Ivorian jailed for saying president should not have been born
Ivorian jailed for saying president should not have been born/node/2609033/world
Ivorian jailed for saying president should not have been born
Ivory Coast has sentenced a nurse to three years in jail for saying Africa would have been saved if President Alassane Ouattara had not been born. (X/@Presidenceci)
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Updated 22 July 2025
AFP
Ivorian jailed for saying president should not have been born
Tokpa Flan Japhet, a 43-year-old nurse, “was tried and sentenced on July 18 to 36 months in prison“
Japhet had in a Facebook post said if Ouattara’s mother had “had an abortion” she “would have saved Africa“
Updated 22 July 2025
AFP
ABIDJIAN: Ivory Coast has sentenced a nurse to three years in jail for saying Africa would have been saved if President Alassane Ouattara had not been born.
The sentence comes months before the west African country’s presidential election at the end of October, with the opposition accusing Ouattara’s government of attempting to stifle dissent in the run-up.
Six youth leaders from the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) have been arrested since June over a social media post calling for mobilization against the government.
PDCI party leader Tidjane Thiam is among several prominent opposition figures to have been excluded from the October 25 vote.
Tokpa Flan Japhet, a 43-year-old nurse, “was tried and sentenced on July 18 to 36 months in prison” and fined $8,500 “despite his request for a pardon,” Abidjan’s public prosecutor Oumar Braman Kone said in a statement on Monday.
Japhet had in a Facebook post said if Ouattara’s mother had “had an abortion” she “would have saved Africa.”
“Neither repentance... nor a request for forgiveness has any effect on the reality of the offenses,” Kone said.
Another man, Moussa Diakate, was arrested after posting a video in which he “made death threats against supporters of a political group,” the prosecutor said.
Ivory Coast, a former beacon of stability in troubled west Africa, has repeatedly experienced violence during elections after the country’s first coup in 1999.
In late 2010 and early 2011, poll-related violence claimed some 3,000 lives after then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to recognize Ouattara’s election victory.
Ouattara, 83, has not confirmed whether he will run for a fourth term, although he has been
tapped by his party to do so.
US appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block
Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the US is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident
Updated 24 July 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.
The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.
“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.
The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from US District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain.
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The Supreme Court has since restricted the power of lower court judges to issue orders that affect the whole country, known as nationwide injunctions.
But the 9th Circuit majority found that the case fell under one of the exceptions left open by the justices. The case was filed by a group of states who argued that they need a nationwide order to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship only being the law in half of the country.
“We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief,” Judge Michael Hawkins and Ronald Gould, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote.
Judge Patrick Bumatay, who was appointed by Trump, dissented. He found that the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue. “We should approach any request for universal relief with good faith skepticism, mindful that the invocation of ‘complete relief’ isn’t a backdoor to universal injunctions,” he wrote.
Bumatay did not weigh in on whether ending birthright citizenship would be constitutional.
The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to US jurisdiction, are citizens.
Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.
The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.
Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the US is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the US.
Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused
William McNeil Jr. 's encounter with teh abusive cops happened in February, but the arrest didn’t capture much attention until the video from McNeil’s car-mounted camera went viral over the weekend
Updated 24 July 2025
AP
A Black college student shown on video being punched and dragged from his car by Florida law officers during a traffic stop faces a long recovery from injuries that include a concussion and a broken tooth that pierced his lip and led to several stiches, his lawyers said Wednesday.
At a news conference in Jacksonville, 22-year-old William McNeil Jr. spoke softly as he made a few brief comments with his family and civil rights attorneys by his side.
“That day I just really wanted to know why I was getting pulled over and why I needed to step out of the car,” he said. “I knew I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was really just scared.”
McNeil is a biology major who played in the marching band at Livingstone College, a historically Black Christian college in Salisbury, North Carolina, Livingstone President Anthony Davis said.
The encounter with law enforcement happened in February, but the arrest didn’t capture much attention until the video from McNeil’s car-mounted camera went viral over the weekend. That’s when the sheriff said he became aware of it and opened an internal investigation, which is ongoing. The sheriff said a separate probe by the State Attorney’s Office cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing — a finding fiercely criticized by McNeil’s lawyers. Video from inside the car captures him being punched
Footage of the violent arrest has sparked nationwide outrage, with civil rights lawyers accusing authorities of fabricating their arrest report.
The video filmed by McNeil’s camera shows him sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville officers’ supervisor, when they broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle and punched him again. He was then knocked to the ground by an officer who delivered six closed-fist punches to the hamstring of his right thigh, police reports show.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday defended law enforcement officers and implied the video was posted to advance a “narrative” and generate attention on social media.
“That’s what happens in so many of these things,” DeSantis said. “There’s a rush to judgment. There’s a, there’s a desire to try to get views and clicks by creating division.” DeSantis says he hasn’t seen the video, but backs law enforcement
DeSantis said he hasn’t reviewed the viral video but has “every confidence” in Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters, who has urged the public not to cast judgment based on the footage alone.
“If people get out of line, he’s going to hold them accountable,” DeSantis said.
Body camera footage of the encounter shows McNeil had been repeatedly told to exit the vehicle. And, though he earlier had his car door open while talking with an officer, he later closed it and appeared to keep it locked for about three minutes before the officers forcibly removed him, the video shows. The vantage point of the body camera footage that was released makes it difficult to see the punches.
The cellphone footage from the Feb. 19 arrest shows that seconds before being dragged outside, McNeil had his hands up and did not appear to be resisting as he asked, “What is your reason?” He had pulled over and had been accused of not having his headlights on, even though it was daytime, his lawyers said.
On Wednesday, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said his client had every right to ask why he was being pulled over and to ask for a supervisor. Report that McNeil reached toward a knife is disputed
A point of contention in the police report is a claim that McNeil reached toward an area of the car where deputies found a knife when they searched the vehicle after taking him into custody.
“The suspect was reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” Officer D. Bowers wrote in his report.
Crump called that police report a “fabrication,” saying McNeil “never reaches for anything.” A second officer observed that McNeil kept his hands up as Bowers smashed the window.
“After Ofc. Bowers opened the door, the subject refused to exit the vehicle, but kept his hands up,” the second officer wrote. Sheriff says officers have been cleared of committing any crimes
The State Attorney’s Office determined that the officers did not violate any criminal laws, the sheriff said. No one from the State Attorney’s Office ever interviewed McNeil, Crump said.
Daniels called their investigation “a whitewashing.”
“But for that video, we would not be here,” Daniels said. “And we thank God Mr. McNeil had the courage to record.”
Asked about the criticism of the State Attorney’s review, a spokesperson for the office said Wednesday that “a memo to McNeil’s file will be finalized in the coming days that will serve as our comment.”
Shortly after his arrest, McNeil pleaded guilty to charges of resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended license, Waters said. Civil rights attorneys call for accountability
“America, we’re better than this, we’re at a crossroads,” Crump said. “We are a Democracy, we believe in the Constitution. We are not a police state where the police can do anything they want to citizens without any accountability.”
Crump said his client remained calm while the officers who are trained to deescalate tense situations were the ones escalating violence. He said the case harkened back to the Civil Rights movement, when Black people were often attacked when they tried to assert their rights.
“What he exhibited was a 21st century Rosa Parks moment where an African American had the audacity to say ‘I deserve equal justice under the law. I deserve to be treated like a human being with all the respect that a human being is entitled to.’”
The sheriff has pushed back on some of the claims by Crump and lawyer Harry Daniels, saying the cellphone camera footage from inside the car “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
“Part of that stems from the distance and perspective of the recording cell phone camera,” the sheriff said in a statement, adding that the video did not capture events that occurred before officers decided to arrest McNeil.
Cameras “can only capture what can be seen and heard,” the sheriff added. “So much context and depth are absent from recorded footage because a camera simply cannot capture what is known to the people depicted in it.”
Many of the speakers at Wednesday’s news conference said they hope the Florida case results in accountability so that what happened to McNeil doesn’t happen to others.
“It’s incumbent upon everyone to understand that this could have been us, this could have been me, this could have been you,” civil rights lawyer Gerald Griggs said.
Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding
The Trump administration pulled the funding, because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus
Updated 24 July 2025
AP
NEW YORK: Columbia University has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus, the university announced Wednesday.
Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” acting University President Claire Shipman said.
The Trump administration pulled the funding, because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.
Columbia then agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.
Wednesday’s agreement — which does not include an admission of wrongdoing — codifies those reforms while preserving the university’s autonomy, Shipman said.
The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year.
“The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track,” Shipman said. “Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”
As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to a series of changes previously announced in March, including reviewing its Middle East curriculum to make sure it was “comprehensive and balanced” and appointing new faculty to its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It also promised to end programs “that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotes, diversity targets or similar efforts.”
The university will also have to issue a report to a monitor assuring that its programs “do not promote unlawful DEI goals.”
The pact comes after months of uncertainty and fraught negotiations at the more than 270-year-old university. It was among the first targets of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests and on colleges that he asserts have allowed Jewish students be threatened and harassed.
Columbia’s own antisemitism task force found last summer that Jewish students had faced verbal abuse, ostracism and classroom humiliation during the spring 2024 demonstrations.
Other Jewish students took part in the protests, however, and protest leaders maintain they aren’t targeting Jews but rather criticizing the Israeli government and its war in Gaza.
Columbia’s leadership — a revolving door of three interim presidents in the last year — has declared that the campus climate needs to change.
Also in the settlement is an agreement to ask prospective international students “questions designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States,” and establishes processes to make sure all students are committed to “civil discourse.”
State Department approves $322 million in proposed weapons sales to Ukraine
The approvals come weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a pause on other weapons shipments to Ukraine to allow the Pentagon to assess its weapons stockpiles
Updated 24 July 2025
AP
The State Department said Wednesday that it has approved $322 million in proposed weapons sales to Ukraine to enhance its air defense capabilities and provide armored combat vehicles, coming as the country works to fend off escalating Russian attacks.
The potential sales, which the department said were notified to Congress, include $150 million for the supply, maintenance, repair and overhaul of US armored vehicles, and $172 million for surface-to-air missile systems.
The approvals come weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a pause on other weapons shipments to Ukraine to allow the Pentagon to assess its weapons stockpiles, in a move that caught the White House by surprise. President Donald Trump then made an abrupt change in posture, pledging publicly earlier this month to continue to send weapons to Ukraine.
“We have to,” Trump said. “They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”
Trump recently endorsed a plan to have European allies buy US military equipment that can then be transferred to Ukraine. It was not immediately clear how the latest proposed sales related to that arrangement.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the US has provided more than $67 billion in weapons and security assistance to Kyiv.
Since Trump came back into office, his administration has gone back and forth about providing more military aid to Ukraine, with political pressure to stop US funding of foreign wars coming from the isolationists inside the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill.
Over the course of the war, the US has routinely pressed for allies to provide air defense systems to Ukraine. But many are reluctant to give up the high-tech systems, particularly countries in Eastern Europe that also feel threatened by Russia.
Tesla profit plunges in latest quarter as Musk’s turn to politics continues to keep buyers away
Faced with boycotts for months, the car company’s profits slumped 16 percent in the three months through June
Musk also alienated many in the market for cars in Europe by embracing far-right candidates for office on the continent
Updated 24 July 2025
AP
NEW YORK: The fallout from Elon Musk’s plunge into politics a year ago is still hammering his Tesla business as both sales and profits dropped sharply again in the latest quarter.
The car company that has faced boycotts for months said Wednesday that revenue dropped 12 percent and profits slumped 16 percent in the three months through June as buyers continued to stay away.
“The perception of Elon Musk, its chief executive, has rubbed the sheen right out of what once was a darling and soaring automotive brand,” wrote Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee in an email. Tesla is “a toxic brand that is inseparable from its leader.”
Quarterly profits at the electric vehicle, battery and robotics company fell to $1.17 billion, or 33 cents a share, from $1.4 billion, or 40 cents a share. That was the third quarter in a row that profit dropped. On an adjusted basis, the company said it earned 40 cents a share, matching Wall Street estimates.
Revenue fell from $25.5 billion to $22.5 billion in the April through June period, slightly above Wall Street’s forecast.
Tesla shares were little changed in after-hours trading as investors wait to hear from Musk on the company’s earnings call later in the afternoon.
Musk, who helped elect President Donald Trump with a massive campaign donation and then headed his DOGE cost-cutting program, has been pinning the future of the company less on car sales and more on robotaxis, automated driving software and robotics. But those businesses are yet to take off, and the gap between promise and profits was apparent in the second quarter.
A big challenge is that potential buyers not just in the US but Europe are still balking at buying Teslas. Musk alienated many in the market for cars in Great Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere by embracing far-right candidates for office on the continent. And rival electric vehicle makers such as China’s BYD and German’s Volkswagen have pounced on the weakness, stealing market share.
Tesla began a rollout of its paid pickup robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and hopes to introduce the driverless cabs in several other cities soon. Musk has said he expects to have hundreds of thousands of the cabs on US roads by the end of next year.
In a conference call after the results were announced, Musk said the service will be available to probably “half of the population of the US by the end of the year — that’s at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals.”
He added, “We are being very cautious. We don’t want to take any chances.”
The test run in Austin has mostly gone off without a hitch, though there have been a few alarming incidents, such as when a robotaxi went down a lane meant for opposing traffic.
With driverless taxis, though, the billionaire who upended the space race and the EV manufacturing faces tough competition. The dominant provider now, Waymo, is already in several cities and recently logged its ten-millionth paid trip.
Meanwhile other threats loom. The new federal budget just passed by Congress eliminates a credit worth as much as $7,500 for buying an electric car. It also wipes out penalties for car makers to exceeding carbon emission standards. That threatens Tesla’s business of selling its “carbon credits” to traditional car companies that regularly fall short of emission standards.
Tesla generated $439 million from credit sales, down sharply from $890 million a year ago.
One way to boost sales that Musk has long promised: A cheaper model. The company now is planning to introduce that to the market in the last three months of the year. Tesla had previously said that was going to happen by June this year.
“It appears management’s focus will now shift to robotaxis and away from deliveries growth,” said Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein, referring to the car sales.
“If Tesla continues to execute well with vehicle autonomy and humanoid robot autonomy,” Musk said in his remarks, “it will be the most valuable company in the world.”
Musk also said he expected regulatory approval to introduce its so-called Full Self-Driving software in some parts of Europe by the end of the year. Musk had previously expected that to happen by March of this year. The feature, which is available in the US, is a misnomer because it is only a driver assistance feature.
Gross margins for the quarter, a measure of earnings for each dollar of revenue, fell to 17.2 percent from 18 percent a year earlier.
A highlight from the quarter was from something far removed from cars and robots: the company’s investment in bitcoin. That bet generated a $284 million paper gain, compared with a loss the previous quarter.