Category World News

Uganda holds elections on Thursday, with President Yoweri Museveni hoping to extend his four decades in power.

Supporters of his main opponent, musician Bobi Wine, allege harassment and intimidation.

So, what’s at stake for one of the world’s youngest populations?

Presenter:

Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Robert Kabushenga – host of The Bad Natives podcast

Alex Vines – Africa programme director at the European Council on Foreign Relations

The administration of United States President Donald Trump will end temporary deportation protections and work permits for some Somali nationals in the US, authorities say.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Tuesday that the Trump administration was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which shields migrants from deportation to countries where it is deemed unsafe to return and grants temporary work authorisation, for Somalis living in the US.

“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” Noem said in a statement. “Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”

The decision, which is expected to affect about 1,100 people, is likely to face legal challenges.

The Somali community has become a frequent target of the Trump administration. The US president has called Somalis “garbage” and depicted them as criminals.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has lashed out at Somalis in the US, alleging large-scale public benefit fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, with about 80,000 members.

Trump has threatened to strip any naturalised Somali or foreign-born person of their US citizenship if they were convicted of fraud, as he continued his attacks on the Somali community.

“We’re going to revoke the citizenship of any naturalised immigrant from Somalia or anywhere else who is convicted of defrauding our citizens,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The administration has additionally cut off Minnesota’s access to federal childcare assistance and surged immigration enforcement agents to the state, home to a sizeable Somali population, prompting widespread anger and condemnation from local and state officials over aggressive immigration raids.

Heavily-armed agents have broken car windows and detained people, used frequent force against protesters, and asked residents for proof of citizenship, drawing concerns from civil liberties groups.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he could take his country to the International Court of Justice if it does not repeal laws targeting the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) and return its seized assets and property.

In a January 8 letter to Netanyahu, Guterres said the UN cannot remain indifferent to “actions taken by Israel, which are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel under international law. They must be reversed without delay.”

Israel’s parliament passed a law in October 2024 banning UNRWA from operating in Israel and prohibiting Israeli officials from having contact with the agency. It then amended the law last month to ban electricity or water to UNRWA facilities.

Israeli authorities also seized UNRWA’s occupied East Jerusalem offices last month. The UN considers East Jerusalem occupied by Israel. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be part of the country.

Guterres said that UNRWA is “an integral part of the United Nations”, and highlighted that “Israel remains under an obligation to accord UNRWA and its personnel the privileges and immunities specified in the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN”.

The convention states that “the premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable”.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, dismissed Guterres’s letter to Netanyahu.

“We are not fazed by the Secretary-General’s threats,” Danon said in a post on X on Tuesday.

“Instead of dealing with the undeniable involvement of UNRWA personnel in terrorism, the Secretary-General chooses to threaten Israel. This is not defending international law, this is defending an organization marred by terrorism,” he added.

Israel has long sought the dissolution of UNRWA, which was created by the UN General Assembly in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel. It has since provided aid, health and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Israel has alleged that a dozen of the agency’s employees were involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, in which 1,139 people were killed, and about 240 were taken into Gaza as captives.

In response to the attack, Israel launched a devastating genocidal war against the Palestinian people of Gaza, killing more than 71,400, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

The UN has said that nine UNRWA staff who may have been involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel have been fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon, killed in September by Israel, was also found to have had a UNRWA job.

The UN has also promised to investigate all accusations made against UNRWA, and has repeatedly asked Israel for evidence, which it says has not been provided.

According to a January 5 UN report, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 382 UNRWA employees in the enclave, which is the highest number of UN casualties since the world body was founded in 1945. Some have been killed in Israel’s deliberate, repeated attacks on UNRWA hospitals and schools, which shelter more than one million displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

Top UN officials and the UN Security Council have described UNRWA as the backbone of the aid response in Gaza, where Israel’s war has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe.

In October 2025, the ICJ reiterated Israel’s obligation to ensure full respect for the privileges and immunities accorded to the UN, including UNRWA and its personnel, and said Israel should ensure the basic needs of the civilian population in Gaza are met.

The ICJ opinion was requested by the 193-member UN General Assembly.

US President Donald Trump says the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is not relevant to the US, but that Canada wants it, as he pushed for companies to bring manufacturing back home.

“There’s no real advantage to it; it’s irrelevant,” Trump said about the trade agreement on Tuesday, during a visit to Detroit, Michigan.

“Canada would love it. Canada wants it. They need it.”

Detroit’s three big automakers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, are heavily reliant on supply chains that include significant parts production in Mexico and Canada, and all three produce hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually in both countries.

Major car makers, including Tesla, Toyota and Ford, in November also urged the Trump administration to extend USMCA, saying it is crucial to US auto production.

The American Automotive Policy Council, representing the Detroit Three automakers, said the USMCA “enables automakers operating in the US to compete globally through regional integration, which delivers efficiency gains” and accounts “for tens of billions of dollars in annual savings”.

Mark Reuss, president of General Motors, said at an event on Tuesday, “Our supply chains go all the way through all three countries. It’s not simple. It’s very complex. The whole North American piece of that is a big strength.”

Trump made his comments as he toured a Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan, ahead of a speech he is delivering on the economy in Detroit on Tuesday.

“The problem is, we don’t need their product. You know, we don’t need cars made in Canada. We don’t need cars made in Mexico. We want to take them here. And that’s what’s happening,” he said.

Stellantis said in November that under the 15 percent tariffs with Japan, US vehicles complying with North American content rules “will continue to lose market share to Asian imports, to the detriment of American automotive workers”.

The USMCA is up for review this year on whether it should be left to expire or another deal should be worked out.

The trade pact, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020 and was negotiated during Trump’s first term as president, requires the three countries to hold a joint review after six years.

Former United States President Bill Clinton and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have refused a congressional subpoena to testify before a House of Representatives committee as part of an investigation into multi-millionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a letter on Tuesday, the Clintons accused Republican Representative James Comer of playing political favourites in the investigation, seeking to punish political opponents like them, while shielding allies, including US President Donald Trump.

The Clintons called the subpoena “legally invalid”, adding the investigation by a committee chaired by Comer was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment”.

“We will forcefully defend ourselves,” wrote the couple.

In response, Comer said he will begin contempt of US Congress proceedings against the Clintons, who are Democrats, next week.

The lengthy process would eventually require approval from a full vote of the House. If that were to pass, the Clintons could be prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

“No one’s accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Comer told reporters on Tuesday. “We just have questions.”

In their letter, the Clintons contended they had already provided all the relevant information they had to the committee, leading them to conclude the subpoena to appear in person was only meant to “harrass and embarrass”.

“We have tried to give you the little information we have. We’ve done so because Mr Epstein’s crimes were horrific,” the Clintons wrote.

Epstein committed suicide in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, but speculation has continued to grow over the influential people in the multi-millionaire’s social orbit.

Both Bill Clinton and Trump had documented friendships with Epstein, but have denied knowledge that he trafficked underage girls.

Last year, Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to release all the files related to its investigation into Epstein, but the agency has to date only released a small fraction.

Critics have accused the department of prioritising the release of documents related to Clinton to draw attention away from Trump.

In a letter last week, two lawmakers, Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie, requested that a federal judge appoint a neutral expert to oversee the release of the files.