Author: Grace Thompson

Brazil’s Supreme Court was evacuated after two nearby explosions Wednesday night that left one dead in a square near Congress and the presidential palace, police said, stirring security concerns shortly before the country hosts the G20 summit. The blasts come five days before global leaders from the Group of 20 major economies meet in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a state visit to Brasilia by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The first explosion happened Wednesday in a parking lot near the court building. The Supreme Court justices had just ended a plenary session and were quickly evacuated safely, the court said in a statement. Federal police said they had deployed a bomb squad to the square in the heart of the Brazilian capital to investigate the blasts. The country’s solicitor gene...

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean authorities indicted an American livestreamer known for his offensive stunts abroad, accusing him of causing a “commotion” at a convenience store, prosecutors said Wednesday. Ramsey Khalid Ismael, 24, better known by his online alias, Johnny Somali, is a livestreamer who hurls provocative and offensive insults while he travels abroad, including in U.S. allies South Korea and Japan . A spokesperson for the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office told reporters Wednesday that Somali will face trial and is also banned from leaving the country. He is not detained, however, the spokesperson's office said. South Korea often imposes travel bans when there’s a flight risk. Somali, whose streams often involve desecrating monuments a...

PARIS — Demonstrations of a few dozen to several hundred people erupted at multiple locations across Paris on Wednesday night to protest a pro-Israel gala that had included Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as the evening’s featured speaker. Smotrich canceled his trip to France to speak at the gala, a spokesperson for his party, Tzionot Datit, or Religious Zionism, told NBC News. In the streets near Paris’ Saint Lazare station, dozens of demonstrators had gathered waving Palestinian flags and lighting flares. By about 8 p.m., tear gas appeared to have been deployed against the crowd, with police in shields and riot gear pushing up against the protesters. Smotrich is known for his incendiary statements and lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. On ...

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, has said that he believes women should not serve in combat and that he wants to see the military purged of “woke” officials who support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Hegseth, 44, a Fox News host, has an extensive history of eyebrow-raising commentary, especially when it comes to military matters he’d oversee should he be confirmed to join Trump’s second Cabinet and become sixth in line to the presidency. Hegseth has long maintained a close relationship with Trump. The pair have frequently appeared together in photographs on social media and on Fox’s airwaves. Hegseth started at Fox News in 2014 as an on-air pundit, working his way up to co-hosting the weekend edition of “Fox ...

President-elect Donald Trump used different strategies to tackle the flow of migration to the U.S. during his first term, and that will increase in his second, according to an adviser to the incoming president and former administration official. “There will be a lot of emphasis on controlling the border and working with Central American and South American countries to do so,” Carlos Trujillo, who was ambassador to the Organization of American States in the first Trump term, said in an interview. Border crossings hit record numbers in the first three years of the Biden administration after pandemic-era restrictions were lifted. Over the summer, the administration put in place strict asylum restrictions that led to an over 50% drop in the daily number of people encountere...

A teenager is in critical condition in a British Columbia children’s hospital, sick with Canada’s first presumptive human case of avian influenza. “This was a healthy teenager prior to this, so no underlying conditions,” said provincial health officer Bonnie Henry in a news conference on Tuesday. “It just reminds us that in young people this is a virus that can progress and cause quite severe illness and the deterioration that I mentioned was quite rapid.” British Columbia health officials said on Saturday the province had detected Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu in a teenager. Henry said the province is still identifying the exact strain, but assumes the case is H5N1. The World Health Organization says H5N1’s risk to humans is low because there is no evidence o...

Tufts University denied Tuesday that it was preventing its students from interning in the office of Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., after he made remarks about transgender athletes following last week’s election. The Boston-area university’s denial followed a reported claim by one of its professors that the political science department would no longer facilitate internships at Moulton’s office. “We have reached out to Congressman Moulton’s office to clarify that we have not — and will not — limit internship opportunities with his office,” the university said in a statement. “We remain committed to fostering an inclusive environment that values diverse perspectives, and our Career Center will continue to provide students with a wide range of employment opportunities across the political a...

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump returned to Washington on Wednesday — entering the White House for the first time since he was voted out of office — to meet with President Joe Biden for a ceremony meant to signal the peaceful transfer of power. The two men appeared briefly for photos, with Biden speaking first and calling for a smooth transition. Trump responded that politics "is tough" but thanked the president for a smooth transition. “You’re welcome,” Biden responded. They did not respond to shouted questions from reporters. Trump and Biden next met privately for a “substantive” sit-down that lasted more than 90 minutes, during which they dived into a variety of pressing foreign and domestic policy issues. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said they discu...

President-elect Donald Trump ’s pick for director of national intelligence, former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard , has been accused of amplifying Russian propaganda and would come to the job having never worked in the intelligence world or served on a congressional intelligence committee. Gabbard, who served in the Hawaii Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq with a medical unit, has long criticized U.S. foreign policy as imperial and heavy-handed. She also has sharply criticized Trump in the past over his approach to the Middle East during his first presidential term, portraying him as dangerous. As director of national intelligence, a position created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Gabbard would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy. The announcement reinforces the closeness Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing. Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, according to two people familiar with the transition who have spent time at the resort over the past week. The sources said Musk’s near-constant presence ...