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• Appeals court denies White House bid to stay May 22 decision
• Ruling prevents Trump administration from shedding jobs, shuttering offices

• White House likely to ask Supreme Court to pause May ruling
  

May 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to allow President Donald Trump's administration to carry out mass layoffs of federal workers and a restructuring of agencies, leaving a lower court order in place that blocked the sweeping government overhaul.

The decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that, for now, the Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to shed tens of thousands of federal jobs and shutter many government offices and programs.

GOMA, May 29 (Reuters) - Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila appeared for the first time in public in rebel-held territory in the country's volatile east on Thursday, meeting with religious leaders in what participants said was a push for peace.

Kabila, who has been out of the country since 2023, mostly in South Africa, is wanted in Congo for alleged crimes against humanity for supporting the insurgency in the east, including a role in the massacre of civilians. Congo has also moved to suspend his political party and seize the assets of its leaders.

The former president's camp denies any ties to the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have seized more territory than ever since January. He had been vowing to return to the Central African country for weeks to help find a solution to the conflict.

His return could complicate Washington's plans for a peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda. Massad Boulos, Trump's senior adviser for Africa, told Reuters earlier this month the deal could be signed this summer, accompanied by minerals deals aimed at bringing billions of dollars of Western investment to the region.

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi's government in Kinshasa this week accused Kabila of "positioning himself as the rebel leader" along with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

• Debris left by collapsed glacier blocks path of river

• Damage seen running into hundreds of millions of Swiss francs
  

• Water getting through the debris and running off, spurring hope
  

ZURICH, May 30 (Reuters) - A lake of water trapped behind a mass of glacial debris that buried a village and blocked a river in southern Switzerland this week has sparked fears of flooding in the Alpine valley, even as some water eased its way through the morass on Friday.

A deluge of millions of cubic meters of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on Wednesday, engulfing the village of Blatten. The few houses that remained intact were later flooded.

The village's 300 residents had already been evacuated after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble. Rescue teams were looking for a missing 64-year-old man but have suspended their search for now due to the difficult conditions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29410228

Pakistan has launched attacks on "multiple targets" across India, according to the media wing of Pakistan's military.

In a statement, Pakistan said it has unleashed Operation Bunyan ul Marsoos (Solid Wall of Steel) in response to what it calls "continuous provocation" by India.

"Multiple targets in this operation are being engaged all across India," the statement added.

Pakistan's military said it used medium-range Fateh missiles to strike a missile storage facility and airbases in Pathankot and Udhampur.

The AP news agency said loud explosions have been heard in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in the disputed region's two big cities of Srinagar and Jammu, and the garrison town of Udhampur.

Meanwhile, an Indian military source told Reuters that India has launched air operations in Pakistan, although no further details were given.

Pakistan's military posted footage on X showing missiles being fired from what appeared to be a mobile launcher.

Pakistan has launched attacks on "multiple targets" across India, according to the media wing of Pakistan's military.

In a statement, Pakistan said it has unleashed Operation Bunyan ul Marsoos (Solid Wall of Steel) in response to what it calls "continuous provocation" by India.

"Multiple targets in this operation are being engaged all across India," the statement added.

Pakistan's military said it used medium-range Fateh missiles to strike a missile storage facility and airbases in Pathankot and Udhampur.

The AP news agency said loud explosions have been heard in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in the disputed region's two big cities of Srinagar and Jammu, and the garrison town of Udhampur.

Meanwhile, an Indian military source told Reuters that India has launched air operations in Pakistan, although no further details were given.

Pakistan's military posted footage on X showing missiles being fired from what appeared to be a mobile launcher.

• Duterte awaits trial in the Hague over bloody war on drugs
• He is also running for election as mayor of southern Davao
• Victory could help his daughter's presidential ambitions
• Candidates of incumbent President Marcos ahead in polls

DAVAO CITY, Philippines, May 9 (Reuters) - Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte spends his days in a small, spartan room in detention at the Hague, awaiting trial for a bloody war on drugs that killed thousands during his time in office.

But halfway around the world, in his hometown of Davao City, Duterte is on the ticket for mayor in midterm elections on Monday that he is widely expected to win, riding on support in the family stronghold, though it may not translate nationwide.

• Rumeysa Ozturk ordered released immediately from Louisiana detention center

• Ozturk was detained after pro-Palestinian campus advocacy
  

• Judge said her detention chills free speech of non-citizens

May 9 (Reuters) - A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to immediately release a Tufts University student from Turkey who has been held for over six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention facility after she co-wrote an opinion piece criticizing her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont, granted bail to Rumeysa Ozturk, who is at the center of one of the highest-profile cases to emerge from Republican President Donald Trump's campaign to deport pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses.

The judge said Ozturk had raised a substantial claim that the sole reason she was being detained was "simply and purely the expression that she made or shared in the op-ed in violation of her First Amendment rights."

"Her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens," Sessions said. "Any one of them may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center."

Following the hearing, Ozturk, who appeared before the judge virtually from the Louisiana detention facility, could be seen hugging one of her attorneys. Tufts has said it plans to help provide Ozturk housing upon her release.

The judge ruled shortly after a federal appeals court rejected, the Trump administration's bid to re-detain Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian campus activist who a different judge in Vermont ordered released last week after immigration authorities arrested him as well.

Ozturk's arrest on March 25 by masked, plainclothes law enforcement officers on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, near her home was captured in a viral video and occurred after the U.S. Department of State revoked her student visa.

The sole basis authorities have provided for revoking her visa was an opinion piece she co-authored in Tufts' student newspaper criticizing the school's response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."

• Trump officials mull proposing COFA status to Greenland
• COFA agreement would see U.S. defending Greenland, but keep island independent
• Plan faces several practical hurdles

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - U.S. officials are discussing a plan to pull Greenland into America's sphere of influence using a type of agreement that the United States has used to keep close ties with several Pacific Island nations, according to two U.S. officials and another person familiar with the discussions.

Under the plan being considered, the Trump administration would propose to Greenland's leaders that the island enter into a so-called Compact of Free Association, or COFA, with the United States.

While the precise details of COFA agreements - which have only ever been extended to the small island nations of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau - vary depending on the signatory, the U.S. government typically provides many essential services, from mail delivery to emergency management to military protection. In exchange, the U.S. military operates freely in COFA countries and trade with the U.S. is largely duty-free.

President Donald Trump, who during his first administration floated the idea of acquiring Greenland, has pressed even harder since taking office in January, refusing to rule out taking the island by force. Denmark, which governs the island, has sharply rebuffed the idea.

A COFA agreement would stop short of Trump's ambition to make the island of 57,000 people a part of the U.S. It is not the only Greenland plan on the table, the sources said, and it would face many practical hurdles.

Reuters reported before Trump took office that some advisers had informally suggested the idea. But it has not been previously revealed that White House officials have begun talks about the logistics behind such a proposal.

Some officials at the National Security Council and the National Energy Dominance Council, which Trump established, are involved in the talks, two of the sources said. The National Economic Council is also involved, one of those sources added.

COFA agreements have previously been inked with independent countries, and Greenland would likely need to separate from Denmark for such a plan to proceed. While polls show Greenlanders are interested in independence, surveys also show most do not want to be part of the U.S. A COFA - which cedes significant autonomy to Washington - could be viewed with similar skepticism.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday agreed to halt all efforts to freeze funds intended for a Maine child nutrition program after initially suspending those dollars due to a disagreement between the state and Trump over transgender athletes.

In response, the state will drop its lawsuit that had been filed against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey announced.

The top US health department plans to require placebo testing for all vaccines in an effort to offer "straightforward" public health information, but experts say such testing could limit availability and raise ethical concerns.

In a statement first given to the Washington Post, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said this week, "All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure — a radical departure from past practices".

The agency did not provide details on which "new vaccines" would be included.

But officials have suggested that updated Covid-19 shots may be included, which vaccine experts say could slow down vaccine access.

Peter Lurie, a former official with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said "it's hard to tell exactly what is being proposed."

"But, broadly, if they mean that every modification to an existing vaccine would require a new placebo-controlled trial, they are treading in ethically dubious territory and likely to deny Americans life-saving vaccines at some point."

HHS has not offered details on the timing of the placebo plan or specify the vaccines involved.

An HHS spokesperson told the BBC in a statement that health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's goal of "radical transparency" means being "honest and straightforward about what we know — and what we don't know — about medical products, including vaccines".

The statement said none of the childhood vaccines recommended in the US - except the Covid shot - had undergone "inert placebo" testing, meaning "we know very little about the actual risk profiles of these products".

But public health experts say the statement is misleading, as childhood vaccinations, including ones for Hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, polio and the mumps, were all initially tested against a placebo. In fact, all new immunizations already go through the trials - a type of random testing where one test group receives the immunization, and the other gets a placebo, like a saline shot.

But newer versions of the shots may not go through the same process, because it is considered unethical to withhold a shot known to be safe from a particular group, and because the shot is only being tweaked in a minor way, vaccine experts said.

An Illinois man has been sentenced to 53 years in prison for the 2023 fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy.

Wadee Alfayoumi was stabbed 26 times and his mother more than a dozen in the Oct. 14, 2023, attack inside their home in the Chicago suburb of Plainfield.

Their landlord, 73-year-old Joseph Czuba, was convicted in February on multiple murder charges, as well as attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crime counts. A Will County jury found Czuba guilty of all counts after deliberating for less than two hours.

Prior to the sentencing on Friday in Joliet, the judge denied a motion from the defense team to overturn the jury verdict that claimed he did not receive a fair trial, Chicago ABC station WLS reported.

The defense has filed a motion to reconsider the sentencing, with a court appearance scheduled for May 7, WLS reported.

Czuba faced a mandatory prison sentence of 20 to 60 years up to a possible life sentence.

Authorities said he targeted his tenants because they were Muslim and in response to the war between Israel and Hamas that had just ignited after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Wadee's great uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, addressed the sentencing outside the courthouse, telling reporters, "It doesn't matter what numbers are. He took a life from us. He took a future."

Sean "Diddy" Combs on Thursday formally rejected the government's offer to plead guilty and spare himself the possibility of a prolonged prison sentence.

"Yes I do, your honor," Combs said after Judge Arun Subramanian asked him whether he rejected the offer federal prosecutors made.

Combs, 55, is scheduled to stand trial beginning Monday with jury selection on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and prostitution that allege he coerced women into prolonged sexual encounters he called "freak-offs."