After nearly two hours of impassioned debate, the Crow Tribe’s Legislature on Oct. 28 voted down a bill that would dramatically change the definition of tribal membership. The bill, brought by Chairman Frank White Clay, would have revised the tribe’s “blood quantum” standard, effectively making more people eligible for tribal citizenship.

Blood quantum, a concept created by White settlers and rooted in assimilation tactics, refers to the fractional amount of tribal affiliation in an individual’s ancestry. The concept is central to individual identity and is also highly controversial.

Most tribes nationwide use a blood quantum calculation to determine eligibility for citizenship. Tribal enrollment, in turn, determines eligibility for certain health services, the ability to vote in tribal elections and whether a person can qualify for educational scholarships, among other rights and privileges. Tribal enrollment numbers can also influence federal funding for tribal programs.

With each new generation, it becomes harder for any tribe using blood quantum to maintain its membership as tribal members marry non-Natives or people from other tribes. The limitations of blood quantum as a qualifying standard for tribal membership, a California Law Review article contends, “threaten to jeopardize the existence of Native nations, as you cannot have a nation without citizens.”

While most tribes in Montana use blood quantum to determine citizenship, the Chippewa Cree and Northern Cheyenne tribes use a lineal descendency model in which membership is determined by a person’s ancestry. The Blackfeet and Fort Belknap Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes have also initiated community discussions about potentially changing enrollment requirements.

According to the Crow Tribe’s current enrollment policy, an individual must “possess one-quarter Crow Indian blood” to enroll as a member of the tribe. The proposed legislation would revise that policy so that all living current members would be considered to have 100% Crow “blood.”

That would change the lives and membership status not just of more than 14,000 enrolled Crow tribal members, but thousands of descendants who would become more likely to qualify for tribal membership and the services that come with it.

The Crow Tribal Legislative Branch,

one of three branches of tribal government, comprises 18 senators. Sitting at a table surrounded by members of the tribal Legislature on Oct. 28 afternoon, Chairman Frank White Clay and tribal attorney Majel Russell made their pitch for the bill.

Blood quantum, they said, became central to federal policy in the late 19th century. From 1887 to 1934, the federal government divided tribal land into allotments for distribution to individual tribal members, using blood quantum to determine eligibility, with the goal of assimilating Native Americans into White society through private property ownership.

In assigning blood quantum values to individuals, federal agents made “significant errors,” said Russell. She called the practice “arbitrary,” citing instances where children of the same parents were assigned different blood quantum values. Russell presented the legislation as “the most viable option” to address the issue in a timely manner.

Other reforms, she said, would require a Constitutional referendum, a more burdensome political process. The tribe has faced declining enrollment since 2023, the chairman and tribal attorney argued. Without a blood quantum revision in the coming decades, they said, the tribe could eventually cease to exist as a political entity.

White Clay said the legislation would benefit young people whose parents are enrolled but who are not enrolled themselves. “Everything about them is Crow,” he told the Legislature. “They live here. They work here. Their culture is here. But, just by a little bit, they’re not Crow.

When we hold on to blood quantum, our tribe has an expiration date.”

While some senators opposed the idea of revising blood quantum at all, others said the legislation didn’t go far enough and offered only a temporary fix. Sen. Darwin Spotted Sr. voiced a popular counterargument: that more liberal enrollment requirements could result in more people vying for fewer resources in a federal system where resources are already scarce.

“Right now, we’re fighting for one big pot, all of us Native Americans in the U.S.,” he said. While the chairman and tribal attorney argued that federal funding is often calculated based on a tribe’s population, resulting in more resources based on higher membership, Spotted said he was skeptical, and added that the Trump administration is particularly unpredictable.

Sen. Dean Don’t Mix said that while he appreciated how the legislation would benefit the tribe, he worried that broader membership could make it more difficult in the future to revise the tribe’s Constitution, which requires support from a significant portion of the tribe’s citizens.

He also expressed concern that the legislation was “passing the buck” to future generations to contend with the issue. “I want to go back to the drawing board,”

he said. Sen. Jason Kills Pretty Enemy took issue with the alleged errors in enrollment information as described by Russell, arguing that before the tribe considers legislation to revise blood quantum, it should correct any inaccuracies in existing membership rolls.

Sen. Velma Pickett spoke in support of adopting a lineal descent policy, the type of membership determined by a person’s ancestry. “This isn’t the only option,” she said of the proposed legislation. “This isn’t a step away from blood quantum, it only extends the expiration date.”

Sens. Lesley Kabotie, Josie Passes and Glenn Plenty Hawk were among the legislation’s most vocal supporters. Kabotie criticized lawmakers’ opposing arguments as being rooted in fear. Supporting the blood quantum revision, she said, exercised the tribe’s sovereignty and helped ensure the tribe’s future.

“Blood quantum is not a legitimate deciding factor of whether Apsaalooké people walk the face of this Earth or not,” she said. “Our decision is to decide that as long as the grass grows, the rivers flow, there shall be recognized, enrolled members of the Apsaalooké Nation that America and everybody else will have to deal with. We need to assure that.”

Passes similarly characterized opposing arguments as “fear-based” and urged the Legislature to consider the community’s children. “We have several little Indian kids running around this reservation who are enrolled in other tribes, who live here, who are Crow, who dance traditional, who speak the language, who sing,” she said.

“That’s their identity, but on paper, they’re not enough. They are one tick mark away, two tick marks away. We’re telling them that they are not Crow and we are not considering them.”

The legislation, she said, sends a message to young people that “you matter. You’re Crow. I see you, and you count.”

After almost two hours of debate, the Legislature voted the bill down on a 10-7 vote. Several lawmakers said that while the bill is dead, the debate about blood quantum isn’t over.

The chairman could bring another piece of legislation for the body to consider or issue an executive order revising blood quantum. The tribe can also change its membership requirements via constitutional referendum. Standing in the chamber after the vote, Chairman White Clay echoed the sentiment that some senators voted out of fear.

“I just believe that they’re scared of change,” he said. “They fear these new things. Maybe the next generation won’t.” This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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NAIROBI, Kenya—The number of people fleeing violence in Ethiopia into neighboring Kenya has risen to 36,000, the United Nations said Oct. 27, as fighting near the border town of Moyale continues to displace civilians, mostly women and children.

The Kenya Red Cross said the displaced people were sheltering in six camps and villages within host communities.

“More food supplies are reaching the camps and our volunteers are helping prepare and serve hot meals every day, alongside the health services and household items already being provided,” the Red Cross said in a statement.

The fighting on the Ethiopian side of the border stems from a territorial dispute between the Oromia and Somali regional administrations, aggravated by the killing of a 13-year-old girl in an area administered by the Somali regional administration.

The UN refugee agency said it was “on

manitarian partners “to support the national and local emergency response”.

Local leaders in Kenya’s Marsabit County expressed concern that the influx could overwhelm communities hosting thousands of those fleeing and appealed for support.

The violence has raised security concerns on the Kenyan side of the border, with police reporting three incidents involving stray bullets in Moyale last week.

Over the weekend, political leaders from Marsabit County warned of a deepening humanitarian crisis that could overwhelm host communities already struggling with food and water shortages worsened by climate change.

The local legislators told journalists they were concerned that the fighting could also spread to the Kenyan side as displaced and aggrieved people cross the border.

The Kenya National Human Rights Commission on Oct. 27 called for an urgent humanitarian response to protect those displaced and ease pressure on host communities. (AP)

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The men could face terrorism-related charges involving deadly devices and explosives under Cuba’s penal code, Col. Francisco Estrada Portales, an official with the Interior Ministry’s State Security department, told The Associated Press.

The offenses can carry the death penalty, but Estrada said prosecutors had not yet requested specific sentences. Cuba has not carried out an execution in decades.

A speedboat carrying 10 men of Cuban origin from the United States attempted to enter Cuban waters on Feb. 25 and opened fire on a Cuban coast guard vessel that tried to intercept it, authorities said.

Three of the attackers were killed in the confrontation, and a fourth later died of his injuries. The boat was about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) northeast of Cayo Falcones, off Cuba’s northern coast.

The captain of the Cuban coast guard vessel was wounded. Authorities also reported arresting a person on land who allegedly provided support to the group.

The incident came as tensions between Cuba and the United States intensified, with Washington imposing energy restrictions on the island as part of its campaign to force a change in government and not ruling out military action.

Cuba’s Interior Ministry previously displayed weapons and equipment seized from the group, including rifles, handguns, explosives, backpacks containing clothing, uniforms, boots, helmets, medical supplies, food, an electric generator, satellite communications equipment and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

“The weapons and explosives were all in good working condition and ready to be used to cause harm,” Estrada said.

Estrada said the suspects’ confessions and cooperation helped investigators determine that Amijail Sánchez, a Cuban who has lived in the United States since 2016, fired the first shots. Sánchez, who is in custody, was included on a list of alleged terrorists that Cuba submitted to the United Nations last year.

Another detained suspect, Leordan Cruz, also appears on Cuba’s terrorism list.

Cuban authorities showed AP video recordings of statements made by the suspects.

AP could not independently verify the contents of the recordings or the circumstances under which the statements were made.

In one recording, Cruz said the group intended to secure an area and encourage Cubans to overthrow the government.

Estrada said Cuban authorities had shared their findings with the United States but had received no response as of Oct. 19. (AP)

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More than a dozen Indigenous representatives from Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador participated in the Oct. 19-23 UN conference on transnational organized crime, known as COP13.

The leaders want governments to tackle the financial networks behind environmental crimes while giving Indigenous peoples a greater role in protecting their ancestral territories and shaping a proposed international agreement.

Criminal networks threaten Indigenous territories

Galois Flores, a representative of Peru’s Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation, told The Associated Press that illegal gold mining, logging and drug trafficking are putting growing pressure on Indigenous communities.

“Deforestation and pollution in the Amazon are no longer just environmental problems, but a crisis of transnational organized crime and security,” Flores said.

Mercury from gold mining is contaminating rivers used for fishing and drinking water, Flores said, while criminal networks have access to weapons, money and the ability to intimidate communities.

In response, the Wampis have established two monitoring posts, each staffed by 14 Indigenous guards, to confront illegal mining. But those resisting criminal groups face threats and violence, Flores said.

Similar dangers confront the Kakataibo people in Peru’s central Amazon, where drug traffickers have established illegal coca plantations and processing laboratories in ancestral forests, according to Indigenous leaders.

Marcelo Odicio, president of the Federation of Native Kakataibo Communities, said six Kakataibo leaders have been killed since 2020, while community representatives routinely face threats.

Across the border in Brazil, Francisco Piyako Apiwtxa, an Ashaninka leader, described threats from illegal logging, drug trafficking and roads used to transport illicit goods.

In July, he said, at least five heavily armed, masked men entered an Ashaninka community, threatening families and searching for Indigenous leaders. Piyako said inadequate government protection has left Indigenous communities confronting criminal groups themselves.

“Our territories, our homes, our waters, the future of our children are at stake,” he said.

In Colombia’s southern Putumayo region, Indigenous leader Ingry Mojanajinsoy said armed groups that previously relied on drug trafficking for money are increasingly turning to illegal mining. Even when mining takes place outside Indigenous territories, she said, pollution travels downstream, contaminating rivers and fish that communities depend on for food.

At least 105 land and environmental defenders were killed in Latin America in 2025, accounting for 85% of the 124 killings documented worldwide, according to environmental and human rights group Global Witness. Colombia recorded 39 killings, followed by Brazil with 26.

Push for an international environmental crime agreement

The Vienna conference brings together countries working under a UN treaty to combat transnational organized crime. Governments are expected to consider launching negotiations on a new protocol addressing environmental crimes, including illegal mining, logging and wildlife trafficking.

Raphael Hoetmer, Western Amazon Program Director at Amazon Watch, said organized crime and illicit economies have become major threats to the Amazon, Indigenous peoples and the global climate.

He criticized governments’ reliance on military operations and raids, arguing they fail to address underlying causes and can leave Indigenous communities caught in the violence.

Instead, delegates want stronger Indigenous land rights, support for community-led territorial protection and a greater voice in international negotiations.

“The conference should not only agree to begin negotiating a protocol against crimes that affect the environment, but also ensure that Indigenous peoples are seriously consulted in the process,” Hoetmer said.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said it works with Indigenous communities across Latin America to combat organized crime and environmental threats, pointing to a project in Brazil that helps communities monitor ille gal gold mining and work more closely with authorities.

The project has also helped lay the groundwork for a national system to detect and respond to environmental crimes, said UNODC spokesperson Alejandra Silva. The agency did not say whether Indigenous representatives would have a formal role in negotiating the proposed protocol.

Flores called for environmental crimes to be treated as seriously as drug and arms trafficking, including tracing illicit financial flows and disrupting markets for illegally mined gold. Odicio urged governments to recognize Indigenous territorial guards and protect threatened leaders.

Flores said isolated police operations are insufficient because illegal operators often return once security forces withdraw. Soldiers made a similar observation to AP during an illegal mining raid in Peru in August, saying miners would wait for troops to leave before restarting work.

“We do not want to leave future generations rivers poisoned with mercury, destroyed forests and communities controlled by criminal violence,” Flores said. (AP)

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The two-day hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Montevideo, Uruguay, marks the first time the tribunal has considered a case involving Indigenous peoples living in isolation in Peru.

The case centers on the Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca peoples, who live in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon. Indigenous organizations say logging concessions and other incursions have pushed outsiders deeper into forests used by the groups, increasing the risk of violent encounters and exposure to diseases to which isolated peoples may have little immunity.

“Many of our brothers and sisters have already disappeared, and we don’t want the Mashco Piro to suffer the same fate,” Maglin Alvarado Vargas, a leader of the Yine Indigenous people from the Native Community of Monte Salvado, told the court. “It is in your hands whether they can survive.”

Peru has argued that it has adopted laws, protocols, monitoring systems and other measures to protect isolated Indigenous peoples. The Peruvian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Julio Cusurichi, part of the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and Tributaries, known by its Spanish acronym FENAMAD, said those protections were not being implemented in practice.

“The government is not taking action to safeguard the rights of these peoples,” Cusurichi said. He warned that continued incursions into their territory could threaten their survival.

The case dates back decades. FENAMAD has raised concerns about logging in Mashco Piro territory since the 1990s and sought emergency protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2005. The commission, a separate body from the court, granted protective measures in 2007.

FENAMAD brought a formal petition to the commission in 2011. In 2022, the commission found Peru responsible for violating the rights of the Mashco Piro, Yora and Amahuaca. The case was sent to the court in 2024 after the commission concluded Peru had not complied with its recommendations.

Teresa Mayo of Survival International, an Indigenous rights organization supporting the case, said Indigenous communities and their allies want the court to hold Peru responsible and require stronger protection of the Mashco Piro’s territory and their right to remain isolated.

“This is a historic hearing,” Mayo said, adding that the groups want the court to guarantee the Mashco Piro can “remain uncontacted, with their land fully protected.”

At the center of the dispute is the territory available to isolated peoples and whether extractive activities can be permitted there.

Maritza Quispe, a lawyer with Peru’s Legal Defense Institute representing the Indigenous side, said the case could establish an important precedent over the ancestral land rights of peoples living in isolation and whether governments can authorize extraction in their territories.

Peruvian law generally bars outside activity in reserves established for isolated Indigenous peoples, but contains an exception allowing natural resources to be exploited when authorities determine there is a public necessity, Quispe said.

One of the lawyers representing the Indigenous groups told the court that Peru had “flagrantly violated” principles intended to protect isolated peoples, including avoiding contact with them and keeping their territories free from outside activity.

The Mashco Piro number more than 750 people and live in southeastern Peru and across the border in Brazil, according to Indigenous organizations. Encounters with outsiders have already turned deadly.

In 2024, two loggers were killed in bow-and-arrow attacks after entering Mashco Piro territory, and subsequent sightings have placed members of the group close to active logging areas.

Contact also poses a potentially deadly risk to the Mashco Piro themselves. Indigenous peoples who have lived in isolation have little immunity to common illnesses brought by outsiders, meaning even diseases such as a cold or flu could kill them.

The parties now have until Oct. 26 to submit their final written arguments. The court will then deliberate and issue a judgment, though no date has been set for a ruling. (AP)

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A Utah judge ordered Douglas Stewart Carter out on bail late Sept. 28, over objections from the victim’s family. Carter is required to wear a GPS monitor while he awaits a new trial in the 1985 killing of Eva Olesen.

The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial last year, citing misconduct by investigators. Carter has maintained his innocence and says a signed confession was coerced.

No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. But the jury convicted Carter, a Black man, based on the confession and the testimony of two witnesses who said he bragged about killing Olesen, who was White. Those witnesses later recanted.

A DNA analysis received Sept. 22 excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and genetic material recovered from the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot.

Judge Derek Pullan said those results further undermined the case against Carter, but a reasonable jury still could conclude that he killed Olesen.

Prosecutors are reconsidering the case

Carter walked out of jail late Sept. 28, wearing a white shirt and grey sweatpants, with his eyeglasses hanging from around his neck. His son pushed a cart with pillows, blankets and Carter’s personal belongings beside him.

Carter smiled at times while also trying to shield his face behind papers. He didn’t speak to a handful of journalists outside the jail, and got into a vehicle with his son and defense attorney. A judge ordered him not to have any contact with Olesen’s family.

“This is going to be a lot for him,” Carter’s son, Tyler Anger, said as he waited for his father.

Carter will be placed in an extended stay hotel near Anger, who was adopted by another family as an infant and didn’t learn about the conviction until years later, said Carter’s attorney Neal Hamilton. Carter also will need therapy to deal with his extended incarceration, Hamilton said.

“If the state of Utah had their way, he would have been executed 15, 20 years ago before we discovered the misconduct,” Hamilton said. He urged prosecutors to seek dismissal of an aggravated murder charge still pending against Carter.

A two-month retrial was planned next year, but recently county prosecutors withdrew a notice that they intended to seek the death penalty.

Utah County prosecutor Erwin Petilos told the judge Sept. 28, that reassessing Carter’s bail was “necessary and fair” as the state continues to look at the remaining evidence in the case.

Carter, a Chicago native, was living with his mother in Utah when Olesen was killed on Feb. 27, 1985. Court documents indicate the investigation eventually focused on Carter, who was suspected of killing Olesen during a robbery.

By that April, Carter had fled Utah believing he was a suspect in an unrelated assault case, according to court documents. He was apprehended that June in Nashville, Tennessee, where he signed a confession while under interrogation by a Provo detective.

Carter said later that he falsely confessed after police repeatedly threatened him. He was convicted and sentenced to death after a trial in which the defense called no witnesses. He was again sentenced to death after a 1992 retrial, and courts in Utah rejected numerous appeals from Carter in subsequent years.

Key witnesses say police gave them cash and gifts

A turning point came in 2011, when the two witnesses from Carter’s original trial were tracked down in Mexico. They said they had been told to lie in court and had received cash and gifts from police, who told them not to disclose the payments. They also said police and prosecutors threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter.

More than a decade of legal wrangling followed before the Utah Supreme Court last year ordered a new trial, citing “multiple instances of intentional misconduct” by police and a prosecutor.

A DNA analysis of the evidence was conducted in response to that order, and prosecutors said the results arrived last week. They declined Sept. 28 to say whether they’re using the DNA evidence to search for other suspects with matching DNA.

Victim’s husband was potential suspect

Carter’s defense attorneys have said witnesses saw a White man fleeing the crime scene and an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen.

They allege that prosecutors were close to filing charges against the husband, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to so he could continue investigating. Carter was identified as a suspect soon after, according to court documents.

Orla Olesen, a painting contractor who died in 2009, told police he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.

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HARARE, Zimbabwe—A television game show in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos has an unforgiving rule: Speak English and you lose. For a U.S.-born millennial in the audience and a student of her parents’ mother tongue, the high-stakes setting is a perfect classroom.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Canadian speaks to a teacher about 8,000 miles away in Zimbabwe, learning a language her parents feared she would never speak.

“Mhoroi,” Nyashadzashe Machingura says cheerfully with a pronounced Canadian accent while greeting in Zimbabwe’s vernacular Shona.

The scenes capture a new generation of interest and entrepreneurship around African languages once pushed to the margins by decades of colonialism. Often seen as secondary to English, French and Portuguese, they are enjoying a renaissance that is also creating business opportunities.

There are between 1,500 and 3,000 languages in Africa

Africa is home to over one billion people speaking roughly a third of the world’s languages, with between 1,500 and 3,000 across 54 countries, according to UNESCO.

Experts say the revival in some of them is driven partly by second- and third-generation Africans in the diaspora finding it easier to reconnect with their roots and communicate with older relatives, thanks to social media, online learning and entertainment.

“There were times I definitely felt left out because my family around me were all speaking Shona. And I just couldn’t understand them,” Nyashadzashe said after a lesson covering traditional greetings, proverbs and ancestral clan symbols. She said she had eaten the food and worn the traditional clothing but still felt left out.

But now her conversations with her grandparents in Zimbabwe are growing longer.

“Being able to connect with them on that level makes me really proud of my heritage,” she said.

African languages were never ‘modernized’

Her Zimbabwe-based tutor, Shungu Chidovi, left her banking career in January to focus full-time on ZimbOriginal, an online platform that teaches Shona through storytelling, book clubs and “buddy pairing” exchanges.

Now she teaches about two dozen learners in Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and Scotland, charging $50 a month.

The business, part of a small but growing number of online initiatives teaching African languages, emerged almost by accident. Chidovi began writing a blog about Zimbabwean traditions in 2016. Readers began asking whether she taught Shona.

“I didn’t see it at the time that I was really writing about the Shona language,” Chidovi said.

Western languages were prioritized

Like many in Africa, she grew up with the understanding that to get ahead she had to embrace Western languages instead of her mother tongue. English remains the dominant language for education, business and government affairs in the southern African nation that officially recognizes 16 mostly Indigenous languages.

“When you talk of Africa, you talk of English, French, Portuguese,” said Believe Mubonderi, a linguistics lecturer at Zimbabwe Open University. His research notes the importance of ensuring that African languages have a place in technologies shaping how people communicate, learn and trade.

“In most cases, African languages were sidelined. They were never exposed or modernized to be used in commerce, science and technology,” he said. “When a language has a very low status, there’s a danger that that language eventually becomes endangered.”

Culture and connection are driving the new interest

Governments and international organizations are trying to reverse that trend.

The African Union’s 2022 decision to adopt Kiswahili, spoken in much of east Africa, as an official working language has raised its international profile. The United Nations declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

And the AU continental body and UNESCO are supporting efforts to document and revitalize African languages, including using artificial intelligence to generate and translate children’s books and teacher guides.

But there’s a steep digital disadvantage. UNESCO says only 10 languages around the world dominate the “internet ecosystem,” while less than 2% of African languages have a meaningful online presence. That leaves many with too little data to train artificial intelligence systems.

Still, momentum for change is growing, with much of it from Africans abroad.

“People of African descent have come to realize that we also have our own identity which we need to embrace and be proud of. You go on Facebook, you go on TikTok, you are seeing many different efforts,” Mubonderi said. Younger diaspora Africans “are trying by all means to revive, to revitalize, to make use of these languages.”

Chindovi said she hears that desire from children and their parents.

“When people are away from home, they long for home more than when they are home,” she said.

Nigerian game show penalizes English speakers

That hunger for connection is also reshaping culture.

In Nigeria, a game show called “Masoyinbo,” meaning “Do not speak English,” has turned Yoruba, one of the country’s most widely spoken languages, into prime-time entertainment. Contestants, including diaspora Nigerians, are tested on Yoruba language and culture, with prizes reaching thousands of dollars.

Host Olalekan Fabilola, who started the show in 2024, sees its popularity as part of a wider shift.

“If ‘Masoyinbo’ had started like 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been what it is now,” he said. “But we are in the age of cultural resurgence. People want to go back to their roots. Everyone wants to know why, where they are from, and so it’s timely.”

Tomi Adeshokan, a New Jersey resident who is learning to perfect her Yoruba with Fabilola as a tutor, was part of the audience during a recent recording of the show. She said she lost daily exposure to Yoruba after moving out of her father’s home before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, she joined Clubhouse just to hear the language and later began taking classes. Now she was back visiting family.

“It’s very important for us to immerse ourselves in our culture and not to fully identify with other cultures, like the American, the Western culture,” Adeshokan said.

Dan Ikpoyi reported from Lagos, Nigeria

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Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Sept. 14 that the U.S. has fielded “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink did not detail what the weapons were, how they work or if they were targeting other objects in space or on Earth. The U.S. had warned two years ago that Russia was developing a new space-based, anti-satellite weapon, though the White House said the danger wasn’t imminent at the time.

But reports of the anti-satellite weapon reflected longstanding worries about space threats from Russia and China, given that much U.S. infrastructure is dependent on satellite communications. The U.S. has also previously demonstrated its own abilities to shoot down satellites from Earth.

In his remarks to the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Meink also said the Air Force was adding more autonomous systems to its capabilities and predicted the service would look “radically different” by 2032. For example, he foresaw one-way attack drones replacing artillery as the “primary killer.”

“We are increasing readiness against existing threats,” he said. (AP)

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In Hawaii, fierce winds downed trees and caused widespread power outages on the island of Kauai, home to 73,000 residents. The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative reported that nearly all of its roughly 35,000 members were without power early Sept. 8.

Emergency officials asked residents to conserve water and stay off the roads as authorities assessed the damage.

Waves that crashed onto Kauai’s southern coast tore apart a road along the coast and pushed piles of sand and lava rocks into a beachside park, said Rochelle Ballard, a former professional surfer who runs a surf school across from the park.

It will take weeks of cleanup, she said. Her family’s surf shop and neighboring restaurant came away without damage, but she said a friend’s house was destroyed.

Hurricane Lowell didn’t make a direct hit on Hawaii

The center of the storm passed West of the islands in the overnight hours Sept. 8 and moved farther away throughout the day.

The storm’s tropical storm-force winds extended well beyond the center, the National Hurricane Center said. On Kauai, sustained winds measured just above 50 mph at Lihue Airport, the island’s only commercial airport that was closed after the storm.

Hurricane warnings for Kauai and the tiny island of Niihau, which has less than 100 permanent residents, were no longer in place by Sept. 8 morning local time. A tropical storm warning was also lifted for Oahu, the state’s most populated island with close to one million residents.

Some wind gusts reached 80 mph, according to the hurricane center. But the force of the sustained winds had decreased by early Sept. 8 and later the storm weakened and was no longer a hurricane.

Storm left a mess on Kauai and Oahu

There was extensive damage across Kauai, and crews were using heavy equipment to push trees and debris off the roads, said Derek Kawakami, mayor of Kauai County. About 300 people were staying in shelters on Kauai.

Kauai real estate agent Lori Benkert, who lives in Lihue, said she endured a loud, windy night after her power went out Sept. 7 evening. The storm downed trees next to her house, and the community’s main road was closed because of fallen trees, she said. “We’re fine. My house did great with no boarded-up windows,” Benkert said. “But there are a lot of downed power lines.”

On Oahu, road crews were clearing sand and rocks from a major route along the island’s western edge after floodwaters topped a coastal highway, North of Honolulu.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green closed schools and government offices on the three islands for Sept. 8 ahead of the storm.

Last month (August), Tropical Storm Lala brushed past Hawaii and stirred up landslides, washing away about 100 homes and causing widespread power outages.

Marie downgraded but still being felt in California

What’s left of Hurricane Marie was downgraded again and is no longer considered a tropical storm.

But it was still creating dangerous surf conditions along the coast of Mexico’s Baja California and Southern California. Swells with life-threatening surf and rip current conditions will continue for the next few days, the hurricane center said.

In Malibu, where big waves were pounding the shore, the driveway of a beachfront home that sits on pylons collapsed into a sinkhole Sept. 8 morning, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. (AP)

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Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford submitted his resignation the same day, but the city’s board of aldermen declined to acknowledge it and instead voted unanimously to fire the chief, according to the city clerk, who did not elaborate on their reasons.

The firing followed reporting by The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News last month that alleged Vanderford used racist slurs in private text conversations with a colleague. It also comes amid the aftermath of the child’s shooting and other incidents.

The toddler Wiley was fatally shot and another woman was wounded June 14 after a Senatobia police officer fired into a vehicle while investigating a shoplifting call at a Walmart. The boy’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, denied that she or a friend accompanying her had stolen anything, and no charges have been filed against them.

The officer who shot Wiley and the woman driving the car the child was in has been placed on administrative leave while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation looks into the shooting.

The child’s death stirs anger in the small Mississippi city

Kohen Wiley was Black, as is his mother. The death ignited anger in a small city where tensions between Black residents and the police have boiled over in recent years. Senatobia, with a population of more than 8,000, is about 40 miles south of Memphis.

“I believe the Board has a responsibility to protect the integrity and trust of the Senatobia Police Department,” Alderman Demetrius Garrett wrote in a Facebook post. “I still believe in unity. But unity does not mean ignoring serious issues; it means standing together for what is right.”

The city had previously addressed the reporting about Vanderford’s texts, saying in a statement on Aug. 25 that he had appeared before the mayor and board to answer questions and that he would continue to serve as police chief.

A Senatobia alderman calls for an independent investigation

Senatobia Alderman Chris McConnell called for an independent investigation of the police department. “We need answers about departmental leadership, internal culture, the handling of complaints and misconduct, financial practices.

And whether the Board has been receiving the information necessary to provide proper oversight,” McConnell said in a statement. “Our citizens deserve a police department they can trust.”

National civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Kohen Wiley’s family, called the chief’s firing the “right decision.”

“The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process,” Crump said in a statement calling for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to release body-camera footage of the shooting. “Give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died.”

The Senatobia Police Department declined to comment on the firing, and Vanderford could not be immediately located for a response Sept. 2.

Kohen Wiley’s shooting death was one controversy among others

Vanderford was appointed police chief on Sept. 29, 2025, after the board of aldermen declined to reappoint the previous chief, Richard Chandler, in July of that year.

Chandler led the police department through several controversies. They included the 2023 arrest of a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public and an incident in which an officer threatened a woman with a Taser and pulled her from her car during a dispute over a handicapped parking space outside the same Walmart where the child was shot.

“You removed Richard Chandler,” said Senatobia community activist Patrick Lumumba. “But you did not remove the culture of racism, and that’s what Vanderford harbors.”

Following the child’s death, Lumumba formed the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, a community watchdog group that is demanding answers about the June shooting and advocating for better policing.

He voiced confidence in Lt. Angelica Maze, who will serve as the department’s interim police chief, calling her a “good person.”

—Sophie Bates, The Associated Press

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