Category World News

Haiti is approaching a “point of no return” as it struggles to respond to escalating gang violence, the top United Nations official in the country has said.

Maria Isabel Salvador, the UN special representative to the Caribbean nation, delivered the warning to the UN Security Council on Monday.

“As gang violence continues to spread to new areas of the country, Haitians experience growing levels of vulnerability and increasing scepticism about the ability of the state to respond to their needs,” Salvador said.

“Haiti could face total chaos,” she said, adding that aid and support for the international force deployed to stem rampant gang violence was desperately needed to avoid that fate.

“I urge you to remain engaged and answer the urgent needs of the country and its people,” she said.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti faces severe political instability, with swaths of the country under the control of rival armed gangs who carry out widespread murders, rapes and kidnappings.

Salvador cited cholera outbreaks and gender-based violence alongside a deteriorating security situation.

Most recently, Salvador said, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, freeing more than 500 prisoners during the assault. It was the fifth prison break in under a year and “part of a deliberate effort to entrench dominance, dismantle institutions and instil fear”, she said.

Armed gangs have also been increasingly battling for control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, with violence intensifying as rival gangs attempt to establish new territories, she said.

Meanwhile, a  Kenyan-led force authorised by the UN has failed to push back the gangs since the deployment began in June of last year. The mission has about 1,000 police officers from six countries, short of the 2,500 originally planned.

Kenya’s national security adviser, Monica Juma, told the council in a video briefing from Nairobi that the force has entered “a decisive phase of its operation” where gangs are coordinating operations and attacking people and strategic installations, and targeting the political establishment.

While the Haitian police and the multinational force have launched intensive anti-gang operations and achieved some notable progress, especially in securing critical infrastructure, she said a significant gap exists.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also warned that further international support was “required immediately to allow the national police to prevent the capital slipping closer to the brink”, according to an unpublished report seen by the AFP news agency.

The report detailed the surge in violence, with the UN recording 2,660 homicides in the three months since December 2024 – a 41. 3 percent increase over the previous quarter.

But the report also pointed to a high civilian toll in efforts to counter the gangs.

During the period, anti-gang operations resulted in 702 people killed, with 21 percent estimated to be innocent civilians, the report said.

There was also an alarming increase in gender-based violence, with 347 incidents reported in the five months to February 2025, according to the UN data.

Harvard University has sued US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt the government’s pause of more than $2bn in funding for the US educational institution.

“Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement on Monday.

“Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority,” Garber said.

Among the United States government agencies mentioned in Harvard’s lawsuit were the Education Department, the Health Department, the Justice Department, the Energy Department and the General Services Administration.

The Trump administration had no immediate comment.

But Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled “anti-Semitism” and a need to reverse diversity programmes aimed at addressing the historical oppresion of minorities.

The administration claims protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses last year were rife with anti-Semitism.

“The Government has not – and cannot – identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation,” Harvard’s legal complaint read.

Many US universities, including Harvard, cracked down on the protests over the allegations at the time, with the Cambridge-based institution placing 23 students on probation and denying degrees to 12 others, according to protest organisers.

Other institutions, including Columbia University in New York City, have bowed to less far-ranging demands from the Trump administration, which claims that the educational elite is too left wing.

Tyler Coward, the lead counsel for government affairs with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan First Amendment group, praised Harvard for “taking a principled stand against federal overreach that threatens the core values of higher education”.

“The Trump administration’s attempt to bypass federal civil rights law and impose sweeping ideological mandates through financial coercion sets a dangerous precedent,” Coward said.

“Colleges must comply with civil rights laws to receive federal funding. Enforcement of those laws must be lawful, transparent, and respect constitutional rights. ”

Nadine Menendez, the wife of former United States Senator Bob Menendez, has been convicted of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes in exchange for attempting to use her husband’s influence to benefit Egyptian officials and New Jersey businessmen.

Nadine Menendez, 58, was found guilty on Monday of all 15 counts she faced, including bribery, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. She will be sentenced by US District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan on June 12.

The conviction comes after Bob Menendez, a Democrat who represented New Jersey for 18 and a half years, was sentenced in January to 11 years in prison.

“Nadine Menendez and Senator Menendez were partners in crime,” acting Manhattan US Attorney Matthew Podolsky said in a statement on Monday after the verdict.

“Together, Nadine Menendez and the Senator placed their own interests and greed ahead of the interests of the citizens the Senator was elected to serve. ”

Outside the court, Menendez, who had pleaded not guilty, wore a pink mask as she stood next to her lawyer, Barry Coburn, who said he was “devastated by the verdict”.

“We fought hard and it hurts,” he said. “This is a very rough day for us. ”

The once-powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Bob Menendez was convicted at trial last July on charges related to efforts to speed Egypt’s access to US military aid, as well as interfering in local prosecutions of businessmen, in exchange for bribes including gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz.

Bob Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate the following month.

The evidence shown to jurors over a three-week trial followed the timeline of the whirlwind romance between the couple that began in early 2018 and continued after criminal charges were brought against them in September 2023.

Nadine Menendez was to be tried with her husband for her alleged role in his scheme, but her trial was postponed after her lawyers said she needed treatment for breast cancer.

Prosecutors said New Jersey businessman Wael Hana arranged meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials, who pressed him to sign off on military aid.

In return, the businessman put Nadine Menendez on the payroll of a company he controlled, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also said Hana and Nadine Menendez communicated requests and directives from Egyptian officials to the senator.

Hana was convicted along with Bob Menendez and sentenced to just more than eight years in prison.

Another defendant, businessman Fred Daibes, was also convicted and received a seven-year prison sentence. Prosecutors said Daibes wanted the senator to protect him from a criminal case he was facing in New Jersey.

The couple also received a Mercedes-Benz from businessman Jose Uribe in return for Bob Menendez using his clout to pressure the New Jersey attorney general’s office to stop investigating some of Uribe’s associates, prosecutors said.

Pope Francis was widely regarded as the “people’s pope”.

He was the first Latin American to lead the Roman Catholic Church, which has more than 1. 4 billion followers worldwide.

Often a voice for the poor, Francis also faced fierce resistance in his efforts to reshape the highly traditional and conservative church.

His messages about peace, poverty and climate change have resonated loudly across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

But will his legacy translate into lasting change? And where does the Catholic Church go from here?

Presenter:

Folly Bah Thibault

Guests:

Reverend Munther Isaac – Palestinian pastor, author of the book Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza

Father James Oyet Latansio – Catholic priest and general secretary of the South Sudan Council of Churches

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have again attacked el-Fasher city in the western Darfur region of Sudan, killing more than 30 people, an activist group has said.

The attack by the RSF and allied militias is the latest deadly offensive on the area, the last stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the war-torn region.

The Resistance Committees in el-Fasher said dozens of other people were wounded in the Sunday attack, which involved “heavy artillery shelling”. The RSF renewed the assault on Monday, shelling residential buildings and open markets, according to the activist group, which tracks the war.

No new casualties were immediately reported. The RSF did not immediately respond to the claims.

For over a year, the RSF has sought to wrest control of el-Fasher, located more than 800km (500 miles) southwest of the capital, Khartoum, from the SAF, launching regular attacks on the city and two major famine-hit camps for displaced people on its outskirts.

However, observers say attacks have intensified in recent months as the RSF suffered battlefield setbacks in Khartoum and other urban areas in the county’s east and centre.

El-Fasher is estimated to be home to more than one million people, including hundreds of thousands of those displaced by the fighting.

Aid ‘dangerously restricted’

The latest violence comes less than a week after a two-day attack by the RSF and its allied militias on e-Fasher, as well as the nearby Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps for internally displaced people, killed more than 400 people, according to the United Nations.

The attack forced up to 400,000 people to flee the Zamzam camp, Sudan’s largest, which has become inaccessible to aid workers, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

On Monday, the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher described the situation in the region as “horrifying”.

He said he had spoken by phone with both SAF general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who committed to giving “full access to get aid in”.

International aid agencies have long warned that a full-scale RSF assault on el-Fasher could lead to devastating urban warfare and a new wave of mass displacement.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has described the situation as “hell on earth” for at least 825,000 children trapped in and around el-Fasher.

The UN also warned of a catastrophic humanitarian situation.

“The humanitarian community in Sudan is facing critical and intensifying operational challenges in North Darfur,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said on Sunday.

She added that “despite repeated appeals, humanitarian access to el-Fasher and surrounding areas remains dangerously restricted”, warning that the lack of access was increasing “the vulnerability of hundreds of thousands of people”.

Nkweta-Salami called for UN and NGO actors to be granted “immediate and sustained access to these areas to ensure life-saving support can be delivered safely and at scale”.

Meanwhile, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for aid airdrops into the city in the face of access restrictions.

Sudan’s brutal civil war began on April 15, 2023, after a tenuous power-sharing agreement between SAF General al-Burhan and RSF leader Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, fell apart.

To date, more than 24,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the UN, although activists say the number is likely far higher.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Pope Francis died of a cerebral stroke and irreversible heart failure, Vatican doctor Andrea Arcangeli has said in a death certificate.

The certificate released on Monday for the 88-year-old pontiff said the pope had fallen into a coma before his death earlier in the day.

Pope Francis died of “cerebral stroke, coma, irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse”, the death certificate said. It added the religious leader, who had been the first Latin American pontiff in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, died at 7:35am local time (0535 GMT) in his apartment at the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican.

Just a day earlier, the pontiff made what would be his final major appearance as he greeted thousands of Easter worshippers from an open-top Popemobile in St Peter’s Square and delivered a blessing through an aide.

Pope Francis had suffered various ailments during his 12-year papacy, with severe complications in recent weeks following a bout of double pneumonia for which he spent 38 days at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

The death certificate added that Francis also suffered from arterial hypertension, multiple bronchiectasis and Type 2 diabetes, ailments which had not been previously disclosed.

The Vatican also released Pope Francis’s spiritual testament – a written statement of faith – in which he said he wished to be buried in Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major and not at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, unlike many of his predecessors.

The text specified Pope Francis wanted to be buried “in the ground, without particular decoration” but with the inscription of his papal name in Latin: Franciscus.

“As I sense the approaching twilight of my earthly life, and with firm hope in eternal life, I wish to set out my final wishes solely regarding the place of my burial,” read the testament, which was dated June 29, 2022.

“May the Lord grant a fitting reward to all those who have loved me and who continue to pray for me,” it said.

The Vatican began on Monday evening a Rosary prayer in St. Peter’s Square in its first public commemoration following Pope Francis’ death. Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, led the prayer at sunset.

Sister Raffaella Petrini, president of the Vatican City State and one of the highest ranking women at the Vatican, delivered the first reading. Her appointment was a sign of Francis’ insistence that women be given more prominent, decision-making roles.

Pope Francis’s passing marks the beginning of nine days of mourning called the Novendiale.

His body will be dressed in papal vestments and placed in St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing ahead of his burial. Daily prayer services and requiem masses will be held in Catholic churches worldwide and at St Peter’s Basilica during this time.

The Vatican also enters a transitional period called the sede vacante or interregnum, where power is handed over to the College of Cardinals, but no major decisions will be made until the papacy is filled.