NAIROBI, Kenya — NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Taiwan accused Kenya on Wednesday of human rights abuses against its nationals attending a global oceans conference in Mombasa and blamed China for exerting pressure on the East African country.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said the scholars’ passports and mobile phones were confiscated and they were detained for more than 20 hours before being deported.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei said it “strongly protests and condemns China’s pressure on the Kenyan government to refuse Taiwanese scholars’ attendance at the international ocean academic exchange conference, as well as the barbaric acts of confiscating passports, mobile phones, and restricting personal and communication freedoms — actions that violate human rights and international norms.”
Kenya defended its decision to deport the Taiwanese nationals. Foreign Ministry Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oei said his country’s foreign policy “recognizes only one China.”
“Any person purporting to hold a Taiwanese passport would ordinarily not be allowed through our borders for lacking proper documentation and would not in any event be part of a formal state meeting convened by Kenya government,” Sing’oei added.
Kenya is hosting the annual oceans conference, which focuses on addressing critical ocean issues, including climate change, biodiversity and pollution.
Hundreds of delegates from Africa, the U.S., the European Union and climate-vulnerable Caribbean and Pacific island nations are taking part in the conference. Organizers have sought to position Africa — which is hosting the event for the first time — as a driving force in global ocean governance.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 as a result of a civil war. For decades, China has seen Taiwan as its own territory and said the island must come under its control, even under the use of force if necessary.
MANILA, Philippines — A leadership standoff in the Philippine Senate ended Wednesday with the removal of an ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte as leader of the chamber, which will soon start the impeachment trial of his daughter, incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte.
With 13 of 24 senators backing him, Sherwin Gatchalian, an ally of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was elected Senate president. His rival, Alan Peter Cayetano, a key supporter of Duterte, conceded defeat.
Both had claimed leadership of the Senate in the last two weeks based on contrasting legal interpretations of the quorum that led to their elections. An allied senator of Cayetano, however, defected Wednesday and gave his rivals’ bloc a clear majority.
“It’s a relief,” Jean Franco, a political professor at the state-run University of the Philippines said, but added that the country’s democracy, “with its weak and fragile institutions,” faces more headwinds.
The Senate infighting has been perceived as being swayed by the long-running political disputes between Marcos and Vice President Duterte. The country’s top two leaders were once allies but had a bitter falling out in a high-profile dispute that reflects the divisions and turbulent politics long plaguing the Asian democracy.
The vice president has blamed Marcos for the arrest of her father, Rodrigo Duterte, and his handover to the International Criminal Court in The Hague last year. The detained former president is scheduled to be tried by the global court starting in November for alleged crimes against humanity.
The charges stem from his brutal anti-drugs crackdowns, which left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead while he was in office. He has denied authorizing extra-judicial killings.
Cayetano captured the Senate presidency on May 11 after his Senate faction attained a slim majority when Sen. Ronald dela Rosa suddenly reappeared to support him after months of hiding.
Dela Rosa once served as Rodrigo Duterte’s national police chief and has been named by the ICC as a co-perpetrator of the former president in the widespread killings of drug suspects. After the ICC unsealed a warrant for dela Rosa’s arrest on May 11, he went back into hiding and remains at large.
Another Cayetano ally, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, was arrested and jailed on June 1 after being indicted on a plunder charge. He was accused of receiving huge kickbacks from a flood control project, a charge that he denies.
Control over the Senate is crucial. It’s expected to start the trial in July of the vice president, who was impeached by the House of Representatives last month over criminal charges, including unexplained wealth and publicly threatening to have Marcos assassinated.
The House is dominated by Marcos’ allies. The vice president denies the allegations, which her supporters say were fabricated to prevent her from pursuing an announced plan to seek the presidency when Marcos’ six-year term ends in 2028.
Midfielder Bernardo Silva has joined Real Madrid on a two-year deal, linking up with manager Jose Mourinho.
Silva, 31, left Manchester City at the end of last season, bringing an end to a trophy-laden nine-year spell.
Silva was heavily linked with a move to Spain, with Barcelona and Atletico Madrid also reportedly chasing his signature.
He becomes Real’s second signing of the summer as a free transfer after defender Marc Cucurella joined from Chelsea in a deal worth £52m.
Real did not win a trophy last season.
They finished eight points behind La Liga champions FC Barcelona and were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
Silva is at the World Cup with Portugal and is expected to play a pivotal role for his country.
Real are understood to be targeting departing Inter Milan defender Denzel Dumfries, while France defender Ibrahima Konate is set to join after leaving Liverpool.
Defender Antonio Rudiger this week signed a contract extension with Real until 2027.
OSLO, Norway — Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway has undergone a successful lung transplant at a hospital in Oslo, the country’s royal house said Wednesday.
The 52-year-old was diagnosed in 2018 with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive disease that damages and scars lung tissue. It can cause serious breathing problems, and there is no known cure.
Earlier this month, the royal house announced that she had been placed on a lung transplant list. On Wednesday, it said in a statement that she had received a transplant at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo.
The head of the hospital’s pulmonary department, Are Holm, said in the statement that “we are very pleased that everything has gone well so far.”
Like other transplant recipients, she will remain in the hospital for “several weeks,” Holm said. He added that “this is standard procedure to adjust medications, manage any complications and conduct rehabilitation.”
The royal house said Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the Norwegian throne, will “adjust his schedule” to be with his wife during that period. It said that it plans its next update on her health when she is discharged from the hospital.
Mette-Marit’s condition worsened over recent months, coinciding with a challenging period for her on other fronts.
Her eldest son, Marius Borg Høiby, was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday after being convicted of two counts of rape, which he denied, among other offenses. Høiby’s lawyers said he will appeal convictions for rape and domestic abuse.
Høiby is Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship and has no royal titles or official duties. But his high-profile six-week trial cast a shadow over the royal family.
While the trial played out, Mette-Marit separately faced renewed scrutiny over her connections with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That raised questions over her judgment, though she is not accused of any wrongdoing.
She apologized in February for the situation she put the royal family in, part of a broader apology for all those she had “disappointed.” In a television interview in March, she said she was manipulated and deceived by Epstein and felt unsafe during a 2013 encounter with him at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion.
The federal government on Tuesday asked a judge to halt the United States’ first reparations program that offered Black people in a small Illinois city $25,000 for 20th century race-based housing discrimination, joining an existing lawsuit that called the program unconstitutional.
The program, launched in Evanston, Illinois in 2021, is the first and only one of its kind in the U.S., allotting $20 million to Black residents — their direct descendants — who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969 and suffered housing discrimination because of city ordinances, policies or practices. Residents, regardless of race, who experienced discrimination due to the city’s policies or practices after 1969 also qualified.
The city has already distributed over $7 million — using revenue from a local tax on legal marijuana sales — to hundreds of people in $25,000 increments to be used for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city.
In this Nov. 25, 2019 file photo, Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, 5th Ward, proposes a reparations fund during a City Council meeting in Evanston, lll. AP
The U.S. Department of Justice called the program “racially discriminatory” in a court filing Tuesday, saying that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it allotted different benefits on the basis of race.
“There are sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct resources to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods. Simply handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
Approximately 14% of the city’s roughly 76,000 residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census, with 11% identifying as more than one race. A majority of the city’s Black residents live in the city’s Fifth and Second Wards, which are historically low-income areas, according to a 2024 study on the reparations program.
Reparations have long been a hot topic
Reparations has been a hot-button issue across the country since the abolition of slavery in 1865. But it has become especially polarizing in recent years after momentum grew for similar programs across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in 2020. At least five states, including California, New York and Maryland, and more than a dozen cities, including Boston, Detroit and Philadelphia, have created have created task forces or commissions to study slavery reparations. But none have gone as far as Evanston to actually distribute resources.
Robin Rue Simmons, who pioneered the program in Evanston and now leads the committee that presides over the funds, said that the lawsuit and the federal government’s support is a “fear tactic” aimed at dissuading other governments from pursuing similar programs.
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Michael Bekesha, one of the attorneys who initially sued the City of Evanston on behalf of six plaintiffs in May 2024, said in an interview that applicants weren’t required to demonstrate that they were specifically harmed by the City of Evanston, leaving race as the only criteria. His clients would all be eligible for the program if they were Black, he said.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for Civil Rights, speaks with reporters after former Attorney General Pam Bondi sat for a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee deposition about the Jeffrey Epstein files, in Rayburn building on Friday, May 29, 2026. ZUMAPRESS.com
Bekesha said Evanston’s program is different from those in the past, pointing to the program that compensated Japanese people after the U.S. government imprisoned over 100,000 people in internment camps during World War II, or the people in Chicago who were paid after being tortured by the city’s police department between the 1970s and the early 1990s.
“Reparations programs aren’t new, but they’ve always been lawful, they’ve always been connected to specific harms, specific injuries suffered by specific individuals,” Bekesha said. “And here in Evanston, there is no connection between the individuals receiving the money and any action taken by the city of Evanston at any point.”
Simmons vehemently disputed the idea that the program wasn’t tailored to specific historical policies. She said redlining policies across the city between 1919 and 1969 harmed Black communities for generations, mirroring a prevalent practice nationwide wherein banks and property owners wouldn’t sell or rent to Black families in areas with more wealth. Those policies, she said, often limited access to high-paying jobs, healthcare and education.
Robin Rue Simmons, alderwoman of Evanston’s 5th Ward poses for a portrait holding a photograph of her mother, aunt and grandmother in her home in Evanston, Ill., Friday, April 9, 2021. AP
“Evanston has set a new precedent. It has shown that racial reparations are possible,” Simmons said.
Conservatives reject race-based reparations
The Trump administration’s move to halt the program is in lockstep with a broader conservative rejection of race-based reparations, and it is a decisive shift from former President Joe Biden’s broad support of a congressional inquiry into ways to address the government’s long history of racial subjugation.
It is also a departure from prevailing attitudes among international governing bodies like the United Nations, which recently adopted a resolution that urged countries to implement reparations for the trafficking of Africans into slavery around the world. The U.S. was one of three countries that rejected the measure, with the United Kingdom and all 27 European Union countries abstaining from the vote.
