(NEW YORK) — Ukraine is sending a high-level delegation to the U.S. on Saturday for more talks on the Trump administration’s new peace plan, ahead of White House envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow expected early next week.
Ukraine’s presidential office confirmed the delegation is on its way.
The Ukrainian delegation will now be led by the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Rustem Umerov, after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff was forced to resign on Friday amid a corruption scandal.
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, is also listed as part of the delegation, as well as senior military, security and foreign ministry officials.
The U.S. and Ukraine last held talks around a week ago in Geneva when they revised the peace plan to make it more acceptable to Ukraine.
In a post on social media on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he expects to be briefed by Umerov on the outcome of the talks on Sunday.
The talks are aimed at ensuring the results from the Geneva talks a week ago are “hammered out” and to “swiftly and substantively work out the steps needed to end the war,” he said.
“Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and head of the Ukrainian delegation Rustem Umerov, together with the team, is already on the way to the United States. Rustem delivered a report today, and the task is clear: to swiftly and substantively work out the steps needed to end the war,” Zelenskyy said.
“Ukraine continues to work with the United States in the most constructive way possible, and we expect that the results of the meetings in Geneva will now be hammered out in the United States,” Zelenskyy continued. “I look forward to our delegation’s report following its work this Sunday. Ukraine is working for a dignified peace.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv was targeted with major attack overnight into Saturday as Ukraine’s foreign minister said last night’s attack shows how Putin is determined to prolong the war despite the peace talks and called on the international community to help out more pressure on Russia.
“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its “war plan” of two points: to kill and destroy,” Andriy Sybiha, the the Ukrainian foreign minister, wrote on X.
“Putin wants to prolong the war at any cost. The war he cannot win — and the war refuses to end. But the international community has the means to ensure that this cost becomes unbearable for him,” he said. “We urge additional support for Ukraine’s defense and resilience, additional strong sanctions on Russia, and a swift decision to enable the full use of frozen Russian assets.”
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s redistricting push to preserve a Republican majority in Congress and allied voting rights cases in Texas and Louisiana could wipe out nearly a third of the 62-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) if all the electoral and judicial dominoes fall his way.
Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who has served 11 terms in the House, called the efforts as “blind, and sometimes even mean-spirited, political decisions that those who perpetuate it could easily deny it.”
Cleaver’s district is one of those in the crosshairs of Trump’s march to enlist statehouses and the courts to increase Republican seats in Congress at the expense of Democrats — many longstanding, dozens of them Black and Brown.
“There are probably some good and decent people who, but for their cult-like political attitudes, would not like something like this to happen,” Cleaver added as he tried to make sense of how he and his district are threatened by what he says is a double-barreled salvo aimed at the Voting Rights Act and state legislatures.
Cleaver’s senior colleague from South Carolina was more blunt.
“These are people who are trying to rig the system, making it very clear that there are certain people who will not be represented in Congress,” said Democratic Rep. James E. Clyburn, who has worn multiple House leadership titles along with being a Presidential Medal of Freedom holder. He has represented the Palmetto State since 1993 and, like Cleaver, once led the CBC — a staple of Capitol Hill politics since 1971.
On Monday, a coalition of voters of color and civil rights advocates will ask the Supreme Court to maintain a lower court’s ruling that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s redrawn map is an illegal racial gerrymander.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused the lower court’s order last week.
The Texas maps were set in motion by Abbott at the behest of Trump, who has openly called on Republican-controlled statehouses and governors to pass maps so that his party gains more seats and maintains control of Congress.
“A very simple redrawing; we pick up five seats. And we have a couple of other states where we’ll pick up seats also,” Trump said of Texas and other efforts in July.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act The effect of the new maps in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere puts at risk so-called “majority-minority” seats made possible by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents any voting procedure or practice which results in a denial of the right to vote using race, color, or even language minority status.
It is also the main legal tool used to challenge election laws, like district maps, which may have a discriminatory result, even if that wasn’t the intent.
Such a challenge under Section 2 may lead to the creation of a majority-minority district where a racial minority group makes up the majority of the voting-age population. The goal in the case of such a district is to give the minority, racial or language group a realistic chance to elect the representative of their choice.
Many of those majority-minority districts are held by African American and Latina/Latino members. Some political and legal analysts say up to 19 members of the CBC stand to be wiped out.
Cleaver, whose Kansas City-area district would be cut in two in a redrawn Missouri map, told ABC News that the effort is part of an overall step backward when it comes to racial representation.
“We are just tearing apart a district in order to satisfy someone’s desire for reelection,” Cleaver told ABC News in September.
Clyburn said “It’s pretty clear what it’s about: What they’re trying to do now is render Section 2 ineffective.”
He added, “You got to hope that the Supreme Court will not take it up … The Supreme Court can stay out of it, and then what the law court has already done, it will stand. And there are a lot of people who think that may be the case.
“I hope the Supreme Court collectively will come to understand that they have unleashed severe threats to those constitutional principles that have kept this country together for all of these years.”
Louisiana’s congressional map was redrawn in 2022 because it violated the Voting Rights Act Section 2 by discriminating against African American voters.
The Pelican State went back to the drawing board to create a new map to follow the law. The majority-minority districts are now in front of the Supreme Court as to whether they violate the Constitution.
Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, called that challenge “specious and wrong.”
Republicans contend their redrawn maps are not about race but are driven by a desire for partisan advantage — something the Supreme Court has ruled is constitutional.
Abbott defended Texas’ redistricting effort, saying race had nothing to do with it and calling a lower court decision “clearly erroneous.”
“The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason,” Abbott said in a statement. “Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings. This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
Nelson said “Despite the Supreme Court’s permissiveness around partisan gerrymandering, this certainly is unconstitutional and is a case that they take up. I think the three-judge panel was quite clear on what the violations were. It was clear from the very beginning that the intention is to dilute the voting power of Black and Latino communities in Texas.”
Protecting vulnerable members Cleaver acknowledged the reality of fighting it out in state legislatures.
“We’re minorities politically. So, it’s not like we can submit a piece of legislation to make it right,” Cleaver told ABC News. “We’re going to lose on all of the votes.”
He said Rep. Gregory Meeks, chair of the CBC’s political action committee CBC-PAC, has identified vulnerable members who the group aims to put on a “protection plan.” Some of those members include Louisiana Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, Alabama Reps. Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures, Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, Texas Reps. Al Green, Marc Veasey and Jasmine Crockett, Mississippi’s Bennie Thompson, Florida Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Clyburn.
The CBC-PAC will raise money for candidates who are “fighting for survival in these places where they were redistricted and left to win in a district that’s not normally responsive to us,” Cleaver said.
Members of other ethnic groups who are vulnerable include Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez, Joaquin Castro and Julie Johnson.
Cleaver said campaigning in the proposed new districts amounts to surrender.
“If you start saying, ‘I want to go out and start campaigning in the proposed district,’ you are actually playing right into the hands of the people who are trying to eliminate you. If we think we’re right, we ought to act like we are right,” he said.
Clyburn, a big ground-game supporter, backs efforts to pass referendums such as one building signature support in Missouri to block the new congressional map recently passed and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe. The new map takes effect in early December, or 90 days after the end of the state’s legislative session, unless opponents collect enough signatures to put the new map to a vote.
However, the effort by referendum advocacy group People over Politicians, which claims it has the necessary signatures to put the new map to a vote is being challenged in court by secretary of state and the state General Assembly, which contends on constitutional grounds that the legislature’s authority over redistricting cannot be overturned by referendum.
People over Politicians says the Republican-led government’s argument is an attempt to justify a “power grab. A federal judge he’ll the matter by Dec. 9, two days before the deadline for gathering signatures for a referendum.
Until then, Cleaver is comforted by those fighting on his behalf which includes an unusual and large coalition of multi-racial clergy, grassroots activists and business leaders who normally are silent. “So, you know we’re not, those of us who are in office. We’re not alone. We’re not alone.”
Effect of striking down majority-minority districts So, what, at the end of the day, do the Louisiana and Texas Voting Rights Act-related cases mean for the law itself if majority-minority districts are struck down by the Supreme Court? Nelson explains both the practical and constitutional stakes.
Nelson said there are up to 19 districts that have been protected by or drawn in response to the Voting Rights Act. She explained the practical and constitutional stakes if majority-minority districts are struck down by the Supreme Court:
“And we expect that, you know, states that are opposed to, you know, shared power among people of all races and backgrounds will leap at the opportunity to redraw maps in a way that shuts out a significant portion of our electorate from ever being able to elect candidates of their choice.”
Nelson said such a move by the court “would be a colossal undercutting of power that would then translate into even more failed policies for some of the most vulnerable communities in our country. So the impact would be absolutely devastating,” she said. “This is not just, you know, political warfare or partisan competition. This is making a mockery of a representative democracy when you don’t have fair representation.”
Clyburn for his part would rather mobilize than wait for parties out of his control to act.
“We need to be involved, to turn out the vote and do what we can to make sure that people get to the polls, and hopefully do what is necessary to stop the redistricting at the polling places. That’s what we can do,” he said. “To sit around wringing our hands about what the court may or may not do is a waste of time, energy, and, I think, emotions.”
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Andriy Yermak, his chief of staff, has resigned after anti-corruption searches on his home and office on Friday morning.
Zelenskyy announced the resignation in an address he posted online Friday.
The head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office, Yermak is the president’s powerful right-hand man and had been leading the negotiations with the United States to end the war with Russia.
Yermak’s fall strips Zelenskyy of his closest adviser and chief negotiator at a moment when he has been under intense pressure to agree to a new peace plan with Russia.
Yermak had increasingly faced suspicion he could be implicated in a sprawling high-level corruption scandal in Ukraine’s energy sector that has rocked the country’s government, already taking in a former business partner of Zelenskyy’s and prompting the resignations of the justice and energy ministers.
Zelenskyy had resisted calls for Yermak’s resignation, but after the highly publicized raids on Yermak’s addresses Friday morning, he appeared to have concluded the suspicions against his chief of staff were causing too much damage. He did not directly acknowledge the raids or accusations during his address, saying he had made the decision to remove Yermak because he wanted to “avoid rumors and speculation” that could harm internal unity at a critical time.
““For internal strength to exist, there must be no reasons to be distracted by anything other than defending Ukraine. I want there to be no questions whatsoever about Ukraine,” Zelenskky said in the video statement.
He said he would hold consultations on Saturday to choose Yermak’s replacement.
Investigators from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) on Friday morning raided Yermak’s office and home as part of their investigation into the corruption scandal that has been dubbed “Mindich-gate” in Ukraine, a reference to Zelenskyy’s former business partner Timur Mindich who is implicated.
Prosecutors allege senior officials and Mindich arranged a kickback scheme that funneled tens of millions of dollars from contractors building defenses to protect Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Investigators have not formally announced any allegations against Yermak or charged him. But he has faced mounting suspicion with critics alleging Yermak must have known about the corruption or bore responsibility for it. Some members of Parliament and anti-corruption campaigners also alleged that he was featured in recording made as part of the investigation under the name “Ali Baba.”
Yermak was also accused by opponents of being behind a failed attempt over the summer by Zelenskyy’s administration to strip independence from the same anti-corruption bodies now investigating him, which triggered mass protests.
There is no evidence Zelenskyy himself knew about the alleged corruption scheme or benefited from it. But as the scandal moved to the heart of his administration, he faced widespread calls to act or be seen as complicit, with worries he could face protests again if Yermak remained in post.
On Friday before his resignation Yermak posted he was “fully assisting” investigators.
Often referred to as Zelenskyy’s “grey cardinal,” Yermak has long-faced accusations of creeping authoritarianism and over-centralizing power, while allegations of corruption have lingered.
He has played a central role in Ukraine’s negotiations, including leading the delegation to Geneva last weekend for the talks with the U.S. on the Trump administration’s new peace plan. In an interview on Thursday with Time Magazine, Yermak ruled out ceding any territory to Russia.
Zelenskyy on Friday thanked Yermak for his role in leading the negotiations to end the war, saying “it has always been a patriotic position” and that he had represented Ukraine’s position “exactly as it should be.”
New peace talks are expected to be held perhaps as early as this weekend and Zelenskyy said they would now be headed by the head of Ukraine’s General Staff, as well as its National Security Council and foreign ministry representatives.
(NEW YORK) — Fears of an artificial intelligence bubble have rattled the stock market in recent weeks and set off concern among critics about a wider risk to the U.S. economy.
A surge of AI spending accounted for roughly two-thirds of gross domestic product growth over the first half of 2025, JPMorgan Asset Management found, outpacing the contribution made by hundreds of millions of U.S. consumers. Many of the nation’s largest companies have poured funds into the chips and data centers necessary to operate AI.
A central question looms over the fate of the technology and the trillions of dollars being spent to develop it: Will AI deliver the type of profits that could turn the product into a moneymaker?
Proponents say a lag between the buildout of AI infrastructure and an onrush of gains is to be expected, pointing to a similar lull after the introduction of other watershed technologies, such as the internet. The widespread adoption of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has revealed a massive potential customer base, they add, noting AI firms have prioritized product development over profits.
Critics, however, say the considerable costs have put pressure on AI to deliver stratospheric profits, but little evidence suggests businesses or everyday users will get enough value to warrant forking over a mountain of cash. The technology must deliver within years rather than decades, they add, since the current level of spending cannot be sustained.
“It’s not particularly unusual for a market at this early stage to not be making much profit,” Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and research fellow at MIT’s Institute for the Digital Economy, told ABC News. “Of course, the difference is most markets at this stage aren’t also spending a trillion dollars.”
AI boosters and skeptics alike have raised alarm about the economic stakes. “A reversal would risk recession. We can’t afford to go backwards,” David Sacks, a venture capitalist and White House czar for crypto and AI, said in a post on X on Monday.
Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at New York University and author, who often criticizes hype surrounding AI, said in a Substack post in September: “It’s not going to be pretty when the music stops.”
A “bubble” is a term used to describe a market in which an asset’s price far outpaces its value on the market. Questions centering on the productivity gains and profitability of AI take up the task of assessing the economic value of the new technology.
Chip giant Nvidia has delivered major profits selling the semiconductors behind AI, becoming the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization. Such success indicates appetite for the building blocks of AI rather than its end uses, however.
For now, AI has failed to achieve gains on a scale near its immense costs, some analysts said. A product like AI would typically generate revenue in the form of sales either direct to consumers or to third-party businesses using the technology to enhance their offerings. AI has faced challenges on both fronts, some analysts said.
Roughly 95% of businesses invested in AI have failed to make money off of the technology, an MIT study in July found, estimating the combined amount spent by the firms is around $40 billion.
“Despite high-profile investment, industry-level transformation remains limited,” the study said.
Consumer-driven profits have also proven elusive. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, boasts about 800 million weekly active users, making it one of the fastest-growing apps ever. That user base makes up about a quarter of the 3 billion monthly active users combined on the array of apps offered by Meta, a company that generated more than $50 billion over a recent three-month period. But OpenAI’s sales do not come close.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Prior told CNBC in September the company is on pace to earn about $13 billion in revenue over the course of 2025, which amounts to $3.25 billion per quarter. On the BG² podcast earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is generating “well more revenue than that.”
Revenue is “growing steeply,” Altman added. “We are taking a forward bet that it will continue to grow, and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing, that AI that can automate science will create huge value.”
Some analysts said the rapid adoption of chatbots underscores the usefulness of the technology, noting that it paves the way for a potentially significant revenue stream if firms were to populate the AI assistants with advertisements or charge for access.
“It’s the fastest adoption of basically any consumer technology that we know about,” Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania who studies AI, told ABC News. “There is a path to making money.”
Arun Sundararajan, a professor of entrepreneurship at New York University, said a delay in uptake from businesses is to be expected for a potentially paradigm-shifting technology like AI.
“It’s true that we haven’t yet seen evidence of significant productivity gains from AI investments, but I’m not surprised,” Sundararajan said. “At the early stages of the rollout of a technology like this, there’s a lot of experimentation and learning.”
“As businesses start to understand how to fundamentally change the way that they work using this technology, that’s when you start to see the big productivity gains,” Sundararajan added.
Other analysts disagreed about the likelihood of profits, pointing in part to the challenge posed by infrastructure costs associated with AI.
For many digital products such as software or smartphone apps, the profitability owes to the relatively low cost of providing the service on a massive scale, Kedrosky said. For instance, the initial cost burden of developing a website is significant, but once completed, a website can reach millions of users with little extra cost.
For AI, however, the energy and computational costs increase in proportion to a given number of chat prompts or users, meaning the technology lacks such low-cost scalability.
“Every time you prompt an AI model, it eats up costs to maintain and cool servers. Those costs rise with the number of users. That’s a problem,” Kedrosky said.
The scale of investment also places pressure on AI companies to deliver major profits within a limited timeframe, since the current level of financing cannot continue into perpetuity, Andrew Odlyzko, an emeritus University of Minnesota mathematics professor who focuses on financial bubbles, told ABC News.
“The problem is when you talk about investments in data centers in the trillions of dollars and do the basic financial arithmetic of how much revenue you have to bring in to justify that, it gets into figures larger than total revenues of Google,” Odlyzuko said.
To be sure, some analysts said the technology remains in an early stage of its development, making the outcome uncertain.
“We’re in the early innings,” Vasant Dhar, a professor of data science at New York University who believes AI will ultimately deliver significant profit, told ABC News. “It remains to be seen what form it will take.”
(NEW YORK) –Traveling after Thanksgiving may be a bit more turbulent than the days leading up to the holiday, with a cross-country storm forecast to bring widespread rain and snow to millions of Americans Friday through Sunday.
Here is a look at the weather forecast for Black Friday and this weekend:
Friday
On Friday afternoon, a new cross-country storm system will bring messy weather for millions of Americans who may be traveling from Thanksgiving, with winter weather alerts for regions across Idaho and Montana down to Indiana and Michigan.
Chicago and Milwaukee are both under a Winter Storm Warning from Friday night through early Sunday, as this cross-country storm moves into the Midwest for the first half of the weekend.
Parts of northern Michigan have already recorded more than a foot of snow, with areas of the Cleveland and Erie metro areas recording between 3 to 4 inches of snow.
A Lake Effect Snow Warning remains in place for multiple areas in upstate New York as well until Saturday, as 6 to 20 inches of additional snowfall are possible with wind gusts reaching up to 50 mph into Friday night.
The rest of the country remains dry and quiet for Black Friday.
Saturday
On Saturday, rain and showers are expected from Kansas and Missouri down to Louisiana and Texas, with 6 to over 12 inches of snow possible for areas in Nebraska to Michigan — including major cities like Minneapolis, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.
With heavy snow and gusty winds, whiteout conditions and very dangerous travel conditions are likely across the Midwest.
In Chicago, snow will start around 6 a.m. Saturday and taper off until noon Sunday, leaving a possible 6 to more than 10 inches of snow.
In St. Louis, snowy precipitation will begin around 4 a.m. Saturday until that evening with 2 to 4 inches of snow possible.
Sunday
By Sunday afternoon and evening, this system will bring rain to much of the East Coast, especially the Northeast, with temperatures too warm for widespread snow causing rainy showers instead through Sunday evening.
Sunday is predicted to be the busiest air travel day for Thanksgiving, and anyone traveling along the I-95 corridor should try to travel earlier on Sunday or move their travel to Saturday to avoid the rain and slick roads, if possible.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said he will “permanently pause migration” from some countries following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.
In a post on his social media platform late Thursday, Trump did not specify which countries the pause would affect, saying it would apply to “Third World Countries.”
In June, Trump issued a proclamation banning travel to the U.S. from 12 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, and imposing travel restrictions on several others.
In the post on Thursday, Trump also listed a number of actions he said the U.S. would take, though it’s not yet clear how the Trump administration plans to accomplish them.
He said the U.S. would “terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
The suspect in Wednesday’s shooting, which claimed the life of one National Guard member and left the other in critical condition, is 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
Officials say Lakanwal came to the U.S. in 2021 during the Biden administration. He was granted asylum in April 2025 under Trump, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
In Afghanistan, the suspect was involved with the Zero Unit, working closely with the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The suspect was a trusted member of that team, which went after U.S. counterterrorism targets, according to sources.
Trump has vowed an immigration crackdown following the shooting, saying Wednesday the attack “underscores the greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
In the past, Democrats and immigration advocates have pushed back against the president’s immigration restrictions, including on asylum seekers, contending that he has exaggerated national security concerns and turned away millions of families in need.
Trump ordered National Guard troops to Washington this summer. He has also ordered members of the National Guard to other Democrat-led cities such as Chicago and Portland, Oregon.
(LONDON) — A month after a massacre that was reported in a war-ravaged city of Sudan shocked the world, the United Nations and others are warning that there’s nowhere near enough humanitarian aid being provided to the tens of thousands of residents who fled.
Many thousands more are believed to still be trapped inside El Fasher, the besieged capital of the Darfur region in Sudan’s west. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful Sudanese paramilitary group that took over the city last month, is allegedly preventing people from leaving and stopping lifesaving supplies from coming in.
The U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Denise Brown, who returned from the Darfur region last week, said the amount of aid they were able to currently provide to the survivors from El Fasher wasn’t close to what is needed.
“We do not have enough food, we do not have enough of anything,” Brown told ABC News in a telephone interview last Friday. “The international community has to step up.”
Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2023, when fighting erupted in the capital of Khartoum between forces loyal to rival military leaders. It was the culmination of weeks of tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the head of the RSF. The two men were once allies who had jointly orchestrated a military coup in 2021 that dissolved Sudan’s power-sharing government and derailed its short-lived transition to democracy, following the ousting of a long-time dictator in 2019.
Officially formed in 2013, the RSF evolved out of the notorious Janjaweed militias used by the Sudanese government to crush an armed rebellion in the Darfur region in the 2000s. Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.
Ultimately, the International Criminal Court charged Sudan’s former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir with genocide. The reported atrocities in El Fasher are seen by experts as a continuation of that genocide.
Sudan’s civil war has since become “one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century,” according to the U.N., with tens of thousands of people killed and millions more displaced. In January, the U.S. Department of State said both sides had committed war crimes and concluded “that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan,” citing the systematic murder of civilians, sexual violence and denial of humanitarian aid for civilians caught in the conflict.
El Fasher was the last stronghold of the Sudanese army and its allied militias in the wider Darfur region, under total siege for over a year and a half before falling to the RSF in late October. At least 80,000 people are estimated to have fled El Fasher and sought refuge in a massive displacement camp in the town of Tawila, with most making the 35-mile journey on foot. The camp was already home to around 600,000 displaced people, according to humanitarian aid workers.
Many of those from El Fasher bring with them horrific accounts of atrocities allegedly carried out by the RSF, including summary executions, gang rape and killing anyone who tries to flee the city. The U.N. believes as many as 50,000 people may still be trapped in El Fasher, considered to be detained there by the RSF, according to Brown.
An analysis of satellite imagery by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab found evidence of continuing mass killings in the days after the RSF took control of El Fasher, with blood-stained sand and piles of bodies apparently visible from space. Moreover, a U.N.-backed monitor for food security declared earlier this month that famine had taken hold in El Fasher and surrounding areas.
Brown said the U.N.’s capability to respond to the crisis is limited by a yawning shortfall in funding from countries and donors.
“We are 28% funded,” she told ABC News. “So what would the international community like me to do to respond to the needs of the people who are traumatized?”
Despite having less than a third of the funding needed, Brown said: “We’re one of the best funded humanitarian responses in the world, at 28%, and there have been cuts across the board by donors. So it’s a cumulative effect of those cuts.”
The United States has long been the U.N.’s largest donor but, under President Donald Trump, has recently withdrawn from several U.N. agencies, frozen funding for others and clawed back $ 1 billion in previously approved funds for the U.N.
“Everyone is calling and asking how can we help? Well, here is how you can help,” Brown told ABC News. “Money is not the solution to what’s going on in Sudan, but money is surely going to help our humanitarian response.”
In particular, Brown said, the U.N. was currently unable to provide enough care or psychological support for women and girls in the Tawila camp who had suffered sexual violence. The U.N. has hundreds of documented cases of gang rape and other sexual violence in the Darfur region, but that is believed to be just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to Brown.
The U.N. has been trying to negotiate with the RSF to allow humanitarian access into El Fasher — so far, unsuccessfully.
The head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, traveled with Brown to Darfur last week to meet with the RSF, requesting complete access throughout Sudan for humanitarian operations and providing the U.N.’s conditions for such an agreement.
“We need safe passage. We want a small team, no presence of any armed militia,” Brown told ABC News. “We need to go to the sites which we have identified as important. We need to be able to evacuate the injured and access to detainees.”
(NEW YORK) — Online shoppers set a record high on Thanksgiving, paving the way for gangbusters performance on Black Friday, Adobe data showed.
Digital spending on Thanksgiving jumped 5% from a year earlier, totaling $6.4 billion and exceeding Adobe’s expectations, the firm said.
The company also expects Black Friday shoppers to set a new record, outpacing last year’s total by more than 8%.
Adobe attributed the strong performance on Thanksgiving to better-than-anticipated discounts, especially for electronics. Discounts also touched an array of products from furniture to appliances to toys.
“Given the strength of Thanksgiving deals, Adobe is adjusting its discount forecast for the big shopping days coming up,” Adobe said in a statement to ABC News. “Deals are now expected to be on par with the elevated levels seen in the last holiday shopping season.”
A surge in the popularity of AI retail assistants also contributed to the nationwide shopping spree, Adobe said. AI-driven traffic to online sellers soared 725% compared to last year, the firm said, stemming primarily from chatbots designed to aid consumers.
Shoppers who arrived at a retail website from an AI service were 54% more likely to make a purchase than those who did not, Adobe said.
“The magnitude of discounts was the big story on Thanksgiving yesterday, as retailers leaned into delivering great deals to drive consumer demand online,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told ABC News in a statement.
“This was further propped up by impulse-led mobile shopping and the use of generative AI which assisted shoppers in locating the best deals, two trends that helped deliver higher-than-expected overall spend on Thanksgiving,” Pandya added.
The early returns for the holiday shopping season arrive at a wobbly moment for the U.S. economy.
Inflation has picked up in recent months, putting price increases a full percentage point above the Fed’s target of 2%. Meanwhile, hiring has slowed, posing a risk of an economic double-whammy known as “stagflation.”
Alongside those headwinds, consumer spending among middle- and low-income Americans has slowed, triggering warnings from restaurant giants such as McDonald’s and Chipotle. A report this month showed consumer sentiment has fallen to its lowest point since a peak of pandemic-era inflation in 2022, University of Michigan data showed.
Retailers hope shoppers defy these trends over the holiday season, when spending typically surges. The outcome could hold significant stakes for the wider economy, since consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.
(WASHINGTON) — The suspect in the “targeted” shooting of two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., will now face charges upgraded to first-degree murder after President Donald Trump announced the death of one of the victims late Thursday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said Friday.
“There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree,” Pirro said Friday morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
The suspected gunman, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was previously charged with three counts of assault with the intent to kill while armed and criminal possession of a weapon, officials said during a press conference on Thursday.
Lakanwal is accused of firing at two National Guard members, 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, on Wednesday afternoon.
The suspect allegedly “opened fire without provocation, ambush style,” struck one of the victims, leaned over and shot the individual again, before firing at the other National Guard member “several times,” Pirro said on Thursday.
Trump announced on Thursday evening that Beckstrom, an Army specialist, had died.
“She’s just passed away. She’s no longer with us. She’s looking down at us right now,” Trump said of Beckstrom. “Her parents are with her. It’s just happened.”
Andrew Wolfe, a U.S. Air Force staff sergeant, remains in critical condition.
“The other young man is fighting for his life,” Trump said. “He’s in very bad shape. He’s fighting for his life.”
The shooting took place around 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday near the Farragut West Metro station.
Pirro said the suspect, an Afghan national, allegedly drove from Washington state to target the guard members, opening fire with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver.
The suspect’s motive is still unclear, according to officials.
A search warrant was conducted at the suspect’s home in Bellingham, Washington, where officials found “numerous electronic devices,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on Thursday.
Patel also noted the FBI received confirmation from the Department of Defense and CIA “that the subject had a relationship in Afghanistan with partner forces.”
“We are fully investigating that aspect of his background as well, to include any known associates that are either overseas or here in the United States of America,” Patel said.
Lakanwal is believed to be from Afghanistan and came to the United States in 2021 under the Biden administration, law enforcement sources said. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April, likely after being vetted, under the Trump administration, according to the sources.
The National Guard was deployed to the nation’s capital as part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city and crime crackdown in August. According to the most recent update, there were 2,188 National Guard personnel assigned to D.C.
A day before the shooting, during the traditional turkey pardoning at the White House, Trump touted his administration’s takeover of D.C. streets. He said it was “one of our most unsafe places anywhere in the United States. It is now considered a totally safe city.”
“You could walk down any street in Washington and you’re going to be just fine. And I want to thank the National Guard. I want to thank you for the job you’ve done here is incredible,” Trump said at the event.
(LONDON) — A woman has died, and a man was seriously injured after a shark attack off Australia’s east coast, police said Friday.
Emergency services were called to a beach at Crowdy Bay, about 40 miles south of Port Macquarie in New South Wales, around 6:30 a.m. Thursday after reports that two people had been bitten, according to New South Wales Police.
A witness helped the victims before paramedics arrived, but the woman, who was believed to be 25, died at the scene, police said.
“The 26-year-old man sustained serious injuries and was airlifted to the John Hunter Hospital where he remains in a serious but stable condition,” police said.
Authorities said the pair are believed to have been visiting from Switzerland, though neither victim has been publicly identified.
The beach remained closed Friday as police continued their investigation, and a report is being prepared by the coroner.
