The US attorney general announced Thursday the arrest of three people for allegedly disturbing a church service while protesting the massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota, as Vice President JD Vance blamed local leaders for disorder.Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly were arrested in connection with a Sunday protest at Cities Church in the state capital St. Paul, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on X.St. Paul and the neighboring metropolis of Minneapolis have been the epicenter of a major deployment of federal agents by the Trump administration to the Democratic-led northern US state.Tensions have flared in the state over a wave of arrests and the killing of protester Renee Good, 37, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.Vance, who has aggressively defended the officer who shot Good in her car on January 7, was in Minnesota Thursday and blamed local Democratic leaders for the chaotic rollout of ICE raids in the state.”Yes, protest. Protest me. Protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully. If you assault a law enforcement officer the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is going to prosecute you,” Vance said, flanked by ICE officers and vehicles.He attacked elected local leaders, both political and policing, in Minneapolis which is a sanctuary city, meaning police do not cooperate with federal immigration sweeps. Vance claimed these leaders were hindering ICE efforts.”The lack of cooperation between state and local officials makes it harder for us to do our job and turns up the temperature,” Vance said.Trump made cracking down on undocumented migrants the centerpiece of his campaign for reelection and has overseen a rapid expansion of ICE’s ranks and immigration sweeps, with Maine in the northeast singled out this week for intensified enforcement.Department of Homeland Security and FBI “agents executed an arrest in Minnesota,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X.”So far, we have arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, who allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church,” Bondi said.”Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” she warned.- Tear gas -She later wrote that officers had also arrested Allen and Kelly for the action where an immigration official was apparently leading a service, according to US media.”WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP,” she posted.FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X that Armstrong had been arrested under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect those seeking to access abortion clinics and places of worship.Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the sweeps. There will be a hearing on the application Monday.There have been confrontations between federal agents and protesters who have demanded a full investigation of Good’s killing, with officers frequently deploying pepper spray and tear gas.A number of school children have walked out of classes in protest at the ICE operation in the city.ICE has detained at least four children from the same Minneapolis school district this month, including a five-year-old boy, administrators said according to local media Wednesday.”The five year old was not arrested… his dad was an illegal alien, and then they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran,” Vance claimed.The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged with any crime. Trump and his officials quickly defended his actions as being legitimately made in self-defense.The federal immigration sweeps in Minneapolis have occurred amid a highly politicized fraud investigation in Minnesota.

US President Donald Trump headed home from Davos on Thursday after unveiling his new “Board of Peace” and once again casting himself as a global peacemaker, despite widespread scepticism over a plan that aims to rewrite the world order.Trump officials also unveiled ambitious plans for a “New Gaza” during the ceremony at the World Economic Forum, the US leader describing the devastated Palestinian territory as “great real estate”.Trump later met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with both describing their talks as good and the US leader saying Russia’s nearly four-year-old war with Kyiv “has to end”.Zelensky announced “trilateral” talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv in the coming days, and said he had reached agreement with Trump on post-war US security guarantees for Ukraine — though he conceded that dialogue with the US president was “not simple”.And the Ukrainian leader hit out at European allies for being too slow to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking: “What’s missing: time or political will?”- ‘Board of Peace’ -Trump’s “Board of Peace” was created after he expressed frustration at failing to win the Nobel Peace Prize and ramped up accusations the United Nations had failed to resolve a host of international conflicts.”Well this is exciting,” Trump said as he was joined on stage by leaders and officials from 19 countries to sign the board’s founding charter in the Swiss ski resort.”This board has the chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created,” he said.The body, of which Trump is the chairman, was initially designed to oversee the Gaza truce and the reconstruction of the strip after the war between Hamas and Israel.But its purpose has since morphed into resolving all sorts of international conflicts, sparking concerns that Trump wants to create a rival to the UN.Key US allies including France and Britain have expressed doubts.Countries have been asked to pay $1 billion for permanent membership of the board, and the invitation for Putin, whose country invaded Ukraine in 2022, has drawn criticism.Trump said the organisation would work “in conjunction” with the United Nations.- Gaza ‘master plan’ -A large part of the ceremony was devoted to talking about its plans for shattered Gaza.Gaza’s newly appointed administrator said in a video message that the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip would reopen in both directions next week.Then Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, like the president a former property developer, showed slides of what he billed as a “master plan” for Gaza’s reconstruction.They included maps of new settlements and artist renderings of gleaming seafront hotels and apartments under the caption “New Gaza”.”It could be a hope. It could be a destination,” Kushner said.Trump told Hamas to disarm under the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire accord or it would be the “end of them”. He added that he was ready to “talk” with regional foe Iran.- ‘Not so popular’ -The representatives of the 19 countries on stage with Trump included two close populist allies, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Argentine President Javier Milei, and officials from a host of Middle Eastern monarchies keen to curry favour.Trump said he expected around 50 countries to join — including Putin, though the latter said he was still studying the invitation.Zelensky, also invited, has said he could not envisage working alongside the Russian leader.Trump said he was hopeful of a deal soon to end the Ukraine war, and Zelensky told the forum that documents being drafted with Washington to end the war were “nearly, nearly ready”.Zelensky has voiced concern that Trump’s push to seize Greenland — which dominated Davos on Wednesday — could divert focus away from Russia’s invasion.Tensions over Greenland eased, however, after Trump announced a “framework of a future deal” over the Danish territory and dropped his threat to hit European allies with new tariffs.Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the Arctic island wanted a “peaceful dialogue” with Washington and it wanted to remain part of Denmark for now.”We have some red lines,” he told a press conference. “We have to respect our territorial integrity. We have to respect international law, sovereignty.”Global stock markets rallied with relief at Trump’s Greenland climbdown, riding what some called the “TACO” trade — for “Trump Always Chickens Out”.But as European leaders gathered in Brussels for a summit, worries lingered over lasting damage to transatlantic ties.burs-dk-lt/jhb/jj

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok generated an estimated three million sexualized images of women and children in a matter of days, researchers said Thursday, revealing the scale of the explicit content that sparked a global outcry.The recent rollout of an editing feature on Grok, developed by Musk’s startup xAI and integrated into X, allowed users to alter online images of real people with simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes.”A flood of lewd deepfakes exploded online, prompting several countries to ban Grok and drawing outrage from regulators and victims.”The AI tool Grok is estimated to have generated approximately three million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appear to depict children, after the launch of a new image editing feature powered by the tool on X,” said the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit watchdog that researches the harmful effects of online disinformation.CCDH’s report estimated that Grok generated this volume of photorealistic images over an 11-day period — an average rate of 190 per minute.The report did not say how many images were created without the consent of the people pictured.It said public figures identified in Grok’s sexualized images included American actress Selena Gomez, singers Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj as well as politicians such as Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch and former US vice president Kamala Harris.”The data is clear: Elon Musk’s Grok is a factory for the production of sexual abuse material,” Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of CCDH.”By deploying AI without safeguards, Musk enabled the creation of an estimated 23,000 sexualized images of children in two weeks, and millions more images of adult women.” There was no immediate comment about the findings from X. When reached by AFP by email, xAI replied with a terse automated response: “Legacy Media Lies.”Last week, following the global outrage, X announced that it would “geoblock the ability” of all Grok and X users to create images of people in “bikinis, underwear, and similar attire” in jurisdictions where such actions are illegal.It was not immediately clear where the tool would be restricted.The announcement came after California’s attorney general launched an investigation into xAI over the sexually explicit material and several countries opened their own probes.”Belated fixes cannot undo this harm. We must hold Big Tech accountable for giving abusers the power to victimize women and girls at the click of a button,” Ahmed said.Grok’s digital undressing spree comes amid growing concerns among tech campaigners over proliferating AI nudification apps.Last week, the Philippines became the third country to ban Grok, following Southeast Asian neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia, while Britain and France said they would maintain pressure on the company.On Wednesday, the Philippines’s Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center said it was ending the short-lived ban after xAI agreed to modify the tool for the local market and eliminate its ability to create “pornographic content.”