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Pro-Palestinian protesters march from Whitehall to the US embassy in Nine Elms, on 15 February 2025, in London, England [Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Images]
The US and Israel have contacted officials of three East African countries to discuss using their territories to settle Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced from Gaza, the Associated Press reported today according to Reuters
US and Israeli sources cited by AP said officials from Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somaliland were contacted regarding the proposal.
However, Sudan officials said they rejected the proposal from the US and officials from Somalia and Somaliland said they were unaware of any contacts, reported AP.
The White House and the US State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. The information ministers for Somalia and its breakaway region of Somaliland did not pick up Reuters’ telephone calls for comment.
Earlier this month, Arab leaders adopted a $53 billion Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza that would avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave, in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s vision of a “Middle East Riviera“.
Trump has proposed a US takeover of Gaza, where Israel’s military assault in the last 17 months has killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, to reconstruct the destroyed enclave, after earlier suggesting that Palestinians should be permanently displaced.
Trump’s plan reinforced long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes, and was met with widespread international rejection and warnings that it amounted to ethnic cleansing.
Israel continues to ban the entry of building materials and diggers into the besieged enclave, leaving the over 2.3 million Palestinians in the Strip to live among the ruins.
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Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant.
The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.
Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
“The FBI has told Citibank that recipients of EPA climate grants are being considered as potentially liable for fraud. That is, the Trump administration wants to criminalize work on climate science and impacts,” the @capitolhunters account wrote Wednesday on X. “An incoming administration not only cancels federal grants but declares recipients as criminals. All these grantees applied under government calls FOR ENVIRONMENTAL WORK, were reviewed and accepted. Trump wants to jail them.“
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Demostrators from the human rights organization Jewish Voice for Peace hold a civil disobedience action inside Trump Tower in New York on March 13, 2025. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
“We know what happens when an autocratic regime starts taking away our rights and scapegoating and we will not be silent.”
This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates…
Nearly a year and a half after the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace began leading nationwide demonstrations against Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, hundreds of organizers and supporters of the group risked arrest Thursday as they assembled in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, demanding the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil.
“Three hundred Jews and friends in Trump Tower, because we know what happens when an autocratic regime starts taking away our rights and scapegoating and we will not be silent,” said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). “Come for one—face us all.”
The latter phrase was emblazoned on banners that were displayed by campaigners, who chanted, “Never again for anyone, never again is now!” and, “Free Mahmoud, free them all!”
New York City police officers began arresting participants in the sit-in early in the afternoon.
Jane Hirschmann, a Jewish New York resident whose grandfather and uncle were abducted by the Nazis in Germany as Adolf Hitler rose to power, said Khalil’s detention “is further proof that we are on the brink of a full takeover by an authoritarian regime.”
“As Jews of conscience, we know our history and we know where this leads,” said Hirschmann. “This is what fascists do as they cement control. This moment requires all people of conscience to take bold action to resist state violence and repression. Free Mahmoud now.”
Actors Morgan Spector, Debra Winger, and Arliss Howard were in attendance at the sit-in, along with writer and artist Molly Crabapple and New York City Council member Alexa Aviles.
Khalil was abducted by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last Saturday night as he was returning home to his Columbia-owned apartment with his wife, who is eight months pregnant. He was a graduate student at the university until this past December, and took a central organizing role in student-led protests and negotiations against Columbia’s investment in companies that profit from Israel’s apartheid policy in Gaza, including the bombardment it began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Khalil, a legal U.S. resident and a citizen of Algeria, was detained under the State Department’s “catch and revoke” program, with the Trump administration revoking his green card and threatening to deport him. Administration officials have admitted that they are not accusing Khalil of breaking any laws by participating in Palestinian solidarity protests, but they said he is viewed as “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”
After a hearing Wednesday, a federal judge is considering whether Khalil should be sent back to New York, where he was detained, from the Louisiana ICE facility where he is being held. The same judge blocked Khalil’s deportation this week.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Two cargo ships enter the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal in Panama City on January 22, 2025. (Photo: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for “reclaiming” the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama’s military and, absent that, possible war.
This is a breaking news story… Please check back for possible updates.
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to “take back” the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama’s military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Last week during his joint address to Congress, Trump proclaimed that “to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal,” but his administration has not clarified precisely what “reclaiming” entails.
The Republican president says the U.S. needs to retake control of the Panama Canal to enhance “economic security,” and has falsely claimed that the waterway is “operated by China.”
Earlier this month, the New York-based investment firm BlackRock led a group of investors in a $23 billion deal to purchase ports at both ends of the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, an agreement Trump dubiously seized upon as proof that “we’ve already started” reclaiming the conduit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Molina countered that “the Panama Canal is not in the process of being reclaimed… The canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!”
The U.S. controlled what was formerly called the Panama Canal Zone from the time of the waterway’s construction in the early 20th century—largely done by Afro-Caribbean workers, thousands of whom died in what’s widely known as the world’s deadliest construction project—until then-President Jimmy Carter transferred sovereignty to Panama in the late 1970s. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the U.S. reserves the right to use military force to defend the canal’s neutrality.
The United States has repeatedly used deadly military force in Panama over the decades, including during a 1964 student-led uprising against American control in which 22 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed, and in a full-scale invasion in 1989 ordered by then-President George H.W. Bush to capture erstwhile ally and CIA asset turned narcotrafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaders killed hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians.
Writing for Americas Quarterly this week, Panamanian jurist Alonso E. Illueca argued that Panama’s efforts to appease Trump aren’t working. These include the BlackRock deal and other moves like quitting China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, taking in third-country migrants deported by the U.S., backing a U.S. resolution on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, auditing the country’s ports, and revisiting a railway project originally developed by the Chinese government.
“Panama should abandon its accommodating policy towards the U.S., which can only lead to escalating demands to banish Chinese influence, to the detriment of Panama’s national sovereignty,” Illueca asserted.
“An alternative policy for Panama is to align with the rules based international order,” he continued. “This includes establishing synergies with like-minded states which have been also affected by U.S. actions such as Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Denmark. The country should seek to transcend the U.S.-China binary and find alternatives for alliances, which should include partners like the European Union.”
“In short,” Illueca added, “the way forward for Panama lies in replacing strategic dissonance with strategic clarity.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Emissions billow from the Phillips 66 refinery in Linden, New Jersey, on 6 February 2024. Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.
The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a supreme court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.
Despite the enormous and growing body of evidence of devastation caused by rising emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics”.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency would reconsider the endangerment finding due to concerns that it had spawned “an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas”.
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Environmentalists reacted with horror to the announcement and vowed to defend the overwhelming findings of science and the US’s ability to address the climate crisis through the courts, which regularly struck down Trump’s rollbacks in his first term. “The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”
In all, the EPA issued 31 announcements within just a few hours that take aim at almost every major environmental rule designed to protect Americans’ clean air and water, as well as a livable climate.
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
