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BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
President Trump has signed an executive order changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. The move needs to be approved by Congress, although it's likely to pass, with the Republicans holding slim majorities in both House and Senate. Speaking from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the rebrand was a more appropriate name in terms of where the world was now. "We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So we're going Department of War. We have the strongest military in the world, we have the greatest equipment in the world, we have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far." The Lebanese government has welcomed a plan drafted by the army to disarm the militant group Hezbollah, but few in Lebanon believe the army is sufficiently powerful to be able to get rid of the militants' arsenal. Lina Sinjab is in Beirut. Many in Lebanon want to see the army as the only power with weapons, believing that stripping Hezbollah of its arsenal would diffuse tensions and please both Israel and the United States. But even a weakened Hezbollah has its supporters. The five Shi'ite members of the cabinet left the meeting before the army chief presented the plans. Earlier, the group's leaders refused to disarm until Israel forces withdrew. There is a growing fear that sectarian tensions will again escalate when the army tries to implement its plan. U.S. immigration agents have arrested 475 people in a raid in a massive complex built for the South Korean carmaker, Hyundai , in the state of Georgia. Operations have been halted at the battery and electric vehicle plant, into which Hyundai has poured billions of dollars. The BBC's Nomia Iqbal has more details. Immigration officials said the raid followed an investigation into unlawful employment practices and serious federal crimes. Hyundai said it understood that none of the people who'd been arrested were directly employed by its company. The $7.6 billion plant employs around 1,200 people and only opened up last year. It was touted as the largest economic investment in the state by its Republican governor. In a statement, Seoul's foreign ministry said that economic activities of our companies investing in the U.S. and the rights and interests of our nationals must not be unfairly violated. Nomia Iqbal. Six lorry drivers from Senegal have been kidnapped in western Mali while transporting goods between the neighboring countries. The Senegalese lorry drivers union has called on the authorities to mount an urgent rescue operation for the men. Mali has been plagued with Islamist violence. World news from the BBC. U.S. officials say the United States is sending 10 F-35 stealth fighter jets to Puerto Rico, adding to the already large U.S. military presence in the southern Caribbean to crack down on foreign drugs entering the U.S. The deployment is seen as increasing pressure on Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro. Mimi Swaby has more background to this latest development. Just outside Venezuelan waters, U.S. ships and troops are stationed watching Venezuela, specifically drug traffickers allegedly smuggling out cargo bound for the U.S. President Donald Trump has blamed that on the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, who he says heads a drug cartel - something Mr. Maduro denies, stating Mr. Trump simply wants to steal Venezuelan resources, especially oil. Mr. Maduro is not one to back down. He says he's preparing for a potential invasion, summoning up an alleged eight million troops. The artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay one and a half billion dollars to settle a copyright lawsuit with a group of authors over its AI training. They accused Anthropic of using their books to train its AI chatbot, Claude, without their permission. If approved by a judge, the settlement will be the largest ever publicly reported copyright payout. The Belgian authorities have asked the United States not to destroy a large stockpile of women's contraceptives stored in a warehouse near Antwerp. The contraceptives, worth about 10 million dollars, were bought by the U.S. foreign aid agency USAID for use especially in African countries. But having abolished the agency, President Trump's administration decided to incinerate them. In tennis, Spain's Carlos [Alcara...] Alcaráz has beaten Serbia's Novak Djokovic to secure a place in Sunday's US Open final. |