part in helping negotiate the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Given his background, it is perhaps not surprising Han leans heavily on economic theory and historical precedent. He repeatedly referenced the last major global trade war in the early 1930s – which was sparked by the US imposing protectionist tariffs and helped trigger a worldwide recession.

“In game theory, just doing things individually may not help the situation to improve,” he said. “We should communicate, cooperate and work together. I think we should try to find a win-win situation.”

Global markets have been sent into a tailspin by Trump’s tariffs, and even usually cautious Asian leaders have spoken in stark terms about how the US is upending international trade.

“It marks a seismic change in the global order,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong warned over the weekend, arguing the world is entering a new phase that is “more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous.”

Asked about that reaction from the nearby trade hub, Han said he was comparatively more sanguine. “Globalization is not dead, it can never be dead,” Han argued.

South Korea is America’s sixth-largest trading partner, with total trade in goods and services reaching $197 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Last year, Korean exports to the US hit a record high of $128 billion, led by automobiles and machinery, according to Korean authorities. The US trade deficit with South Korea also surged, reaching $66 billion in 2024.

An economic expert at the helm

But the current tariffs could pose a major challenge even for a seasoned negotiator and trade expert like Han, with Trump’s recent rhetoric reflecting his refusal to bend.

“We can make a really fair deal … a good deal for the United States, not a good deal for others,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “This is America first.”

Senior Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro echoed those remarks, writing in the Financial Times on the same day: “This is not a negotiation. For the US, it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system.”

As nations around the world scramble to strike tariff deals with Trump and launch emergency procedures to soften the economic blow, China has positioned itself as an oppositional force standing up to what it called American “bullying.”

That has alarmed some US leaders and economists, who warn Trump’s tariffs could push countries closer to American rivals – especially since some of the highest tariffs have targeted poorer Asian nations like Vietnam and Cambodia.

The tariffs “drive people into the arms of China, who will offer pretty good trade terms while we’re in the process of conducting this massive tariff carpet bombing,” said James Stavridis, formerly NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander and a partner at global investment firm The Carlyle Group.

“Look at Asia right now. A week ago, we saw Japan, South Korea and … China talking about coordinating their responses to our tariffs. That’s an alignment we don’t want,” he said, referring to the March meeting between the three countries. “We want to hold our allies firm and we want to build the case against our opponents like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

That meeting drew attention due to its timing, just before Trump’s tariff announcement, and because the three countries have had historically fraught diplomatic relations. Tensions have risen in recent years as the US and its partners sought to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific by strengthening alliances and courting smaller nations.

But South Korea and China have also maintained a strong trade relationship. At $133 billion, Korean exports to China last year exceeded even those to the US, government figures show, even though some of those products were eventually exported again after processing.

On Tuesday, Han insisted that the trilateral meeting “was not a very extraordinary one, it was a normal meeting.” He added that the trio often hold ministerial meetings – and it just happened to be the trade ministers’ turn to convene.

“Clearly they might say, what are the implications of this kind of new US policy, but it’s not some kind of coalition of fighting back,” he said – adding that that kind of response could “really contract global trade.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Han’s age

It is not yet clear if this is the start of a major spring offensive by Vladimir Putin’s forces, of which Ukraine has been warning for some time. However, it appears to suggest the Russian leader is unconcerned about upsetting US President Donald Trump, who will make up his mind “in a matter of weeks” if the Kremlin is serious about peace, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said last week.

Where is the current fighting?

For several months, some of the fiercest fighting has been taking place to the south of the town of Pokrovsk – a one-time key logistics hub for Ukraine’s armed forces in the Donetsk region.

Ukraine’s army has achieved several small tactical successes since the start of the year, pushing back some of the Russian advance towards Pokrovsk, which had bought it to within just a few kilometers of the town center.

But with Pokrovsk itself heavily defended and the military supplies previously situated there largely relocated, Russia’s main effort in the area could be to push westward, rather than north.

Social media posts by Ukrainian soldiers in the last few days describe fears of possible encirclement in one location and breach of a defensive line in another.

“The frontline in this area has entered an active phase. The Russians will not stop,” one Ukrainian with the call-sign Muchnoi wrote on Telegram.

The aim of the advance is a town called Novopavlivka, he said.

“They will enter the Dnipropetrovsk region – this is one of the key tasks set by the Russian command.”

Moving into Dnipropetrovsk would be a significant moment because it would be the first time Russian troops have set foot there. Indeed, it would be the first new Ukrainian region to come under part-Russian occupation since the earlyweeks of the full-scale invasion more than three years ago.

The Ukrainian mapping service DeepState puts Putin’s forces just six kilometers (3.7 miles) away from the region while people living along the border are already being evacuated, Dnipropetrovsk officials say.

For Putin – and quite possibly American negotiators as well – any Russian control over a part of Dnipropetrovsk could be seen as a useful bargaining chip in a future negotiation.

Surges along the front line?

Luhansk is Ukraine’s easternmost region and the one where Putin’s forces have most control – just a few pockets remain in Ukrainian hands. Here, too, Russian troops have made steady gains in recent weeks, particularly the north of the town of Lyman, a railway hub and rear support base for Ukraine’s troops.

“It’s hard, we need to work on stabilizing the front and methodically knocking out the enemy, otherwise the gangrene will spread,” one Ukrainian officer wrote on Telegram.

Before that date, the average number of daily clashes in March had been around 140 (excluding an outlier on March 11). Since then, while tallies have fluctuated, the average has been around 180 clashes per day, an increase of about 30%.

The data includes the Kursk region in Russia, where Ukraine is now holding on to just a few villages along the border, after a slow but successful Russian rollback of Kyiv’s surprise gains last summer. The ground advances are also seeing Russia make inroads into Ukraine’s neighbouring Sumy region, creating small grey zones where neither side is in complete control.

Further complicating the picture along the northern border is Ukraine’s incursion into a slither of Russia’s Belgorod region, confirmed by Kyiv for the first time on Monday.

How are the Russians fighting?

Ukrainian soldiers report a variety of Russian tactics in recent weeks.

In the south of Donetsk region, a Ukrainian officer with the call sign Alex described Russian troops moving forward in columns consisting of both armored and soft-skin vehicles– about four to five infantry fighting vehicles and tanks, while “the rest are trucks, cars and golf carts.”

He did not hide his scepticism at the prospects for major Russian advances if current maneuvers reveal a real shortage of armor.

“Yes, they have a lot of manpower, several times more than we do, but whatever one says, in a war in the 21st century, it is impossible to build on any successes and launch a rapid offensive without mechanized means of delivering and supporting infantry,” Alex wrote on Telegram.

Also writing on Telegram, Ukrainian commander Stanislav Buniatov said Russian forces there were suffering heavy losses but continued undeterred. “One unit in this area loses ten to 50 Russians per day,” he said.

“The Russians are operating in small tactical groups of five to seven men, maximum 10 people. As soon as it’s foggy or rainy, they start advancing using bad weather as cover from our drones.”

As spring progresses and the weather turns drier, tactics will change, the drone commander says.

“They can’t use heavy vehicles at the moment. It’s too wet, they will get stuck. As soon as the land dries up, they will make a move; it’s not in doubt, they will charge for sure.”

Reality checks

Despite the downbeat assessments, it is important to keep some perspective. The amount of territory Russia is capturing remains small. For instance, its forces southwest of Pokrovsk, bearing down on Dnipropetrovsk region, are only about 45 kilometers (28 miles) further advanced than they were one year ago.

In fact, Britain’s Ministry of Defence, in common with other analysts, assesses Russia’s rate of advance to have been in steady decline for six months, from about 730 square kilometers captured in November last year to just 143 last month.

Part of this may well be down to the challenges of warfighting in winter, though the US military’s senior commander in Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, in an upbeat testimony to Congress last week, said Kyiv’s forces had “assumed very strong defensive positions,” and were “well dug in.”

“It is very hard to envision Ukraine collapsing and losing that conflict,” Cavoli concluded.

Even so, land warfare analyst Nick Reynolds, of the Royal United Services Institute in London, cautions against thinking that because Russia has not taken much territory, it is not achieving anything.

Russia’s territorial claims, he says, will not be achieved through military advance, tree line by tree line, village by village.

“The aim is attrition, and the goal is not immediate. The goal is to kill people, to destroy equipment, to suck in resources, to bankrupt the Ukrainian state and to break its will to fight.”

Even weak Russian offensives, he says, need some defense by Ukraine, which in turn allows for better mapping of Ukrainian defensive positions, providing targets for artillery or glide bomb attacks.

Prognosis

Even in a best-case scenario, Europe’s stepped-up efforts to re-arm Ukraine, amid doubts over US military support, will likely take a few years to come to fruition. While Ukraine’s own defense industry has made great strides, it remains more economically dependent on its allies than Russia’s, analysts say.

Under pressure from Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains publicly committed to an end to the war, as long as any peace agreement is just and secure and does not allow Russia to resume fighting later.

For its part, the Kremlin says it wants peace too, but only if the “root causes” of the conflict are addressed, which in essence means Ukraine must fall back unequivocally into Moscow’s sphere of influence.

But Putin’s announcement last week of the largest conscription round in more than 10 years, and his stated ambition to build an army with 1.5 million active servicemen, along with an aerial onslaught that shows no signs of slowing, point more to a campaign of attrition than any intention to stop.

For fighters on the front lines, even high-ranking officers, peace talks mean little.

Victoria Butenko contributed reporting.