World News

March 30 (Reuters) – The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said a peacekeeper was killed when a projectile exploded at one of its positions near the southern Lebanese village of Adchit al-Qusayr on Sunday.

Another peacekeeper was critically injured, it said in a statement early on Monday.

“We do not know the origin of the projectile. We have launched an investigation to determine all of the circumstances,” UNIFIL added.

UNIFIL is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel – an area that is at the heart of clashes between Israeli troops and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters.

The mission, which will be halted at the end of 2026, has been sporadically caught in the crosshairs of both Israel and Hezbollah over the last couple of years. Recent incidents underscored the risks.

On March 6, Ghana’s armed forces said the headquarters of its U.N. peacekeeping battalion in Lebanon was hit by missile attacks, leaving two soldiers critically injured.

Israel’s military later acknowledged that its tank fire had hit a U.N. position in southern Lebanon that day, wounding the Ghanaian peacekeepers.

The military said its troops had responded to anti-tank missile fire from Hezbollah, which had moderately wounded two of its soldiers.

“Once again, we call on all actors to uphold their obligations under international law and to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property at all times, including by refraining from actions that may put peacekeepers in danger,” UNIFIL said.

Lebanon was pulled into the war in the Middle East when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Tehran, two days after Iran was attacked by Israel and the United States. Hezbollah’s attack prompted a new Israeli offensive against the group.

(Reporting by Hatem Maher and Muhammad Al Gebaly; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Jonathan Oatis)

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Violence erupted in the central Haitian town of Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite early Sunday morning as a powerful gang warred with a vigilante group, regional officials confirmed to The Associated Press.

The rampage from the gang Gran Grif left bloodied bodies scattered across the streets of the neighborhood of Jean-Denis, videos show. Gangs set fire to houses and left civilians reeling.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were slain by the gang. The massacre is just the latest bloodshed in a nation that has been left reeling by spiraling gang warfare for five years following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Around 2023, vigilante groups began to emerge in the Caribbean nation to strike back against gangs sucking the life from Haiti. The wave of brutal vigilante justice has made the conflict in Haiti even more complicated at the same time as international forces have sought to pacify the country.

Vigilante groups often close off neighborhoods, stone and chop off the limbs of suspected gangster, behead them and set them afire, sometimes while they are still alive.

Meanwhile, the Gran Grif gang has continues to sow terror in the Artibonite region of Haiti, where Petite-Rivière de l’Artibonite is located. The Gran Grif gang was among a number of Haitian gangs to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration last year.

According to the U.N., it’s the largest gang in the region, responsible for 80% of civilian deaths there. It has massacred and raped civilians, including a minor, forced thousands of people to flee their homes and dismembered people, the organization said.

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March 30 (Reuters) – Israel’s parliament approved the 2026 state budget, a Knesset spokesperson said in a statement early on Monday, allowing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to head off early elections as his country’s joint war with the U.S. on Iran continues.

The approval of the defence-heavy 699-billion shekel budget comes a month into the war, with Israel also fighting against Hezbollah in Lebanon and its cost to the economy standing at about $1.6 billion a week.

Failure to approve the budget would have likely triggered a snap election within 90 days, which opinion polls so far have predicted Netanyahu would lose.

The election is due in late October though a date has yet to be set. Netanyahu has said it could be held in September.

The budget’s last-minute passage removes a key overhang for Israel’s financial markets and economy, which has been operating since the start of the year on a pro-rated 2025 budget.

By adding another 32 billion shekels for defence, the budget deficit target was raised to some 5% of gross domestic product.

This has raised the prospects of inflationary effects that will also continue to prevent a return to responsible fiscal policies while preventing further interest rate reductions.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Jonathan Oatis)

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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is expanding its powers to track, raid and deport migrants to “return hubs ″ in third countries in Africa and elsewhere, quietly adopting tactics of the Trump administration that have drawn public criticism across the 27-nation bloc.

The EU continues to tighten migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, has said the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, when about 1 million people arrived to seek asylum.

“We have learnt the lessons of the past. And today, we are better equipped,” von der Leyen has said. The new policies, known as the Pact on Migration and Asylum, go into effect on June 12.

Far-right parties in Europe have praised the deportation policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and called for the EU to adopt a similar approach. Human rights groups warn that authorities are already illegally pushing back migrants at EU borders and hollowing out their legal protections.

The EU already spends millions of dollars to deter migrants before they reach its shores, and has supported tens of thousands of Africans returning home, voluntarily or by force.

What’s envisioned now is an expansion of what Italy has created under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her “tough on migration” stance. It operates two migrant detention centers for rejected asylum-seekers in Albania. One currently holds at least 90 migrants, said lawmaker Rachele Scarpa, who said she found people confused and scared during a recent visit.

In addition, Meloni’s Cabinet has approved an anti-immigration package that would allow the navy to halt vessels in international waters for up to six months if they are deemed a threat to public order; return intercepted migrants to countries of origin or third countries; and speed up the deportation of foreign nationals convicted of crimes.

An “informal group” of EU nations including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece are pursuing deportation center agreements, said Bernd Parusel, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies.

Kenya is one country they are speaking with, said a Dutch member of the European Parliament, Tineke Strik. Whether consciously or not, the plan is similar to Trump’s deals with nations like El Salvador to take in deported migrants, she said.

Other countries are exploring similar ideas. Sweden’s migration minister has said the conservative ruling coalition approves setting up hubs outside Europe, especially for Afghan and Syrian asylum-seekers.

During the Winter Olympics in Italy, protests erupted over the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the U.S. delegation. But others in Europe have praised ICE’s actions and called for setting up deportation-focused police units.

The EU border service Frontex began sending officers along on raids with Belgium’s police in 2024 to detain and deport migrants. It is not clear whether it is doing this in other countries.

The European Commission has declined requests to take a position on U.S. federal immigration policies.

In Britain, which left the EU several years ago, the center-left Labour Party government has made curbing unauthorized immigration a key focus.

The Home Office in February said almost 60,000 people had been deported since the government was elected in July 2024. It said 9,000 arrests were made of people working without permission in 2025, up by more than half from the year before.

Under the principle of non-refoulement in EU and international law, a person cannot be returned to a country where they would face persecution.

But European immigration enforcement tactics include so-called pushbacks, where people trying to cross into the EU are forced back across a border without access to asylum procedures.

Authorities in Europe carry out an average of 221 pushbacks a day, according to a February report by a group of humanitarian organizations. More than 80,000 pushbacks were recorded in 2025, the report said, mostly in Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia.

“Men, women and children — including individuals in critical medical condition — are routinely subjected to beatings, attacks by police dogs, forced stripping, forced river crossings and theft of personal belongings,” according to the report.

European agents are brutalizing migrants just like in the U.S., said Flor Didden, migration policy expert at the Belgian human rights group 11.11.11. Some, like in Greece, even wear masks.

“The images are shocking and the outrage is justified,” he said of the U.S. “But where is that same moral clarity when European border authorities abuse, rob and let people die?”

The groups also have recorded an expansion of surveillance technology like drones, thermal cameras and satellites to monitor people on the move.

Other human rights groups warn of a weakening of legal protections.

The EU’s new migration regulations allow for more police raids in private homes and public spaces and more use of surveillance and racial profiling, said a letter to EU institutions in February from 88 nonprofit groups including the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.

“We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe,” said the platform’s director, Michele LeVoy.

Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU migration advocate for Amnesty International, said Europe retains more protections for vulnerable migrants than the United States but shares much of the political momentum toward harsher policies.

“There’s a level of institutions’ and courts’ independence and human rights compliance in Europe that you can’t disregard,” she said. “But the fundamental political impulse is the same, and I worry that the human consequences will be the same.”

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Zampano reported from Rome. Associated Press writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Jill Lawless in London, Paolo Santalucia in Rome, Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

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By Andrew Chung

March 29 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s challenge to the longstanding rule that anyone born in the United States, with only narrow exceptions, is automatically a citizen echoes a similar dispute that took place on the shores of San Francisco more than a century ago. 

In the late 19th century, amid a wave of fervent anti-Chinese sentiment, the U.S. government sought to prevent a young man named Wong Kim Ark from re-entering the country upon returning by steamship from a trip to his parents’ homeland of China, contending that, despite being born in the United States, he was not a citizen. 

On March 28, 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, recognizing that the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment grants citizenship by birth on U.S. soil, including to those like Wong whose parents were foreign nationals.

A DESCENDANT WORRIES

Now his great-grandson, a San Francisco area resident, worries that the principle enshrined by his ancestor’s case may be in peril. 

“Wong Kim Ark knew he was an American. And he demanded that his citizenship be recognized. He was willing to stand up,” Norman Wong, 76, said in an interview. “Wong Kim Ark didn’t make the rule. He affirmed the rule.”

That 128-year-old understanding will be contested again at the Supreme Court on Wednesday when the justices hear arguments over the legality of Trump’s executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to babies born in the United States if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident.

Though he was unaware of the legacy of his great-grandfather for most of his life, Norman Wong has since spent years learning about it, and last year visited his family’s ancestral village in China. The Trump administration is offering “fake arguments and fake reasons” to accomplish a dangerous goal that is contrary to the American dream, the retired carpenter said. 

Trump’s fight at the Supreme Court “was settled 128 years ago,” Wong said. “We’re just revisiting it.”

The Republican president’s directive, issued in January 2025 on his first day back in office as part of a sweeping crackdown on immigration, carried through on threats Trump had made for years to try to restrict birthright citizenship. 

The administration has said automatic citizenship creates incentives for illegal immigration and leads to “birth tourism,” by which foreigners travel to the United States to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. Critics call Trump’s directive a plainly unconstitutional action rooted in racially discriminatory anti-immigrant views.

Trump’s order would refuse to recognize the citizenship of babies of immigrants who are in the country illegally or whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. 

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has repeatedly let Trump expand mass deportation measures on an interim basis while legal challenges play out – such as ending humanitarian protections for migrants or allowing them to be deported to countries where they have no ties.

The court last year gave Trump an initial victory in the birthright citizenship context in a ruling restricting the power of federal judges to curb presidential policies on a nationwide basis. That decision, though arising from the administration’s challenge to judicial rulings declaring his birthright citizenship directive unconstitutional, did not resolve the legality of Trump’s action – something Wednesday’s case is expected to do. 

UPHILL BATTLE

Many legal experts have said that, given the nation’s long tradition of birthright citizenship in addition to the precedent involving Wong Kim Ark, the administration faces an uphill battle as it seeks to reinterpret the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. It overturned the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 decision called Dred Scott v. Sandford, which had declared that people of African descent could never be U.S. citizens. 

“Every single method and source of constitutional interpretation confirms that it applies to everyone born in the United States with extremely narrow common law exceptions,” University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost said. 

The primary exception relates to children born to foreign diplomats, who would not have birthright citizenship.

Trump’s Justice Department contends that for generations the U.S. government has mistakenly conferred citizenship on people who do not qualify – namely, those present illegally or temporarily. 

If the Supreme Court endorses that view, the practical consequences would be enormous, affecting the legal status of as many as 250,000 babies born each year in the United States, according to some estimates, and requiring the families of millions more to prove the citizenship status of their newborns. 

Though Trump’s directive specifically targets babies born after it goes into effect, critics have expressed concern that it later could be applied retroactively.

“While the order is formally prospective … the arguments the government is making about what it claims the Constitution means cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions of other people who have lived their entire lives as American citizens, potentially going back generations,” said Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the challengers to Trump’s directive. 

“Even beyond that, I think a decision in favor of the government here would signal open season on challenges to the citizenship of fellow Americans, even those whose parents are not non-citizens in these particular categories” of people targeted in Trump’s directive, Wofsy said. 

The lawsuit before the Supreme Court challenging Trump’s order was brought in New Hampshire by the ACLU on behalf of parents and children whose citizenship would be threatened. U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante let the plaintiffs in that case proceed as a class, allowing Trump’s order to be blocked nationally. 

WONG KIM ARK’S SAGA

When Wong Kim Ark, a cook in his 20s, returned from a months-long trip to China in 1895, customs officials in San Francisco declared him a non-citizen. Though he was born in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood, the officials said that because his parents were Chinese nationals, so too was he, and as such he was ineligible for entry due to an 1882 law called the Chinese Exclusion Act that restricted Chinese migration and citizenship.

The Supreme Court rejected the government’s bid to place limits on citizenship based on the 14th Amendment’s language conferring citizenship to only those born in the United States who are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” 

The latter phrase was meant to exclude from citizenship by birth on U.S. territory the children of foreign diplomats and occupying enemies – which did not apply to Wong Kim Ark – and “not to impose any new restrictions upon citizenship,” the court said in a 6-2 ruling. Native Americans were also included among the exceptions, although they were accorded citizenship by statute in 1924.

To hold otherwise, the court added, “would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”

Trump’s administration has argued that his directive complies both with the 14th Amendment and the 1898 ruling because it allows citizenship for some immigrants with lawful “domicile” in the United States, including permanent residents. 

At the time of his birth, Wong Kim Ark’s parents had permanent domicile and residence in the United States, the administration has said, citing the court’s ruling in the case. Those in the United States only temporarily or illegally do not meet this standard, according to the administration.

“I just don’t think it’s correct to say that Wong Kim Ark (as a legal precedent) decided the question of the citizenship status of children born to temporary visitors or to people here illegally,” University of Minnesota law professor Ilan Wurman said. 

That precedent “strictly speaking, focused on law domiciled parents,” Wurman said, adding: “There is good language in that case supporting either side of this case.”

FAMILY LEGACY

Norman Wong, who like his ancestor was born in San Francisco, now embraces the chance to warn others about the Trump administration’s quest to limit citizenship. 

“I didn’t see the executive order … as an end. I saw that as a beginning, that they would chip away at citizenship until they can do away with the people that they don’t want. And they’ll always have a reason, you know?” Wong said. “We’re talking about the soul of America, who we are as a people.”

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY, March 29 (Reuters) – Pope Leo said on Sunday that God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars and have “hands full of blood”, in unusually forceful remarks as the Iran war entered its second month.

Addressing tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square on Palm Sunday, the celebration that opens the holiest week of the year in the lead-up to Easter for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, the pontiff said that Jesus cannot be used to justify any wars.

“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo, the first U.S. pope, told crowds in brilliant sunshine.

“(Jesus) does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’,” he said, citing a Bible passage.

Leo did not specifically name any world leaders, but he has been ramping up criticism of the Iran war in recent weeks. 

The pope, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict and said on Monday that military airstrikes are indiscriminate and should be banned.

Some U.S. officials have invoked Christian language to justify the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 that initiated the expanding war. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has started leading Christian prayer services at the Pentagon, prayed at a service on Wednesday for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”.

Leo on Sunday referenced a Bible passage in which Jesus, about to be arrested ahead of his crucifixion, rebuked one of his followers for striking the person arresting him with a sword.

“(Jesus) did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war,” Leo said. “He revealed the gentle face of God, who always rejects violence. Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross.”

(Reporting by Joshua McElweeEditing by David Goodman)

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MOSCOW, March 29 (Reuters) – Russia’s Ust-Luga port, one of its largest petroleum export outlets, was damaged on Sunday in a Ukrainian drone attack that sparked a fire, Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the northern Leningrad region said on Telegram.

A total of 36 drones were shot down over the region, Drozdenko said.

Ust-Luga, operated by Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, handles around 700,000 barrels per day of oil exports, and, according to sources, shipped 32.9 million metric tons of oil products in 2025.

Ukraine has regularly attacked Russian oil exporting facilities and oil refineries as it seeks to undermine Moscow’s war economy.

(Reporting by Reuters. Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Mark Potter)

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March 29 (Reuters) – Oman’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that it condemns attacks on its territory, adding that no party has claimed responsibility.

It said authorities were investigating the attacks’ “sources and motives” without providing further details or specifying any specific attack.

Oman said on Saturday that a worker was injured in a drone attack on the Gulf country’s Salalah port and Danish container shipping group Maersk said later that it temporarily halted its operations at the port after Saturday’s attack.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that they targeted a U.S. support vessel at a “considerable” distance from Salalah port, Iranian media reported.

“As we have previously stated, the national sovereignty of our brotherly and friendly country Oman is respected by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” it added.

On March 11, drones struck oil storage facilities at Salalah port. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Oman’s sultan in a phone call that the incident would be investigated.

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din and Jaidaa TahaEditing by David Goodman)

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CAIRO, March 28 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said they carried out a second attack on Israel in less than 24 hours using missiles and drones, and vowed to continue military operations in the coming days, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised speech.

The Houthis’ entry into the conflict adds to regional tensions, particularly given their ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, as they did in support of Hamas in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attacks.

(Reporting by Enas Alashray and Hatem Maher in Cairo;)

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BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — The Republic of Congo’s constitutional court on Saturday confirmed President Denis Sassou-N’Guesso’s victory in the recent election, granting the 82-year-old leader a fifth term with 94.90% of the vote.

“The president Denis Sassou-N’Guesso is elected with 94.90% of the vote, representing an absolute majority,” said Auguste Iloki, president of the constitutional Court, at the end of the hearing.

Provisional results announced March 17 by Interior Minister Raymond Zephirin Mboulou had already placed Sassou-N’Guesso in the lead with 94.82% of the vote.

Six other candidates challenged the 82-year-old for the top job in the Central African country that boasts one of the largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa.

Two of his challengers had rejected the provisional results last week. One of them, Uphrem Mafoula, had filed an appeal with the constitutional Court seeking to annul the election. The constitutional Court on Saturday rejected the appeal.

The election is the latest in a trend of octogenarian African leaders clinging to power. Sassou N’Guesso is the third-longest-serving African president, only behind Cameroon ’s Paul Biya and Equatorial Guinea ’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Sassou N’Guesso, running for the Congolese Party of Labor, first came to power in 1979 and ruled until 1992 when he organized the country’s first multi-party elections. He returned to power as a militia leader following a four-month civil war in 1997.

The campaign period showed a vast mismatch between Sassou N’Guesso and his opponents, with the incumbent being the only candidate to travel around the country to canvass for votes. Roads in the capital city, Brazzaville, were paved with Sassou N’Guesso’s effigies.

Two other major parties boycotted the elections over allegations of unfair electoral practices.

A constitutional referendum in 2015 removed presidential age and term limits, allowing N’Guesso to run again.

The Republic of Congo is struggling with high international debt, which stands at 94.5% of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank, and skyrocketing unemployment rates for young people. More than half the country’s 5.7 million population lives in poverty and 47% of the country’s population is under 18.

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