World
Congolese demonstrators burn US, Belgian flags as tensions flare
Police in the Democratic Republic of the Congo fired tear gas on Monday to disperse protesters who burned tires and U.S. and Belgian flags near Western embassies and U.N. offices in the capital Kinshasa, angry about insecurity in eastern Congo.
The protesters, seizing on a new tactic by targeting embassies, say the West supports neighboring Rwanda, which is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebellion whose advance is threatening the strategic city of Goma in the east.
Rwanda has denied the accusations. Congo, Western governments including the United States and Belgium, and a United Nations expert group say the rebel group benefits from Rwandan support.
COLLISION BETWEEN TRUCK, BUS KILLS AT LEAST 18 IN CONGOLESE CAPITAL
Despite security being stepped up after U.N. staff and vehicles were attacked on Saturday, groups of protesters gathered at the U.S. and French embassies and the offices of the United Nations mission in Congo known as MONUSCO.
Some threw stones, attempting to break the surveillance cameras at one of the United States embassy offices, while others chanted “Leave our country, we don’t want your hypocrisy”.
Demonstrators protest against Western partnerships outside MONUSCO mission headquarters in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on Feb. 12, 2024. (REUTERS/Justin Makangara)
“The Westerners are behind the looting of our country, Rwanda doesn’t work alone, so they must leave our country,” said Pepin Mbindu, who joined the protest.
Onlookers cheered as one demonstrator removed the EU flag from the entrance of a large hotel in central Kinshasa, according to videos shared on X. Reuters has not authenticated the video.
“The international community remains silent while Congolese are being killed; they finance Rwanda,” said Fabrice Malumba, a motorcycle driver participating in the demonstration in front of the United States embassy.
Police fired tear gas and chased protesters.
Congo’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Christophe Lutundula met ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions in Kinshasa on Sunday. He said security measures would be taken to protect their representations.
“As you can see, we are ensuring the security of the partner embassies of the Democratic Republic of Congo in accordance with the Vienna Convention,” General Blaise Mbula Kilimba Limba, Kinshasa police chief, told Reuters.
Decades of conflicts in eastern Congo between myriad rival armed groups over land and resources and brutal attacks on civilians have killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 7 million.
Congo is the world’s top supplier of cobalt and Africa’s top copper producer.
World
Trailer for Ivo M. Ferreira’s Thriller ‘Projecto Global’ Debuts Ahead of Rotterdam Festival Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)
Ivo M. Ferreira‘s thriller “Projecto Global,” which has its world premiere in the Big Screen Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, has debuted its trailer (below).
The world sales rights are held by The Match Factory.
The film is set in Lisbon in the 1980s. The Carnation Revolution, which heralded Portugual’s transition to democracy, and the euphoria of freedom belong to the past. The country faces turbulent times: factories close, workers raise barricades, and politics dominates every street corner.
As social tensions deepen, the far-left armed group FP25 emerges. Its members follow a path of no return, living underground lives built on bank robberies, attacks, friendship, family, and love — all under the perpetual threat of prison or death.
As they abandon everything and everyone except each other, they begin to lose their own identities, while an officer fighting against them faces a moral dilemma of his own.
Ferreira comments: “ ‘Projecto Global’ speaks of a dream of equality from which one is forced to awaken, and of the difficulty of accepting defeat when ideas collide with reality – made up of compromises, interests, pettiness, and renunciations. We swing between the euphoria of wanting to change the world and creeping despair.”
The cast is led by Jani Zhao, Rodrigo Tomás and José Pimentão. The screenplay is by Ferreira and Hélder Beja. The producers are Luís Urbano, Sandro Aguilar and Donato Rotunno. The lead production company is O Som E A Fúria. The film is co-produced by Tarantula.
In 1998, Ferreira’s short film “O que foi” was released, and his first feature film, “Em Volta,” came out in 2002. In 2006, he received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to attend a screenplay writing course at the London International Film School, which led him to write and direct “Águas Mil,” screened at several film festivals in 2009.
In 2010, he released “The Foreigner and Vai com o Vento.” In 2016, he wrote and directed “Letters From War,” a feature film based on the book by António Lobo Antunes, which premiered in competition at the Berlinale. His next film, “Empire Hotel,” shot in Macau, was released in 2018.
World
Iranian drone swarms pose ‘credible threat’ to USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group, defense expert says
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U.S. military assets headed to the Middle East could face a serious threat from Iranian drone swarms as reports emerge that Iran’s supreme leader has gone underground, according to a leading military drone expert.
Cameron Chell, CEO and co-founder of Draganfly, warned that Iran’s growing reliance on low-cost unmanned systems poses a credible danger to high-value U.S. naval assets, including the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group.
“Iran’s drone capabilities are worth well into the tens of millions of dollars,” Chell told Fox News Digital.
“By pairing low-cost warheads with inexpensive delivery platforms, essentially remotely piloted aircraft, Iran has developed an effective asymmetric threat against highly sophisticated military systems.”
TRUMP HAS THREE STRIKE OPTIONS THAT WOULD AID THE PROTESTERS AND DEVASTATE IRAN
In this handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy, a RIM-7P NATO Sea Sparrow Missile launches from the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) during a stream raid shooting exercise on Aug. 13, 2007, at sea. (M. Jeremie Yoder/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
Chell said Iran can launch large numbers of relatively unsophisticated drones directly at naval vessels, creating saturation attacks that could overwhelm traditional defenses.
“If hundreds are launched in a short period of time, some are almost certain to get through,” Chell said.
“Modern defense systems were not originally designed to counter that kind of saturation attack. For U.S. surface vessels operating near Iran, warships are prime targets.”
The warning comes as a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News Digital that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group had not yet crossed into U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility in the Indian Ocean.
“It is close, but technically not in CENTCOM yet,” the source said. This would indicate the carrier strike group is not yet in a position to strike Iran.
U.S. officials say Washington is reinforcing its military posture in response to growing instability inside Iran, boosting its presence by air, land and sea, while closely monitoring developments in Syria.
IRAN SHUTS DOWN AIRSPACE, FOREIGN OFFICIALS WARN AGAINST TRAVEL TO ISRAEL
An American F-15EX in action. (U.S. Air Force)
A squadron of F-15 fighter jets has deployed to the region, and C-17 aircraft carrying heavy equipment have arrived.
Once the aircraft carrier strike group enters the CENTCOM area of operations, which should be soon, it will still take several days before the strike is fully on station.
Chell noted that U.S. and allied militaries are rapidly developing defenses but uncertainty over new capabilities on the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier groups for managing multiple Iranian drones flying in formation remains. He emphasized that Iran’s drone fleet is a concern.
“These drones give Iran a very credible way to threaten surface vessels,” he said. “U.S. assets in the region are large, slow-moving and easily identifiable on radar, which makes them targetable.”
“Iran’s strength lies instead in these low-cost, high-volume drone systems—particularly one-way strike drones designed to fly into a target and detonate.”
Chell explained that Iran gained an early advantage in what are known as Category One and Category Two drone systems—low-cost platforms that can be produced in large numbers and used effectively in asymmetric warfare.
IRAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARD COMMANDER SAYS REGIME HAS ‘FINGER ON THE TRIGGER’ AS US WARSHIPS HEAD TO MIDDLE EAST
Iranian opposition group exposed a top-secret drone base in the country. It is said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei oversees the operation. (Getty Images/NCRI)
“Category Three systems are a completely different matter,” he said. “In that area, Iran is decades behind the United States.”
The U.S. military buildup coincides with widespread unrest inside Iran. Protests erupted Dec. 28 amid mounting public discontent.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said the casualty figures had reached 5,459 as of Sunday, with 17,031 cases under investigation.
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Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been reported to have moved into a fortified underground shelter in Tehran after senior officials assessed an increased risk of a potential U.S. strike, according to reports.
President Donald Trump also addressed the deployment on Jan. 21, telling reporters, “We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens. We have a big force going towards Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely.”
World
Trump administration, MAGA allies spread misinformation on Pretti killing
US President Donald Trump’s administration and his (Make America Great Again) MAGA allies have disseminated a flurry of misinformation about the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in the US city of Minneapolis.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Sunday claimed that Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun”, and that agents had “attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted”.
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Video footage shot by bystanders shows Pretti filming a group of US Border Patrol agents on Saturday before stepping in to defend a woman who was shoved to the ground by one agent.
In footage shared by US-based Drop Site news, Pretti can be seen trying to help the woman before at least five agents tackle him to the ground and shoot him multiple times after a scuffle on the icy road.
Analysis of footage by US media and Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, shows that Pretti’s gun had already been confiscated by an agent before he was shot dead.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara later told reporters that Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit, and that his only criminal history was a few traffic tickets.
Despite the video evidence, Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino told a news conference that Pretti’s gun showed that he “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement”.
Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security, claimed without evidence that Pretti was an “assassin” who tried to “murder federal agents”, while DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said he had “violently” resisted arrest.
Popular right-wing influencers amplified the Trump administration’s claims on X.
The MAGA-allied account “Libs of TikTok” labelled Pretti a “lunatic” and an “assassin”.
Right-wing influencer Alexander Muse told his 681,000 followers that Pretti was “expecting a firefight at a distance” with federal agents despite there being no evidence that he ever took out or brandished his gun.
Some right-wing influencers went even further than echoing the Trump administration’s narrative, piling blatant misinformation on top of officials’ baseless accusations.
Trump ally Nick Sorter, who has 1.4 million followers on X, falsely claimed that Pretti, a US citizen, was an “illegal alien” who was “armed with a gun and attempted to PULL IT on agents as he was being apprehended”.
Conservative podcaster Jesse Kelly smeared Pretti as a “soldier for the communist revolution” who had “died fighting in a war” in an X post that included a photo of Pretti on a hike.
MAGA-affiliated accounts also shared digitally altered images purporting to be pictures of Pretti dressed in female clothing.
In a statement, Pretti’s parents said their son was a “kindhearted soul” and that the administration’s “sickening lies” about him were “reprehensible and disgusting”.
Claims that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” and scrutiny of his political beliefs mirror similar accusations levelled at Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was also fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Trump administration officials also described Good as a “terrorist” and claimed that she was trying to run over an immigration officer with her vehicle despite video evidence casting doubt on those claims.
Officials have also spread misleading information seemingly aimed at discrediting protests against Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown more generally.
The White House last week shared an image of an arrested activist, Nekima Levy Armstrong, that had been altered with artificial intelligence to make her look emotionally distressed.
Some Republicans have pushed back on the narrative pushed around Pretti’s death, including Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who said on X that “carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right”.
The National Rifle Association, a pro-gun lobby group, also rejected a suggestion by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor that approaching a law enforcement officer with a gun could be grounds for being shot.
Minnesota law enforcement officials have also contested statements by Trump administration officials, including a claim by Vice President JD Vance that local authorities refused to assist their federal counterparts in the investigation into Pretti’s killing.
The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said on Sunday that it was state authorities who were being obstructed, stating in a statement on X that its officers had been denied access to the crime scene by the DHS.
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