Washington (United States) (AFP) – Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported to his home country of Britain, the US government said Saturday.

Yiannopoulos, an early supporter of Donald Trump who has voiced support for the president's immigration crackdown, has largely fallen out with the Trump movement.

He was arrested Thursday at New Orleans International Airport and deported the following day by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to AFP.

After arriving in the United States in 2019 and overstaying his visa, he was issued a final order of removal in July "after failing to show up for his immigration hearing," the department said.

The 41-year-old entered the public eye a decade ago, casting himself as a gay crusader for free speech and an enemy of "political correctness," but was widely accused of being racist and misogynistic.

He wrote for the right-wing US news outlet Breitbart News and backed Trump during the 2016 election campaign but has more recently been critical of the US leader.

Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer hailed his arrest, boasting on X that she was "the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally where he incited violence against President Trump."

ICE is tasked with carrying out Donald Trump's anti-immigration crackdown, and many Americans consider its methods brutal. Federal agents shot dead two American citizens in January as they protested anti-immigrant enforcement raids in Minneapolis.

In September 2025, Yiannopoulos posted on X: "Total legal immunity for ICE agents when they're on duty."

Abuja (AFP) – Criminal groups in Nigeria raised nearly $6 million in ransom payments in the last year, a report said Wednesday, with two mass kidnappings by Boko Haram responsible for nearly 90 percent of the total.

Abductions have become a key moneymaker for criminal groups in Africa's most populous country, especially jihadists and non-ideological armed gangs known as bandits.

Some 7.78 billion naira in ransom was paid between July 2025 and June 2026, the report, from Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence, said – more than triple the 2.56 billion naira paid during the same period last year.

At least 7,825 people were abducted, up 66 percent compared with the same period last year, based on SBM's figures, which may be conservative since many victims do not want to speak about ransom payments, which are illegal in Nigeria.

A minimum of 1,142 people were killed, including 895 civilians, it added.

Security forces are overstretched fighting a 17-year jihadist insurgency in the northeast and banditry in northwest and central Nigeria.

Farmers and herders clash over land in the centre of the country while a simmering separatist movement festers in the southeast.

The northwest, increasingly home to jihadists as well, remains the hardest hit by the kidnapping crisis, SBM said.

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Algeria entered a second day of national mourning on Friday as firefighters continued to battle wildfires in the north of the country that have killed at least 12 people and injured dozens.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared three days of national mourning on Thursday and cancelled all cultural events and sporting competitions.

“With a heavy heart and a soul in mourning at the tragedy of the loss of our fellow citizens,” Tebboune said in a statement announcing the mourning period.

Five people died in Jijel province, four in Bejaia and three in Tizi Ouzou, Interior Minister Said Sayoud said on Wednesday. Another 54 people were being treated in hospital for burns, including six in a serious condition.

Algeria’s civil protection service said on Thursday morning that 46 fires were still burning out of 193 recorded over the previous 24 hours.

Videos shared online overnight on Wednesday showed fires engulfing large areas as residents were trapped by the flames. AFP was not immediately able to verify the footage.

Three major roads connecting regions in eastern Algeria were closed because of forest fires near the cities of Bejaia, Jijel and Setif, the gendarmerie said.

Weather conditions were complicating firefighting operations, the interior ministry said.

“Adverse weather conditions, rising temperatures, strong and intense winds, and high concentrations of smoke prevented the continued deployment of aircraft in the fire-fighting operations,” Sayoud said on Thursday.

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Nuwakot (Nepal) (AFP) – Rescuers in Nepal and China were still battling Saturday to locate thousands of people missing days after a deadly, tsunami-like wall of water and debris swept through the Himalayan region, engulfing villages.

The number of missing soared close to 3,000 Saturday, latest figures from both countries showed, with 633 bodies recovered -- and reports of some dead possibly swept downstream as far away as India.

In an area home to vast energy infrastructure projects, Nepal's disaster authority added 933 hydropower workers to a missing persons list already including trekkers and pilgrims to Tibet's sacred Mount Kailash.

Those that made it out say they have lost everything and now face an agonising wait to discover the fate of missing loved ones, and the prospect of rebuilding their lives from nothing.

"All the settlements near the river were swept away. There is nothing left," survivor Buddhi Ram Dangol told AFP.

Samjhana Thing said she had been waiting three days for news of her missing brother.

"We don't know anything. Hopefully he is in a safe place," she said.

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Washington (United States) (AFP) – President Donald Trump said Friday his administration has reached a huge oil deal with Venezuela that gives the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves.

The deal -- which Trump proclaimed as "the biggest oil deal in world history" -- will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela, US and Venezuelan officials said.

Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. Its government has operated under intense pressure and close scrutiny from the Trump administration since the US ousted and captured long time ruler Nicolas Maduro in January.

Washington allowed his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to stay on and serve as interim leader so long as she toes the US line.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to secure Venezuelan oil for the US, and in his post announcing the deal on his Truth Social platform, he said it will more than double US oil reserves.

Interim leader Rodriguez confirmed what she called a "historic agreement" that would "have a significant impact on the rebirth of our nation."

Writing on social media, she hailed potential investment of "more than $100 billion and more than $209 billion in tax revenue for the State."

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reached the deal with Rodriguez "through a partnership with private business."

"This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States!" Trump wrote.

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Copenhagen (AFP) – Greenland said Friday it would establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Denmark's forced contraception of thousands of indigenous Inuits, after experts failed to agree on whether the scheme constituted "genocide"

The forced contraception campaign is one of the darkest chapters in Greenland's history with its former colonial master Denmark.

From the 1960s to 1990, more than 4,000 Greenlandic women were forced to wear a contraceptive coil -- or intrauterine device (IUD) -- in the vast majority of cases without their consent or that of their parents if they were minors.

Girls as young as 12 were affected, some of whom were never able to have children afterwards.

"We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide. This is something we can continue to debate," Greenland's Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen told reporters.

Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the priority now was to "begin the healing process".

"We will set up a reconciliation commission," he vowed, saying he wanted to cooperate with Denmark on the matter.

In Copenhagen, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also sounded a conciliatory note.

"We will handle the political process together with the government of Greenland. The most important thing for me is that we find the right path together," she said.

A four-member commission was tasked in August 2024 with shedding light on the scheme.

The experts were unable to agree on a unanimous conclusion, presenting two different reports instead.

"One states there was no genocide at all, while the other says there might have been," Paviasen said.

The reports did however agree that the contraception programme may have violated multiple human rights and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

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Ngwerere (Zambia) (AFP) – From a distance, the Shaolin Temple outside Lusaka appeared almost like a mirage, a slice of central China dropped into the Zambian landscape.

Then the dragons emerged from beneath the pagoda, their brightly coloured fabric bodies hoisted on poles by teenagers moving with surprising precision.

Nearby, smaller children tumbled across a weather-beaten foam mattress, twisting into barrels and forward rolls as 30-year-old instructor Yan Chen barked commands.

The sprawling complex houses Africa's first Shaolin Temple -- part of a Buddhist monastic martial arts tradition -- set on a 20,000-square-metre (215,300-square-foot) plot 18 kilometres (11 miles) north of the capital.

The site was donated by Chinese businessman Jiang Qingde, with the cost of building the cultural centre estimated at nearly $6 million.

It has become one of the most visible symbols of China's cultural footprint in a country where Beijing's influence already runs deep through investment in mines, roads, factories and infrastructure.

John Bwalya, third-born in a family of nine, arrived at the temple three years ago.

"I grew up watching the Karate Kid movies on TV and told myself I need to learn this thing," he told AFP, recalling the 2010 reboot of the film series featuring martial-arts star Jackie Chan.

Now 23, Bwalya lives at the temple alongside 36 other students, most from underprivileged backgrounds.

Under the watch of four Chinese instructors, a Zambian and an Ivorian, their days begin as early as 3:00 am.

The compound is their school, training ground and home: they sleep, study and train there, leaving only for a few days each December to visit their families and earning a stipend from performances.

Saulo Woonga, 18, did not want to come. His mother sent him after he got into a fight with another boy in their neighbourhood.

"I was beating another guy," he said. "So, my mum decided that, you need to go in the Shaolin temple."

Mathews Mafulu, also 18, arrived with a different problem. He was being bullied and, by his own admission, was lazy.

Kung fu has changed him, he said, making him "jacked up, creative and a little strong".

Mafulu, who has lived for five years at the temple, does not see the Chinese presence around him as an intrusion.

"It's not like the Chinese they are taking over Zambia," Mafulu said.

"It's like exchanging cultures. We are learning new things from the Chinese and we are also teaching them new things of Africa."

Their early-morning routines, acrobatics, dragon dances and training sessions have drawn millions of views on TikTok and Douyin, China's version of the platform.

Ronald Mwale, 26, is one of its biggest faces.

The 26-year-old, who now speaks Mandarin and goes by the Chinese name Hang Shao, has travelled to China four times and is preparing for a year-long stay there from next month.

His videos, chronicling life inside the temple, have made him a social media sensation, attracting more than 615,000 followers on TikTok.

Yet when he first arrived, he had little interest in China itself.

"All I was interested in was training martial arts," he said, watching younger students rehearse wushu, the Chinese term for the martial arts better known in the West as kung fu.

Today, his ambitions stretch far beyond the training yard. He hopes to become an actor and dreams of following in the footsteps of performers from China's Henan province, the cradle of Shaolin kung fu and Zen Buddhism, where many of the temple's traditions originated centuries ago.

Mwale already starred in his first movie, published in March on YouTube, and has racked up nearly half a million views.

A few hours later, the training yard fell quiet and the students filed silently into the temple.

Dressed in orange and yellow robes, they bowed shoulder-to-shoulder before Buddhist altars and began chanting prayers beneath ornate ceilings painted in red, blue and gold.

At the doorway, a handful of curious visitors stood quietly, phones raised as the students' voices rose and fell in unison.

For Chen, who arrived in Zambia in 2022 after growing up in a poor community in China, the temple is about more than martial arts.

"It gives them hope for their lives," he said.

Washington (United States) (AFP) – The most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States is spending more than any other outside group on the 2026 midterms -- even as its once-coveted backing becomes an increasingly potent weapon for political opponents.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has poured tens of millions of dollars into races nationwide through its main election-spending vehicle, the United Democracy Project (UDP).

The so-called "super PAC" -- a group allowed to lavish unlimited sums to influence elections, provided it operates independently of candidates -- has spent $54 million on congressional races, according to campaign finance monitor OpenSecrets.

That has made it the single largest outside spender of the cycle, OpenSecrets said, while the wider pro-Israel donor network spent $71 million -- placing it second only to the cryptocurrency industry.

The extraordinary financial firepower underscores AIPAC's continued influence in Washington -- but also a growing backlash over US policy toward Israel and the role of wealthy interest groups in American elections.

AIPAC has concentrated much of its spending on Democratic primaries, supporting candidates strongly committed to Israel and trying to defeat critics of unconditional US military aid.

It didn't respond to a request for comment, but it has rejected suggestions that its influence is collapsing, saying hundreds of candidates it backed have won their primaries.

Its money has indeed delivered victories this year, but also some expensive failures.

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New York (AFP) – Two air traffic controllers left work early ahead of a deadly collision between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport in March, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The pair clocked off around an hour before their shift was due to end, the newspaper said citing sources, leaving the control tower short-staffed before the crash that killed two pilots.

Surveillance footage from March 22 captured the moment the plane smashed into the rescue vehicle as it crossed its path, sending both hurtling down the runway.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is moving to fire the two controllers who left, according to The Wall Street Journal, which said LaGuardia was handling over twice its usual traffic when the accident happened.

It added that going home early is called an "early shove" in the aviation industry and is considered an informal perk for staff, sometimes offered after especially taxing shifts.

An FAA spokeswoman said the agency "is committed to holding employees accountable, and we will not compromise the safety or efficiency of the National Airspace System."

Investigators are still probing the accident but a preliminary report in April pointed to communication failures and a lack of proper equipment.

It found one of the most egregious errors occurred when air traffic controllers gave clearance to the fire truck crew to cross the runway while the jet was approaching.

An air traffic controller realized the mistake a few seconds later, telling the fire crew to "stop stop stop." But one of the two occupants of the truck "did not know who that transmission was intended for."

Another factor was the lack of a transponder on the fire engine, which would have automatically alerted air traffic controllers that the aircraft and the truck were on a collision course, according to investigators.

The crash was LaGuardia's first fatal accident since 1992.

Deadly air crashes in the United States in recent years include a collision between a passenger jet and an army helicopter near Washington in January 2025 that killed 67 people.

Damascus (AFP) – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi as a presidential adviser, state media said on Friday, days after Abdi announced the dissolution of his Kurdish forces under an integration deal with Damascus.

"Mustafa Khalil Abdi is appointed as adviser to the presidency of the republic," announced the decree, signed by Sharaa and published by state news agency SANA.

Abdi, who has been known by several different names, was for years the leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Washington-backed group at the forefront of the battle against the Islamic State jihadist group.

On Tuesday, he announced the SDF's dissolution, part of a deal he made with Sharaa in January to integrate the Kurds' forces and civilian administration into the state.

Syria's new Islamist authorities who toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 have been seeking to extend state control across the whole country.

The integration deal was a major victory for Sharaa but an end to long-held Kurdish hopes for autonomy.

US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said on Tuesday that "this is what real integration looks like... former counterparts with differing points of view crafting a diplomatic solution to strengthen the sovereign nation of Syria".

"Securing substantive roles for our valued partners" including Abdi within the government "pays due respect to their leadership, the sacrifices of our Kurdish partners, and the constructive contribution they have made to regional stability", Barrack added, without indicating what role Abdi was to have.

Abdi said Tuesday that the SDF's dissolution followed "the completion of the process of integrating our forces into the brigades of the Syrian army".

The SDF was formed in 2015 at the instigation of the United States, which was impressed by the Kurdish fighters who had defeated IS in Kobane in the north and was seeking a reliable partner in the ongoing battle against the jihadists.

It was the de facto army of the semi-autonomous administration which the Kurds set up in north and northeast Syria after seizing territory battling IS during Syria's civil war.

But Abdi signed up to the integration deal following clashes this January that saw the Kurds lose swathes of territory to government troops, and as the Kurds' longtime backer Washington drew close to the new authorities in Damascus.

During the violence, Sharaa signed a decree enshrining the Kurds' national rights and recognising Kurdish as a national language -- an unprecedented step since Syria's independence in 1946.

Last week, Abdi announced that the integration of the Kurdish administration with the Syrian state was complete, adding: "Our struggle will continue, to cement our people's rights in the constitution."

Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered Lake Ontario to be renamed "Lake America" as he escalated his trade war with Canada, sparking immediate pushback from Ottawa.

Trump stepped up his trolling of Canada by signing an executive order changing the name of the body of water on the border between the North American neighbors.

But Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney swiftly rejected Trump's move, saying it would be called Lake Ontario "then, now and always."

The volatile US leader's move comes after US-Canada trade talks collapsed at the last minute last week, prompting the two longtime allies to slap tit-for-tat tariffs on each other.

"We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America," the 80-year-old Republican told journalists as he signed the order at the White House.

Asked by an AFP reporter why he was targeting an ally for punishment instead of America's adversaries, Trump replied: "The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They're nasty people."

Behind Trump's desk in the Oval Office were two maps -- one with the words "Lake America" in red over the lake, and the other with the header, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater."

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Belgrade (AFP) – Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief convicted of war crimes for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, died in hospital on Thursday, according to a United Nations international tribunal.

Mladic, who had suffered several strokes in recent months, was serving a life sentence in The Hague for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity after overseeing the Srebrenica slaughter, Europe's worst act of bloodshed since World War II.

His conviction for the wartime killings as the former Yugoslavia descended into carnage after the fall of communism led the media to dub him the "Butcher of Bosnia".

The 1992-1995 war left around 100,000 people dead and 2.2 million displaced.

Mladic was the military face of a brutal trio, led on the political side by ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Serbian state officials and Mladic's family had appealed for his release due to his failing health, but the Hague tribunal rejected those calls.

A representative of the Mothers of Srebrenica victims' association, reacting to the death of Mladic, told AFP that his name would always "symbolise genocide".

"That will never be erased from his name," said Sehida Abdurahmanovic, who believes her missing brother was among those killed in Srebrenica.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he stood "in solidarity with the victims, survivors and their families who suffered the crimes for which Mr Mladic was found guilty", his spokesman told reporters.

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