Thousands of Kenyans have marched through central Nairobi to demand that the government declare a national crisis over rising cases of femicide and child disappearances.

The march, composed mostly of women, was organised on Monday by the End Femicide movement alongside women’s rights, human rights, and child protection groups. It was one of the largest demonstrations against gender-based violence the Kenyan capital has seen in months, and brought traffic to a standstill across parts of the city’s central business district.

The protest organisers used the brutal murder of a gospel singer, Rachel Wandeto, to rally support.

Wandeto was doused with petrol and set on fire by three men as she walked home in Nairobi on May 16. She suffered burns to over 85 percent of her body and died two days later at Kenyatta National Hospital.

The lobby groups have given the Kenyan government a 40-day ultimatum to declare gender-based violence a national crisis, or face nationwide protests.

Participants dressed in white carried red roses and gathered around symbolic coffins covered in flower petals in a tribute to the victims. A large wall listing the names of the dead stood at the centre of the gathering beneath the message “Stop Femicide in Kenya”.

Protesters carried placards reading “Stop Killing Women,” “Enough is Enough,” and “End Pedicide”.

Former Chief Justice David Maraga joined the march, lending his voice to calls for stronger government action.

The ultimatum to the government demanding action, issued on May 21, came as the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya reports receiving roughly 70 gender-based violence cases every week across its three offices in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu.

(Aljazeera)

The United States Department of Defense has barred journalists from its press office, the latest move by the Pentagon to restrict media access since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said on Monday that the administration had re-designated the office as a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility” due to its use by speechwriters with access to classified government information.

“These speechwriters routinely handle classified material and require SIPRNet access,” Valdez said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera, referring to the secure computer network used by the Pentagon to share classified information.

“As a result, journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space. Access to the office of the Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and to the Press Secretary remains available by appointment only,” Valdez added, using the Trump administration’s preferred title for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Washington Post first reported the change.

The move follows a slew of steps by the Trump administration to curtail the ability of US media outlets to report on the military and other areas of the government.

In March, the Defense Department said it would no longer allow media outlets to maintain offices at the Pentagon after a judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit challenging the imposition of new rules for obtaining press credentials.

The Pentagon also announced that journalists would require an official escort while inside the complex, a policy that The New York Times is seeking to overturn in a separate lawsuit filed in May.

The National Press Club, the main professional organisation for journalists in the US, condemned the latest restrictions as a “troubling escalation” in the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail media scrutiny of the Pentagon.

“Independent reporting on the US military is not optional,” National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr said in a statement.

“When journalists are pushed farther from the institutions they cover, the American people are left with less information, less transparency, and less oversight. Any effort to restrict that access should alarm everyone who values a free and informed society.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy organisation, also criticised the move.

“It’s rare for anything other than disingenuous spin and outright lies to come out of the Pentagon’s press office these days, so it’s hard to imagine what basis they have to call the space classified,” Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the organisation, told Al Jazeera.

“The only thing sensitive or confidential about the information released by Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is that it’s not true.”

[Aljazeera]

Marcia Lucas, the Oscar-winning editor of the original Star Wars film, has died aged 80.

Lucas, who was married to Star Wars creator George Lucas during the making of the first three films, was regarded as a pivotal creative force behind the space saga’s early success, imbuing the original series with emotional depth and narrative clarity.

She died from metastatic cancer at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, on Wednesday surrounded by loved ones, according to her family.

“Marcia was a force,” her family said in a statement to US media on Friday. “A true trailblazer for women in film and one of the most influential editors in cinematic history; she helped redefine what film editing could be.”

Lucas won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for 1977’s Star Wars – later renamed A New Hope – alongside editors Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch.

Although her contributions largely took place behind the scenes, her role in shaping the film’s emotional heart and narrative structure has been widely recognised in the decades since its release.

George Lucas credited her with helping make sense of the vast amount of footage filmed for the climactic Death Star battle sequence.

“It was extremely complex and we had 40,000 feet of dialogue footage of pilots saying this and that,” he told Rolling Stone shortly after the film’s release

“Nobody really has ever tried to interweave an actual plot story into a dogfight, and we were trying to do that.”

Born Marcia Griffin in Modesto, California, in 1945, she began her career as a film librarian before becoming one of Hollywood’s most respected editors.

After marrying George Lucas in 1969, she worked on several of his early films, including THX 1138 and American Graffiti – earning an Oscar nomination for the latter.

She also collaborated with director Martin Scorsese on a string of his acclaimed 1970s films including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver and New York, New York.

Lucas later returned to the Star Wars franchise, working on The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983.

She and George Lucas adopted a daughter, Amanda, in 1981. The couple divorced in 1983 after 14 years of marriage.

She later married Tom Rodrigues, a production manager at Skywalker Ranch, with whom she had a second daughter, Amy.

[BBC]