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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is sending “hundreds” more officers to Minnesota a day after tens of thousands of people marched through Minneapolis to protest the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in remarks that aired Sunday.The officers would be deployed to bolster the safety of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol officials already in Minnesota, Noem said on Fox News’s *Sunday Morning Futures.Some 2,000 federal officers have already been dispatched to the Minneapolis-St Paul area in what the DHS has called its largest operation ever.The new deployments were scheduled to begin even as more than 1,000 rallies were planned nationwide this weekend to protest the federal government’s deportation push and Wednesday’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an ICE officer.Minnesota officials have called the shooting unjustified, pointing to bystander video that they say showed Good’s vehicle turning away from the agent as he fired.Noem and other US officials have maintained that the agent acted in self-defense because Good, a volunteer in a community network that monitors and records ICE operations in Minneapolis, drove forward in the direction of the agent who then shot her, after another agent had approached the driver’s side and told her to get out of the car.In a separate appearance Sunday on CNN’s *State of the Union, Noem said that other video footage showed Good protesting ICE agents at other locations earlier on Wednesday morning, but did not say if or when it would be publicly released.Minnesota authorities said on Friday that they were opening their own criminal investigation into the incident, after some state law enforcement officials said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was refusing to co-operate with state investigators.White House Border Security Czar Tom Homan said on *Fox News Sunday that he wanted to let the investigation play out, but added that he “truly believe that officer thought his life was in danger to take that action”. Related Story Source link
Benin voted Sunday in parliamentary and local elections, just one month after a failed coup plot shook the west African country and three months ahead of presidential polls.President Patrice Talon’s ruling coalition is expected to strengthen its already powerful hand in the elections, with the main opposition Democrats party barred from the local polls.The elections come at a fraught moment for Benin, still reeling from a deadly coup attempt by army mutineers on December 7, which was put down by the military, with support from Nigeria and France.Talon, 67, who is nearing the end of his second five-year term, called on all voters to “do their duty” as he cast his ballot.”Today is the beginning of a better life,” he said. Benin’s President Patrice Talon votes at a polling station during the country’s parliamentary election, in Cotonou, Benin, January 11, 2026. REUTERS The legislative elections will define the political landscape ahead of April’s presidential polls, from which the opposition has also been struck from the ballot for failing to obtain the required number of signatures.Talon, who has served the constitutional two-term limit, is barred from running in April’s elections.His hand-picked successor, Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni, is a strong favourite to win.Talon has presided over strong economic development across his nearly one decade in power, but critics accuse him of restricting political opposition and basic rights. A woman casts…
US President Donald Trump told Cuba to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences, drawing an angry retort from its leader who said “no one” tells the communist-ruled country what to do. The island nation near Florida has been a US foe and ally of Caracas for decades, but Trump has ramped up his threatening language in recent days – particularly after Washington toppled Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”He provided no details about what potential deal he referred to, or what such an arrangement would achieve. His remarks come a week after US forces seized Venezuela’s leader Maduro in a nighttime operation in Caracas that killed dozens of Venezuelan and Cuban security forces.A week ago, Trump stated that “Cuba is ready to fall”, noting that the island’s economic crisis was worsening and that it would be difficult for Havana to “hold out” without receiving heavily subsidised Venezuelan oil. Earlier Sunday the president reposted a message suggesting that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio – a child of Cuban immigrants – could become the president of Cuba.Trump shared that post with the comment: “Sounds good to me!” In a separate message soon afterwards, Trump said that “Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!” “Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last week’s U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years.” Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel rebuffed Trump’s threatening language, saying that the Caribbean island’s residents were “ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood”.“Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do,” he said on X. “Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the US for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez also weighed in to stress that Cuba is within its rights to import fuel from any willing exporter, “without interference or subordination to the unilateral coercive measures of the United States”. Under a US trade embargo, Havana since 2000 has increasingly relied on Venezuelan oil provided as part of a deal struck with Maduro’s predecessor, the firebrand leftist Hugo Chavez.Trump’s provocative language on Cuba comes as the emboldened American leader has hinted he has other countries in his sights after capturing Maduro. Trump, who had openly sought last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has recently threatened Colombia, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. Some Republican US lawmakers have lauded Trump for his aggressive comments on Cuba, including Mario Diaz-Balart, a US congressman from Florida. “We are witnessing what I am convinced will be the beginning of the end of the regime in Havana,” Diaz-Balart posted in Spanish Sunday on X. “The tyranny in Cuba will not survive the second term of President Trump, and Cuba will finally be free after decades of misery, tragedy, and pain.” Trump’s push on Cuba represents the latest escalation in his move to bring regional powers in line with the United States and underscores the seriousness of the administration’s ambition to dominate the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s top officials, including Rubio, have made no secret of their expectation that the recent US intervention in Venezuela could push Cuba over the edge. US officials have hardened their rhetoric against Cuba in recent weeks, though the two countries have been at odds since former leader Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Cuba relies on imported crude and fuel mainly provided by Venezuela, and Mexico in smaller volumes, purchased on the open market to keep its power generators and vehicles running. As its operational refining capacity dwindled in recent years, Venezuela’s supply of crude and fuel to Cuba has fallen. However, the South American country is still the largest provider with some 26,500 barrels per day exported last year, according to ship tracking data and internal documents of state-run PDVSA, which covered roughly 50% of Cuba’s oil deficit. Even before Maduro’s capture, Cuba had been struggling to keep the lights on. Vast swaths of the island live without electricity for much of the day, and even the capital Havana has seen its economy crippled by hours-long rolling blackouts. Shortages of food, fuel and medicine have put Cubans on edge and have prompted a record-breaking exodus, primarily to the United States, in the past five years. Mexico has emerged in recent weeks as a critical alternative oil supplier to the island, but the supply remains small, according to the shipping data. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum last week said her country had not increased supply volumes, but given recent political events in Venezuela, Mexico had turned into an “important supplier” of crude to Cuba. Related Story Source link
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Saturday aimed at protecting the proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil deposited in US Treasury accounts from any quarantine or judicial process. The White House said in a statement that the order is intended to advance the foreign policy objectives of the United States, adding that President Trump prevents any seizure of Venezuelan oil revenues that could undermine the critical efforts undertaken by the US to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela.The US announced on Friday that its forces had intercepted the oil tanker “Olina” in the Caribbean, marking the fifth vessel targeted in recent weeks, as Washington intensifies its efforts to curb Venezuelan oil exports.It is noted that last Saturday, Trump declared a broad-scale operation against Venezuela, during which Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into custody and transferred out of the country. Following these developments, Venezuela recently announced that it had initiated talks with the US regarding the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries, occurring days after US special forces detained President Nicolas Maduro and removed him from the capital, Caracas. Source link
A serviceman walks past the Nimbus 2K high-speed aerial target drone by the Woot Tech aerospace company, during the second edition of Pakistan International Maritime Expo…
Kakapo: critically endangered New Zealand’s critically endangered flightless parrot, the kakapo, started breeding last week for the first time in four years, the government conservation department said.Only 236 of the rotund and regal-looking green parrots remain in three breeding populations on some of New Zealand’s most remote southern islands.That includes 83 breeding age females, with high hopes this year could bring the most hatched chicks since records began.”It’s always exciting when the breeding season officially begins, but this year it feels especially long-awaited after such a big gap since the last season in 2022,” said Deidre Vercoe, the department of conservation’s kakapo recovery operations manager.”Now it is underway, we expect more mating over the next month and we are preparing for what might be the biggest breeding season since the programme began 30 years ago.”In 1995 the department of conservation and indigenous Maori tribe Ngai Tahu launched the Kakapo Recovery Programme, with a population of just 51 birds at serious risk of extinction.By 2022, numbers had rebounded to 252, but 16 birds died over the past four years.This mating season is the 13th in the past 30 years, with the bird breeding every two to four years.”Kakapo are still critically endangered so we’ll keep working hard to increase numbers,” Vercoe said.”But looking ahead, chick numbers are not our only measure of success. We want to create healthy, self-sustaining populations of kakapo that are thriving, not just surviving.”This means with each successful breeding season we’re aiming to reduce the level of intensive, hands-on management to return to a more natural state.”Tane Davis, a Ngai Tahu representative on the recovery programme, said it was hoped kakapo would one day thrive throughout New Zealand’s South Island.The first chicks are expected to hatch in mid-February. Source link
The remains of a burnt out shipping container frame a destroyed car, amid bushfires, in Upton Hill, Victoria, Australia, Saturday. Australian authorities declared a state of disaster Saturday after bushfires destroyed houses and razed vast belts of forest in the country’s southeast. Temperatures soared past 40C as a heatwave blanketed the state of Victoria this week, with hot winds fanning some of the most dangerous fire weather since the “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019-2020. One of the most destructive bushfires ripped through almost 370,000 acres near Longwood, a region cloaked in native forests. State premier Jacinta Allan Saturday declared a state of disaster, giving fire crews emergency powers to force evacuations. “It’s all about one thing: protecting Victorian lives,” she said. “And it sends one clear message: if you have been told to leave, go.” Three people missing inside one of the state’s most dangerous fire grounds had been found, Allan said. Emergency management commissioner Tim Wiebusch said at least 130 structures had been destroyed across the state, a figure that includes houses, sheds and other buildings. “We’ve seen significant livestock, cropping land and vineyards that have also been impacted or destroyed,” he told reporters. Wiebusch said 10 major fires were still burning despite conditions easing. “Importantly, many of these major fires will continue to burn for days, if not weeks. “We are expecting more fires as a result of lightning that occurred throughout Saturday afternoon and overnight.” The worst blazes have largely been confined to sparsely populated rural areas where towns might number a few hundred people. Photos taken this week showed the night sky glowing orange as the fire near Longwood ripped through bushland. “There were embers falling everywhere. It was terrifying,” cattle farmer Scott Purcell told national broadcaster ABC. Another bushfire near the small town of Walwa crackled with lightning as it radiated enough heat to form a localised thunderstorm, fire authorities said. Hundreds of firefighters from across Australia have been called in to help. Millions have sweltered through this week’s intense heatwave. Related Story Source link
A woman waits as rescuers continue search operations after a landslide at a landfill in Barangay Binaliw, Cebu City Saturday. Hard hat-wearing rescue workers and backhoes dug through rubble in search of survivors Saturday in the shadow of a mountain of garbage that buried dozens of landfill employees in the central Philippines, killing at least six.About 50 sanitation workers were buried when refuse toppled onto them on Thursday from what a city councillor estimated was a height of 20 storeys at the Binaliw Landfill, a privately operated facility in Cebu City.Rescuers were now facing the danger of further collapse as they navigated the still-shifting wreckage, Cebu rescuer Jo Reyes said Saturday.”Operations are ongoing as of the moment. It is continuous. (But) from time to time, the landfill is moving, and that will temporarily stop the operation,” she said.Cebu City councillor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the city’s disaster council, said another two bodies had been uncovered Saturday by crews working in 24-hour shifts.The discovery brings the death toll to six, while 32 people remain missing.”We found another two bodies, but we cannot retrieve the bodies because of the heavy metal beam that fell on them, so we are trying to cut the metal,” he said.To assist in the rescue operation, 20 trucks equipped with hydraulic cranes and specialised cutting attachments were being sent to help rescuers forced to crawl to reach areas blocked by debris.”Our rescuers are struggling because the metal beams are big,” he said. “With (the trucks), the metal can be lifted and our rescuers can navigate the site more efficiently.”We are just hoping that we can get someone alive … We are racing against time, that’s why our deployment is 24/7.”Twelve employees have so far been pulled alive from the garbage and hospitalised.Numerous families were on site awaiting word on the fate of their relatives, Joel Garganera, another Cebu City council member, said Saturday.”We are hoping against hope here,” he said.The city councillor described the height from which the trash fell as “alarming”, estimating the top of the pile had stood 20 storeys above the area struck.”Every now and then, when it rains, there are landslides happening around the city of Cebu … how much more (dangerous is that) for a landfill or a mountain that is made of garbage?” Garganera said.”The garbage is like a sponge, they really absorb water. It doesn’t (take) a rocket scientist to say that eventually, the incident will happen.” Related Story Source link
Women charge their devices inside a ‘Point of Invincibility’ centre in Kyiv, a government-run shelter that offers basic services and heat during blackouts. Reuters Kyiv residents huddled against bitter winter cold inside their unheated apartments Saturday as engineers struggled to restore power, water and heat knocked out in the latest salvo of Russian strikes.Russia has regularly conducted intense bombardments of Ukraine’s energy system since it invaded its neighbour in 2022.The war’s fourth winter could be the coldest and darkest yet, with the accumulated damage to the grid bringing utilities to the brink, and temperatures already below -10° Celsius (14°F) and set to plunge further this week.Saturday Kyiv’s heat, power and water, hit hard by a strike two nights earlier, were shut down again as engineers tried to repair the ruined power grid.Galina Turchin, a 71-year-old pensioner living on Kyiv’s badly affected eastern bank, had a window covered by plastic sheeting after it was blown out when drone debris hit another part of her building during the last overnight attack.She said she had not cooked food for two days, eating whatever had been left in their kitchen before the power, water and heat went out, and would now try to cook on a gas camping stove.”We hope they will give us heat. If not power, then at least heat,” she said, standing wrapped in layers of jumpers in her kitchen.The city administration said around noon local time (1000 GMT) Saturday that the state grid operator Ukrenergo had ordered the city’s power system to be shut down, and that the water and heating systems, as well as electrified public transport, would also stop working as a result.Less than an hour later, Ukrenergo said engineers had managed to remedy the immediate issue, which had been caused by damage from previous Russian strikes, and that power was coming back online in parts of Kyiv.Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the heating system, which in Ukrainian cities is centralised and pumps hot water to homes in pipes, was also coming back on, and that she expected heat supply to be fully restored.However, she said that the power situation in the capital was still difficult, as the grid was badly damaged and people were using more electric heaters because of the cold.On Friday, with about half of Kyiv’s apartment blocks left without heating after the latest Russian missile and drone attack, Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents who had a warm place to go to temporarily leave the city.Turchin, the pensioner in her cold apartment, said she had a village cottage in another region but it was unheated and would take three days to warm up with logs.”The neighbour wrote. She said it was already -17° (Celsius) there last night.” Related…
People pause for a minute of silence during a press conference organised by the group ‘Minneapolis Families for Public Schools’, in Minneapolis. – AFP The mayor of Minneapolis called Friday for state investigators to be allowed to join the federal probe into the killing of a US woman by immigration enforcement, accusing the Trump administration of pre-judging the case.Minnesota officials have complained that their law enforcement have been excluded from the investigation into the killing of motorist Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer on Wednesday.US President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to paint the victim as a “domestic terrorist,” insisting that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense.”This is not the time to bend the rules. This is a time to follow the law… The fact that Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice and this presidential administration has already come to a conclusion about those facts is deeply concerning,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told a briefing on Friday.”We know that they’ve already determined much of the investigation,” he said, adding that the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has consistently run such investigations.”Why not include them in the process?” Frey said.”We’re not even talking just about full control here. We’re talking about being at the table.”On Thursday US Vice President JD Vance asserted that the ICE officer, named in US media as Jonathan Ross, had “absolute immunity.”Minnesota officials have said that local investigators were initially invited by the FBI to participate in the inquiry, but were subsequently blocked from the probe.Good, 37, was shot in the head on as she apparently tried to drive away from ICE in the midwestern US city as officers approached her car, which they said blocked their way.Good was one of four people who have been killed by ICE since Trump launched his immigration crackdown and seven others have been injured, reported The Trace, an outlet that tracks gun violence.Large, noisy crowds gathered around Minneapolis in protest on Thursday, chanting slogans against ICE. Federal immigration officers armed with pepperball guns and tear gas wrestled several protesters to the ground.In a separate incident on Thursday afternoon, US federal agents shot and wounded two people in the western city of Portland, Oregon, local police said.”ICE needs to get out of Minnesota, we don’t need them here, these are not criminals — and actually ICE they are the criminals,” Minneapolis resident Eleanor told AFP. Source…