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 He has since been replaced by his...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...