Author: Elizabeth Jenrola Oso

A man accused of aiming a laser at the presidential helicopter Marine One while it was carrying Donald Trump has been acquitted by a jury in Washington DC after less than an hour of deliberations. Jacob Winkler, 33, was found not guilty on Tuesday following a trial that concluded with jurors reaching a verdict in about 35 minutes. He had faced a felony charge that carried a potential prison sentence of up to five years. The case marked another setback for Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News presenter appointed by Trump as US attorney for the District of Columbia, whose…

The Senegalese Football Federation (FSF) has accused Morocco’s local organising committee of undermining Senegal’s preparations for Sunday’s Africa Cup of Nations final against the hosts. In a statement released on social media, the FSF complained of inadequate security on arrival in Rabat, unsuitable accommodation, confusion over tra insufficient allocation of tickets for Senegal supporters. Senegal reached the final after defeating Egypt in Wednesday’s semi-final in Tangier. The squad travelled to Rabat on the Al-Boraq high-speed train, a journey of about 75 minutes. On arrival at the station, players and staff were surrounded by fans seeking photographs and videos. Footage shared…

The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his artificial intelligence company, alleging that its Grok chatbot generated sexually explicit images of her, including images in which she appeared to be underage. Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit in the New York state supreme court against xAI, the company behind Grok, which operates on Musk’s social media platform, X. She claims the tool continued to generate explicit images of her despite promises that such content would be restricted. St Clair is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, alleging that dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images…

Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota amid protests in Minneapolis against federal immigration enforcement operations. In a post on Truth Social, the president said he would use the law to “quickly put an end to the travesty” if what he called the “corrupt politicians of Minnesota” failed to stop protesters he described as “professional agitators and insurrectionists”. The warning came as Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, urged demonstrators to remain peaceful following a night of unrest in Minneapolis. “I am making a direct appeal to the president: let’s turn the temperature down,” Walz said in a…

Thousands of people in Iceland have signed a petition condemning comments reportedly made by Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the country, after he joked that Iceland should become the 52nd state of the United States. According to Politico, former Republican congressman Billy Long made the remarks on Wednesday, telling colleagues that Iceland would become the 52nd US state and that he would serve as its governor. The comments were reported just hours before senior officials from Greenland and Denmark were due to meet US representatives, amid renewed concerns over Trump’s past threats to seize Greenland. The reaction in…

Rightwing leaders from across Europe and beyond have publicly endorsed Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, underlining the symbolic importance of the country’s upcoming election for global far-right movements, even as the populist leader trails in opinion polls. A campaign video released online this week by Orbán features endorsements from nearly a dozen political figures, including Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her deputy Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Alice Weidel, a co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). “Europe needs Viktor Orbán,” Weidel says in the video. Le Pen, the former leader of France’s National Rally, praises…

Researchers in Uganda have found that treating baby-carrying wraps with the insect repellent permethrin reduced malaria cases in infants by almost two-thirds. Malaria kills more than 600,000 people worldwide each year, most of them children under the age of five in Africa. The trial involved 400 mothers and babies aged around six months in Kasese, a rural and mountainous area in western Uganda. Half of the mothers were given wraps, known locally as lesus, treated with permethrin. The others used untreated wraps that had been dipped in water as a placebo. Researchers followed the families for six months, re-treating the…

The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has handed her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump following a meeting at the White House, nearly two weeks after the US president ordered the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Machado, who received the award last year for her opposition to Maduro’s authoritarian rule, said she presented the medal to Trump “in recognition of his unique commitment to our freedom”. Trump later claimed on Truth Social that Machado had “presented me with her Nobel peace prize for the work I have done”, calling it “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect”. A…

Donald Trump has imposed a 25% tariff on certain advanced artificial intelligence chips, including Nvidia’s H200 processor and a comparable semiconductor from AMD, the MI325X, under a new national security order issued by the White House on Wednesday. The move follows a nine-month investigation conducted under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The investigation concluded that reliance on foreign-made high-end semiconductors poses a risk to US economic and national security. According to the proclamation, the tariffs apply to a defined group of high-performance semiconductors that meet specific technical benchmarks, as well as devices containing them. The measure…

A controversial US-funded study examining hepatitis B vaccination among newborns in Guinea-Bissau has been halted, according to a senior official at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Yap Boum, deputy incident manager at Africa CDC, confirmed the decision at a press conference on Thursday, saying the study had been cancelled following widespread concern over its ethical design. The $1.6m project, funded through the US Department of Health and Human Services under the oversight of Robert F Kennedy Jr, had drawn strong criticism for proposing to withhold a proven hepatitis B vaccine from some infants in a country with…