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Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump's Justice Department announced on Monday the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate political allies prosecuted under the Biden administration.

Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups immediately attacked the plan as a brazenly corrupt "slush fund" that would reward the Republican president's loyalists with taxpayer money.

In exchange for the creation of the "Anti-Weaponization Fund," the Justice Department said Trump was dropping a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for a leak of his tax returns.

Trump, his two eldest sons Eric and Donald Jr. and the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit against the tax-collecting agency in a federal district court in Florida in January seeking $10 billion in damages over the tax returns leak.

A former IRS contractor pleaded guilty in 2023 to leaking the tax returns of Trump and other wealthy Americans to the media and received a five-year prison sentence.

The Justice Department, which is currently headed by Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, said the "Anti-Weaponization Fund" was being created as part of a settlement in the IRS case.

"The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department's intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again," Blanche said in a statement.

"As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress," the acting attorney general said.

The Justice Department said Blanche will appoint five people to oversee the fund and the Trumps "will receive a formal apology but no monetary payment or damages of any kind."

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San Diego (AFP) – A shooting at a mosque complex in California killed three people Monday, with two suspected teenage gunmen later found dead in a car from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.

Police said emergency response teams found the victims outside the sprawling Islamic Center of San Diego, before later finding the shooters, aged 19 and 17, also dead.

TV footage from a helicopter showed armed response teams gathered outside a building, with one unidentified person lying in a pool of blood.

Dozens of patrol cars were lined up around the Islamic Center, described on its website as the largest mosque in San Diego county, which lies in southern California.

After a short period of lockdown when authorities advised residents to stay inside, San Diego police announced that the threat at the center had been "neutralized."

"We received a call of an active shooter at the Islamic center. Within four minutes, officers arrived on scene and observed immediately three deceased victims out in front," San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters.

"We immediately began to deploy with an active shooter response into the mosque and adjacent school," he said, adding that police had received calls about more gunfire nearby, where landscaper at work there had been shot at but not hit.

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Havana (AFP) – Cuba's leader warned Monday of a "bloodbath" in the event of an American attack, while the US Treasury sanctioned Cuba's main intelligence agency and top leaders as tensions spiked between the arch-foes.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel stressed Cuba's right to defend itself a day after US news site Axios reported that Havana had obtained over 300 military drones from Russia and Iran and is mulling using them against US targets.

The report, which quoted US intelligence officials, came amid growing speculation that the United States is weighing military action to topple Cuba's communist government.

Axios quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Havana was considering drone strikes on the US base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba, on US military vessels and possibly even Florida.

Writing on X, Diaz-Canel repeated that Cuba "poses no threat" to the United States or any other country and warned that a US attack would "trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences."

He did not directly address Cuba's alleged stockpiling of attack drones but said the island had "the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself against a military onslaught."

Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations struck a similarly defiant note.

"If someone tried to invade Cuba, Cuba will fight back, no doubt about it," Ernesto Soberon Guzman told AFP in New York.

"In the 60s, they (the US) tried to invade Cuba, and they were defeated. Of course, everybody can say this is a different situation. Yes, it is. But the will of the people of Cuba has not changed," he added.

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Washington (United States) (AFP) – One of Indian billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani's companies will pay the United States $275 million to settle a probe into whether it violated Washington's sanctions against Iran, the US Treasury said Monday.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said the agreement had been reached with Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), part of the magnate's sprawling multinational conglomerate of companies.

"AEL agreed to settle its potential civil liability for 32 apparent violations of OFAC's Iran sanctions," the Treasury said, pointing to AEL's purchases of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) between November 2023 and June 2025.

The announcement came days after Adani agreed to pay a separate $18 million settlement in a US civil court case linked to corruption, without admitting guilt, according to one of his other companies.

In that case, Adani was accused of participating in an estimated $250 million scheme to bribe Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.

Monday's settlement announcement said AEL had cooperated with OFAC's probe and agreed to additional nonmonetary remedial measures to strengthen compliance with US sanctions.

The probe focused on LPG imports arranged through a Dubai-based supplier that claimed to be exporting Omani and Iraqi gas, OFAC said.

"Red flags should have put AEL on notice that the LPG actually originated from Iran," the statement said.

Adani Enterprises confirmed the settlement in a stock exchange filing made on Monday, saying the agreement was executed on May 14.

Also on Monday, US prosecutors asked a federal judge to drop bribery-related criminal charges against Adani.

The New York Times has reported that Adani's lawyer told Justice Department officials in April that if charges were dropped, the magnate would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy.

Prosecutors did not mention that apparent offer in their brief court filing, which simply said they had decided "not to devote further resources" to the case.

The Adani Group is one of India's largest business empires, operating businesses ranging from ports and power plants to cement factories and media houses.

Adani, one of India's richest men, has been rocked in recent years by corporate fraud allegations and a stock crash.

Adani is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hails from the leader's home state of Gujarat.

India is the world's second-largest buyer of LPG, and the fourth-largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, much of which is sourced through the Middle East.

Washington (United States) (AFP) – President Donald Trump and top cabinet officials addressed thousands of Americans at a mass prayer rally in Washington on Sunday -- an event critics saw as an overt display of Christian nationalism undermining the separation of church and state.

The gathering was organized by the White House as part of a program of celebrations for America's 250th anniversary and billed as an opportunity to revive the idea of a country founded on Christian principles.

During the daylong outdoor event on the National Mall, attendees sang and swayed to Christian music and listened to addresses by pastors and government officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who both spoke via video.

In a brief video appearance, Trump read a passage from the Bible in which God says he will "heal their land" if people "seek my face and turn from their wicked ways."

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson offered a prayer over what he described as "sinister ideologies" in the United States.

"We've witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes and the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this great nation," Johnson said. "We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions."

Muscular Christian nationalism, which fuses American and Christian identities, has enjoyed a prominent platform since Trump's return to power, and evangelicals are among the president's staunchest backers.

Hegseth is a member of an ultra-conservative evangelical church, and his briefings on the Iran war have been notable for their use of bellicose, religious rhetoric.

"Today, friends, we are in a spiritual war," Pastor Gary Hamrick of Virginia told the crowd. "This is a battle for the very soul of America."

The US Constitution explicitly bars the establishment of any official religion, but the expression of any faith is also explicitly protected.

Earlier, Johnson countered criticism of the event on Fox News Sunday, calling Christian nationalism a "new" and "pejorative" term used by people "trying to silence the influence and the voices of Christians."

Jeana Dobbins, a 67-year-old retiree who traveled from North Carolina with her friend, said they had come to "rededicate our country back to God. Our country has fallen away in so many areas," she told AFP.

Sarah Tyson, holding a "Jesus Saves" sign, said she believes Trump was chosen by God to lead the nation through a new spiritual revival.

"God ordained him for a time like this, because these United States needs to wake up," said Tyson, a middle-aged woman who came from New York with fellow church members.

While previous administrations and presidents have regularly held and attended faith-based gatherings, Sunday's event is still unusual for its scale and the presence of top cabinet officials.

And apart from a rabbi and a retired Catholic archbishop, almost all the 20 listed "faith leaders" who spoke were evangelical Protestants.

"It's not unprecedented to have a group of evangelical pastors or conservative clergy come together for something like this and blend a certain kind of nationalism with a certain kind of conservative Christianity," said Sam Perry, a professor at Baylor University, a Christian school in Texas.

But "the Trump administration taking the lead on this celebration at this scale is different than previous events," Perry added.

The organizers' website says the prayer gathering is for "Americans of every background" but Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, says the list of speakers suggested "an idea of American identity that is rooted in whiteness and Christianity."

The event "sends a specific message... that they are the mainstream Americans, and the rest of us are sidelined," Ingersoll said.

The National Mall, which stretches from the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, is a common site for mass rallies and protests -- most famously the 1963 March on Washington, when an estimated 250,000 people heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Sierra Leone has agreed to take in hundreds of West African migrants who are being deported by the United States, its foreign minister has said – the latest deal as part of the ​Trump administration's bid to accelerate removals.

The first flight of so-called third-country deportees will arrive in ⁠Sierra Leone on 20 May transporting 25 nationals from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria, Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba told Reuters.

“Sierra Leone signed a Third Country National Agreement ‌with the US to accept 300 Ecowas citizens from the US per year with a ⁠maximum of 25 a month," Kabba said, referring to the 15-member West African regional bloc.

The US has previously sent third-country deportees to African states including Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea ​and Eswatini.

The move has been criticised by legal experts and rights groups over the legal ‌basis for the transfers and the treatment of deportees sent to countries where they are not nationals.

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Kinshasa (AFP) – An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 80 as authorities warned there was no vaccine for the strain in a crisis that the World Health Organization declared an international health emergency on Sunday.

A total of 88 deaths and 336 suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever have been reported, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC Africa) said in an update on Saturday.

The Geneva-based WHO said early on Sunday the outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola constituted a "public health emergency of international concern" -- the second-highest level of alert under international health regulations.

The global health body warned the true scale of the number of cases and spread was not clear but stopped short of declaring a pandemic emergency, the highest alert level introduced in 2024.

Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it was preparing a "large-scale response", calling the rapid spread of the outbreak "extremely concerning", in warnings echoed by authorities.

"The Bundibugyo strain has no vaccine, no specific treatment," DR Congo's Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said.

"This strain has a very high lethality rate, which can reach 50 percent."

The strain -- which was first identified in 2007 -- has also killed a Congolese national in neighbouring Uganda, officials said Saturday.

Vaccines are only available for the Zaire strain, which was identified in 1976 and has a higher fatality rate of 60-90 percent.

Health officials had confirmed the latest outbreak Friday in Ituri province in northeastern DRC, bordering Uganda and South Sudan, according to CDC Africa.

"We've been seeing people die for the past two weeks," said Isaac Nyakulinda, a local civil society representative contacted by AFP by phone.

"There is nowhere to isolate the sick. They are dying at home and their bodies are being handled by their family members."

According to Kamba, patient zero was a nurse who reported to a health facility in Ituri's provincial capital Bunia on April 24, with symptoms suggesting Ebola.

Symptoms of the disease include fever, haemorrhaging and vomiting.

"The number of cases and deaths we are seeing in such a short timeframe, combined with the spread across several health zones and now across the border, is extremely concerning," says Trish Newport, MSF Emergency Programme Manager, which is mobilising medical and support staff to the area.

Large-scale transport of medical equipment is a challenge in DR Congo, a country of more than 100 million people which is four times the size of France but has poor communications infrastructure.

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The Hague (AFP) – A suspect in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, accused of masterminding a notorious radio station that urged on the brutal massacres, died Saturday, according to the international court in The Hague where he had faced trial.

Felicien Kabuga, who was in his 90s, died in hospital earlier Saturday, said the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in a statement.

Once one of the world's most-wanted fugitives, Kabuga was often referred to as the man who financed the massacre of some 800,000 people in Rwanda between April and June 1994.

Kabuga was arrested in Paris in 2020 after years in hiding using a succession of false passports and aided by a network of former Rwandan allies.

In July 1994, he sought refuge in Switzerland but was thrown out a month later.

He then flew to Kinshasa and later moved to Kenya, managing to avoid three arrest attempts by police.

The United States offered a reward of $5 million in 2002 for information leading to his arrest and funded a media campaign in Kenya that splashed his photo across the country.

After being eventually caught in Paris, he was transferred to The Hague and charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to genocide, as well as crimes against humanity including extermination and murder.

Prosecutors accused Kabuga, once one of Rwanda's richest men, of being the driving force behind Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which urged ethnic Hutus to kill Tutsis with machetes.

He was also accused of "distributing machetes" to genocidal groups, and ordering them to kill Tutsis.

His defence lawyers countered that he was just a businessman with a minimal role at RTLM, which described Tutsis as "cockroaches" that must be exterminated.

They also denied that he supplied machetes and supported the murderous Interahamwe Hutu militia.

Kabuga pleaded not guilty.

The trial in The Hague was closely watched in Rwanda, but not by Kabuga himself, who declined to attend and did not even watch by videolink.

In 2023, judges halted the trial, deeming the wheelchair-bound Kabuga "unfit to participate meaningfully" in proceedings, but he was ordered to remain detained awaiting provisional release.

At the time of his death, he was awaiting release to a country willing to take him.

The court's presiding judge Graciela Gatti Santana has ordered a full inquiry into the circumstances of Kabuga's death.

Africa’s top public health body has declared a new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Ituri province, raising concerns over cross-border spread in a region already affected by conflict and frequent population movements.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said in a statement on Friday that around 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths had been reported, mainly in the mining areas of Mongwalu and Rwampara, about 100 kilometres north of the provincial capital Bunia.

Among the cases confirmed by a laboratory, four people died.

Preliminary laboratory analysis by the National Biomedical Research Institute in Kinshasa detected the virus in 13 of 20 samples tested.

Health officials say sequencing is ongoing, but early indications suggest the strain is not the Zaire variant, which has been responsible for several previous outbreaks in the country.

Additional suspected cases have been reported in Bunia, a densely populated urban centre near the borders with Uganda and South Sudan, heightening fears of regional transmission.

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La Paz (AFP) – The Bolivian government struck a deal with protesting miners on Friday, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz.

However, other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of government.

On Thursday, police prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots, an AFP journalist observed.

Protests against the policies of center-right President Rodrigo Paz, in power since November, have convulsed the Andean nation since early May, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said.

Miners demonstrating on Thursday demanded that Paz resign, arguing that he has not addressed their demands, which include the provision of fuel and work equipment.

Early Friday morning, the government said it had reached a deal with the protesters following "almost 12 hours of talks," Economy Minister Jose Gabriel Espinoza told reporters.

He said the negotiated agreement would be announced in due course, without providing further details.

"We mainly had nine points, all of which have been addressed successfully," Oscar Chavarria, president of Potosi's Federation of Mining Cooperatives, confirmed.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, the governments of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Panama, and Honduras expressed their concern about the situation in Bolivia.

"We reject any action aimed at destabilizing the democratic order," the group said. "We urge all political and social actors to channel their differences by prioritizing dialogue, respect for institutions, and the preservation of social peace."

Paz won elections last year that marked a shift to the right after two decades of socialist rule.

He promised to end Bolivia's worst economic crisis in four decades, marked by an acute shortage of foreign currency and fuel.

Paz scrapped the two-decade-old fuel subsidies that had drained the treasury's international dollar reserves, but so far has failed to stabilize fuel supplies.

Now he is under pressure from all sides.

Schoolteachers, transportation workers, Indigenous people and other Bolivians have taken to the streets, calling for wage increases, economic stability and an end to the privatization of state-owned companies.

The Bolivian Highway Administration warned that roadblocks on routes leading into La Paz were preventing food supplies from entering the capital.

The government has been getting food into the city via air transport since Saturday -- a common response to protest blockades in Bolivia.

Argentina provided two aircraft to get food around the blockades and into the city, Jose Luis Galvez, a spokesperson for the Bolivian presidency, said Friday.

The prices of meat, chicken and some vegetables skyrocketed in some supermarkets this past week, after year-over-year inflation hit 14 percent in April.

Washington (United States) (AFP) – Prosecutors said Friday that they will seek the death penalty for a Chicago man charged with fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staffers in the US capital last year.

Elias Rodriguez was arrested immediately after the May 21 shooting of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his fiancee, Sarah Milgrim, 26, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a court filing that prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Rodriguez, who faces murder, firearms and hate crime charges.

"Rodriguez's actions were motivated by political, ideological, national, and religious bias, contempt, and hatred," Pirro said.

Rodriguez allegedly shouted "Free Palestine" as he was taken away by police after the shooting and told officers, "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza."

According to the FBI, Rodriguez is believed to have acted alone, motivated by "anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian ideology."

Lischinsky, an Israeli citizen, was a researcher at the Israeli embassy, while Milgrim, an American, worked for its public diplomacy department. The couple were engaged to be married.

President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and has called for an expansion of its use "for the vilest crimes."

Ghana has announced it will evacuate 300 of its citizens from South Africa, following a spate of xenophobic incidents and protests against immigration across the country in recent weeks.

Ghana's Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said on Tuesday that President John Dramani Mahama had approved the operation.

"These distressed Ghanaians had earlier complied with the Foreign Ministry's advisory and registered with our High Commission in Pretoria to be rescued, following the latest wave of xenophobic attacks," he wrote in a message posted on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

"The Government of Ghana shall continue to safeguard the welfare of all Ghanaians home and abroad."

The decision comes after a series of anti-immigration protests in South Africa, as well as claims of assaults and intimidation against other African nationals across the country in recent weeks.

Nigeria and Ghana have both voiced concern over the situation.

The South African government, however, has rejected all claims of xenophobia.

"South Africans are not xenophobic," presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya told reporters last week. "What you have is pockets of protest, which is permissible within our constitutional framework."

Magwenya said Africa needs to address conflict, instability and cases of "misgovernment" that were behind waves of migration across the continent.

At the end of last month, the government in Accra summoned South Africa's high commissioner in protest at several xenophobic incidents targeting Ghanaians.

South Africa is Africa's leading economy and home to more than 3 million foreigners – who male up 5 percent of the population.

But unemployment is running at 30 percent, fuelling tensions over migrant workers.

In the worst violence against immigrants in the last two decades, 62 people were killed in 2008. Violent clashes also erupted in 2015, 2016 and 2019.

(with AFP)