Armed men in Haiti have kidnapped James Boyard, cabinet director of the Defence Ministry and a highly respected security expert who also serves as inspector general of Haiti’s police, a person with the knowledge of the situation said on Saturday. He is the highest-ranking official to be kidnapped in the gang-wracked Caribbean country in recent years. A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorised to speak publicly about the case confirmed the kidnapping to Associated Press on...

US President Donald Trump is expected to discuss plans to demine the Strait of Hormuz with allies during next week’s Group of Seven summit in France, a senior US administration official said on Saturday, as mediators said an agreement to end the war was close. Britain and France, which are both members of the G7, have expressed interest in assisting with demining the critical waterway once the conflict is paused. The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on ground rules...

Iran’s state-run news agency said on Saturday funeral processions for its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be held in July, as mediators say an agreement to end the war is close. The funeral, burial, and farewell ceremonies for Khamenei would take place between July 4 and 9, Iran’s state-run television IRIB reported. Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the war that Israel and the United States launched against Iran in late February. He has since been replaced by his...

The letters spelling out US President Donald Trump’s name on the facade of the Kennedy Centre are now gone, the executive director of the performing arts venue said in a legal filing on Saturday with the court that had ordered the removal. A tarp continued to hang over the scaffolding constructed for workers to remove Trump’s name from the building, making it impossible to immediately detect whether the only words remaining on its white marble portico are “The John F. Kennedy Center for the...

President Donald Trump said late on Friday that a “swift and lethal kinetic” US strike has killed Tren de Aragua gang leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores. “At my direction, ‌the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nino Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organisations on Planet,” Trump said in a post ⁠on Truth Social on Friday evening, referring to Guerrero Flores by his...

A US federal judge who was disciplined after an investigation found that she had sex with a police officer in her chambers and then lied about it wrote a letter to a former law clerk apologising for her “harmful, offensive, and unprofessional behaviour”. An investigation initiated last year by the chief judge of the 11th Judicial Circuit found that US District Judge Eleanor Ross had sex in the courthouse with a high-ranking uniformed police officer within earshot of staff, attended a partisan...

A shooter who opened fire in the West Texas city of Midland died on Friday after a stand-off with police following an attack that left one person dead and at least nine others injured, city officials said. The suspect, 45-year-old Victor Mata Villarreal, had shot at police just days earlier during a chase and was already being sought by authorities when he began firing at officers and bystanders in Midland, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Police were called to the area after...

Even popes have travel delays. Lucky for Pope Leo, King Felipe VI offered a way out, and a way home. Leo’s Iberia charter, due to take him back to Rome after a week-long visit to Spain, was grounded by a technical problem Friday, prompting Spain’s king to offer his private jet instead. Felipe escorted Leo to his Falcon on the tarmac at the airport in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Leo and members of his delegation boarded the plane and took off, more than three hours after he was...

Catapulted by the market debut of his rocket company SpaceX, Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire. That level of wealth, all owned by just one person, was once unfathomable. Before Friday, the trillion dollar mark was reserved for measures like the GDP (or staggering debt) of a handful of major economies – and, in the last decade alone, the value of some of the biggest companies to ever trade on the stock market. Musk’s new title arrives amid a wider acceleration for the richest of...

A Toronto police officer was shot and killed Thursday by a suspect in the investigation into a shooting attack that damaged the facade of the US consulate in the Canadian city in March, police said. One 19-year-old suspect was in custody at a hospital in critical condition while officers searched for a second suspect, who was identified as 19-year-old Zara Jabbi and was considered armed and dangerous, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said at a news conference. “I urge you to turn yourself in,”...

Police blasted water cannons at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them during a second night of violence Wednesday over a brutal stabbing on a Belfast street. Demonstrators wearing masks tore bricks from the walls outside homes and smashed pavements with sledgehammers to toss at riot police. In one place, the unruly crowd used sections of a dismantled picket fence to take cover on the street. The clashes with police came several hours...