Global Pulse

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  • Trump and Macron will meet over dinner at Versailles palace after G7 summit in France

    Trump and Macron will meet over dinner at Versailles palace after G7 summit in France

    As leaders of the world’s major industrialized economies prepare to gather in southern France for next week’s G7 summit, new details have emerged about the packed diplomatic agenda awaiting former U.S. President Donald Trump, including a high-profile celebratory dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the iconic Palace of Versailles.

    Senior White House administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under the White House’s established press ground rules, confirmed Saturday that the summit will bring a full slate of one-on-one bilateral meetings for Trump, who has publicly stated he is working to finalize a new Iran nuclear agreement in the coming days. Trump is set to depart Washington D.C. on Sunday evening immediately after marking his 80th birthday with a primetime mixed martial arts event hosted on the White House South Lawn, and will arrive in France for the summit on Monday afternoon.

    Following the conclusion of the main G7 gathering in the scenic Alpine lakeside town of Evian-les-Bains, Macron will host Trump for a private dinner at Versailles, the opulent former royal residence just outside Paris that has long stood as a symbol of Franco-American diplomatic ties. According to the Élysée Palace, the dinner will also commemorate the 240th anniversary of U.S. independence, an occasion chosen to highlight the deep historical friendship between the two nations.

    Versailles, which served as the official seat of the French monarchy from the reign of Louis XIV through Louis XVI, is a regular venue for state visits and meetings with visiting global leaders. In 2021, Macron welcomed Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the palace for its 400th-anniversary celebrations, hosting a state dinner in the palace’s famous Hall of Mirrors, one of the most famous spaces among the sprawling estate’s 2,300 rooms. Prior to that, in 2017 shortly after his first election to the presidency, Macron welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Versailles, a meeting that took place before relations between Paris and Moscow collapsed entirely following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

    Beyond his scheduled meeting with Macron, Trump is also set to hold separate bilateral talks with the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and India. All four nations have been invited to participate in this year’s summit as guest countries at Macron’s request.

    The 2025 G7 summit, which brings together leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, will cover a wide range of pressing global policy topics. Officials confirm the agenda includes discussions on sustainable global economic growth, securing resilient supply chains for critical minerals needed for the energy transition, addressing irregular cross-border migration, and establishing global guardrails for artificial intelligence development.

    Two ongoing conflicts are expected to dominate much of the off-agenda and bilateral conversation: the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and escalating tensions around Iran. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is confirmed to attend the summit to meet with G7 leaders, but administration officials noted that no formal bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy has been added to the U.S. president’s official schedule as of Saturday. The pair could still hold an informal meeting on the summit sidelines, officials added.

    The report was compiled from contributions by AP correspondent Petrequin, reporting from London, and fellow AP writer Aamer Madhani.

  • Canada’s Carney says middle-power countries shouldn’t compete for favor with the US

    Canada’s Carney says middle-power countries shouldn’t compete for favor with the US

    Ahead of the upcoming Group of Seven summit kicking off Monday in France, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has ramped up his diplomatic push to realign Canada’s global partnerships away from the United States and toward deeper integration with Europe, making his case for collective middle-power action during a visit to Dublin this weekend.

    Carney’s European tour began with a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, followed by talks Saturday with Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin. During a remarks delivered at Dublin’s Trinity College, the Canadian leader laid out a clear alternative path for nations caught in an era of intensifying great power rivalry. Instead of smaller and middle-sized countries competing to win favor from major global powers, Carney argues that uniting with like-minded allies can multiply collective strength to create an independent, influential third way.

    “ In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice — to compete for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney told the audience. This framing builds on comments he made earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he made global headlines by declaring the traditional post-Cold War rules-based global order defunct and condemned coercive pressure exerted by great powers on smaller sovereign states.

    Carney highlighted the combined scale of Canada and the European Union to back his case for closer cooperation: together, the two blocs hold a combined population more than double that of the United States, a combined GDP matching that of the U.S., and a collective defense budget twice the size of China’s. He framed the Canada-EU partnership as a values-driven force for global good, rooted in shared commitments to human rights, individual dignity, and pluralism.

    “The new world order will be built starting with Europe,” Carney stated during a joint press conference with Martin ahead of his Trinity College address. “Canada is the most European of non-European countries. We are transforming our cooperation with Europe.”

    This shift toward Europe is already well underway, Carney noted. Just five months ago, Canada became the first non-European country granted membership in the EU’s SAFE defense procurement initiative. In the 15 months since Carney took office as prime minister, this trip marks his ninth visit to the continent, and Canada has already secured 56 critical minerals partnerships across more than 10 European nations. Carney has also set a formal national target to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next decade, a goal shaped by ongoing trade friction with Washington under the second Trump administration.

    Ireland, which is set to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union starting in July, has fully embraced Canada’s ambition. “Prime Minister Carney has spoken with great clarity and conviction about Canada’s desire to deepen its engagement with Europe. Ireland warmly and unreservedly welcomes that ambition, and we will do what we can to strengthen relations between the European union and Canada during our forthcoming presidency,” Martin confirmed.

    Even as Canada leans into closer European ties, trade tensions with the U.S. remain a lingering issue, with the upcoming July 1 mandatory review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) looming on the horizon. The USMCA, the latest iteration of a North American free trade framework that has linked the three regional economies since the 1990s, has been the subject of conflicting signals from Trump, who said this week he may choose not to renew the pact.

    Carney pushed back against fears of a full collapse of the regional trade arrangement, noting that the Trump administration has made clear it has no interest in rewriting the core structure of the agreement. Changing the agreement fundamentally would require congressional approval, a step Carney said the White House has no intention of taking. He added that roughly 85% of Canadian exports to the U.S. already enter tariff-free under the current USMCA framework, a status the administration has chosen to maintain.

    A senior anonymous U.S. administration official confirmed that no bilateral meeting between Trump and Carney is scheduled for the G7 summit, and that no major trade breakthroughs are expected during the gathering. The official did note that the White House has viewed Canada’s recent reversal of a regulation requiring foreign streaming platforms to invest a share of their Canadian revenue into local content and news as a positive step, and that Washington has received outreach from Ottawa for further trade discussions.

    Carney acknowledged that Trump’s trade policies have created uncertainty for cross-border investment, a key factor driving Canada’s push to diversify its economic and geopolitical partnerships. The new alignment with Europe, he argues, will strengthen both blocs at a time of shifting global power dynamics.

  • Mass shootings in South Africa’s poorest areas are a symptom of organized crime and police failures

    Mass shootings in South Africa’s poorest areas are a symptom of organized crime and police failures

    A devastating mass shooting in an informal Johannesburg shack settlement has left 12 people dead and at least 15 injured, amplifying long-simmering concerns over organized criminal activity and systemic failures in South Africa’s law enforcement. No suspects have been taken into custody in the attack, which multiple perpetrators are believed to have carried out earlier this week.

    For criminologists and security analysts, the shooting is not an isolated tragedy — it is the latest outcome of a growing pattern of brutal violence concentrated in South Africa’s most underserved low-income communities. Experts agree that this violence stems directly from well-organized criminal syndicates exploiting widespread police dysfunction, from severe under-resourcing to open corruption and even collusion with criminal networks.

    Earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa took the extraordinary step of deploying national army troops to high-violence crime hotspots across the country, a move that critics frame as a quiet admission that police have lost control of security in many marginalized communities. The deployment came amid a sprawling corruption scandal that has roiled South Africa’s top law enforcement ranks: more than a dozen senior police officers have been arrested, and both the national police commissioner and national police minister have been suspended over allegations of ties to organized criminal groups.

    Jacob Mofokeng, a criminology professor at the University of South Africa, explained that criminal gangs deliberately target under-policed poor settlements because the lack of security, inadequate street lighting, and delayed police response create the perfect cover for illegal activity. “Criminal syndicates explicitly capitalize on this to hide weapons, execute hits, and vanish into the shadows,” Mofokeng told the Associated Press.

    South Africa is already grappling with a national crisis of violent crime, with official annual data recording an average of more than 60 homicides per day across the country. The burden of this violence falls overwhelmingly on poor townships and informal settlements, a reflection of the deep socioeconomic inequality that has persisted in South Africa decades after the end of apartheid. Wealthy, gated communities with private security services see drastically lower rates of violent crime.

    A primary driver of violence in these Johannesburg-area settlements is the illicit trade in unregulated gold mining, run by notorious local gangs known as *zama zamas* — a Zulu term loosely translated as “hustlers” or “chance-takers.” For decades, these gangs have set up operational bases in underserved, poorly policed areas, where they fight violent turf wars with rival groups to maintain control of illegal mining operations. Many gang members are undocumented migrants from neighboring countries, a detail that makes police investigations far more difficult. With no formal legal identification, registered address, or existing law enforcement biometric data, “they are effectively a ghost,” Mofokeng noted.

    The South African government estimates that illicit mining drains more than $3 billion annually from the national economy, and the long-standing *zama zama* crisis was a key justification for Ramaphosa’s year-long military deployment against organized crime. Local residents of the settlement targeted in this week’s shooting confirmed that illegal mining gangs have operated openly in the area for years, and law enforcement officials confirmed that the gangs are the central focus of the ongoing investigation into the mass shooting, though a confirmed motive has not yet been released.

    Compounding the crisis is a massive unregulated firearms problem: while South Africa enforces strict rules for legal gun ownership, independent research and civil society groups estimate that between 2 million and 3 million illegal firearms are currently circulating among the country’s 62 million population. Guns are responsible for the vast majority of homicides nationwide.

    Willem Els, an analyst with South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, said the combination of unregulated gun flows and systemic police failure has created an environment where organized crime can operate with near-total impunity. “In South Africa, we actually managed to create conditions that are very conducive for violent crime and also for organized crime syndicates to operate with impunity,” Els told the AP. “We’ve got a lot of unregistered firearms that are not being controlled by the police.”

    Beyond resource shortages, widespread allegations of police corruption have eviscerated public trust in law enforcement, creating a further barrier to cracking down on gang activity. Last year, a senior provincial police commander made public allegations that top law enforcement officials were colluding with criminal syndicates, prompting Ramaphosa to launch a national corruption probe that has already led to dozens of arrests of senior officers.

    Mike Bolhuis, a private investigator and veteran security specialist, said the corruption crisis has created a cycle of distrust that makes community cooperation with police nearly impossible. “The public doesn’t trust the police, they don’t trust the authorities, and they don’t trust each other,” Bolhuis said.

  • Why is football called ‘soccer’ in the US and Canada?

    Why is football called ‘soccer’ in the US and Canada?

    As the 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, draws near, a longstanding linguistic debate has reemerged for football fans across the globe: why do U.S. and Canadian fans call the world’s most popular sport soccer, rather than football? For one sports academic who grew up in 1960s and 1970s England, this debate always felt deeply odd. Stefan Szymanski, emeritus professor at the University of Michigan, recalls that “soccer” was a completely unremarkable, acceptable term during his childhood in Britain, prompting him to dig into the little-known history behind the word.

    Szymanski’s research traces the origin of “soccer” back to the very founding of modern organized football in 19th century Britain. When elite Oxford-educated graduates founded the Football Association in 1863 to standardize the sport’s rules, the new code was formally named “association football” to clearly separate it from the other dominant mainstream 19th century football variant: rugby football.

    By the 1880s and 1890s, wealthy students at top British universities had developed a popular slang trend: shortening common nouns and adding an “-er” ending to the end of the truncated word. This habit turned breakfast into “brekker” and rugby football into “rugger” — and it was this same trend that gave birth to soccer. Students extracted “soc” from the middle of “association,” added the characteristic slang “-er” suffix, and created the term we know today. While Szymanski notes that no historian can claim absolute certainty over the word’s earliest origins, multiple documentary sources confirm it was coined by Oxford students. Sports historian Andy Mitchell supports this timeline, having identified at least three printed instances of “soccer” (or its variant “socker”) in British school publications dating back to late 1885, with evidence suggesting the term was already in common verbal use even earlier.

    As the sport of association football spread across the world throughout the 20th century, the term “soccer” traveled with it. Today, the name remains in common use in countries including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and of course the United States, where “football” had already been adopted to describe the distinctly American gridiron variant of the sport that evolved from rugby in the same 1880s-1890s period that “soccer” was coined in Britain. Szymanski points out that American football and association soccer are actually close sporting cousins, and the parallel rise of both games in the late 19th century cemented the use of “soccer” for the global game in the U.S.

    What many modern fans do not know is that “soccer” remained in widespread use across British media for decades after it caught on in North America. Analysis conducted by Szymanski and his colleague Silke-Maria Weineck shows that major British newspapers continued to use “soccer” alongside “football” well into the 1960s and 1970s, only phasing it out gradually to leave “football” as the universal dominant term in Britain by the 1990s.

    Today, it is common for American fans to feel awkward about using the word “soccer” around international supporters, often apologizing for the term out of a belief that it offends British fans. Szymanski says this unnecessary awkwardness is rooted in a modern misconception: “soccer” is not an American corruption of the proper name — it is a uniquely British invention from the sport’s earliest days. For the professor, there is no reason for North American fans to hesitate to use the term that has been part of the sport’s linguistic history for more than 130 years.

  • As Belfast burned, two Sudanese women braved the streets and sheltered those under attack

    As Belfast burned, two Sudanese women braved the streets and sheltered those under attack

    A wave of racially motivated violence has shaken Northern Ireland’s capital Belfast, leaving immigrant families from Sudan displaced and terrified, as local volunteer groups stepped in to fill the gap left by absent state authorities. Earlier this week, two Sudanese families living in Belfast’s Tiger Bay neighborhood were targeted in coordinated attacks by gangs of masked men, who broke into their properties and set fire to the homes and work vehicles parked outside.

    One attack trapped a single mother and her two young children upstairs as flames consumed the floor below. Too afraid to confront the attackers who had explicitly targeted people perceived as foreign, the family hid in place while waiting for emergency response that took a full hour to arrive. Next door, a father shielding his two children waited out the violence, already wondering how he would explain the chaos to his wife, who was traveling overseas for work. Both heads of household work as translators for the UK’s National Health Service, and their work cars, left parked on a street decorated with loyalist murals, were completely destroyed in the arson.

    The violence followed a stabbing incident in Belfast earlier that week perpetrated by a man of Sudanese descent, and quickly spiraled into targeted attacks against the city’s entire Sudanese immigrant community. Even before the worst unrest broke out, two Sudanese community leaders – Areej Fareh and Twasul Mohammed, who run the Belfast-based women’s collective Anaka – had been working to address growing safety risks for immigrant residents. When the first night of attacks erupted on Tuesday, members of the Anaka collective, most of whom are immigrant women from diverse backgrounds, took to the streets despite the danger of flying petrol bombs and makeshift checkpoints set up to target people who appear non-local.

    With no sign of police, housing officials or other state agencies responding to the crisis, the grassroots organizers launched an independent evacuation effort. They first moved out 12 families whose homes and vehicles had already been destroyed by arson. When a leaked list of additional targeted addresses circulated on social media and WhatsApp groups the following night, the team expanded their operation: using a shared network of volunteer contacts, a centralized database of displaced people and a registry of local residents with spare rooms to offer, the group ultimately relocated more than 200 vulnerable families and individuals, many of whom remain unable to return to their neighborhoods.

    Fareh and Mohammed’s experience organizing against authoritarian rule in their home country prepared them to step into this crisis. The pair became friends while studying at university in Sudan, where they both organized opposition to the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in a 2019 popular revolution. Mohammed relocated to Belfast in 2016, while Fareh remained in Sudan to take part in the uprising, an experience that left her with first-hand trauma from state repression. During a 2019 protest in Khartoum, she was arrested by al-Bashir’s security forces, harassed and abused. She had already watched a close friend, a young chemist, killed by gunfire during a 2013 protest crackdown led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Janjaweed-derived paramilitary now accused of genocide in Sudan’s ongoing civil war. By the time al-Bashir fell, Fareh made the decision to leave to protect her 15-year-old son, and resettled in Belfast.

    For years after her arrival, Fareh said she felt entirely safe in her new home. “The first few years, until the attacks in 2024, I never worried that people on the street were racist,” she explained. “I was confident. Even if it was late and I was on my own I felt safe. Now I feel it all the time. If I see two men I feel worried.”

    Today, a central Belfast church has been converted into a makeshift refuge for hundreds of people displaced by the violence, with volunteer organizers running a full kitchen serving hot meals to displaced residents. Even amid the trauma, small moments of community connection persist: as the World Cup kicks off, a local resident organized a casual pool on when the first tournament goal would be scored. Local organizers like Brenda, a 15-year veteran of film and television set production in Belfast, have streamlined operations at the refuge to ensure every displaced person has support.

    Community housing organizer Conol Matthews, who has worked alongside the volunteer evacuation effort, argues that the anti-immigrant violence is stoked by manipulative forces that benefit from working-class division. When he encounters anti-immigrant sentiment among local working-class residents, he challenges them to ask who actually gains from the UK housing crisis that places asylum seekers and refugees in working-class neighborhoods, with private landlords charging the state inflated rents. “It’s those boys in suits,” he tells them. “They benefit. You have to live it. Maybe look not at the people living a life like yours.” Matthews has faced retaliation for his work: his phone number was leaked to loyalist extremist WhatsApp groups, and his call log is now flooded with endless anonymous threatening calls.

    Despite the fear and trauma of recent attacks, both Fareh and Mohammed say they refuse to leave Belfast, drawing on their experience of resistance in Sudan to reject the narrative of collective punishment that blames the entire Sudanese community for the actions of one individual. Mohammed notes that while rising anti-immigrant sentiment is a problem across much of the West, Belfast has a unique context of colonial history that creates solidarity. “There are more good people here than bad,” she said. “It’s becoming like this all over the West, but at least here the Irish understand, they have the history of being colonized.”

    For Fareh, the message to the racists targeting their community is clear: the Sudanese community will not be driven out. “We are not leaving it for them,” she said. “If you think you should leave then you have to think: no way.”

  • Woman seriously injured in shark attack at Sydney beach

    Woman seriously injured in shark attack at Sydney beach

    On a recent Saturday morning, a major shark attack unfolded at one of Sydney’s most popular coastal destinations, leaving a 35-year-old woman with critical injuries and prompting authorities to shut down multiple nearby beaches as a safety precaution.

    New South Wales Police confirmed that emergency response teams were dispatched to Coogee Beach, located in Sydney’s eastern coastal corridor, immediately after reports of the incident emerged. According to official statements, quick-thinking members of the public pulled the injured woman from the ocean and administered urgent first aid before first responders arrived. The attack left her with severe wounds to both her arm and leg, requiring urgent medical intervention that led to her being airlifted via emergency helicopter to a nearby major hospital for treatment.

    Nicola Logan, an eyewitness who was at the beach during the attack, shared her harrowing account of the event with Reuters. She told reporters that she first spotted a large, dark pool of blood spreading through the shallow water, before noticing the woman struggling to stay afloat, making frantic motions to swim and creating large splashes as she fought for safety. A recreational ski paddler who was on the water nearby quickly moved in to help bring the injured woman back to shore, Logan added.

    This latest attack comes just one week after a fatal shark bite killed a male diver off the southeast coast of Perth, Western Australia. Authorities suspect that attack involved a great white shark measuring approximately 4.5 meters, or nearly 15 feet, in length. That incident marked the second fatal shark attack near Perth in just a few months: back in May, a man who was a father of two was also killed by a shark while in waters close to the city.

    While shark attacks are statistically rare events globally, they occur more frequently in Australian waters than in most other regions of the world. Historical records, which date back to 1791, show that there have been nearly 1,300 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks across Australia, with more than 260 of those incidents resulting in death. Despite the higher frequency of encounters, the majority of shark attacks in the country are not fatal.

    To reduce risk to beachgoers, most popular Australian swimming and surfing locations routinely implement a range of shark mitigation measures, from drone surveillance and shark spotting towers to netting and drum line barriers. Still, unpredictable encounters remain a persistent risk for those recreating on the country’s iconic coastlines.

  • Ghana slams Canada’s decision to deny World Cup visa for Partey, who faces rape charges

    Ghana slams Canada’s decision to deny World Cup visa for Partey, who faces rape charges

    A diplomatic and legal dispute has erupted after Canada rejected a visa application from Ghanaian star midfielder Thomas Partey for his team’s FIFA World Cup group stage match in Toronto, drawing sharp condemnation from the Accra government over what it calls an “extremely unfair” ruling that violates the core legal principle of presumption of innocence.

    The 32-year-old Arsenal loanee, currently plying his trade at Spain’s Villarreal, is scheduled to face trial on multiple rape and sexual assault charges in London later this year. All allegations date back to his tenure at Arsenal between 200 and 2025, and Partey has repeatedly maintained his not-guilty plea across all counts. He was forced to withdraw from Ghana’s pre-match camp and return to the team’s base in Rhode Island after the visa refusal left him unable to enter Canada for the World Cup opener against Panama this past Wednesday.

    In an official statement released Saturday, Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lambasted the Canadian decision as “high-handed and extremely unfair”, noting that the refusal was based solely on unproven allegations that have not received any formal judicial ruling. “We reaffirm the fundamental legal principle of the presumption of innocence, a cornerstone of justice and due process in democratic societies,” the statement read.

    While Ghana acknowledged Canada’s sovereign authority to enforce its own immigration regulations, the government argued that basing a visa denial on unadjudicated charges raises serious questions about basic fairness and proportionality. “Accordingly, Ghana is pursuing active diplomatic engagements with the relevant Canadian authorities on this matter,” the statement added.

    The Accra administration has already submitted an official note of protest requesting a formal review of the visa decision, and confirmed it is “determined to explore and pursue all available diplomatic, legal and administrative remedies under Canadian and international law” — including filing for judicial review at the Federal Court of Canada if necessary — to secure a full, fair reassessment of the case consistent with due process principles.

    The statement added that ongoing discussions are already underway between Ghanaian and Canadian officials, and that Ghana “remains committed to constructive engagements” with Canadian counterparts to reach a timely, amicable resolution of the dispute.

    Ghana national team head coach Carlos Queiroz already stood by Partey’s inclusion in the 2026 World Cup squad, explicitly citing the principle of presumption of innocence when announcing the roster. The midfielder will still be eligible to take part in Ghana’s remaining group stage matches: he will be allowed to enter the United States for the team’s June 23 clash against England in Massachusetts, and the final group match against Croatia on June 27 in Philadelphia.

    The controversy comes as Partey faces a total of eight charges: five counts of rape connected to two separate alleged victims, one count of sexual assault involving a fourth woman, and two additional rape charges added in March stemming from an allegation by a fifth woman who claims Partey raped her twice on a single day in December 2020. The new charges were filed after the initial set of allegations were made public. Partey’s legal team confirmed in March that the midfielder would enter a not-guilty plea to all new charges.

    In closing, the Ghanaian government’s statement invoked the unifying values of international football: “May the beautiful game of football continue to live up to its reputation of uniting nations, forging lasting bonds of friendship, playing by the rules, and promoting fair play both on and off the field.”

  • At least 17 people killed by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria

    At least 17 people killed by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria

    ABUJA, Nigeria – A devastating armed assault on unarmed civilians working their agricultural lands in northwestern Nigeria has left at least 17 farmers dead and 13 others injured, according to local authorities and community witnesses. The deadly incident unfolded Friday in Goron Namaye, a small town located within Nigeria’s violence-plagued Zamfara state’s Maradun local government area.

    No armed faction has yet stepped forward to claim responsibility for the attack, but regional security observers note that organized gang violence has surged across northwestern Nigeria in recent months, targeting civilians and local communities regularly. Shehu Musa, a Maradun resident who confirmed the details of the assault to the Associated Press Saturday, described the sudden, unprovoked nature of the attack: “The farmers were working on their lands when the bandits suddenly attacked and killed 17 of them.” The injured survivors have been transported to a nearby medical facility for emergency treatment, Musa added.

    Local government leaders have linked the latest killing to the Zamfara state government’s ongoing refusal to enter into negotiations with the armed gangs that control large swathes of rural territory in the region. Sanusi Dosara, chairman of the Maradun local government, stated in an official release that the attack was a direct retaliation for the government’s refusal to negotiate. Dosara issued a formal appeal to Nigerian security forces to launch a targeted operation to dismantle the Bayan-Ruwa militant enclave hidden in Maradun’s extensive forest areas, which he identified as the primary base for the gunmen responsible for the attack.

    The Friday assault comes just one day after another high-profile incident in the same local government area, underscoring the rapid escalation of insecurity in the region. On Thursday, gunmen abducted 39 residents of Magamin Diddi community, who had gathered to meet with the family of a suspected bandit leader as part of a local grassroots peace initiative aimed at ending a wave of mass kidnappings for ransom.

    For years, overlapping crises of insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and widespread ransom kidnappings and gang violence in the northwestern and central regions have devastated communities across the country. United Nations data estimates that these connected conflicts have killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions more from their homes. The escalating violence comes despite repeated public pledges from Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who took office last year, that his administration would curb insecurity and resolve the long-running crisis.

  • The nuclear challenge at the heart of Trump’s Iran negotiations

    The nuclear challenge at the heart of Trump’s Iran negotiations

    A senior official from the second Trump administration has publicly stated Washington is confident a historic deal to end the ongoing war with Iran will be finalized and signed in the coming days. If reached, the agreement is expected to reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil shipments pass — in exchange for the United States lifting its current naval blockade on Iranian commercial shipping, according to early outlines of the emerging framework.

    Core to the proposed agreement is a requirement that Iran destroy and remove all of its existing enriched uranium stockpiles, a non-negotiable demand the Trump administration has insisted on since the war began in late February. Technical details surrounding how this process will be carried out, including verification protocols and disposal locations, are still being negotiated, the official confirmed.

    To understand the stakes of the emerging deal, it is necessary to contextualize the decades-long debate over Iran’s nuclear program. Uranium, a naturally occurring radioactive material, can be processed to fuel civilian nuclear power plants or refined to a high purity for use in nuclear weapons. The process of increasing the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope, the core fissionable component, is called enrichment. Low-enriched uranium, between 3% and 5% purity, is sufficient for civilian power generation, while weapons-grade uranium requires a minimum enrichment level of 90%.

    Iran has long maintained that “zero enrichment” is a non-negotiable red line that violates what it views as its sovereign right to a civilian nuclear program, a position that has been a major sticking point in negotiations for decades.

    This is not the first major nuclear agreement with Iran: the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated by the Obama administration alongside the UN Security Council and other world powers, already placed strict limits on Iran’s enrichment activities in exchange for widespread sanctions relief. When the JCPOA was reached, negotiators framed it as a landmark deal to eliminate the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

    Catherine Ashton, the former UN lead negotiator for the JCPOA, told BBC Verify that the entire agreement centered on one core goal: eliminating international fears that Iran would pursue an atomic bomb. “When it was introduced, the Obama administration declared that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from building a secret nuclear programme and that Tehran had agreed to extraordinary and robust monitoring, verification, and inspection,” Ashton explained. Under the JCPOA’s terms, Iran agreed to cut its enriched uranium stockpile by 98%, capping its holdings at 300kg (660lbs), limit enrichment to 3.67% purity, and accept strict caps on the number of centrifuges — the specialized machines used to enrich uranium. In exchange, the United States and international community lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran’s oil sector, trade, and banking system, granting Tehran access to billions of dollars in previously frozen overseas assets.

    For years after the agreement entered into force, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s independent nuclear watchdog, repeatedly confirmed Iran was fully complying with all JCPOA requirements. The US State Department also officially confirmed in an April 2018 report that Iran was “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA.”

    Kelsey Davenport, nonproliferation expert at the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, called the original deal “remarkably successful,” noting that any deviation from the agreement’s terms or any move toward a nuclear weapon would have been detected immediately by IAEA inspectors.

    That did not stop then-President Trump from withdrawing the US from the JCPOA in May 2018, when he labeled the agreement a “horrible, one-side deal that should never, ever have been made.” Trump argued the JCPOA failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile program, that inspection mechanisms were insufficient to prevent and punish cheating, and that the deal gave Iran access to billions in sanctions relief that it used to fund militant proxies across the Middle East. He has repeatedly criticized former President Obama for what he calls “bribing” Iran with billions in sanctions relief.

    Jacob Olidort, chief research officer at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute, argues Trump was justified in pulling out of the deal. “All of these issues were completely pushed to the sidelines, completely deprioritised and not included in the arrangement,” Olidort told BBC Verify. He also pointed to the JCPOA’s so-called sunset clauses, which saw many core limits on enrichment expire after 15 years, arguing the deal would have eventually allowed Iran to expand its program openly.

    Ashton rejects these criticisms, noting the JCPOA was designed to solve the most urgent problem: eliminating the immediate risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon. “There was always a criticism that we should have covered all kind of things. But the critical question was, ‘Could we prevent any fear that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon?’ And we did that,” she said. “There was plenty of opportunity afterwards to talk about other issues, ballistic missiles, drones etc. And indeed the Trump administration in its first term could have done that. If President Trump felt that the deal was inadequate, then the answer was to build on it, not to rip it up.”

    Davenport also notes that while some core limits were set to expire in 2031, many critical provisions — including permanent IAEA monitoring and safeguards — would have remained in place, ensuring any move toward a nuclear weapon would be detected quickly. Sanctions relief, Ashton added, was a necessary quid pro quo: “If you sanction someone because they’re doing some behaviour and they change the behaviour, then by definition the sanction cannot stay.”

    After the US withdrawal, Iran began gradually expanding its enrichment program, steadily increasing its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. By June 2025, when the US and Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA estimated Iran held 440.9kg (972lbs) of uranium enriched to 60% purity — just a short technical step away from 90% weapons-grade material.

    The strikes, US officials have said, significantly set back Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon, destroying much of its enrichment infrastructure. Since the war began in February 2026, IAEA inspectors have been unable to access most of Iran’s key nuclear sites, including the underground tunnels at Isfahan where IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi estimated in April that roughly 200kg of 60% enriched uranium is stored. “We haven’t been able to inspect or to reject that the material is there and that the seals – the IAEA seals – remain there,” Grossi told the Associated Press, adding the watchdog also demands access to sites at Natanz and Fordo.

    Trump has already claimed any new deal he negotiates will be “far better” than the 2015 JCPOA. While the full terms of the emerging agreement remain undisclosed, experts say the outline is already taking shape. Davenport notes that Iran will never agree to a deal without significant sanctions relief and access to its frozen overseas assets, a demand that puts Trump in a difficult position given his longstanding criticism of the JCPOA’s sanctions relief provisions.

    Trump will likely seek to frame the deal as a historic breakthrough that secured concessions Obama never could, Davenport said, likely pointing to the permanent removal of Iran’s existing enriched uranium stockpiles and a multi-year suspension of enrichment activities. She also notes that direct comparisons to the JCPOA are largely unfair: after the 2025 US-Israeli strikes, Iran’s nuclear program is far smaller and less advanced than it was in 2015, a fact that changes the entire negotiation dynamic.

    Olidort argues the US is negotiating from a position of unprecedented strength, noting Iran’s military capabilities have been badly damaged by the war and its regional proxy network has been significantly weakened. Any deal, he said, will be far stronger than the original JCPOA.

    Still, former negotiator Ashton warns that military pressure alone cannot produce a lasting, sustainable agreement. “All I can say is in my experience, the way that negotiations work is that people have to feel that they’ve got enough to make it worthwhile participating in that negotiation,” she said. As both sides work to finalize technical details in the coming days, the world awaits what could be a pivotal shift in Middle Eastern security.

  • Trump’s name being removed from Kennedy Center after judge order

    Trump’s name being removed from Kennedy Center after judge order

    One day after a federal court’s ordered deadline for removal passed, construction crews have started taking former U.S. President Donald Trump’s name off the exterior facade of Washington DC’s iconic John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The process follows a weeks-long legal battle over the controversial addition of Trump’s name to the national cultural landmark, which is permanently enshrined by federal law as a memorial to assassinated 35th President John F. Kennedy.

    In late May, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper issued a landmark ruling that declared the addition of Trump’s name to the venue unlawful. The judge found that no federal statute grants the executive branch authority to rename a congressionally designated memorial without explicit approval from Congress, and he ordered the name to be fully removed by Friday, June 12.

    Crews first moved into place on the afternoon of June 12, assembling large scaffolding along the Kennedy Center’s front facade as curious onlookers gathered throughout the evening to watch the preparations. However, severe thunderstorms rolling through the DC area forced work to be halted overnight, pushing the start of actual letter removal to early Saturday morning. By the time work resumed Saturday, crews draped long opaque plastic sheeting along the structure to obscure the removal process from public view while the work proceeded.

    Ahead of the scheduled removal, the Trump administration mounted a last-ditch legal effort to pause the court’s order and delay the work indefinitely. Judge Cooper rejected this emergency request outright, clearing the path for crews to proceed with the deconstruction. A subsequent appeal to the federal appeals court also failed, with justices declining to issue an emergency stay to block the removal pending future legal arguments over the case.

    The entire legal dispute grows out of a sweeping power grab Trump executed at the Kennedy Center shortly after he began his second term. In February 2025, Trump replaced multiple existing sitting members of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, installed himself as a new trustee, and then arranged to be elected chairman of the institution’s governing body. Later that year, as part of a broader series of rebranding changes across Washington DC’s federal landmarks, Trump formally announced his decision to add his own name to the Kennedy Center’s exterior.

    Throughout the legal proceedings, the Trump administration defended the name addition, arguing that reversing the change would create unnecessary public confusion if the court’s ruling were eventually overturned on appeal. On the ground Friday, as scaffolding went up, some gathered onlookers openly supported the removal, chanting “take it down” as crews prepared the site, according to CBS News, the US-based news partner of the BBC.