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There is no end in sight for the drivers of illegal mining, while police action appears ineffectiveCora Bailey has been encountering illegal miners ever since she first started treating injured animals in the townships around Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, in 1991. But as the price of gold has soared, so too has activity in the abandoned mine shafts that mark the area.In late September, dozens of zama zamas – the name given to illegal miners in South Africa, meaning roughly “to take a chance” in Zulu – arrived to dig for gold across the dirt road from her charity, Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare). Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's administration quietly agreed to arm a foreign military unit with a gruesome human rights record, a new report revealed.The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid, including armored personnel carriers, to Cameroon's Rapid Intervention Battalion, known as the BIR, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. U.S. officials and congressional aides told The Journal that State Department officials negotiated the aid alongside a deal for the Central African nation to accept deportees from the U.S. who aren't Cameroonian.The unit has a brutal past. A 2017 Amnesty International report accused the BIR of war crimes during its fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, finding that members beat and drowned detainees and tortured some of them to death. Trump's first administration cut off some aid to the unit in 2019 and booted Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over its forces' ongoing abuses, which Cameroon denied at the time.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the aid package earlier this year, according to The Journal. That stalled the deal for months until April, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team told her the administration was overriding her and pushing ahead.Shaheen this week tore into the arrangement as "grotesque" and said Rubio had let her down by signing off on it.In a statement, Shaheen argued that the U.S. has no business handing sensitive military gear to governments with shaky human rights records, let alone as payment for taking in people.Cameroon started accepting U.S. deportation flights in December and has taken in at least 36 people since, according to Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy group. Some officials told The Journal the Trump administration intends to ramp up flights to African countries in the coming months. Around the time the aid was disclosed to Congress in January, the U.S. also steered $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency's operations in Cameroon, even as it slashed foreign aid elsewhere.The State Department wouldn't discuss the details of any agreement but praised its partnership with Cameroon on security and counterterrorism, and said it follows the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to forces tied to human rights abuses. Cameroon's embassy in Washington did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.

President Donald Trump received a high-level military briefing Thursday as his administration considers launching another round of major attacks against Iran, according to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal.Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, made a rare in-person visit to the White House to discuss potential military operations, the Journal reported, citing U.S. officials and others familiar with the meeting.Cooper was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. The meeting also covered other topics, according to the report.The unusual gathering came as the U.S. weighs “resuming major combat operations,” the Journal reported Thursday. It followed a separate White House meeting a day earlier when military leaders met with Vice President JD Vance.Vance has reportedly reached out to one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners in an effort to revive peace negotiations, according to the report, suggesting the administration is still pursuing diplomatic efforts even as it considers new military strikes.But Trump himself recently raised the prospect of renewed strikes.“We may do another little Epic Fury,” Trump said at a rally last week, referring to the earlier U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.The possibility of renewed strikes has also alarmed some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who said he had been briefed on some of the classified military planning and called the plans "insane.""It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law," Murphy warned.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) says he’s been briefed on the Iran war plan President Donald Trump is expected to launch after the midterms and calls it “insane,” the Daily Beast reported on Thursday.Murphy said he couldn’t share details. However, in a post on X, he claimed the plan would likely destroy the country’s commitment to the rule of law, adding that it “will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation.”At the Middle East Institute on Thursday, Murphy said he’d had a “fairly detailed conversation” about it and predicted it would prolong the conflict with Tehran. He acknowledged the public has heard it described as short in duration, but said the plan is “insane.”He noted reports that the Pentagon may be considering civilian infrastructure targets.Murphy said officials had been asked by the president to develop a plan, and that whether they think it will work, he couldn’t say. In his view, it would drag out the war and hurt U.S. security interests.He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees. His comments followed reports that Gulf nations were told to prepare for a brief but intense campaign after Nov. 3. The Wall Street Journal cited officials as saying Trump was weighing strikes on nuclear sites and civilian infrastructure. Trump has said he won’t strike Iran before the election.Trump's campaign against Iran has proven wildly unpopular, with the public largely seeing him as breaking a promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and with the Strait of Hormuz crisis driving up energy prices to uncomfortable levels.

Journalist Scott MacFarlane flagged what he called an obvious mistake in a Justice Department announcement about an alleged noncitizen voter, in his “Day Ahead” newsletter on Wednesday.MacFarlane said DOJ has been putting out releases on individual noncitizens accused of voting in 2022, each showing a blurred image of the suspect with an agent’s windbreaker. One of the entries alleges a Greek national voted for President, Vice President, US Senator and Member of the House of Representatives in 2022.”The problem is that “2022 was not a Presidential or Vice Presidential election year,” MacFarlane noted.MacFarlane says the handful of cases couldn’t sway a federal election, and haven’t been proven in court.Separately, he noted, DOJ is also pressing a suit to block certification of Alaska’s Senate race over the fact that two candidates' names on the ballot are similar, and seeking to set aside tens of thousands of California ballots over alleged noncitizen voting that local officials dismiss as “hogwash,” though an appeals court denied DOJ’s request Monday.He adds that DOJ plans to use 1,000 election monitors, with deployments reportedly concentrated in Democratic areas such as Georgia’s Fulton and DeKalb counties and Indiana’s Marion and Lake counties.Just hours prior to the suit being filed in Alaska, Attorney General Todd Blanche had told reporters the DOJ would not intervene against a state certifying its own election unless there was a "doomsday scenario."

Jean Kaseya, of the Africa CDC, warns of the illness spreading like Covid unless more funding is secured to increase preparedness and possible treatmentThe “unprecedented” spread of the Ebola outbreak means it could reach the UK and other countries, according to one of Africa’s top health officials.As the current outbreak reached 10,000 cases, with almost 5,000 deaths, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared the outbreak to the Covid pandemic, which first took hold in China before spreading to countries across the world, claiming millions of lives, and ravaging health systems and economies. Continue reading...

Right-wing podcaster Candace Owens is gloating over a partial legal win against France's first couple, even though the fight is far from over.Owens wrote in a post on X Tuesday that she was "in the absolute best mood over this Macron dismissal" after a Delaware judge removed her personally from the defamation lawsuit filed against her by French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron. The New York Times reported the ruling the same day."Feels like a year and a half of my family having to deal with psychotic lies regarding pending bankruptcies, secret accounts and plans to flee the country," Owens wrote, adding that the ordeal was finally over.Judge Sheldon K. Rennie of Delaware Superior Court found that his court lacked jurisdiction over Owens, who lives in Tennessee, and threw out every claim against her personally. Her two companies, Candace Owens LLC and GeorgeTom Inc., remain defendants. According to The Times, the decision makes it "likely that her personal assets would be shielded" if the Macrons ultimately win.The Macrons sued in July 2025 after Owens falsely claimed that the French first lady is a man. Owens has devoted dozens of episodes of her show to the conspiracy theory, which she began pushing in March 2024.Rennie also sided with Owens' argument that French law, not American law, should set the deadline for the Macrons' claims. France generally gives plaintiffs three months to sue over allegedly defamatory statements, though that window can stretch to a year when the remarks target someone over traits such as sex or sexual orientation."We argued the Macron couple was intentionally forum shopping because being held to France's 3 months would have naturally expired their claims," Owens wrote.The judge is allowing both sides to submit additional arguments on which deadline applies before deciding the fate of the claims against Owens' companies. If the three-month rule wins out, the entire case faces dismissal because the Macrons didn't file within that window.Owens also insisted the couple "is NOT and has never sued anyone for matters pertaining to sex, sexual orientation, or gender," claiming the suit instead targets her statements about "MK Ultra and theft." The Times, however, reported that the lawsuit followed her false claims about Brigitte Macron's gender.Clare Locke, the law firm representing the Macrons, praised the court for keeping the claims against Owens' companies alive and said it would explore other ways to hold her personally accountable.Owens is separately facing two defamation suits over her commentary on the killing of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk. Both cases, filed in federal courts in Tennessee and Utah, are still pending.

A White House promise aimed squarely at voters in several red states is running into an awkward reality, according to an administration insider.A person close to the Trump administration told Politico in a report published Tuesday that the recent burst of optimism about a looming trade agreement with Canada is meant to send a signal to places like Iowa and Kansas. But "no one expects a deal," the person said.The remarks cut against the message coming from the top. President Donald Trump predicted at a Sunday rally in Michigan that the trade fight would be "settled pretty soon," while National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Fox News the same day that the two countries were "very close."Talks between Washington and Ottawa have picked up since Trump spoke by phone with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Oct. 21. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc have been in frequent contact since then, Politico reported, though a senior Canadian official described the discussions as still informal.Neither country has budged on its core demands. Canada is still pushing for relief on autos, steel and aluminum, while the United States wants a bigger foothold in Canada's dairy and alcohol markets. People familiar with the negotiations told Politico that any final agreement is likely weeks or months away.Carney also has little reason to hand Trump a win ahead of the midterms. The prime minister's poll numbers have climbed since he walked away from negotiations in August, and he is set to host European Union leaders in Montreal for a summit meant to strengthen ties with the bloc."Carney would have to have some reason to want to get a deal before the midterms," the Trump administration insider said. "But I can't imagine why he would at this point."An industry official told Politico that Lutnick's resistance to cutting sector-specific duties remains the biggest obstacle. "Any potential Canada deal is going to have the same issue," the official said.Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who told Politico he believes the two countries will eventually reach an agreement, couldn't say whether it would happen before Election Day. "I don't know," he said.