Foreign News
Trump says US to boycott South Africa G20 summit over white ‘genocide’
President Donald Trump has said no United States officials will attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.
Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa”.
“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, reiterating claims that have been rejected by authorities in South Africa.
“No US Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the Black-majority country, a claim rejected by South Africa’s government and top Afrikaner officials.
Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend the summit – which will see the heads of states from the world’s leading and emerging economies gather in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23 – as he also called for South Africa to be thrown out of the G20.
US Vice President JD Vance had been expected to attend the meeting in place of the president. But a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press news agency that he will no longer travel to South Africa.
Tensions first arose between the US and South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law in January seeking to address land ownership disparities, which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in the hands of the white minority more than three decades after the end of apartheid.
[Aljazeera]
A newly married couple were killed when a gas cylinder exploded at a house in Islamabad where they were sleeping after their wedding party, police have said.
A further six people – including wedding guests and family members – who were staying there also died in the blast. More than a dozen people were injured.
The explosion took place at 07:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Sunday, causing the roof to collapse.
Parts of the walls were blown away, leaving piles of bricks, large concrete slabs and furniture strewn across the floor. Injured people were trapped under the rubble and had to be carried out on stretchers by rescue workers.
(BBC)
Rescue workers are racing to find dozens of people still missing following a landslide at a landfill site in the central Philippines that occurred earlier this week, an official has said.
Mayor Nestor Archival said on Saturday that signs of life had been detected at the site in Cebu City, two days after the incident.
Four people have been confirmed dead so far, Archival said, while 12 others have been taken to hospital.
Conditions for emergency services working at the site were challenging, the mayor added, with unstable debris posing a hazard and crew waiting for better equipment to arrive.
The privately-owned Binaliw landfill collapsed on Thursday while 110 workers were on site, officials said.
Archival said in a Facebook post on Saturday morning: “Authorities confirmed the presence of detected signs of life in specific areas, requiring continued careful excavation and the deployment of a more advanced 50-ton crane.”
Relatives of those missing have been waiting anxiously for any news of their whereabouts. More than 30 people, all workers at the landfill, are thought to be missing.
“We are just hoping that we can get someone alive… We are racing against time, that’s why our deployment is 24/7,” Cebu City councillor Dave Tumulak, chairman of the city’s disaster council, told news agency AFP.
Jerahmey Espinoza, whose husband is missing, told news agency Reuters at the site on Saturday: “They haven’t seen him or located him ever since the disaster happened. We’re still hopeful that he’s alive.”
The cause of the collapse remains unclear, but Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera previously said it was likely the result of poor waste management practices.
Operators had been cutting into the mountain, digging the soil out and then piling garbage to form another mountain of waste, Garganera told local newspaper The Freeman on Friday.
The Binaliw landfill covers an area of about 15 hectares (37 acres).
Landfills are common in major Philippine cities like Cebu, which is the trading centre and transportation gateway of the Visayas, the archipelago nation’s central islands.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.
Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.
But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.
Trump has said he will unleash the South American nation’s oil after US forces seized its leader Nicolas Maduro in a 3 January raid on its capital.
“One of the things the United States gets out of this will be even lower energy prices,” Trump said in Friday’s meeting at the White House.
But the oil bosses present expressed caution.
Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”
“Today it’s uninvestable.”
Venezuela has had a complicated relationship with international oil firms since oil was discovered in its territory more than 100 years ago.
Chevron is the last remaining major American oil firm still operating in the country.
A handful of companies from other countries, including Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni, both of which were represented at the White House meeting, are also active.
Trump said his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate.
“You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela,” he said.
The White House has said it is working to “selectively” roll back US sanctions that have restricted sales of Venezuelan oil.
Officials say they have been coordinating with interim authorities in the country, which is currently led by Maduro’s former second-in-command, Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez.
But they have also made clear they intend to exert control over the sales, as a way to maintain leverage over Rodríguez’s government.
The US this week has seized several oil tankers carrying sanctioned crude. American officials have said they are working to set up a sales process, which would deposit money raised into US-controlled accounts.
“We are open for business,” Trump said.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to prohibit US courts from seizing revenue that the US collects from Venezuelan oil and holds in American Treasury accounts.
Any court attempt to access those funds would interfere with US foreign relations and international goodwill, the executive order states.
“President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical US efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet about the order.
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