On the doorstep of Goma – the site of the UN’s biggest peacekeeping mission in the world – there are signs of surrendered soldiers and fierce battles.
As we walked on the road in front of the United Nations’ main base, we stepped around fatigues, rounds and helmets once belonging to the Congolese army fighting the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels.
The rebels now control the strategic city of Goma after fighting for the border post with Rwanda. It sits south of the swathes of mineral-rich mining territory the rebels have been seizing through last year.
We see them packed on the back of trucks still marked by the FARDC logo of the Congolese army.
I ask one man watching from the side of the road what he makes of this extreme shift.
“This is bad!” he says to me discreetly on the side of the road, with our car as cover from the prying eyes of the junior M23 soldiers.
“My family is not good. I am not good – we don’t know what comes next.”
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Watch as M23 rebels take over Goma in DRC
Small groups are meeting the rebels with cheers and clapping.
We cannot tell if it is relief from the Congolese state or a necessary precaution for many who do not want to leave their hometown on the cusp of a new administration.
But before they can settle in and set up a local authority, M23 have time to stop and humiliate their former enemy.
Not just the Congolese troops, but the Romanian mercenaries fighting alongside them.
MONUSCO, the United Nations’s peacekeeping group in the DRC, brokered an evacuation convoy for the paid fighters to go to Rwanda with trucks full of Uruguayan peacekeeping troops watching as M23 led the handover through their newly-captured border.
As the Romanian men pass through in a single file, they are chastised by M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma who taps them mockingly one by one.
“Come on soldier!” he said. “You were fighting for money – we were fighting for our life!”
I corner him as he flags the buses through – could you have come this far without Rwanda’s support?
He tries to keep busy, and after the fourth time I repeat the question, he yells into my face in French:
“We are a Congolese army, we are Congolese! We fight for a fair and noble cause – we are Congolese. We are not helped by Rwanda!”
It will take more than a feverish denial to undermine the widely known support of Rwanda for M23 – one that has been condemned at the highest levels of the United Nations and senior diplomats from around the world.
As the “Welcome to Rwanda” sign gets closer, the last Romanian mercenary limps across with a wounded leg flanked by a UN security advisor and an Indian medic.
A surreal sight of a man heading home after fighting a war in a foreign country surrounded by Congolese families fleeing the war at home.
Donald Trump has linked a diversity drive at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under previous governments to a deadly plane crash in Washington DC.
Later Sky’s US partner NBC news said staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport, where air traffic controllers were guiding the flights, was “not normal”, according to an initial FAA report.
The tower normally has a controller who focuses specifically on helicopter traffic.
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But at the time of Wednesday night’s crash, a source said, one controller at DCA was overseeing both plane and helicopter activity.
FAA guidelines do allow for this position to be combined.
At his briefingMr Trump blamed his predecessor, former president Joe Biden, for lowering standards for air traffic controllers.
“We have to have our smartest people,” he said. “They have to be naturally talented geniuses.”
He added: “The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.”
Mr Trump criticised Mr Biden and another Democrat former president Barack Obama for putting “policy over safety” when it came to US aviation.
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CCTV captures moment of mid-air collision
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Audio captured moments after the crash
“I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary,” Mr Trump said.
He said that after being sworn in last week, he signed an executive order which “restored the highest standards of air traffic controllers”.
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‘We look at the human, the machine, the environment’
Mr Trump also said: “When I left office and Biden took over he changed them [standards for those who work in aviation system] back to lower than ever before, I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level.”
At a later briefing he was asked if gender or race played a role. He answered: “It may have, I don’t know. Incompetence may have played a role.”
Authorities have said the rescue operation for passengers on board the jet and the Black Hawk helicopter shifted to a recovery one as they believe there are no survivors.
Profound sense of loss in Wichita – the ‘air capital of the world’
In two news conferences on Thursday morning, the pain and bewilderment were both palpable.
At the Washington airport where the American Eagle jet was due to land, officials were forced to say what no air crash investigator wants to – that rescue had turned to recovery.
There was a sense of bewilderment over how this could have happened, a pledge to find out what went wrong and most importantly to recover the bodies of all those who died.
A total of 28 bodies, including 27 from the jet and one from the helicopter, have been recovered from the Potomac river.
“This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history and a tragedy of terrible proportions as one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so suddenly,” Mr Trump said.
The American Airlines jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew when it crashed with the military helicopter, carrying three soldiers, shortly before 9pm local time on Wednesday.
Flight 5342 was preparing to land on runway 33 at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with the helicopter.
The crash is the country’s worst civil aviation disaster since 2009.
Mr Trump also said “the people in the helicopter should have seen where they were going” and that the crash involved a “confluence of bad decisions”.
The Pentagon and US army are investigating the crash, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on X.
Three Israeli and five Thai hostages have been freed under a phased ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza.
But after a chaotic release that saw crowds swarm sections of the handover, Israel temporarily delayed the freeing of 110 Palestinians expected in exchange.
The first hostage, 20-year-old female Israeli soldier Agam Berger, was released in northern Gaza.
Hours later, footage from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis showed a stunned and scared-looking Arbel Yehoud being led through a crowd, flanked by armed, masked Palestinian militants.
It’s suspected she was being held by Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza.
A third Israeli, civilian Gadi Mozes, 80, was also released on Thursday.
Israeli military identified the five Thai nationals as Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakhan, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat and Rumnao Surasak.
In return for the release of the Israeli hostages, Israel is expected to set free 110 Palestinians detained in prisons, including children, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
Among them are a 61-year-old held since 1992 and 30 teenagers, the youngest a 15-year-old boy.
Their release was pausedafter the Israeli PM condemned the “shocking” scenes of the handovers to the Red Cross.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Palestinian detainees would be held until the safe exit of Israeli hostages was guaranteed in future.
He said later that he had received such a commitment, and Israeli media reported the releases of Palestinians would go ahead.
The war has devastated much of Gaza’s infrastructure, including homes, roads, sanitation and communications networks.
The latest planned exchange is part of a fragile truce – mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt – that began on 19 January and has so far held, aimed at winding down the deadliest war ever fought between Israel and Hamas.
Among the roughly 250 people taken from Israel during Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack which ignited the conflict, some have died in captivity in Gaza, while others have been released or rescued.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Hamas-run authorities in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Gazans traversed rubble and dirt to return to what was left of their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip.
But joy was tempered by grief as many discovered shattered or looted homes, no running water in the vicinity and dire shortages of basic supplies.
On Thursday, a new Israeli law came into effect banning the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) from Israeli territory.
It raised fears of a shutdown of its schools, medical facilities and other services in east Jerusalem – and possibly more in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where UNRWA is the biggest provider of aid.
British MP Sarah Champion, who chairs the International Development Committee of MPs, called the ban “devastating”.
“Food, water, education, even rubbish collection will all be affected,” she said.
“In the strongest possible terms, I urge the UK government to do everything it can to get all parties round the table and ensure that UNRWA can fulfil its UN-mandated work. The success of the current ceasefire hangs in the balance if not.”
An Iraqi man who burned copies of the Koran in Sweden has been killed in a shooting, Swedish authorities say.
Swedish police said Salwan Momika was shot dead in a house in Sodertalje, a town near Stockholm, on Wednesday, hours before a court verdict was due in a trial in connection with his burning of the Koran.
Five people have been been arrested, but police did not say whether the gunman was among those detained.
Mr Momika, a refugee and anti-Islam campaigner, staged several desecrations of Islam’s holy book in public or in social media broadcasts in 2023.
Sweden’s prime minister has expressed concern the shooting may be linked to a foreign power.
“I can assure you that the security services are deeply involved because there is obviously a risk that there is a connection to a foreign power,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said at a news conference on Thursday.
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A court in Stockholm had been due to sentence Mr Momika, 38, and another man on Thursday over “offences of agitation against an ethnic or national group,” in connection with the Koran burnings.
The court said the verdict was postponed because one of the defendants had died.
Judge Goran Lundahl and court documents confirmed Mr Momika was the deceased.
Meanwhile, police said they were alerted to a shooting in Sodertalje on Wednesday night.
Officers found a man with gunshot wounds, who later died. A preliminary murder investigation was opened.