Video shows an attendee collapsing during an Oval Office event on lowering weight-loss drug prices. White House medical staff responded immediately. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the man, identified as a health care company representative, is OK. The event later resumed.
The London university where British political commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi completed his studies has called for “full transparency and due process” regarding his detention in the United States.
In a statement published on Wednesday, SOAS University of London said it was “deeply concerned” by reports of Hamdi’s detention, adding that “there is no indication that Mr Hamdi has violated any laws”.
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“We urge the US authorities to ensure full transparency and due process in Mr Hamdi’s case, and to uphold his fundamental right to freedom of expression and movement.”
Hamdi, 35, was stopped at San Francisco international airport in California on October 26 and detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Hamdi’s detention as “a blatant affront to free speech”, attributing his arrest to his criticism of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679 since October 2023.
Hamdi, who was completing a speaking tour in the US discussing Israel’s war on Gaza, had addressed a CAIR gala in Sacramento, California, the previous evening and was due to speak at another CAIR event in Florida.
He was unaware at the time that his visa had been revoked by US authorities two days before his detention.
Hamdi’s detention has led to a legal battle, with his lawyers filing emergency petitions against his detention, and his wife Soumaya and civil society groups demanding that the United Kingdom government take action.
Soumaya told Al Jazeera that the US government has still not provided any evidence “as to why they feel the need to revoke his visa. And therefore they are treating him as an overstayer”.
She said the incident raises an important question: “Has the United States become a country now where a British citizen travelling on a valid visa can be detained at will? Because that is really scary.”
Soumaya said she believed her husband had been targeted by the US authorities because “he’s become extremely effective at galvanising support for Palestinian rights. Sami has been able to bring people together across the political spectrum, not just within Muslim communities.”
She also said her husband’s arrest should be of concern to “everybody who values the right to freedom of speech, everybody who values the right to receive facts from journalists and for journalists to be able to report on news without being persecuted”.
“If they [US authorities] are able then to treat Sami in this way, it’s only a matter of time before they start to treat US citizens like that too.”
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) says it has agreed to a proposal by the United States for a ceasefire in Sudan after more than two years of fighting with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The paramilitary group said in a statement on Thursday that it would accept a “humanitarian ceasefire” proposed by the US-led “quad” mediator group, which includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, “to address the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the war and to enhance the protection of civilians”.
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There was no immediate comment from Sudan’s military.
Earlier this week, the US senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, said efforts were under way to reach a truce and that the warring sides had “agreed in principle”.
“We have not recorded any initial objection from either side. We are now focusing on the fine details,” Boulos said on Monday in a statement carried by the Sudan Tribune news outlet.
Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said the plan would begin with a three-month humanitarian truce that could pave the way for a lasting political solution, which would include a new civilian government.
The RSF “said that they’re eager to find some kind of end to this two-year conflict”, Morgan said of the group’s agreement to the truce.
SAF has repeatedly said it wants to continue fighting, Morgan reported, adding that army officials do not believe members of the RSF can be reintegrated into Sudanese society.
SAF has previously said it does not want the UAE’s involvement in truce discussions and that it will demand the RSF withdraw from any city it occupies, among other stipulations, she said.
“This humanitarian access the ceasefire would bring about is desperately needed, but the Sudanese army is yet to agree to it. They have conditions,” Morgan reported. “It doesn’t look like the RSF will meet them.”
Earlier on Thursday, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had said his forces were “striving for the defeat of the enemy”.
“Soon, we will avenge those who have been killed and abused … in all the regions attacked by the rebels,” he said in a televised address.
The announcement comes as the RSF faces accusations of committing mass killings since it seized the city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state on October 26, following an 18-month siege.
The RSF now dominates the vast western Darfur region and parts of the country’s south, while the army holds the north, east and central regions along the Nile and the Red Sea.
More than 70,000 people have fled el-Fasher and surrounding areas since the RSF’s takeover, according to the United Nations, with witnesses and human rights groups reporting cases of “summary executions”, sexual violence and mass killings of civilians.
The World Health Organization had reported the “tragic killing of more than 460 patients and medical staff” at a former children’s hospital during the city’s takeover.
Researchers at Yale University said in a report on Thursday that new satellite imagery has detected activity “consistent with mass graves” in the city.
The US university’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) report said it found evidence consistent with “body disposal activities”.
The report identified “at least two earth disturbances consistent with mass graves at a mosque and the former Children’s Hospital”.
It also noted the appearance of metres-long trenches, as well as the disappearance of clusters of objects consistent with bodies near the hospital, the mosque and other parts of the city – indicating that bodies deposited around those areas were later moved.
“Body disposal or removal was also observed at Al-Saudi Hospital in satellite imagery,” the report said.
The war in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has pitted the army against the group led by al-Burhan’s former deputy, RSF commander Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti.
Both the warring sides have been accused of war crimes. In a September report, the UN Human Rights Council accused both sides of extrajudicial killing, large-scale attacks against civilians and torture. It also reported an “overwhelming volume” of evidence on sexual violence primarily perpetrated by RSF and SAF members.
Video shows Israeli drones launching intense airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday. At least one person was killed in the town of Toura. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah sites despite a ceasefire agreed to with the group last year.
A United States judge in Texas has approved the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss a criminal case against Boeing despite his objections to the decision.
On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor of the US District Court in Fort Worth dismissed the case, which will allow the plane maker to avoid prosecution over charges related to two deadly 737 MAX crashes: the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash.
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O’Connor said he disagreed with the Justice Department’s argument that ending the case served the public interest, noting that he lacked the authority to overrule it.
The government argued Boeing has improved, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is providing enhanced oversight. Boeing and the government argued O’Connor had no choice but to dismiss the case.
He said the deal with the aerospace giant “fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public”.
In September, O’Connor held a three-hour hearing to consider objections to the deal, questioning the government’s decision to drop a requirement that Boeing face oversight from an independent monitor for three years and instead hire a compliance consultant.
O’Connor said the government’s position is “Boeing committed crimes sufficient to justify prosecution, failed to remedy its fraudulent behaviour on its own during the [deferred prosecution agreement], which justified a guilty plea and the imposition of an independent monitor, but now Boeing will remedy that dangerous culture by retaining a consultant of its own choosing”.
The DOJ first criminally charged Boeing for the crashes in January 2021, but also agreed to deferred prosecution in the case.
The plane maker was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the US. Courts found that Boeing deceived the FAA about what is called the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, which affects flight control systems on the aircraft.
“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” acting Assistant Attorney General David P Burns of the DOJ’s criminal division said in a statement at the time.
O’Connor said in 2023 that “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in US history”.
Under the non-prosecution deal, Boeing agreed to pay an additional $444.5m into a crash victims’ fund to be divided evenly per victim of the two fatal 737 MAX crashes, on top of a new $243.6m fine and more than $455m to strengthen the company’s compliance, safety, and quality programmes.
This year is set to be among the hottest on record, sinking the world even deeper into the climate crisis and threatening “irreversible damage,” the United Nations says in a new report.
Years 2023, 2024 and 2025 are set to be the hottest years ever recorded, with this year on track to be the second or third hottest ever in 176 years of record keeping, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in the report released on Thursday in advance of next week’s COP30 UN climate summit in Brazil.
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The UN report offered some stark observations, including warnings that concentrations of greenhouse gases have grown to new record highs, locking in more heat for the future, while the past 11 years, 2015 to 2025, will individually have been the 11 warmest years.
Together, these developments make “it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C [2.7F] in the next few years,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo said in a statement, referring to the 2015 Paris climate accords.
The legally binding pact limiting greenhouse gas emissions aimed to provide the world a roadmap for breaking away from fossil fuels that have powered the global economy since the Industrial Revolution and looked to limit global warming to well below 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels, and to 1.5C if possible.
But the world has fallen short of its Paris obligations, with the WMO now saying limiting global heating to the goals of the 2015 agreement is virtually impossible.
“This unprecedented streak of high temperatures, combined with last year’s record increase in greenhouse gas levels, makes it clear that it will be virtually impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C in the next few years without temporarily overshooting this target,” Saulo said. “But the science is equally clear that it’s still entirely possible and essential to bring temperatures back down to 1.5C by the end of the century.”
In the report, the WMO said the mean near-surface temperature — about 2 metres (6 feet) above the ground — during the first eight months of this year stood at 1.42C (2.5F) above the pre-industrial average.
At the same time, concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ocean heat content continued to rise this year, up from 2024’s already record levels.
In its annual report on Tuesday, the UN Environment Programme also confirmed that emissions of greenhouse gases increased by a further 2.3 percent last year, an increase driven by India, followed by China, Russia and Indonesia.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called the inability to limit the rise in global temperatures a “moral failure” on Thursday at the opening of a leaders’ summit in Brazil before COP30.
“Each year above 1.5 degrees will hammer economies, deepen inequalities and inflict irreversible damage. We must act now, at great speed and scale, to make the overshoot as small, as short, and as safe as possible – and bring temperatures back below 1.5C before the end of the century,” Guterres said.
The WMO said the impact of temperature rises can be seen in the Arctic sea ice extent, which, after the winter freeze this year, was the lowest ever recorded.
The Antarctic sea ice extent, meanwhile, tracked well below average throughout the year, it said.
The UN agency also highlighted numerous weather and climate-related extreme events during the first eight months of 2025, from devastating flooding to brutal heat and wildfires, with “cascading impacts on lives, livelihoods and food systems”.
In this context, the WMO hailed “significant advances” in multi-hazard early warning systems, which it stressed were “more crucial than ever”.
Since 2015, it said, the number of countries reporting such systems had more than doubled, from 56 to 119.
It hailed in particular progress among the world’s least developed countries and small island developing states, which showed a 5 percent rise in access in the past year alone.
However, it lamented that 40 percent of the world’s countries still have no such early warning systems.
“Urgent action is needed to close these remaining gaps,” it said.