05/12/2025

FRIDAY | DEC 5, 2025

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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump yesterday brought together the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for what he hailed as his latest peace triumph despite ongoing violence on the ground. He expressed hope that the agreement would pave the way for the United States to gain control over critical minerals in DRC, a violence-torn region home to many key ingredients in modern technologies, such as electric cars. Rwandan President Paul Kagame met Trump and DRC President Felix Tshisekedi in the newly renamed Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace, which Trump shuttered as part of sweeping government cost-cutting. The White House said the two leaders would sign a peace agreement, more than five months after the countries’ Foreign ministers met Trump and announced another deal to end the conflict. On the eve of the meeting, intense fighting raged in eastern DRC, where the Rwandan-backed armed group M23 has been gaining ground in recent weeks against Kinshasa’s forces. Trump has boasted that DRC, where hundreds of thousands of people have died over several decades, is among a long list of wars he has ended since he returned to office in January. DRC said the agreement with Trump would include a peace agreement, regional economic integration framework and a “strategic partnership” on natural resources. Presidential spokesperson Tina Salama said Kinshasa has been adamant on peace on the ground before proceeding to a second stage of economic development. Rwanda has made the end of its “defensive measures”contingent on Kinshasa neutralising the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an ethnic Hutu group with links to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Kagame, who is expected to meet separately with Trump, last week publicly accused DRC of delaying the signing of an agreement. DRC Communication Minister Patrick Muyaya in turn said the fighting on the ground showed a lack of seriousness by Rwanda. – AFP BERLIN: Anyone who provides false or incomplete information during the naturalisation process will be barred from becoming a German citizen for 10 years, German Press Agency reported. This is set out in an amendment to the draft law on designating safe countries of origin by decree, which was approved by the Bundestag’s Interior Committee on Wednesday. The change comes in response to investigations into the trade of forged language certificates in several German states. The draft is to be discussed and voted on in plenary today. Another proposed change would remove the right to state-funded legal assistance for people held in deportation detention or departure custody, a right introduced only last year. – Bernama-dpa TRAM COLLISION IN POLAND INJURES AT LEAST 35 WARSAW: At least 35 people were injured after two trams collided in the southern Polish city of Krakow on Wednesday, according to Polish media, Xinhua reported. The crash occurred at 6pm local time (1700 GMT) on Bienczycka Street, when a moving Tram Line 5 struck a stationary Tram Line 52 near a major traffic roundabout. According to police and the tram transport company, two people, including one of the tram drivers, suffered serious injuries and were taken to hospital in life-threatening conditions. Emergency services carried out a large-scale rescue operation and several tram lines had to be diverted. Investigators are probing the cause of the crash. – Bernama-Xinhua Trump to sign Rwanda, DRC accord GERMAN NATURALISATION BAN OVER FALSE INFO

Washington sends ICE agents to New Orleans McLaughlin said the New Orleans operation would target‘illegal criminal aliens’ wanted for‘home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto and rape’. – AFPPIC

potentially violating even some of their due process rights.” She also expressed concern about federal agents concealing their faces with masks and not being readily identifiable, news portal Nola.com reported. “If you are a masked person and not necessarily identifiable as an officer, you are coming up to people and grabbing them, it can be a real safety issue for everyone around, including the Border Patrol or ICE agents.” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the New Orleans operation would target “illegal criminal aliens” wanted for “home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto and rape”. “Under Trump and Noem, we are restoring law and order for the American people.” The Trump administration claims that most of the undocumented migrants swept up in the immigration crackdown have committed or are wanted for crimes. However, in a study published last month, the Cato Institute said only 5% of those taken into ICE custody since Oct 1 have a violent criminal conviction and 73% have no criminal conviction at all. – AFP

after US President Donald Trump said he plans to send National Guard troops to the southern US city, an action he has taken previously in Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis. “The governor called me. He would like to have us go there. He has asked for help in New Orleans and we are going to go there in a couple of weeks.” Trump has said the troops are needed in the cities to address crime and assist with the sweeping immigration crackdown he pledged to carry out during his White House campaign. Critics dispute this, with the mayors of Los Angeles and Memphis both saying the troops are not needed. The Louisiana governor is a Republican but the New Orleans mayor-elect is a Democrat. Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, who takes up her post on Jan 12, expressed concern on Wednesday about how immigration raids have been carried out in other cities. “Do we want the most violent criminals off of our streets? Absolutely. Yes. I do not think anyone is going to object to that. “But what we have been seeing across the country and in other cities is that Border Patrol appears to be targeting brown people and

NEW ORLEANS: The US Homeland Security Department launched an immigration crackdown on Wednesday in New Orleans, the latest Democratic-run city to be targeted by the Trump administration. “The men and women of the department’s law enforcement have landed in The Big Easy,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, using the nickname for the Louisiana city. She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “will remove the worst of the worst from New Orleans, Louisiana, after the city’s sanctuary politicians have ignored the rule of law”. Sanctuary policies enacted by local authorities in New Orleans limit the cooperation of local law enforcement with federal immigration agents. The crackdown in New Orleans comes a day o Mayor-elect concerned over how raids have been carried out in other cities

BR I E F S

Britain to boost facial recognition to curb crime LONDON: Use of facial recognition technology will be expanded across Britain’s police forces to help track down criminals, the government said yesterday, as it proposed a new body to oversee its use. treated like suspects on an almost daily basis.“ The Metropolitan Police use live facial recognition at major events, such as soccer matches and the Notting Hill Carnival, to identify people on its watch lists. out of control, with over seven million people in England and Wales scanned by facial recognition cameras in the last year, according to police records.

“Live facial recognition could be the end of privacy as we know it,” said its director Silkie Carlo, adding that with the possibility of the government introducing mandatory ID cards with facial biometrics, “we are hurtling towards an authoritarian surveillance state that would make Orwell roll in his grave”. The government said it would launch a 10-week consultation to examine the benefits of the technology and any safeguards needed to ensure public confidence, including privacy protections. It proposed creating a single body to oversee and regulate police use of facial recognition and similar technologies. – Reuters

The technology also helps police in criminal investigations search footage from phones, video doorbells and CCTV against its database of images of people taken on arrest. Crime and Policing Minister Sarah Jones said facial recognition is the biggest breakthrough in catching criminals since DNA matching. “It has helped take thousands of dangerous criminals off our streets and has huge potential to strengthen how police keep us safe. We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and address crime in their communities.” Big Brother Watch said surveillance is already

The technology is used by London’s Metropolitan Police, which has made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition in the last two years, including rapists, domestic abusers and violent criminals, and found more than 100 sex offenders who had breached their licence conditions. However, civil liberties group Big Brother Watch called the planned expansion of facial recognition a grave threat to privacy. “Laws in Europe protect the public against facial recognition mass surveillance, but Britain is an outlier in the democratic world, with the public now watched by these cameras and