*** Ecuadorian teachers maintain protests for salary claim. Teachers oppose the veto of reforms to the education law that include salary increases for teachers. Demonstrators hold hunger strikes and marches in several Ecuadorian cities.

*** Russia to create 12 military units on western border due to NATO threat. Russia will create new military bases in western Russia in response to NATO expansion, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Friday.

*** A 1955 Mercedes of which there are only two examples was sold in early May for 135 million euros ($143 million), nearly tripling the previous auction record for a car, RM Sotheby's said Thursday. The 1955 Mercedes Coupe 300 SLR Uhlenhaut was sold on May 5 at a confidential auction at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart (Germany) in cooperation between Sotheby's subsidiary for luxury vehicles and the German carmaker.

*** The president of Costa Rica, right-wing Rodrigo Chaves, informed on Thursday that he decided to "unilaterally" terminate an educational agreement with the government of Cuba, signed by the previous administration. "We do not see a benefit from the point of view of public education and the formation of students from part of that agreement. There was a lot of controversy", explained the governor, who recalled that with this measure he was fulfilling a campaign promise.

*** Two cases of monkeypox have been reported in Belgium. According to the Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst, the last of them was identified in his laboratory in the city of Louvain on Thursday evening. It is a man from the province of Flemish Brabant, in the Flemish region. The expert's announcement comes less than a day after the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp (province of Antwerp, Flanders) announced the first case of the disease in the country, according to local media.

*** The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, resumed this Thursday the radio program "La Hora de la Salsa y la Alegría", through Radio Miraflores, a space he used to inform citizens that Venezuela and the UN Agency for Refugees (Acnur) will coordinate joint actions to ensure the protection of Venezuelan migrants. "Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has made the first arrangements with the Director General of UNHCR", detailed the president.

*** NASA's Voyager 1 probe is starring in a "mystery" with the confusing data it has begun to send from beyond our solar system. The readings from the spacecraft's Attitude Articulation and Control System (AACS) do not reflect what is really happening on board.

*** France deploys the Mamba anti-missile system in Romania as part of the "reinforcement of NATO's deterrent and defensive posture on the eastern flank" Along with the Mamba system, the French Armed Forces have set up a Defense Management Center in the third dimension (CMD3D), which allows to control the surface-to-air anti-missile system.

*** The Colombian Ombudsman's Office lists 290 municipalities as being at "extreme risk" of violence in the run-up to the presidential elections. This warning was a follow up to the recent "violent actions" of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Gulf Clan.

*** The Chilean Government removes the military chief of the state of exception in Bío Bío, in charge of the deployment of troops in the South Macrozone. The administration of Gabriel Boric appointed in his replacement the commander in chief of the Submarine Force, Rear Admiral Juan Pablo Zúñiga Alvayayay.