South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa will hold crucial talks at the White House with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday in a high-stakes meeting that could improve or deteriorate already frosty relations between the nations.

Ramaphosa is hopeful his visit could end a diplomatic feud that sparked aid cancellations by Trump and fueled the expulsion of his nation’s ambassador to the US.

There are also fears that the African nation could now potentially lose some of its US trade privileges as relations between the two countries sour.

Ramaphosa’s trip comes just over a week after a group of 59 White South Africans arrived in the US after being granted refugee status.

Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country, claimed the South Africans were being persecuted back home. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was in the US national interest to prioritize White South Africans for refugee resettlement, telling a hearing that they’re “a small subset” who “are easier to vet.”

The Trump administration has sharply criticized an expropriation law, which was enacted in South Africa earlier this year. The law empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances.

Trump claimed that lands belonging to South Africa’s minority Whites, who own 72% of the nation’s agricultural land, were being targeted for confiscation, and cited unverified claims that “a genocide is taking place” in South Africa. He added that “White farmers are being brutally killed” amid reports of farm attacks.

Trump also disapproves of South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice against the US ally Israel.

Ramaphosa’s office said he would “discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest” with the US president at the White House. Analysts say the meeting could pose a tipping point for their fraught ties.

The US is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner, and the African nation benefits the most from a US trade agreement that provides preferential duty-free access to US markets for eligible sub-Saharan African nations.

Under that agreement, South Africa is the main agricultural exporter and exports two-thirds of its agricultural goods to the US, tariff-free. But some US lawmakers want those benefits withdrawn when the trade agreement is reviewed this year.

‘A tricky place to be’

South African researcher Neo Letswalo describes the anticipated meeting as “make-or-break” and one that requires “supreme negotiation tactics” by Ramaphosa.

The South African leader is set for a tight rope walk at the White House, he added, reminiscing about a shouting match that broke out in the Oval Office between Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late February.

He believes that “Ramaphosa would maintain his composure to iron out some of the misunderstandings that Trump’s administration officials have about South Africa.”

Other analysts, such as Christopher Afoke Isike, who is a professor of African politics and international relations at the University of Pretoria, believe that Ramaphosa can pull through, “considering the fact that he’s a businessman president like President Trump.”

Ramaphosa plans to soften the ground with a potential licensing deal for Starlink, a satellite internet service owned by Musk, Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya told Reuters Monday.

What could go wrong?

For Letswalo, the crucial talks between Trump and Ramaphosa could hit a brick wall if the White House makes costly demands.

“A dealbreaker would be a request by Washington for Pretoria to retrieve the Land Expropriation Act or Gaza Case in order to continue the US-SA relationship,” he said, adding, “it would be interesting to see how President Ramaphosa maintains the sovereignty and his statement of ‘not going to be bullied by America’, without compromising the pre-existing relationship with the US.”

That task could be one of Ramaphosa’s most challenging, according to André Duvenhage, a politics professor at South Africa’s Northwest University.

“This may be his single biggest challenge in terms of anything he had to deal with in his term as president of the Republic of South Africa.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk for the first time since Moscow claimed to have completely recaptured the region following a surprise incursion by Ukrainian forces last year, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.

Putin met with municipal leaders in the city of Kurchatov and visited the Kursk nuclear power plant, which is currently under construction, the Kremlin said, according to TASS.

Video footage posted by Russian state media showed Putin dressed in a suit speaking with what appeared to be local volunteers.

The news agency did not report when the visit took place.

Last August Ukraine launched a shock incursion into Kursk, swiftly capturing territory in what was the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II.

Since then, Russia, with support from North Korean soldiers, has been fighting to oust Ukraine’s forces from its borders, while Kyiv poured precious resources into holding onto its territory there, with the view of using it as a key bargaining chip in any peace talks.

Putin claimed last month that Russian forces had recaptured Kursk and said North Korean soldiers took part in the fighting to recover territory in the region.

Kyiv has insisted its troops are fiercely battling to preserve their foothold in the territory.

Last week Ukraine said it is still pursuing the ground war inside Russia.

“We are continuing our active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions – we are proactively defending Ukraine’s border areas,” President Zelensky said in his nightly address last Wednesday.

An off-the-cuff remark about never paying for rice has cost Japan’s agriculture minister his job, as pressure mounts on the government to solve the nation’s rice crisis.

Taku Eto resigned on Wednesday, telling reporters that he had concluded he was “not the right person for this role” after sparking a public backlash by saying that he had “so much rice at home that (he) could sell it.”

The cost of rice – Japan’s prime staple food – has become a major political issue, with prices surging to record highs this year and the government taking the rare steps of releasing emergency reserves and importing foreign rice.

Eto’s gaffe could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government, which was already suffering from low approval ratings due to spiraling cost of living, weeks ahead of an election.

“I have never bought rice myself. Frankly, my supporters give me quite a lot of rice. I have so much rice at home that I could sell it,” Eto said in a speech over the weekend, drawing the ire of the public.

He later clarified he did buy his own rice and said he “deeply regretted” his comments.

“I made an extremely inappropriate remark as the minister responsible. For that, I apologize once again to the people of Japan,” Eto said Wednesday after tendering his resignation.

He added that he “fully recognized” the hardship people are facing due to soaring rice prices.

A major threat

Frustrations over the rising cost of living in Japan is shaping up to be a major threat for Prime Minister Ishiba and his Liberal Democratic Party as the country heads to the polls for upper house elections in July.

The latest approval ratings for Ishiba’s cabinet slipped to 27.4%, a record low, according to a poll by Japanese news agency Kyodo released on Sunday. Almost one in nine of the households surveyed said the government’s efforts to rein in rice prices had been insufficient.

Ishiba’s party, which has ruled Japan for almost all of its post-war history, suffered a crushing defeat in last year’s lower house election, but he held on to power by seeking support from minor parties.

Further defeat in the coming elections could threaten his coalition’s rule and spark calls for a new leader.

Rice price stubbornly high

Despite the government’s attempts to bring them down, rice prices in Japan have remained stubbornly high – almost twice what they were a year ago.

The average retail price of rice rose to 4,268 yen ($29.4 US) per five kilograms in the second week of May, reversing a brief decline in 18 weeks recorded in the previous month, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Earlier this year, it took the rare step of putting hundreds of thousands of tons of rice from its emergency reserves up for auction, in a bid to drive down prices. Multiple auctions have since been scheduled until July, with hundreds of thousands of tons of rice being released.

Japan, which takes deep pride in its homegrown rice, has also scaled up imports of rice from overseas, mainly from the US. In April, it also imported South Korean rice for the first time since 1999.

Dealing with the rice crisis is now the job of Shinjiro Koizumi, a former environment minister and son of a former Japanese Prime Minister, who Ishiba has appointed to head the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

“I have instructed Mr. Koizumi to make strong efforts to supply rice to consumers at a stable price, especially in light of the current high rice prices,” Ishiba said.

A suicide attack on a school bus in southwestern Pakistan killed three students of a military-run school on Wednesday, officials said, in the latest attack that underscores the deteriorating security situation in the region.

The explosion took place in the city of Khuzdar in restive Balochistan province and targeted a school bus carrying “a large number” of children of military officials, according to Yasir Dashti, a senior government official from the province.

38 people were wounded in the attack, Dashti said.

“The bus was carrying Army Public School children,” said Kaleem Ullah, a police official from Khuzdar.

Army Public Schools are a network of school across Pakistan for children of military staff.

At least three children and two adults were killed, according to a statement from the Pakistan military.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack so far.

Balochistan has been rocked for years by a separatist insurgency that seeks greater political autonomy and economic development in the strategically important and mineral-rich mountainous region.

Pakistan’s military accused “Indian proxies” of being behind the attack in a statement released shortly after the incident. It did not give evidence for its claims.

Pakistan has previously accused its neighbor and arch-rival of being behind attacks in Balochistan. New Delhi has denied the accusations.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif “strongly condemned the cowardly attack” in a statement and repeated the military’s accusations that India was behind the attack.

India has long accused Pakistan of sheltering militant groups that have carried out attacks across the border, including a recent massacre of tourists in India-administered Kashmir, allegations Islamabad has denied.

Tensions between the two spiraled after that massacre and resulted in a brief four-day conflict earlier this month that was the most sustained fighting between the two in decades. A fragile ceasefire has held since then.

Wednesday’s attack comes just over two months after the deadly hijacking of a train by separatist militants in Balochistan.

In that incident the Baloch Liberation Army took more than 350 people – some of whom were security personnel – hostage, killing 27 of them.

Children have also been the target of some of Pakistan’s most devastating terror attacks.

At least 145 people, mostly school children, were killed in by Pakistani Taliban militants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2014 – the worst terror attack in the country’s history.

The Pakistani Taliban’s most notable target was then 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who was singled out and shot on October 9, 2012 as she rode to school in a van with other girls.

The radio crackled, but the order barked into it was clear: Capture the commander and kill the others.

The chilling exchange was part of a series of radio transmissions between Russian forces that Ukrainian officials say provide further evidence that Russian superiors are ordering soldiers to execute surrendering Ukrainian troops in violation of international law.

Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said the radio transmissions and drone footage suggest the killing of surrendered soldiers by Russian forces, as has been reported by the UN.

Tidball-Binz, who has investigated similar suspected executions, called such incidents “grave breaches” of international law, adding that he believes this conduct could only be authorized by the highest authorities in Russia.

They “would not happen with such numbers and frequency without orders – or at the very least consent – from (the) highest military commanders, which in Russia means the Presidency,” he said.

Russian officials have previously denied that Russian troops have committed war crimes and insisted that Russia treats prisoners of war in accordance with international law.

The alleged executions of prisoners of war, among other widespread charges that Russian military forces are responsible for war crimes in Ukraine, could complicate efforts by US President Donald Trump to bring a swift conclusion to the war. Trump has sought to end the fighting with an erratic approach that has often seen him side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and saw his administration briefly interrupt a State Department initiative to track alleged war crimes by Moscow.

The official said he was examining similar material from other cases, which “strengthen the evidence of a directive from Russian commanding officers to kill Ukrainian soldiers who have surrendered or are in the process of surrendering.”

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office said it has, as of May 5, opened 75 criminal investigations into the suspected executions of 268 Ukrainian prisoners of war. It said the number of alleged executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war has been rising, with eight cases involving 57 soldiers in 2022, eight cases involving 11 soldiers in 2023, 39 cases with 149 soldiers in 2024, and 20 cases so far this year, with 51 soldiers.

Yurii Bielousov, head of the war crimes department at the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, said the rise was attributable to “instructions being given by top leaders of the Russian Federation, both political and military. We didn’t yet see a written order, but we had several examples of oral orders.”

Bielousov noted that Putin had said in March that Ukrainian soldiers captured in Russia’s Kursk region should be treated as terrorists. “Everyone knows how Putin treats people who they call terrorists. So, it’s almost a synonym for us to execute,” he said.

Bohdan Okhrimenko, head of the secretariat at Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, said another possible explanation for the killings was that the Russian military wanted to avoid the logistical issues of capturing and managing prisoners. “It complicates military logistics, from their point of view. The Russian command made a simple decision… to shoot captured prisoners.”

‘Take the commander captive and kill everyone else’

The Ukrainian intelligence official shared a transcript of the radio transmissions, which noted they were intercepted at 12:05 p.m. local time, when the Ukrainian position was stormed, and continued until 12:31 p.m., when apparent fears over a Ukrainian drone arriving causes the Russian commander to order a retreat.

The Russian commander can be heard ordering the killings on six separate occasions. According to the transcript of the intercepted transmissions, the commander’s first order was given at 12:22 p.m.

“Ask who is the commander. Who is the commander? Ask. Take the commander captive and kill everyone else,” he can be heard saying.

Four minutes later, he repeats the order twice.

“You do it. Take the commander captive, f**k off the others.”

“That’s it. Take the senior, get rid the f**k of the others!”

The commander frequently demands updates from his combat unit, who struggle to reply. “Someone, b*tch, answer, are the f**kers surrendering or not?”

The soldier referred to by the callsign “Arta,” who appears to be the main interlocutor, says they have not found a Ukrainian commander, only a “senior.”

At 12:28 p.m., the order is given on the radio a sixth time, and a soldier wearing a mask and a dark green uniform consistent with the Russian military can be seen emerging from the foliage, moving towards the captives.

“Get the f**k out! Take the senior, get rid of the others, f**k!” the commander said.

One Ukrainian soldier is visible in the grainy footage apparently gesturing to the Russians. Moments later, the masked soldier shoots him in the head. The voice of the Russian commander captured on the transmissions then asks if the killing is complete.

“Did you take them down? A question. Did you take them down? A question.”

“Arta! Arta! I’m Beliy, roger that!”

“We killed the f**king others.”

In the footage, another Ukrainian, presumably the commander who was motionless until that point, stands up, removes his body armor and is led away. The Russian commander radios his concern as a drone is seen rising over the smoke from an explosion. A retreat is then ordered.

The killing of surrendering Ukrainian troops is alleged by Ukrainian officials and international experts to be part of an orchestrated Russian policy. The incident appears to be one of the first times that intercepted radio transmissions have been linked to drone footage of a suspected execution.

Ukrainian officials claim the alleged executions are fueled by Russia’s cultural hatred of their opponents but are also meant for psychological impact. Okhrimenko said Russian soldiers had posted videos of the beheading and castration of Ukrainian troops to affect morale.

“Violence breeds violence,” he said, adding that Ukraine had increased training of its personnel to be sure Russian prisoners were held safely for later exchanges.

Portnov, 51, was shot several times as he was getting into a car around 9:15 a.m. local time in Madrid (3:15 a.m. ET), the police source said. Various assailants shot him in the back and the head, and later fled into a wooded area, the source said.

The shooting took place outside The American School of Madrid, located in Pozuelo de Alaracon, an affluent suburb just west of Madrid. It has just over 1,000 students from the United States, Spain and several dozen other countries.

Portnov was sanctioned by the United States in 2021 for corruption and bribery under the Magnitsky Act. He was “credibly accused of using his influence to buy access and decisions in Ukraine’s courts and undermining reform effort,” according to the US Treasury Department.

The Magnitsky Act, signed into law in December 2012, blocks entry into the US and freezes the assets of certain Russian and pro-Russian government officials and businessmen accused of human rights violations.

The Security Service of Ukraine previously investigated Portnov’s possible involvement in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but the case was later closed.

The former politician fled Ukraine months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, when men of draft age were not permitted to leave.

Canada also froze his assets in 2014 as part of a crackdown on “corrupt foreign officials,” in relation to his work as a former adviser to ousted ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Portnov was appointed deputy head of Yanukovych’s administration in 2010, as well as the head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate for Judicial Reform and Judicial System. At the same time, Portnov became a member of the board of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Yanukovych was driven from office by mass demonstrations in Ukraine in 2014 after he turned his back on the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Yanukovych then fled Ukraine, and Portnov also left the country at the time.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A group of 59 White South Africans arrived in the United States last week after being granted refugee status by the White House, which has fast-tracked the processing of Afrikaner refugees but paused refugee applications for other nationalities.

On Wednesday, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in Washington, seeking a reset in relations with the United States. Ties between both nations have been fraught since Trump froze aid to South Africa in February over claims it was mistreating its minority White population.

The South African government said “reframing bilateral, economic and commercial relations” was the specific focus of Ramaphosa’s US visit. Ramaphosa said that the White South Africans arriving in the US “do not fit the bill” for having refugee status as someone who is leaving their country out of fear of persecution.

But as thousands more Afrikaners hope for admission to the US, others insist they have no need of refugee status but want America’s help instead to tackle a wave of violent crime in South Africa, or even to establish an autonomous state within a state.

Joost Strydom leads the group of White South Africans who have dismissed the US’ offer of asylum, and heads Orania, a separatist “Afrikaner-only” settlement in the country’s Northern Cape.

“Help us here,” he said his message was to Trump, whom he hopes will recognize Orania’s quest for self-determination.

Home to some 3,000 Afrikaners, the 8,000-hectare (19,800-acre) Orania town is partially self-governing. The exclusively White enclave produces half of its own electricity needs, takes local taxes, and prints its own currency that’s pegged to the South African rand. But the settlement’s residents want more: its recognition as an independent state.

Strydom was part of Orania’s delegation to the US in late March to push for this goal.

“We met with government officials,” he said. “The conversation is ongoing, and it is something that we’ve decided to keep a low profile on.”

Orania is backed by a 1994 post-apartheid accord that allowed for Afrikaner self-determination, including the concept of an Afrikaner state, referred to as Volkstaat.

Strydom anticipates that the settlement could develop into a “national home for the Afrikaner people.”

Why are some Afrikaners fleeing to the US?

Afrikaners are the descendants of predominantly Dutch settlers in South Africa, with White South Africans making up roughly 7% of the country’s population as of 2022 – a share that had declined from 11% in 1996, census data shows. A discriminatory apartheid government led by Afrikaners lost power in the mid-1990s, replaced by a multi-party democracy dominated by the African National Congress.

At least 67,000 South Africans have shown interest in seeking refugee status in the US, according to the South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA (SACCUSA).

In comments justifying his decision to resettle Afrikaners in the US, Trump cited claims that “a genocide is taking place” in South Africa, adding that “White farmers are being brutally killed and their land confiscated.”

South African authorities have strongly denied such claims. In a statement in February, the South African Police Service said “only one farmer, who happens to be white,” had been killed between October 1 and December 31, and urged the public “to desist from assumptions that belong to the past, where farm murders are the same as murders of white farmers.”

Police minister Senzo Mchunu stressed in a recent statement that there was no evidence of a “White genocide” in the country.

The police crime figure for the last quarter of 2024 had been disputed by an Afrikaner advocacy group, AfriForum, which argued that five farm owners were murdered during those months and that police had underreported the actual figures.

Most of the attacks happened in Gauteng province, the group stated. Gauteng is home to the largest concentration of South Africa’s White population, according to the country’s last census in 2022, with about 1.5 million Whites living there.

Afrikaner farmer Adriaan Vos is a recent victim of Gauteng’s farm attacks. The 55-year-old said he was left fighting for his life just two months ago after being shot on his farm in Glenharvie, a township in Westonaria, West of Gauteng.

“I was shot twice in the knee and once at my back,” Vos said about the attack on his farm in the early hours of March 16.

“Luckily, that bullet stuck next to my lung,” he said, adding that his farmhouse was pillaged and set on fire the same night.

Vos could not identify his attackers and is unsure whether the attack was racially motivated. But the raid appears to be part of a pattern of farm attacks that has persisted for years in South Africa, a country grappling with one of the world’s highest murder rates. South African authorities rarely publish crime figures by race but local media report that most murder victims are Black.

South African leader Ramaphosa does not believe that Afrikaners are being persecuted – as claimed by Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country – and has described those fleeing to the US as “cowards” who are opposed to his government’s efforts to undo the legacy of apartheid, especially inequality.

One of those efforts was the controversial enactment in January of an Expropriation Act, which empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it – with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances – if the seizure is found to be “just and equitable and in the public interest.”

Under apartheid, Black South Africans were forcibly dispossessed of their lands for the benefit of Whites. Today, some three decades after racial segregation officially ended in the country, Blacks, who comprise over 80% of the country’s population of 63 million, own around 4% of private land while 72% is held by Whites.

Who are the Afrikaners staying back, and what do they want?

For some Afrikaners in Orania, there is more to lose than gain if they choose to be refugees in the US.

Built from scratch on arid land described by Strydom as “an abandoned ghost town” with extreme weather, Orania has witnessed infrastructural growth and is the most realistic place to preserve Afrikaner culture and heritage, according to Cara Tomlinson who coordinates an Afrikaner cultural association.

“When we travel outside Orania in South Africa, it is very common to be looked at with hate,” he added.

Both Roets and Tomlinson desire Trump’s recognition for Orania, but the legitimacy of the separatist town has been questioned by other South Africans, including members of the radical left-wing party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who say that its “Afrikaner-only” policy “institutionalizes exclusion.”

South Africa’s foreign ministry said Orania had no status as a nation within a nation and remained bound by South African laws.

Beyond Orania, other Afrikaners, such as Vos, who’s still nursing his injuries, do not plan to leave despite the pressures felt by farmers.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said, adding: “I must look after this place (his farmland), whatever is left. We were born and bred here. South Africa is all we know.”

But help must come fast, Vos warned, as he outlined what he hoped Ramaphosa will tell his US opposite number during his visit to the White House.

“We need help in South Africa because you don’t know if you’re going to wake up tomorrow. It’s a mess here,” he said.

“Hopefully, he (Ramaphosa) can be open about everything (with Trump) … and say, ‘I’m going to fix it, and I’m going to look after the farmers and the people that are putting food in my mouth.’ He must come and do it, implement it, and let’s start over again.”