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An inmate convicted of murdering a man over a $200 drug debt by burning him alive was executed by nitrogen gas in the southern US state of Alabama on Thursday.Anthony Boyd, 54, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder two years earlier of 32-year-old Gregory Huguley.He was pronounced dead at 6:33 pm Central time (2333 GMT) at a state prison in the town of Atmore, the state department of corrections announced.At trial, prosecutors said that Boyd and three other men abducted Huguley at gunpoint because he allegedly failed to pay for $200 of cocaine.Huguley was driven to a baseball field, bound with duct tape, doused with gasoline and set on fire.Boyd was convicted largely on the testimony of a co-defendant, Quintay Cox, who was spared the death penalty.This was the 40th execution in the United States this year, the most since 2012, when 43 inmates were put to death.Florida has carried out the most executions with 14, followed by Texas and Alabama with five each.Nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causes the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

US President Donald Trump has pardoned the convicted Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the White House press secretary said Thursday, accusing Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden of behaving in a “very hostile” manner toward the crypto industry.Binance was created in 2017, and swiftly became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, turning Zhao into a billionaire.Following an investigation into the firm’s operations, Zhao pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money-laundering laws in late 2023, and served a four-month prison sentence for it in 2024.Zhao’s pardon could help pave the way for Binance to return to the United States, around two years after it agreed to suspend its US operations in a deal to resolve the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation.  “This was an overly prosecuted case by the Biden administration,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in Washington on Thursday, accusing the previous administration of pursuing an “egregious over-sentencing of this individual.”The previous administration had also been “very hostile” to the cryptocurrency industry, she continued, adding that Trump had pardoned Zhao in order to “correct this overreach of the Biden administration’s mis-justice.”Trump later defended his decision, telling reporters at the White House that “a lot of people” had told him Zhao was not guilty.Binance has spent almost a year pursuing a pardon for Zhao, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, noting that Binance has been a “key supporter” of the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial. Despite stepping down as chief executive in 2023, Zhao remains the majority shareholder of Binance.In a social media post on Thursday, he said he was “deeply” grateful to Trump for “upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.”Democrats were quick to criticize Trump’s decision to pardon the convicted crypto billionaire. “CZ pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge and was sentenced to prison. But then he financed President Trump’s stablecoin and lobbied for a pardon. Today, he got it,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a post on X. “If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it,” added Warren, a high-profile figure on the left of the party who sits on the US Senate’s finance committee. Since his presidential campaign, Trump has become a defender and promoter of the cryptocurrency sector, reversing his past criticism.He has eased the regulatory framework imposed on the cryptocurrency industry, which contributed more than $100 million to his reelection campaign.The Trump family’s various crypto businesses have netted them a pre-tax profit of around a billion dollars over the past 12 months, according to a recent Financial Times investigation.Trump’s pardon of Zhao follows a string of other similarly controversial moves, such as his decision to issue a blanket pardon for people convicted of violence in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The US president has also commuted the sentence of the disgraced former Republican lawmaker George Santos, who was convicted of committing wire fraud and identity theft. 

The man suspected of deliberately causing one of the deadliest fires in California history pleaded not guilty when he appeared in court on Thursday.Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is charged with deliberately starting a blaze in the hills above the wealthy Los Angeles enclave of Pacific Pallisades early on New Year’s morning.Prosecutors say that fire was initially supressed by firefighters, but was rekindled by powerful winds a week later, growing into an inferno that tore through some of America’s most desireable real estate.A separate blaze, likely started by a fault in the electrical distribution system, began almost at the same time near the Altadena neighborhood.The two huge fires burned for weeks, and together killed 31 people, as they left thousands more homeless and laid waste to thousands of acres (hectares).Rinderknecht, wearing white jail garb with a chain around his waist, told US Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver he understood the charges of destruction of property by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, and timber set afire. He denied them all.If convicted of the three federal charges Rinderknecht would face up to 45 years in prison, prosecutors said.Rinderknecht, who remains in federal custody, was ordered to return to court on November 12, with a trial tentatively set for December 16.The two major fires that gripped the Los Angeles area in January were among the deadliest in California history.They were also among the costliest natural disasters ever, with estimates of damage running into hundreds of billions of dollars.Firefighters struggled for days to contain the blazes, hampered by winds up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) an hour that prevented their using helicopters and planes.The sheer scale of the inferno created difficulties, as did an urban water supply that was never designed to cope with such enormous conflagrations.Rinderknecht’s arrest in Florida this month came after a lengthy investigation into the cause of the Pallisades Fire.In July, the Southern California Edison power company said it would begin paying compensation to those affected by the Eaton Fire that devastated Altadena.While no official cause of the fire has been revealed yet, the finger of blame has been pointing for months at a power line in the hills behind Altadena.Several videos and witness accounts suggest the equipment produced sparks that could have caused the fast-moving flames.

Demolition workers have finished tearing down the White House’s entire East Wing to make way for US President Donald Trump’s giant new $300 million ballroom, satellite pictures showed Thursday.The completion of the wrecking work came as the White House released a list of donors to the ballroom including Apple, Google and Meta.A gray and brown patch of rubble can now be seen in the area that used to be occupied by the iconic building, according to the images shared with AFP by Planet Labs PBC and dated Thursday.Satellite photos taken just under a month earlier show the wing that housed the offices of the US first lady intact. The complete destruction of part of one of the world’s most famous landmarks is a far more extensive demolition than previously announced by Trump — and happened virtually without warning.When the former property magnate unveiled his plans in July, Trump said that the 90,000-square-foot ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building” and that it would be “near it but not touching it.” But after work started this week, Trump said Wednesday that he had decided after consulting architects that “really knocking it down” was preferable to a partial demolition.He insists the 1,000-seat ballroom is essential because state dinners and other large events currently have to be held in tents that are temporarily erected on the White House lawn.Trump also said that the new ballroom would cost $300 million, raising the cost from the $250 million quoted by the White House days before, and the $200 million it cited in July.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told an AFP reporter in a briefing that $300 million was now the definitive number but said that “it’s not going to cost the taxpayers a dime.”- Tech donors – Billionaire Trump says the ballroom will be funded entirely by private donors and by himself.The White House released a list of the donors to AFP on Thursday. They include US tech titans Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Palantir, as well as defense giant Lockheed Martin.Individual donors include the family of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who were made famous as jilted investors in the movie “The Social Network” about the birth of Facebook.”How much am I donating? I won’t be able to tell you until it’s finished,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “I’ll donate whatever’s needed, I’ll tell you that.”Many US presidents have carried out upgrades to the White House but Trump’s ballroom is the biggest in more than a century.While lower profile than the West Wing where the president works, the East Wing had stood in one form or another for 123 years since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.It received a major makeover in 1942 from President Franklin Roosevelt and was until this week home to the first lady’s offices. It was also the main point of entry for guests for tours and parties.As criticism mounted about the demolition, the White House Historical Association — an independent group that helps preserve the history of the presidential home — said it had been helping with preservation work.The association had carried out a “comprehensive digital scanning project and photography to create a historic record,” it said in an email to members obtained by AFP.It added that “historic artifacts have been preserved and stored.”Trump’s wrecking of the East Wing has provoked howls of outrage led by his Democratic opponents, including former first lady and 2016 presidential election rival Hillary Clinton.Another top US historic group, however, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, had urged Trump to pause the demolition.It said in a letter on Tuesday that it was “deeply concerned that the massing and height of the proposed new construction will overwhelm the White House itself” and urged the plans be put before the agency that oversees work on government buildings in Washington.The White House argues that Trump had the authority to go ahead with the demolition without needing the agency’s sign-off.

Colombia’s leftist president ramped up denunciations of Donald Trump’s anti-drug air strikes and swatted aside US threats to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in aid Thursday.Fueling a spat that threatens to shatter ties between the long-allied nations, Gustavo Petro said, “Mr Trump has slandered me and insulted Colombia.”Petro accused Trump of “carrying out extrajudicial executions” that “violate international law” by striking alleged drug-trafficking boats. The US has destroyed nine vessels and killed at least 37 people in under two months, according to US government accounts. “The deaths keep increasing like a taxi meter,” said Petro.At least one Colombian is among the dead, a fisherman who Petro now admits may have become involved in trafficking “intermittently” to escape poverty.Colombia has publicly demanded that Washington halt the attacks, infuriating Trump, who has branded Petro a “thug” and drug trafficker.  As retribution, Trump has announced an end to hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid to Colombia and threatened tariffs on Colombian goods.If enacted, the cuts would stifle decades of security cooperation to curb the flow of cocaine from the world’s biggest producer, Colombia, to its biggest consumer, the United States.- ‘Seize oil wells’ -Petro dismissed the impact of aid cuts, saying the cash goes to fund US non-governmental groups and to buy US arms. “What happens if they take away the aid? In my opinion, nothing,” he said.The United States provided Colombia with almost $750 million in aid in 2023, according to US figures.There are growing fears among Colombia’s allies that a withdrawal of US funds could harm years-long efforts to stop the country from sliding back into conflict.Despite peace accords a decade ago, pockets of the country are still controlled by guerrillas, cartels, and other armed groups.The United States and other donors provide military aid as well as funding for coca eradication and demobilization projects. Petro — a former guerrilla who will leave office after the May elections — has not shied away from the feud, which plays well with some of his core leftwing supporters.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted Petro’s renewed attacks Thursday: “I don’t think we’re seeing a de-escalation from the unhinged leader of Colombia right now.” Petro also lashed out at Trump’s September decision to put Colombia on a list of countries classified as not helping in the drug war.Describing it as “an insult,” he insisted Colombia was successfully countering cartels, despite cocaine production and exports hitting record levels. “We have been the most effective in cocaine seizures in world history,” Petro claimed, adding that Trump was being fed misinformation by his opponents on Colombia’s “far right.”He said they aimed to influence Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, to “strike Colombian progressivism and seize oil wells” in Venezuela.Trump has said he is preparing attacks against traffickers operating on land, claiming maritime routes are being reduced.”Any ground aggression is invasion and a rupture of national sovereignty,” warned Petro.Behind the scenes diplomats from both countries have been working to keep relations form rupturing completely.On Thursday a string of Colombian ministers met with the top US diplomat in Bogota, for what the Colombian foreign ministry called a “frank dialogue.”They announced Colombia’s ambassador to the United States Daniel Garcia-Pena would return to Washington, after being recalled in protest. 

Demolition workers have finished tearing down the White House’s entire East Wing to make way for US President Donald Trump’s giant new $300 million ballroom, satellite pictures showed Thursday.A gray and brown patch of rubble can now be seen in the area that used to be occupied by the iconic building, according to the images shared with AFP by Planet Labs PBC and dated Thursday.Satellite photos taken just under a month earlier show the wing that housed the offices of the US first lady intact.The complete destruction of part of one of the world’s most famous landmarks is a far more extensive demolition than previously announced by Trump — and happened virtually without warning.When he unveiled his plans in July, Trump said that the 90,000-square foot ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building” and said it would be “near it but not touching it.” But after work started this week, Trump said Wednesday that he had decided after consulting architects that “really knocking it down” was preferable to a partial demolition.Trump also said that the new ballroom would cost $300 million, raising the cost from the $250 million quoted by the White House days before, and the $200 million it cited in July.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told an AFP reporter in a briefing that $300 million was now the definitive number but said that “it’s not going to cost the taxpayers a dime.”Trump says the ballroom, which will be used for hosting state dinners and other large events, will be funded entirely by private donors and by himself.The White House released a list of the donors to AFP on Thursday. They include US tech titans Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, as well as defense giant Lockheed Martin.Individual donors include the family of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who were made famous as jilted investors in the movie “The Social Network” about the birth of Facebook.

“Hands off!” chanted hundreds of New Yorkers furious over a roundup of street vendors by federal agents as part of US President Donald Trump’s escalating campaign against undocumented migrants.Masked federal officers are often found in the halls of 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where immigrants attempting to remain in the United States attend court hearings. But on Tuesday, agents hit Canal Street in Chinatown, picking up nine African men suspected of being in the country illegally during an operation Homeland Security said focused on counterfeit goods.Four people who sought to interrupt the arrests were also detained, but later released without charge. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Todd Lyons subsequently announced that arrests in New York would increase as it is a sanctuary city — meaning local police do not cooperate with federal enforcement. Lyons added that his agency’s operations were not “random” but “intelligence driven.” – ‘Get out of New York’ – Several dozen New Yorkers took to the streets on Tuesday night to protest the arrests, followed by hundreds more on Wednesday.Protester Lorelei Crean, 18, warned that immigration officers had “been taking over all over the country.” “Now it’s coming to New York, and this is New York showing and saying that ICE has to get out of New York,” Crean said. Political and religious leaders spoke out during a briefing Thursday, alongside City Council speaker Adrienne Adams. “We have gathered in unison to send a clear message to the Trump administration: Hands off New York City. Stop threatening our public safety and our economy,” Adams said. Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, National Guard troops have deployed in several major Democratic cities including Los Angeles, Washington and Memphis.”New York City does not want or need a military or federal occupation,” Adams added. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Trump foe who has been indicted on charges she says are politically motivated, is seeking digital evidence of immigration raids in the city. – ‘Declare war’ – Migrant roundups topped the agenda at Wednesday’s final debate among candidates for New York City’s mayoral election on November 4. All three leading candidates oppose the deployment of federal immigration officers in the city.The frontrunner, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, called ICE “a reckless entity that cares little for the law and even less for the people that they’re supposed to serve.”Mamdani has accused Trump of “looking to declare war” on New Yorkers and insisted he would only cooperate with the Republican president on bringing down the city’s soaring cost of living.Mamdani’s closest rival, former state governor Andrew Cuomo, said that as mayor, he would “have to confront President Trump,” while Republican Curtis Sliwa said “negotiation” would be the only solution.

At least one US B-1B bomber flew over the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela Thursday, flight tracking data showed, the second such show of force by US military aircraft in a week.The bomber flight — which President Donald Trump later falsely claimed did not occur — comes as Washington carries out a military campaign against alleged drug traffickers in the region, deploying forces that have sparked fears in Caracas that regime change is the ultimate goal.Data from tracking website Flightradar24 showed a B-1B flying toward the Venezuelan coast on Thursday afternoon before making a U-turn and heading north, after which it disappeared from view.Asked during a White House event about reporting that the United States had sent B-1Bs near Venezuela, Trump responded that “it’s false,” while adding the United States is “not happy with Venezuela for a lot of reasons.”The latest flight came about a week after US-based B-52 bombers circled off Venezuela’s coast for several hours.The US military described that mission as a demonstration of Washington’s commitment “to proactively deter adversary threats, enhance crew training, and ensure the global force readiness necessary to respond to any contingency or challenge.”The United States has deployed stealth warplanes and Navy ships as part of what it calls counter-narcotics efforts, but has yet to release evidence that its targets — eight boats and a semi-submersible — were smuggling drugs.The US strikes, which began on September 2, have killed at least 37 people, according to an AFP tally based on US figures.Regional tensions have flared as a result of the campaign, with Venezuela accusing the United States of plotting to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, who said Wednesday that his country has 5,000 Russian man-portable surface-to-air missiles to counter US forces.

Brazilian senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, on Thursday urged the United States to bomb boats in Rio de Janeiro to fight drug trafficking, as it has done in the Caribbean and Pacific.Washington has deployed stealth warplanes and Navy ships in the Caribbean as part of what it calls counter-narcotics efforts, destroying nine vessels and killing at least 37 people, according to US figures. President Donald Trump’s government alleges the boats were involved in drug trafficking, although it has not shared evidence to back that assertion and some family members of those killed say they were innocent fishermen.Flavio Bolsonaro said he was “envious” in a post on the X social media platform responding to one by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, featuring a video of the moment a boat sailing at sea is hit by a missile and set ablaze.”I heard there are boats like this here in Rio de Janeiro, in Guanabara Bay, flooding Brazil with drugs. Wouldn’t you like to spend a few months here helping us fight these terrorist organizations?”Trump last week said he had authorized covert CIA action against Venezuela and was considering strikes against alleged drug cartels on land.The US actions — which killed at least one Colombian — have also enraged that country’s leftist President Gustavo Petro and shattered ties between Washington and Bogota.Petro said Trump was “carrying out extrajudicial executions” that “violate international law” by striking alleged drug-trafficking boats. Washington has not released evidence to support its assertion that the targets of its strikes are drug smugglers, and experts say the summary killings are illegal even if they hit confirmed narcotics traffickers.The Bolsonaro family has close ties to Trump.The former president was sentenced last month to 27 years in prison over a botched coup attempt in what Trump said was a “witch hunt” against his ally.Another son of the former president, Eduardo, lobbied hard for Washington to impose punitive tariffs on Brazil and sanctions against top officials.However, tensions between Brasilia and Washington have thawed in recent weeks with a potential meeting on the cards between Trump and leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a summit starting this weekend in Malaysia.

Trinidadian Rishi Samaroo’s relatives are adamant: he was a fisherman, not a drug trafficker as the United States claimed after it destroyed his boat in Caribbean waters.Samaroo, 41, was one of six people killed in the attack announced last week by US President Donald Trump himself.Rehabilitated after a criminal youth, “Rishi was a loving, kind, caring, sharing person… He would do anything for anybody that asked him,” his sister Sunita Korasingh told AFP Thursday after his funeral in a suburb of Port of Spain, the capital of the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The United States has deployed a military fleet in the Caribbean in what it has called an anti-drug operation but Venezuela says it really aims to unseat President Nicolas Maduro.The Pentagon has announced nine attacks on alleged drug boats in recent weeks in the Caribbean and now the Pacific, claiming close to 40 lives. The victims’ governments and families say most were civilians — many of them fishermen. The US has made public no evidence to back up its claims of drug trafficking involving the vessels.In a question addressed to Trump, 38-year-old Korasingh said: “If he was 100 percent (sure) that this boat… had drugs in it, why didn’t he stop this vessel and search it and all the rest of vessels instead of blowing up people… like dogs?” If drugs are found on these boats, she continued, “you could lock them up… within the law… but you can’t just be going around blowing up” boats.- “We all make mistakes” About 30 people gathered Wednesday night for Samaroo’s wake in a tent in a poor neighborhood.Neighbors say shootings are frequent in the area, host to several drug gangs and a significant community of Venezuelan migrants. Few people wanted to speak to AFP. A scholar known as a pandit led the Hindu ceremony, one of the most practiced religions in Trinidad and Tobago. Korasingh made a banner featuring Samaroo with angel wings standing on clouds with a blue sky in the background and the words: “Gone but never forgotten.”His family said he had served a 15-year sentence for homicide committed as a teenager, then moved to Venezuela. “As human beings, we make mistakes at a young age… We learn from our mistakes and grow,” said Korasingh of her brother’s criminal past.When he got out, he became a fisherman and a goat farmer and sold cheese.Drugs? Never. “He never even smoked a cigarette in his whole life,” she insisted. “He never even drank a beer in his life.”His family says Samaroo was on his way home from Venezuela when he was killed.- Last call -Attendees at the wake played cards, drank alcohol and coffee, and talked about Samaroo. Another sister, Sallycar Korasingh, said she received a video call from him minutes before he set out by boat on that fateful night of October 12.”We spoke and he showed me he was going on the boat. This was just before midnight… I took a picture of him,” the 31-year-old told AFP.She said did not know what Samaroo’s relationship was with 26-year-old Chad Joseph, also killed in the strike.According to Trinidadian press, Joseph had been accused of drug trafficking in the past but never convicted. But his family and neighbors insisted to AFP last week Joseph had no links to drug trafficking, and was also a fisherman and farmer.Samaroo had three children in Venezuela with three different women, according to family members.Trinidadian police are investigating the strike.