Author: Elizabeth Jenrola Oso

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…

Video footage verified by Agence France-Presse showed the broken crane resting on large concrete pillars, with smoke rising from the derailed train.

The move marks a clear shift from last year’s policy announcement, when Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said workers would not be able to work in the UK without a digital ID.

A labour rights group has said it has uncovered evidence of worker exploitation in the supply chain of Labubus, the furry toy figures that surged in global popularity last year and are expected to remain in high demand in 2026. Labubus, toothy gremlin-like characters produced by the Chinese toy company Pop Mart, have become one of China’s most successful cultural exports. In the first half of 2025, Pop Mart’s “The Monsters” toy line, which includes Labubus, generated 4.8bn yuan (£511m) in sales. In August, the company’s chief executive, Wang Ning, said revenues were on track to reach 20bn yuan by…

The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has confirmed the delivery of critical military supplies to Nigeria, in a move aimed at strengthening the country’s capacity to tackle growing security threats. In a statement posted on X on Tuesday, AFRICOM said US forces had handed over the supplies to Nigerian partners in Abuja. “This delivery supports Nigeria’s ongoing operations and emphasises our shared security partnership,” the statement read. The delivery forms part of continued cooperation between the two countries, which have maintained a strategic security relationship for decades. The supplies are intended to assist Nigerian forces in addressing a range of…