Rubio tells Cubans ‘now is the time’ to act to see political change

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth alleges Confucius Institutes operating in disguise on US university campuses The ⁠US defense department has designated Chinese-funded cultural centers on university campuses ⁠known as Confucius ⁠Institutes ​as a threat to US national security, defense secretary Pete ⁠Hegseth said on Friday. Washington has long accused Confucius Institutes of being Chinese propaganda ⁠tools and has taken steps to ​crack down on them.

The U.S. State Department says it will reduce staffing at four U.S. embassies in the Middle East, not including Saudi Arabia, where nonessential diplomats and family members were ordered to leave earlier this week. The staffing changes — driven by concerns that Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militants may escalate rocket, missile and drone attacks around the region — will affect the embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but do not entail an order to leave, the department said.

Javier Milei had denied acting fraudulently when a cryptocurrency nosedived after he deleted a social media post about it.

In tonight's programme, scramble to get through rubble to trapped survivors after a more than 10 storeys building being built in Nairobi goes down. Also, Kenya says that there's been a second Ebola death. Earlier this week it had logged 9 cases so far, all traced back to its first Ebola patient who died earlier this month. And in finally the 11th edition of the iconic contemporary art festival Also known as Africa taking place in Paris, we speak to Cape Verde's artist Amadeo Carvalho.