The annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been rescheduled after the original event on April 25 was suspended after a gunman attempted to access the venue, resulting in an exchange of fire with Secret Service agents.

The new event will be held on July 24 with “significantly enhanced safety measures and new access procedures”, Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), wrote in a letter to members.

US President Donald Trump said he would attend the rescheduled dinner, which will be held at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington DC.

The April shooting saw Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, among others, rushed off stage by Secret Service agents.

The suspect was subdued by agents on the scene, and one Secret Service agent was injured by shotgun fire, according to the Department of Justice.

Trump said the rescheduling of the event, which is meant to honour journalists and the freedom of the press, is a “sign of Strength and Fortitude”.

“This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling,” the president wrote on social media.

The WHCA spent the last several weeks raising funds to make sure that its members who purchased tickets to the April event do not have to pay again for the July event, which will be a “more intimate gathering”, Jiang said.

The association is also offering financial support to scholarship winners who wish to travel back to Washington DC for the dinner, Jiang said.

Trump said he has accepted an invitation to speak at the rescheduled event, adding that he’s not sure if he will “give the same rather nasty statements” that he had planned to in April.

“But we will soon find out,” the president said.

The April event – attended by the president, vice-president, members of Congress and Trump’s cabinet, and hundreds of journalists – was already underway when a gunman stormed through a security checkpoint.

The suspect was later identified as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, who police said was armed with the shotgun, a handgun and knives.

At a press conference immediately after the shooting, Trump said he would work to get the event rescheduled in the following 30 days.

The Waldorf Astoria, where Trump says the July event will take place, was first converted from an old post office into a luxury hotel by the Trump Organization more than a decade ago. The Trump family leased the building in 2012 and opened the Trump International Hotel there in 2016, before selling the lease in 2022.

[BBC]

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]