US President Donald Trump and the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a peace deal Thursday, even as fresh violence raised questions about the accord to end one of Africa’s longest wars.Trump said the United States was also signing deals on critical minerals with the two countries as he hosted Paul Kagame, the longtime president of Rwanda, and Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi in Washington.”I think it’s going to be a great miracle,” Trump said after the signing — held in a peace institute which his administration has just renamed after him.Speaking of the two leaders, he added: “They spent a lot of time killing each other, and now they are going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States of America economically, like every other country does.”But the African leaders both took a more cautious tone, as fighting raged in eastern DRC where the M23 armed group — which the UN says is backed by Rwanda — has been gaining ground in recent weeks against Kinshasa’s forces.”There will be ups and downs on the road ahead, there is no doubt about it,” said Kagame, whose allies have taken a decisive edge on the ground against his country’s turbulent neighbor.The DRC’s Tshisekedi called it the “beginning of a new path, a demanding path.”- ‘A lot of money’ -Trump has boasted that the eastern DRC conflict, where hundreds of thousands of people have died over several decades, is among eight wars he has ended since he returned to office in January.The US president has made no secret of his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize.Trump said the agreement will pave the way for the United States to gain access to critical minerals in both countries. The violence-torn eastern DRC in particular has reserves of many of the key ingredients in modern technologies such as electric cars.It is the latest in a series of deals in which the billionaire Republican has negotiated a stake for US firms to extract rare earth minerals, including in Ukraine.”We’re going take out some of the rare earth,” Trump said. “And everybody’s going to make a lot of money.”The signing comes more than five months after the countries’ foreign ministers also met Trump and announced another deal to end the conflict.The long-simmering conflict exploded in late January as the M23 captured the major cities of Goma and Bukavu.After the June agreement, the M23 — which denies links to Rwanda — and the Kinshasa government pledged a ceasefire following mediation by US partner Qatar, but both sides have since accused the other of violations.- ‘Many dead’ -Violence continued on the ground even on the day of the signing.An AFP journalist at the scene heard weapon fire ring out on the outskirts of Kamanyola, an M23-controlled town in South Kivu province near the borders with Rwanda and Burundi. “Many houses have been bombed, and there are many dead,” said Rene Chubaka Kalembire, an administrative official in Kaziba, a town also under M23 control, on the eve of the signing.After several days of clashes around Kaziba, fighter jets bombarded the town again on Thursday morning, a local civil society representative who requested anonymity told AFP.Explosions could also be heard coming from the Bugarama border post in Rwanda across the border in neighboring Burundi, with Rwandan police temporarily shutting the frontier post on Thursday. AFP was unable to obtain a verifiable toll from the fighting from independent sources.Local sources reported a massive build-up of M23 reinforcements, accompanied by armored cars, in the high plateau of South Kivu.Passage through the mountainous region would allow its troops to encircle Uvira, the last major town in South Kivu to evade the M23’s capture.The Trump-brokered deal meanwhile comes as both countries are in talks with his administration on its priority of taking in migrants amid the president’s sweeping deportation drive.burs-dk/des

With US President Donald Trump and other sceptics calling climate change a hoax, the UN’s climate science body must tell the world in a “very clear way” that humans are heating the planet, its chairman told AFP.Jim Skea, a Scottish professor, chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which held a five-day meeting in a skyscraper outside Paris this week to begin drafting the next major UN climate assessment.The gathering of more than 600 scientists from around the world, which ends Friday, kicked off a process that will culminate in the publication of the massive report by 2028 or 2029.Established in 1988, the IPCC assesses global climate research and issues comprehensive reports every five to seven years to inform policymakers and guide climate negotiations.QUESTION: You said recently it is “almost inevitable” the world will cross the 1.5C warming threshold. If this happens before the next IPCC assessment is published, what should it emphasise to remain relevant and impactful?ANSWER: “The messages are that if we want to return global warming to 1.5C, it’s quite clear what steps need to be taken. We do need very significant reductions in emissions from land use and from energy. And we also need to start thinking about removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale. And there are a lot of knowledge gaps associated with that.”QUESTION: France voiced strong support for the IPCC this week, saying it stood for its scientists in the face of rising climate scepticism. You met with President Emmanuel Macron. How important was it for the IPCC to have this kind of backing in this context?ANSWER: “It’s really important. It was really welcome to get that level of support from the French government, from multiple people. I mean, the head of state, three senior ministers, that was a significant level of support and it gave a lot of impulse to the scientists. When I talked to the scientists afterwards, they were very pleased to have that level of support. It gave them confidence and enthusiasm about moving forward.” QUESTION: How will the IPCC ensure that its findings cut through misinformation and reach the public effectively when you have people like US President Donald Trump calling climate change a hoax?A: “We need to keep communicating the science in a very clear way. I mean, we concluded in our last report, very simple conclusion: It is unequivocal that human beings are causing the climate change that we are already seeing. And we need to keep emphasising that message and we can support it with several different types of explanation, lines of evidence.”QUESTION: The US government is absent from the IPCC and is not funding American academics participating in the process, but are you concerned that it could intervene at the approval stage to block the final report?ANSWER: “We still have a huge US presence in IPCC. We’ve got nearly 50 US authors at this meeting whose travel and subsistence is being supported by US philanthropies and who were nominated by US observer organisations. …”The approval sessions — when we finish the reports — have always been difficult sessions because we need scientists and governments to agree down to the last word and comma. And I don’t think it’s got really substantially more difficult over time to do that.”There’s only been one occasion in IPCC history where a summary for policymakers was not approved and was passed over to the next session. And this wasn’t recent, this was in 1995. So it’s always been difficult. But we’ve always overcome these hurdles.”QUESTION: France and other countries want the IPCC assessment to be published in 2028 ahead of the COP33 climate summit in India. French diplomats say Saudi Arabia and India are pushing for 2029. Is it important for the report to be published in 2028?ANSWER: “Whether or not it is published in time for the global stocktake is frankly, a matter for the governments. For the scientists here, what the question is, is the timetable compatible with the time needed to produce an assessment? And frankly, that time should not be too short or not be too long.”QUESTION: What is your message to governments and ordinary people as you begin this new cycle of work?ANSWER: “Wait with bated breath for what we are going to come out with in roughly three years down the line. There are new areas of research, there are new knowledge gaps that we need to explore, including this issue of, is it possible to limit warming to 1.5C in the long term?”

A Virginia man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly planting pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot, officials said.Attorney General Pam Bondi identified the suspect as Brian Cole Jr. of Woodbridge, Virginia.The pipe bombs placed outside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) offices in Washington in the evening of January 5 failed to detonate.The devices were discovered by authorities the next day as supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in a bid to prevent the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.The FBI released numerous photos and video clips of a masked and hooded suspect over the years and eventually increased the reward money for information leading to an arrest to half a million dollars.But Thursday’s arrest is the first breakthrough in the case, which spawned numerous conspiracy theories among the far right.

Donald Trump will travel to Pennsylvania next week to talk up his economic agenda, the White House said Thursday, as the US president faces growing pressure over an affordability crisis that he dismisses as a “hoax.”The Republican billionaire’s speech in the crucial blue-collar state marks the start of what aides say is a bid to ramp up his domestic travels, following criticism from some in his party that he has focused too much on foreign policy.”The president will be traveling to Pennsylvania to discuss how he and the administration continue to focus on delivering on his day one priority of ending Joe Biden’s inflation crisis,” a White House official told AFP.Trump insists that prices are falling and that he is fixing what he describes as a mess left by his Democratic predecessor.”They use the word ‘affordability.’ It’s a Democrat hoax,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday as he announced a reset of Biden’s fuel-economy standards that he said would lower US car prices.”Just about everything is down,” Trump said. “I think affordability is the greatest con job.”But Trump’s approval ratings have slumped to their lowest point since his return to office in January, particularly over the cost of living, which Americans have blamed at least partly on his tariffs.Democrats made a major issue of affordability in elections that they swept last month for New York City mayor, and for the governors of New Jersey and Virginia.On Tuesday, Republicans suffered a sharply reduced majority in a congressional district in deeply conservative Tennessee, one of Trump’s safest bastions.Pennsylvania is a key stop on the road to the White House. Trump narrowly won the northeastern state in 2016 and 2024, and lost it by a sliver to Biden in 2020.Trump is ineligible to run again in 2028 despite hints that he might try.