Category World News

A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s plan to strip deportation protections from thousands of Ethiopians living in the United States.

Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued the order on Friday, delaying a February 13 deadline that would have forced more than 5,000 Ethiopians to leave the country or face arrest.

The ruling represents the latest legal setback to the administration’s broader push to end temporary protections for more than one million people across multiple countries.

Murphy’s decision came during a virtual hearing, where he said the delay would provide time for the Department of Homeland Security to produce records explaining its decision-making process before he considers blocking the move for longer.

“I want to do everything I can to keep this case going,” the judge said.

The case was brought by three Ethiopian nationals and the advocacy group African Communities Together, who filed suit after the DHS announced in December it was terminating the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) first granted to Ethiopia in 2022.

The lawsuit argues the administration unlawfully ended the protections with just 60 days’ notice despite ongoing armed conflict in the African nation.

Plaintiffs also claim Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem acted based on an “unconstitutional animus against non-white immigrants”.

The move came even as the State Department continues urging Americans to reconsider travel to Ethiopia due to “sporadic violent conflict, civil unrest, crime, communications disruptions, terrorism and kidnapping”.

The DHS defended the termination by pointing to recent peace agreements, including a 2022 ceasefire in Tigray, despite renewed fighting in the region this month.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said TPS “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty programme, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades”.

The ruling follows a similar decision a day earlier when a federal appeals court found the administration unlawfully ended protections for 600,000 Venezuelans.

That three-judge panel said Noem’s actions were based on “racist stereotyping” and left people “in a constant state of fear that they will be deported, detained, separated from their families”.

About a dozen countries now face TPS terminations as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Some 350,000 Haitians are set to lose protections on February 3, while Somalis face a March 17 deadline, despite the State Department maintaining a “Do Not Travel” warning for Somalia.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a Sudanese doctor, feared he would not live to see the sun go down.

“All around we saw people running and falling to the ground in front of us,” the 28-year-old physician said, according to a report by The Associated Press news agency on Saturday.

Ibrahim was recounting the assault on el-Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur, by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that began on October 26 and lasted three days, ending an 18-month siege of the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the province.

The RSF and the Sudanese army have been waging a brutal civil war for control of Sudan since April 2023, killing thousands of people and displacing millions. The conflict has created what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis

“We moved from house to house, from wall to wall under nonstop bombardment. Bullets were flying from all directions,” Ibrahim said as he recounted fleeing el-Fasher’s last functioning medical facility.

What followed was a systematic campaign of mass killings and ethnic cleansing, according to the United Nations and human rights groups, triggering war crimes investigations and international sanctions.

Speaking with the AP from the town of Tawila, about 70km (43 miles) from el-Fasher, Ibrahim provided a rare, detailed first-person account.

As RSF fighters swarmed in, they opened fire on civilians scrambling over walls and hiding in trenches in a vain effort to escape, while mowing down others with vehicles, Ibrahim said. He said seeing so many killed felt like he was running towards his own death.

“It was a despicable feeling,” he said. “How can el-Fasher fall? Is it over? I saw people running in terror. … It was like judgement day.”

Within hours, RSF fighters were storming homes, demanding phones at gunpoint and looting property.

Satellite imagery analysed by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been monitoring the war in Sudan, identified at least 150 clusters of objects consistent with human remains between October 26 and November 1.

Researchers documented systematic efforts to destroy evidence through burning and burial, with RSF vehicles present near the sites.

Sarra Majdoub, a former UN Security Council expert on Sudan, said in a post on X that a “machinery of disappearance” had been operating in the aftermath of the fall of the city, with thousands unaccounted for.

Ibrahim, the doctor, was also held by RSF fighters after being captured, with the fighters demanding a ransom. “I didn’t want to tell them I was a doctor, because they exploited doctors,” he said.

After negotiating his ransom down from a $20,000 initial demand, his family paid $8,000 for his release, the AP report said.

The International Organization for Migration reported that more than 26,000 people fled el-Fasher in just two days following the October 26 takeover, with at least 106,387 people displaced by late November.

The United States, United Kingdom and European Union have imposed sanctions on RSF commanders in recent months.

Nazhat Shameem Khan, deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in el-Fasher “as a culmination of the city’s siege by the Rapid Support Forces”.

Lindsey Vonn crashed out of a World Cup downhill on Friday that was hazardous to her Olympic medal hopes, though judged safe by race officials and team coaches.

Safe, it was agreed, at the place and exact time that Vonn lost control when landing a jump and spun into an awkward slide into the safety nets, injuring her left knee.

“It was probably good light in the spot where she completely missed the line and did the mistake,” World Cup race director Peter Gerdol said.

Gerdol spoke after the late-afternoon meeting of race and team leaders to debrief the day and detail the next morning’s schedule.

At the meeting in Crans-Montana – starting minutes after Vonn posted on social media her Olympic downhill dream next weekend was alive – a broad agreement was that the race had been safe. Some objected to it being cancelled at all.

About 25 minutes after Vonn crashed as the No 6 starter, with the race still paused, Gerdol and the race jury called it off for safety reasons.

“I feel for those guys, they have a tough job,” United States head coach Paul Kristofic said.

By 10:50am local time on an overcast day in the Swiss Alps, the light had dimmed since the 10am start and was forecast to get worse. It did.

The race may have seemed unsafe because three of the six starters failed to finish, and even leader Jacqueline Wiles barely made a tight final turn that caused one crash.

Still, the Austria coach said his racer Nina Ortlieb’s exit as the first starter, at the same spot as Vonn, was caused by a poor racing line, not poor light.

Roland Assinger later said racing had been much safer than two weeks ago at Tarvisio, Italy, where the women went “110 kilometres an hour (70 miles per hour) through the fog where you can see nothing”.

Assinger’s view echoed the view of Vonn’s teammate, Breezy Johnson, who was caught swearing on a television hot mic while chatting with racers in the warmup area when the cancellation news came.

World champion Johnson recalled the “(expletive) rain in Tarvisio” and added: “Then they are like ‘This is too bad a visibility.’ Like, what the …” Johnson later apologised for her choice of words in a social media post.

Swiss TV commentator Patrice Morisod, who had chuckled on air hearing Johnson’s words live, later said: “If we cancel such a race then we don’t have ski sport.”

What Gerdol and Morisod agreed on was disliking the tight turns into the finish line that sent Norwegian racer Marte Monsen into the fences and almost tricked Wiles.

“It’s not downhill,” Morisod said. “For me, that’s a big mistake for the FIS.”

Gerdol told the coaches’ meeting that the course design will be reviewed before the two-week world championships Crans-Montana will stage in one year.

“In view of the championships next year, we will definitely work on this,” the race director acknowledged.

The 2027 world seems far away when the Milan Cortina Olympics open next Friday, and the marquee women’s downhill is scheduled two days later.

Vonn faces a race to be fully fit for the Olympics she targeted in her remarkable comeback as the fastest 40-something in women’s ski race history.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that United States President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Europe stirred tensions by “provoking” people during the recent protests that gripped the country.

“They equipped and brought a number of innocent people along with this movement and poured them into the streets and incited them to tear this country apart, create fights and hatred between people, and create division,” Pezeshkian said in a televised speech on Saturday, according to Iran’s official Student News Network.

“In any normal protest, they don’t pick up guns, they don’t kill military personnel, they don’t set fire to ambulances and markets, and we should sit with the protesters, listen to their words and concerns, and resolve them; we are ready to listen,” he added.

“Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest,” Pezeshkian said, claiming that the foreign powers “took advantage of our problems”, “provoked us” and “sought to divide our society”.

Iranian authorities acknowledge that thousands were killed during the recent protests, giving a toll of more than 3,000 deaths, but say the majority were members of the security forces or bystanders killed by “rioters”.

But rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher, with estimates in the tens of thousands.

For several weeks, Trump has been threatening to launch a military strike on Iran over its deadly protest crackdown earlier this month – protests Tehran repeatedly claimed were incited by foreign powers.

A US naval strike group has been in Middle Eastern waters since Monday, and Trump warned it was “ready, willing and able” to hit Iran “if necessary”.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday the country is ready for “fair and equitable” talks with the US, adding: “Iran has no problem with negotiations, but negotiations cannot take place under the shadow of threats.

“I should also state unequivocally that Iran’s defensive and missile capabilities – and Iran’s missiles – will never be the subject of any negotiations,” Araghchi said during a news conference alongside his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan.

Separately on Friday, the US announced sanctions against Iran’s interior minister and other officials, over the incidents that took place during the protests.

Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni “oversees the murderous Law Enforcement Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran (LEF), a key entity responsible for the deaths of thousands of peaceful protesters”, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement about the measures.

Those sanctioned also included several high-ranking officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Iranian investor Babak Morteza Zanjani, who stands accused of having “embezzled billions in funds from the Iranian people”.