Eight people, including Irish missionaries and three-year-olds, remained missing Monday after raiding orphanages in Haiti, the latest attack in an area controlled by a powerful collection of armed gangs.

Authorities have scrambled dozens of children and staff to relocate from the Saint-Hélène Orphanage run by Nos Petits Freres et Squers, an international charity with Mexican and French offices. According to its website, the orphanage cares for more than 240 children.

Among those invited early on Sunday was Jenna Heratie, an Irish missionary who has been working in Haiti since 1993 and oversaw the special needs programme for children and adults orphanages. She was assaulted in 2013 when the suspect broke into an orphanage and killed a colleague, according to Irish media.

Her family issued a statement saying that it was “absolutely devastated” by the invitation on Sunday. “The situation has evolved and I’m deeply concerned.”

Sunday marked the latest famous invitations involving foreign missionaries. In 2021, the 400 Mauzo gang invited 17 missionaries, including five US-based children in Gantier, east of the capital. Most were taken prisoner for 61 days.

Sunday’s invitation took place in Kenskoff, a once peaceful community in the Porto Princes metropolitan area. The door to the orphanage remained closed Monday as Haiti’s Institute of Social Welfare and Research worked with UNICEF to identify locations where children and employees could move.

No one has argued responsibility for the invitation in an area managed by a gang federation known as “Viv Ansanm.” This year, the US designated it as a foreign terrorist organization.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, in a statement, said in a statement that Herati and the others’ invitations were “deeply worried” and called for their immediate release.

In a previous interview with Ireland’s Independent Newspaper, Heraty recalled that in 2013 the suspect was threatened with death when he invaded the orphanage.

“They were very aggressive. One had a hammer and a gun,” she said. Heratie says her colleague was killed with a hammer after rushing to help her colleagues and others.

“The last place where violent deaths are expected to occur in Haiti will be in a home with people with special needs,” she said. “Life is not fair. We know that. We have to accept it.”

At least 175 people in Haiti were reportedly tempted from April to the end of June this year, with 37% of these cases occurring in Port-au-Prince.

The United Nations said the majority of these enticements were condemned by the Gangs of Deeu, the Grand Valley and villages that form part of the Viviansam Federation.

Kyiv
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Vladimir Putin started it. Joe Biden didn’t stop it. But regardless of his efforts to oppose it, this is the week when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be the war of President Donald Trump.

The world’s most powerful offices don’t always invite choices. Trump has mandated the US as a key Ukraine alliance and sponsor, which requires it to deal with the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Trump may have completely dropped the war. Instead, however, he chose to impose the power of his personality. Initially through the idea that it can be finished in 24 hours or a revised 100-day deadline. He then tried to navigate that character and cooperated with the Russian president. Initially, he publicly recognised Ukrainian President Voldymir Zelensky in an oval office, reflecting his story.

He slammed NATO allies hard and demanded that they pay more for the European defence. And then the diplomatic hard slogs splattered through the gear, and in the end it almost never happened.

But it wasn’t until the last two weeks that Trump’s decision and realization turned it into an issue he currently owns. He has seen Putin not wanting peace. He saw Ukraine urgently needing an arm, and he tried to help, albeit in an inactive way. He made the notable choice to respond to the usual rejected nuclear saber latting of former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev with a more difficult nuclear threat to position US nuclear submarines near Russia. The US has been a nuclear threat against Russia less than a month from suspending military aid to Ukraine.

Once this week is over, he will likely have to make the most consequential decision of the conflict as Trump displays the deadline for shortening the peace deal. He really hurts fines – is he imposing secondary tariffs on Russian energy customers? Maybe he accepts the US and its allies need to endure a bit of pain economically to inflict pain?

Impacting serious secondary sanctions on India and China could hit global energy markets. Trump posted Monday that he would increase tariffs on India as he was selling Russian crude oil for profit, and “didn’t mind the number of people killed by Russian war machines,” but he had not provided details of the new measure. India has not publicly stated whether it intends to stop purchasing Russian energy products. China is completely dependent on Russian oil and gas and cannot afford to stop buying it.

To avoid another “taco” moment for Trump to always kick out the chickens, Trump must cause some discomfort, and perhaps he will feel some backlash. Or, if offered to his special envoy, Steve Witkov on this week’s visit to Moscow, he can look for an off-ramp. Trump could probably accept a bilateral meeting with Putin as a sign of progress towards peace. But even this backdown would mean he left his indelible mark in the war – in the words of the former US Secretary of State regarding Iraq, if the US defeats it, they own it.

Trump cannot have it in both ways. By his nature, he seeks to be a fulcrum of all decisions and a lightning bolt of attention to certain issues. All the turning points so far are based on his personal choices and fantasies. And this contains an important lesson from the President of the United States.

Trump is his own problem and he can’t choose which issues he can ignore. Maga’s America First Platform may be about reducing Washington’s global footprint, but Trump doesn’t allow him to own only his success. Unless Trump reduces the American power footprint to zero globally – it’s not compatible with the personality of a president forced to “do” – America’s problems always have a few issues.

He says he hopes the war will stop. But that’s not enough. War does not adhere to everything.

Former US President Barack Obama inherited the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He came out fast from the former and doubled with the latter surge, but that didn’t work. Afghanistan became Obama’s war despite the chaos he inherited. Trump has been curbed by the chaos and he handed his quick fix to Biden, who was paraded as a Democrat failure, widely paraded by Republicans in the chaotic collapse of August 2021.

Trump faces the same problems as inheriting the crisis. He cannot hope or kajoru the conflict. His death on the battlefield, which he mourns, has a distant stitching and sadness, transforming this into an existential war of survival for the souls of the Kremlin and Ukrainian society.

Ukrainians want to live in peace without the sirens of the nightly air raids. Putin does not want peace, and instead his recent maximalist demands amount to something equivalent to Ukraine’s surrender.

Ultimately, this reflects the harsh reality that it should be considered Trump’s war. It is a critical conflict between his presidency and the post-9/11 era. The results define Europe’s security and China’s engagement over the next decade. China needs to understand that and win Russia. Russia sees the opportunity for the bloc’s weaknesses, as Europe understands it and arms itself. We will learn this week whether Trump will understand this and accept the uncomfortable, intense decisions that come with subsequent consequences.

The owner of a white South African farm and two employees face the murder of two black women who prosecutors said they were shot dead in August last year and a trial that included pigs being fed.

The woman was allegedly killed by 60-year-old Zakaria Olivier, his worker, Adrian de Wett, 19, and 45-year-old foreigner William Musolo.

The man appeared at the Limpopopolokwane High Court in northern Limpopo Province on Monday, a regional spokesman for the South African National Prosecutor’s Office (NPA) told CNN.

The trio “faces two counts of murder, attempted murder, three counts that defeat the end of justice, possession of firearms and ammunition,” the NPA said in a previous statement.

Musoro, described by police as “illegal immigrants,” was further charged with “violation section of the illegal immigration law,” a police statement said.

They were not asked to enter the petition before the hearing was shifted Thursday, said Mashdu Marabi Dizungi, a spokesman for the Limpopo NPA.

On August 20, 2024, police said, “The man was arrested after the body of a pig was found decomposed among the pigs on a farm in Severen, on the outskirts of Mankwen.

“The investigation began on August 17th (2024) when a 45-year-old South African woman went missing after visiting the farm. “Both women were injured by bullets and a 47-year-old foreign man with them” fled, but “we were shot dead and hospitalized.”

Survivors told reporters that one of the murdered women was his wife. The other women were their neighbors. They were on the farm to collect expired and abandoned dairy products, he said.

Many South Africans who were furious at the murders are hoping for justice from their victims.

Similar murders have been recorded in South Africa in recent years. In Mpumalanga, four men, including a 24-year-old farm manager, face accusations of murder and temptation, allegedly killing and burning the bodies of three people accused of stealing sheep in August last year, the NPA said.

In 2019, the South African High Court served two white farmers long sentences for a 16-year-old teenager from a moving truck in Coliny, northwest state, to two white farmers for allegedly stealing sunflowers. However, the man was acquitted by the High Court two years later, and he overturned the sentence, citing his lack of evidence.

Violent crimes are spreading in South Africa’s more than 60 million South African countries, where around 20,000 murders were recorded between April and December last year, police data show.

Farm murders involving both white and black South Africans account for a small portion of about 0.2% of those killings, despite the widespread claims of genocide against white farmers by white nationalist groups.

“What I’m doing now is digging my grave,” says Eviater David as his fragile figure, shovel-suppressed hunger in the fierce gaza tunnel.

“Every day, my body gets weaker and weaker,” adds the 24-year-old hostage.

This is just one of the horrifying scenes recorded in the latest hostage video released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad over the weekend, showing two Israeli hostages lured on October 7, 2023 and suddenly deteriorated in captivity.

The broadcast of disturbing images across Israel and international media was approved by the families of traumatized hostages.

“Eviyatar was a young, healthy man before he was accused. He was still a bit chubby. Now he looks like a skeleton, a human skeleton.

Rom Braslavski, only 22 years old, appears even more disastrous. In a video of a Palestinian Islamic jihad group embracing him, his weakened body is shown feeling pain on the makeshift Gaza prison floor, pleading with tears for relief.

“My legs don’t look very well and I can’t walk to the bathroom. I don’t have enough food or water. I can’t sleep. I can’t live,” he sobs.

His own mother says that her son’s weak voice sounds like an acknowledge that he is not alive.

The video doesn’t warn that “the worst-case scenario of hunger” is unfolding on the territory this week amid the worsening hunger crisis in Gaza. Gaza health officials say 13 more people have died of malnutrition over the weekend, including one child, since the conflict began in 2023 with at least 175 people.

It all puts more pressure on the Israeli government, already facing increasing international isolation against Gaza’s devastating humanitarian situation, and now faces a new call to return the remaining 50 hostages home from Gaza.

The best way to do that is one of the important questions to divide Israeli opinions.

“The horror video by Hamas came from one goal: their attempts to put pressure on the state of Israel,” said Itmar Ben Gwil, a brand of fire on the right, in a statement made over the weekend during a visit to the mountains of the sacred temple.

“We need to send a message from here, to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, to declare all Gaza sovereignty, to eliminate all Hamas members, and to encourage voluntary immigration. Only in this way can we regain hostages and win the war.”

His call to double down on Israel’s already devastating military action in Gaza and essentially oust the local Palestinian population could be dismissed as the devastation of Fringe militants.

However, Ben Gwil is a senior minister of the Israeli government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relies on him and other Jewish nationalists hardliners.

Furthermore, Israeli media reports suggest that Netanyahu may actually be leaning towards strengthening military operations in Gaza.

In the past, many Israelis, including many hostage families, accused Netanyahu of intentionally extending the conflict in Gaza to maintain his ruling coalition, and accused him of essentially sacrificing their loved ones of power.

But frankly, the latest hostage video showing prisoners who were weakened in a state of creepy anger has sparked shock and rage throughout Israel.

The hostage family is confident that time will run out before their loved ones are rescued or returned, so there is a great deal of pressure on the Israeli government to make a deal with Hamas before it is too late.