Good morning.
The Trump administration is going to restrict the number of refugees it admits into the US next year to the token level of just 7,500 – and those spots will mostly be filled by white South Africans.
The low number represents a dramatic decrease from last year’s ceiling, set under the Biden administration, of 125,000 people fleeing war and persecution.
The announcement swiftly drew criticism from a large range of refugee organizations.
“Since the US Refugee Program was created in 1980, it has admitted over 2 million people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors. Now it will be used as a pathway for white immigration,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
What reason has been given for prioritizing white South Africans? The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the South African government is implementing anti-white policies through a new land expropriation law. The South African government has called the claims false.
California officials investigate after second shooting by ICE agents in a week
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in a shooting in southern California on Thursday, prompting a federal investigation.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a vehicle stop in Ontario when another driver, who was not the target, approached. Officers ordered the driver to leave the area, according to the statement.
“As the driver began to pull away, the car stopped and attempted to run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping,” Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS’s assistant press secretary, said in a statement.
What was the other shooting by ICE agents in LA recently? Last week, federal agents shot an LA man who livestreams immigration enforcement operations on social media. Officials said at the time that Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok creator with a large following, had attempted to ram federal agents’ vehicles after agents surrounded him and boxed in his car.
Hurricane Melissa death toll nears 50 as Jamaica relief efforts intensify and storm heads north
The death toll from Hurricane Melissa has reached 49 as the storm continues to tear through the Caribbean, heading past Bermuda, and workers in Jamaica ramped up efforts to clear roads and reach people in isolated and cut-off areas.
Tropical storm conditions were occurring on Bermuda late on Thursday, as the category 2 storm moved past the western side of the territory, packing maximum sustained winds of 100mph (155km/h). The storm is moving in a north-easterly direction at a speed of 38mph (61km/h).
What do we know about the number of deaths so far? In Haiti the death toll has risen to 30, with another 20 missing, the civil defence agency said on Thursday. “It is a sad moment for the country,” said Haiti’s head of the transitional presidential council, Laurent Saint-Cyr. In Jamaica the death toll rose to 19, and search and rescue efforts were continuing, said the information minister, Dana Morris Dixon.
In other news …
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has declared a state of emergency to raise $65m to help food pantries, with federal funding for the national food stamps program set to expire on Saturday due to the government shutdown.
The UK’s Prince Andrew will be stripped of his royal titles, Buckingham Palace has announced, amid ongoing allegations of his friendship with child sexual abuse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Russian commanders are executing or deliberately sending to their deaths soldiers who refuse to fight in Ukraine, according to a new investigation by the independent outlet Verstka.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party is almost certain to be excluded from the next Dutch government, after a general election in which his support slumped while liberal-progressives made gains.
Stat of the day: $14,674 median salary for Starbucks employee is 0.015% of CEO’s $97.8m pay
Unionized Starbucks workers are voting over strikes, amid anger over pay and conditions and allegations the company breached labor laws. Figures show that the median annual salary for a Starbucks employee in 2024 was $14,674 – representing 0.015% of the $97.8m total compensation received by its chief executive, Brian Niccol, over the past year.
Don’t miss this: The least frightening films ever – ranked!
Halloween season is packed with scary movie lists. But what about the least frightening films ever? Stuart Heritage ranks the serene and the relaxing, from My Dinner with Andre (1981) to Before Sunset (2004) to David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999), in which an old man drives a lawnmower across middle America to visit his dying brother.
Climate check: ex-EPA head urges resistance to Trump attacks on climate action – ‘We won’t become numb’
Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency head who now co-chairs America Is All In, which is sending more than 100 subnational leaders to the UN climate summit in Brazil next month, told reporters yesterday that US cities and states “will not allow our country to become numb or debilitated by those who are standing in the way of progress”.
Last Thing: ‘I dressed up as a superhero for Halloween – and then saved a man’s life’
On Halloween night in 2020, Christopher Lee Taylor dressed up as the superhero Homelander, with a stars and stripes cape. Driving to a house party, “I saw flames shooting out of another house,” he says. “The kids were both staring from the back seat. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll be right back’, and took off towards the burning house.”
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