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Kenyans fighting illegally for Russia in Ukraine to be granted amnesty

​ Kenyans fighting illegally for Russia in Ukraine to be granted amnesty. 10 hours ago. Humphrey MgonjaBBC Africa. Anadolu via Getty Images. Kenyans enlisted to fight for Russia in the war against Ukraine will be granted amnesty on their return home, the East African nation’s foreign minister has said.. The announcement follows Musalia Mudavadi’s recent visit to Moscow to tackle the issue and where it was agreed that no more Kenyans would be recruited.. Under Kenya’s laws it is illegal for the country’s citizens to be conscripted into foreign armies – an offence that can carry up to a 10-year prison sentence.. The foreign ministry estimates that 252 Kenyans have been illegally conscripted to fight on the front line – a trend that began about six months ago and has also involved recruits from other African countries.. Some Kenyans have said they were lured to fight for Russia with promises of well-paid civilian jobs, only to find themselves forced into fighting in Ukraine – often signing contracts in Russian without understanding what was involved.. Lured by lucrative job offers and sent to fight for Russia – Kenyans want their sons back. ‘I’m Kenyan, don’t shoot’ – the athlete who says he was duped into the Russian army. “So far 44 Kenyans have been safely repatriated back home while 11 have been reported missing in action/killed in action, 38 are currently hospitalised in various Russian hospitals under restricted access, leaving 160 Kenyans officers still actively involved,” Mudavadi said in a statement.. Mudavadi also negotiated a deal that allowed Kenyans currently on the front line and “unwilling to continue in the assignment disengaged and freed to travel back home”, the foreign ministry said.. Moscow had already agreed to put Kenya on what it called a “stop list” to prevent further recruitment, it said.. Russia has previously insisted that all foreign fighters joined voluntarily ”in full compliance with Russian law”.. Reuters. According to Kenya’s foreign ministry, the two countries will begin efforts to “thwart human trafficking, smuggling and illegal recruitment” to the Russian war effort. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.. Mudavadi’s trip to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov followed growing public pressure from the relatives of those who had travelled to Russia calling for Kenya’s government to take action.. Last month, the foreign minister told the BBC the Kenyan authorities had closed more than 600 recruitment agencies suspected of duping Kenyans with promises of jobs overseas.. Ukrainian intelligence assessment has estimated that more than 1,700 people from 36 countries in Africa have been recruited to fight for Russia.. In February, South Africa repatriated 17 citizens who said they had been trapped in Ukraine’s Donbas region after being deceived into fighting for Russia.. Working as a mercenary or fighting on behalf of another government is also illegal in South Africa, unless the govern  

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BBC News World

Two dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at New York’s LaGuardia Airport

​ Plane and ground vehicle collide at New York’s LaGuardia airport halting flights. 19 minutes ago. Olivia Ireland. Getty Images. New York’s LaGuardia airport has been closed until further noticed after an Air Canada Express plane and ground vehicle collided.. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for the airport late on Sunday night and said there was a “high” likelihood the order would be extended.. CBS News, the BBC US partner, reported the plane was coming in from Montreal and landed. It slowed down to about 24mph when it collided with a vehicle from the the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.. The plane – a smaller model CRJ 900 that had about 70-90 people on board – suffered significant damage.. Local media report there are a number of injuries.. Video footage on social media show the aircraft coming to a rest with its nose upturned.. Aviation accidents and incidents  

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BBC News World

Asia stocks slide as US and Iran threaten to escalate war

​ Asia stocks slide as US and Iran threaten to escalate war. 1 hour ago. Peter HoskinsBusiness reporter. AFP via Getty Images. Major stock markets in Asia have slumped after Washington and Tehran threatened to escalate hostilities, as the US-Israel war with Iran enters its fourth week.. Japan’s Nikkei share index closed 3.5% lower, while South Korea’s Kospi fell by 6.5%. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 opened down 1.4%.. US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday he would “obliterate” Iranian power plants if Iran did not open the key Strait of Hormuz shipping route. Iran said it would respond to any such strikes by targeting key infrastructure in the region.. Japan and South Korea have been particularly affected by the conflict, as they are heavily dependent on oil and gas that would normally pass through the strait.. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, since the US and Israel attacked the country on 28 February.. About 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes through the waterway — and the war has sent global fuel prices soaring.. On Monday, International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol said that the war could see the world facing its worst energy crisis in decades.. Speaking at the National Press Club in Australia’s capital, Birol compared the current energy crisis to those of the 1970s and the impact of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.. “This crisis as things stand is now two oil crises and one gas crash put all together,” he said.. In a social media post published at 23:44 GMT Saturday, Trump said: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”. That threat came after Iranian missiles hit the Israeli city of Dimona, and shortly before a second attack on the town of Arad nearby.. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, said on Sunday that energy and desalination infrastructure in the region would be “irreversibly destroyed” if his country’s power plants were attacked.. Such action would significantly escalate the conflict, which has already disrupted global energy supplies, pushing up prices and causing fuel shortages.. Simon Flowers, chairman and chief analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said the markets were waiting to see if the threats were “carried through”.. “If the US does strike Iranian infrastructure, it escalates the whole intensity of the war a step further and then we’d have to see if Iran strikes back at infrastructure tit-for-tat as they’ve done over the last week or so,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.. Global oil prices rose on Monday, with Brent crude climbing more than 1% to above $113.40 (£85.30) a barrel and US-traded oil was up more than 2% at $100.50.. The jump in oil and gas prices since the start of the conflict  

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BBC News World

UN issues new climate warning as El Niño looms

​ UN issues new climate warning as El Niño looms. 4 hours ago. Mark PoyntingClimate researcher. Getty Images. The Earth’s climate is further out of balance than at any time in recorded history, the UN’s weather agency has warned.. The World Meteorological Organization says that our planet is gaining much more heat energy than it can release, driven by emissions of warming gases such as carbon dioxide.. This record “energy imbalance” heated the ocean to new heights last year and continued to melt our planet’s ice caps.. And scientists fear that a natural warming phase called El Niño – expected to begin later this year – could soon bring further heat records.. In response to the report, UN Secretary General António Guterres reiterated his call for countries to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy to “deliver climate security, energy security and national security”.. “Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red,” he warned, in a typically punchy video address.. The last 11 years were the Earth’s 11 warmest years in records stretching back to 1850, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says.. In 2025, global average air temperatures were about 1.43C above those of “pre-industrial” times – before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.. A temporary cooling from the natural La Niña weather pattern meant that 2025 was not quite as hot as 2024, which was boosted by the opposite El Niño phase.. But last year was still one of the three warmest years since records began. Many scientists now believe that warming is accelerating, although they say temperatures are broadly within the range of long-term predictions.. And the WMO points to a wealth of other evidence showing that the climate is changing faster than we have ever seen before.. Perhaps the most comprehensive measure is the amount of extra heat energy being taken up by the Earth.. This “energy imbalance” ultimately drives climate change and reached a new high last year, the WMO says.. While scientists are still working out exactly why the Earth has accumulated so much extra heat over the past decade or so, they have no doubt that heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are the root cause of the imbalance.. Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are at their highest for at least two million years, the WMO says, due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.. Some of the extra energy trapped by these gases warms the atmosphere and the land, as well as melting the planet’s ice.. The world’s glaciers had one of their five worst years on record in 2024/25, according to provisional data, while sea ice at both poles was at or near record lows throughout most of 2025.. But more than 90% of the Earth’s extra energy heats the oceans, which in turn harms marine life, drives more intense storms and contributes to sea-level rise.. The heat stored in the upper 2km (1.2 miles) of the global ocean reached a  

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BBC News World

France’s Socialists hold on to power in major cities in election boost for mainstream

​ France’s Socialists hold on to power in major cities in election boost for mainstream. 7 hours ago. Hugh SchofieldParis correspondent. Getty Images. Socialists and allies held on to power France’s big four cities – Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Lille – on a local election night that offered hopes for mainstream parties in next year’s presidential elections.. The new aspirants of the far-left and far-right also made gains – notably in Nice for an ally of Marine Le Pen and Roubaix in the north for the France Unbowed (LFI) party.. But the big lesson of the evening was the failure of alliances between mainstream left and LFI, with voters turning to the centre and right in long-time Socialist Party (PS) strongholds like Clermont-Ferrand and Brest.. On the contrary, in cities like Paris, Marseille and Lille – where incumbent Socialists steered clear of the far-left because of accusations of sectarian anti-Semitism in its ranks – left-wing administrations were comfortably returned.. Lyon – where the ecologist mayor Gregory Doucet did ally himself with LFI and still won – was seen as a case apart, because the right-wing challenger, businessman Jean-Michel Aulas, ran a poor campaign.. “My conclusion from tonight is that the LFI wins nothing – and what is worse it is the LFI that brings about defeat,” said Pierre Jouvet, PS secretary-general.. There had been calls for a boycott of LFI after one of its parliamentary assistants was charged with incitement to murdering a far-right student in Lyon. The party’s firebrand leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon also enraged his enemies when in a speech he seemed to joke about the Jewishness of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.. But after round one of voting a week ago, many Socialist and Green candidates decided to overlook their objections to the far-left party and formed what the right then termed “alliances of shame” in order – they hoped – to secure victory.. The alliances between left and far-left also failed to perform in Toulouse, Strasbourg, Poitiers, Limoges and Tulle. The last is the electoral fief of the former PS president François Hollande, whose calls for a boycott of LFI went unheeded there.. But reacting to the results Sunday evening the LFI’s Manuel Bompard pointed to the party’s first-round victory in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, as well as Sunday’s win in Roubaix.. “Tonight we have made the demonstration that nothing can stand in the way of a people on the move. Next year the new France will sweep away the world of [President] Macron and his nefarious policies,” he said.. Grégoire’s win in Paris was in line with opinion polls and confirmed the capital’s reputation as a mainly left-wing city. His predecessor Anne Hidalgo had made her mark with vigorously anti-car policies which were in general supported by voters.. Right-wing Rachida Dati – a pugnacious former minister under presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron – proved to be a divisive candidate, and her impen  

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BBC News World

Trump says ICE agents will assist airport security as DHS shutdown continues

​ Trump says ICE agents will assist airport security as DHS shutdown continues. 10 hours ago. Grace Eliza Goodwin. Getty Images. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will be sent to airports to help with increasingly long lines at security checkpoints, the Trump administration has said.. President Donald Trump posted on social media that ICE agents will go to airports on Monday, while border tsar Tom Homan told CNN that his team was working out the details of the plan.. The union that represents the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers criticised the move, saying staff “deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents”.. Travellers have faced hours-long airport security queues in recent days as the partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security continues.. The DHS has gone without funding since mid-February, after Congress failed to reach an agreement – leaving normal airport security staff without pay.. Trump posted on Truth Social: “On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job.”. Trump’s comments came a day after he threatened to send ICE agents to help TSA agents at airports if Democrats did not immediately agree to fund DHS.. “I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump posted on Saturday.. The ICE agents will not be directly involved in screening passengers, Homan told CNN’s State of the Union.. Instead, they will be used to free up TSA agents to conduct the screenings they are trained to do, he said.. Homan suggested ICE agents would cover entry and exit points so “that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines”.. The border tsar added that he is still working with the TSA and ICE to iron out the details, including how many agents would be involved, but said the plan will be finalised before agents are deployed on Monday.. Speaking to ABC News’ This Week, Transport Secretary Sean Duffy suggested a wider role for ICE.. He said ICE had the experience to help the TSA as they ran the “same type of security machines at the southern border” for packages and people.. “We have ICE agents who are trained and can provide assistance,” he added.. In a statement to the BBC’s News partner CBS News, a DHS spokesperson said the president “is using every tool available” to help American travellers.. “While the Democrats continue to put the safety, dependability, and ease of our air travel at risk, President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted,” the DHS spokesperson said on Sunday.. The BBC has contacted ICE for comment.. Getty Images. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to the announcement on Sunday, telling CNN the deployment of ICE agents is “the last thing that the American people need”.. “These are untra  

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