BREAKINGBREAKING,
A powerful earthquake has struck off Japan’s coast, triggering a tsunami alert.
An initial report by Japan’s Meteorological Agency put the magnitude of the quake on Monday at 7.2.
It said the earthquake struck off the coast of Aomori and Hokkaido, adding that a tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages.
United States President Donald Trump has said he will sign an executive order creating “one rulebook” for artificial intelligence (AI) development.
The announcement on Monday via Trump’s Truth Social account represented the US president’s latest effort to remove AI barriers, a priority of his administration that has raised concerns related to oversight of the transformative technology.
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Trump said the so-called “one rule executive order” would override state approvals of AI, although the legality of such a presidential action remained unclear.
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” he said. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”
“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY!” Trump added, employing his typical use of all-capital letters.
The announcement comes as the White House has pushed for provisions creating a federal AI framework to be added to this year’s defence budget.
The initiative has divided members of Trump’s Republican Party, which has traditionally strongly supported the rights of states and a smaller federal government.
Opponents included Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly a staunch supporter of Trump, who has broken with him on several issues.
“States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state,” she wrote in November.
State lawmakers from across the political spectrum have also warned against federal actions that would override state policies.
“In recent years, legislatures across the country have passed AI-related measures to strengthen consumer transparency, guide responsible government procurement, protect patients, and support artists and creators,” they wrote in a letter to Congress in November.
“These laws represent careful, good-faith work to safeguard constituents from clear and immediate AI-related harms. A federal preemption measure on state AI laws risks sweeping these protections aside and leaving communities exposed,” they said.
Trump has maintained close ties with AI and tech leaders since taking office in January.
He has already signed an executive order calling for the removal of “barriers” to AI innovation. He has also published a so-called AI action plan and an AI “Genesis Mission”.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) says it has seized control of the strategic Heglig oilfield in Sudan’s South Kordofan province.
The claim early on Monday was supported later by a statement issued by the military government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) saying it had withdrawn from the area. The takeover comes as the RSF, embroiled in a two-and-a-half-year conflict with the SAF, pushes to expand eastwards and southwards from the western Darfur region, over which it took full control last month.
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Youssef Alian, the head of the RSF-affiliated “civil administration” in the where the oilfield is situated, asserted in a statement that the takeover happened under his coordination.
He said that he had helped “prepare a special, qualified and trained force … to secure the Heglig field and protect oil installations from any acts of sabotage or threats that may affect their safety”.
The Heglig field is the Sudan’s largest, and also the main processing facility for neighbouring South Sudan’s oil exports.
The RSF has been mobilising troops to take more areas in the south and central parts of Sudan.
It has made inroads from Darfur eastwards and to the south.
It was battling last week for control of the West Kordofan town of Babnusa, viewed as a gateway to Darfur.
The eastwards push into the giant Kordofan region offers a potential route towards the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, from which the SAF pushed its paramilitary rival earlier this year.
The RSF push would also potentially offer significant funding opportunities, with central Sudan being a major agricultural centre.
Further to the south in Kordofan can be found Sudan’s gold reserves, as well as oil.
Heglig lies in the far south of the region. Fierce fighting has erupted in recent weeks as the RSF wrestles with the SAF for territory.
In August, drone strikes forced the authorities to temporarily suspend operations at the field.
An army source appeared to confirm the capture of Heglig, telling the AFP news agency that SAF troops withdrew “to protect the oil facilities and prevent damage”.
Alian said his administration has now limited entry to the oilfield to a task force created to “protect” it.
“The liberation of the Heglig oil region is a pivotal point in the liberation of the entire homeland,” the RSF said in a statement.
An unnamed engineer told AFP that the army and workers at the oilfield were evacuated to South Sudan.
“The processing plant near the field through which South Sudanese oil passes was also shut down,” the engineer said.
Sudan has been engulfed in civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the RSF.
Over the last two months in Darfur, Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have committed horrifying atrocities in the city of el-Fasher. There, they have fired on and killed civilians already shattered by more than 500 days of siege; people already so starved they have been forced to eat animal feed.
People who have managed to escape – often walking to the town of Tawila, 60km (37 miles) southwest of el-Fasher – are deeply traumatised. The killings have been indiscriminate and ethnically targeted, according to testimonies of survivors that Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders – MSF) teams treat in Tawila. Women report harrowing testimonies of rape. Children have arrived, terrified, in the arms of strangers, having been orphaned in el-Fasher.
People have been massacred, tortured, and summarily executed. Many remain stranded or unaccounted for as the violence that has swept through the city continues unchecked; several thousand people remain detained, held for ransom.
My Sudanese colleagues are treating patients as they await news of their relatives. Most of my colleagues in Tawila have family members, friends, or colleagues whom the RSF killed in el-Fasher.
While the scenes unfolding across Darfur are shocking and outrageous, we should not be surprised. For months, Sudanese people and many observers, including MSF, have been warning that this massacre would be the inevitable result of the RSF takeover of el-Fasher.
That is because we had seen it before. At the onset of the war in 2023, at least 15,000 people, mainly belonging to the Masalit and other non-Arab communities, were killed as the RSF took West Darfur’s capital, el-Geneina. Displaced and injured people treated by MSF in Chad reported being attacked because of their tribe or ethnicity and were told to “leave this country or die”. An MSF retrospective mortality survey showed rates 20 times higher in the months following April 2023, compared with pre-war figures. Nearly one man in 20 aged between 15 and 44 was reported missing during this period. El-Geneina is now virtually empty of Masalit people.
The Zamzam camp, on the outskirts of el-Fasher, was once the country’s largest displacement camp. The carnage that occurred there when the RSF launched a large-scale assault in April was not a wake-up call either. Well before those massacres, our teams in Zamzam had repeatedly warned of the scale of malnutrition and called for a massive humanitarian response – to no avail.
Even when a state of famine was declared in the camp in August 2024, MSF trucks carrying food supplies were stuck for months in North Darfur; the RSF ordered them to go anywhere but near el-Fasher. Later, the displaced and besieged communities were regularly hit by shelling, forcing MSF to leave the camp in February 2025.
Far from being the actions of rogue RSF commanders, the mass atrocities culminating in el-Fasher have been part of a deliberate campaign to starve, forcibly displace, and kill civilians, often along ethnic lines.
The RSF, which, according to reports by international organisations and media outlets, is supported by the United Arab Emirates, bears responsibility for the crimes it has committed in el-Fasher. It must immediately halt mass atrocities and ethnically targeted killings and provide a safe passage to survivors.
Warring parties must uphold the obligations they have under international humanitarian law, but also those under basic humanity. Both parties must grant immediate humanitarian access to people in need, regardless of who controls the territory.
But that this tragedy was so predictable underscores how shared and collective the overall failure to protect civilians is.
The death and destruction are being enabled by too many governments choosing not to use their influence to try to pressure the warring parties to stop killing people or blocking humanitarian aid. Choosing to issue passive statements of concern, while they and their allies provide financial and political support, and the weapons that destroy, maim, and kill.
More than 20 years ago, when similar extreme violence was committed, the world mobilised for Darfur. The International Criminal Court charged former President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and genocide for the atrocities committed by his army and and the Janjaweed militias, which later were reorganised into the RSF.
Today, as other crimes are committed against the same ethnic groups, world leaders cannot look away. Countries that have influence with the warring parties, including the United States, the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, known as the Quad, must act to prevent further atrocities.
As the dust settles on the horrors of el-Fasher, we must refuse to move towards a “new normal” of accepting such atrocities. We need political commitment, sustained humanitarian mobilisation based on an impartial evaluation of the situation, and accountability. Last month, the UN Human Rights Council tasked the independent fact-finding mission for Sudan to investigate crimes committed in el-Fasher – a process which we call on all states and parties to support.
We need to do more for people whose lives are still in danger in el-Fasher and the surrounding towns. And we need to make sure that the cycle of violence and ethnic cleansing finally comes to an end in Darfur.
The conflict dynamics under way seem to indicate that the excruciating plight of el-Fasher may not be the end of horrific violence, but rather a milestone in a catastrophic war that keeps crushing civilian lives, notably at this moment in the Kordofan region. We fear that more civilian victims and other scenes of atrocities will unfold.
After al-Assad’s fall, a lawyer uncovers files from a notorious prison that reveals the fate of Syria’s disappeared.
When the al-Assad regime falls, Ammar, a Syrian lawyer and former Sednaya prison detainee, is determined to uncover the truth about Syria’s missing. Haunted by the disappeared and his own imprisonment, he searches for answers in the ruins of Sednaya prison.
Among classified documents, he discovers records of enforced disappearances and deaths, exposing the regime’s brutality. With each case, Ammar pursues justice and closure, offering families a chance to grieve and heal.