📌White Persecution Alleged, Trouble In Turkey.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said comments on white people being persecuted in his country is a “false narrative.”

It was his latest attempt to push back against allegations made by US President Donald Trump and his influential adviser Elon Musk about the treatment in South Africa of a white minority group known as Afrikaners.

South African-born Musk has regularly accused South Africa’s black-led government of being anti-white and repeated a claim in a social media post that some of the country’s political figures are “actively promoting white genocide.”

The Economic Freedom Fighters, a political opponent of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress, is most identified with stoking the tensions. It won 9.5% of the vote in last year’s national election.

Commentators say there is no evidence of widespread targeting of whites. Attacks, they say, are part of South Africa’s extremely high violent crime rates, which affect all races. The group representing Afrikaners says the police have undercounted farm homicides in statistics. It said it had figures showing eight farm homicides in October–December last year when police only recorded one. There were 6,953 homicides across South Africa during that period, police statistics show.

Turkish authorities arrested journalists in a crackdown amid growing protests over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor.

Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is a top rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A court ordered Ekrem jailed pending a trial on corruption charges. His detention sparked the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade, deepening concerns over democracy and the rule of law.

1,133 people have been detained since the mayor was arrested at his home, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. As many as 123 police officers were injured in the protests, he said, adding that materials such as acid, firebombs and knives were seized.

“Some circles have been exploiting the right to assemble and demonstrate, attempting to disrupt public order, incite street unrest and attack our police,” Yerlikaya said on social media. He said some of the detained were identified as having ties to groups listed as terrorist organizations and others had criminal records.

The mayor’s jailing is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major challenger to Erdogan from the next presidential race, scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.

Hundreds of thousands have come out for the largely peaceful protests across Turkey in support of the mayor. There has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas and pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

Tariffs on automobiles, pharmaceuticals and other industries, signal President Donald Trump’s plans for more foreign duties.

“We’ll be announcing cars very shortly,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting. “We’ll be announcing pharmaceuticals at some point,” he said, “because we have to have pharmaceuticals.”

At another White House event later Monday Trump added the lumber and semiconductor industries to his list, saying tariffs on those two sectors would come “down the road.” He said he “may give a lot of countries breaks” on the reciprocal tariffs, which are set to take effect April 2.

The president’s latest comments came hours after he vowed to slap 25% tariffs on all countries that buy oil and gas from Venezuela. A White House official said the tariffs targeting specific sectors “may happen or may not.”

Shipments of ready-to-hatch eggs have been seized three times this month at a port of entry in the Midwest.

US Customs and Border Protection, agriculture specialists in Louisville, Ky., seized 39 hatching eggs between March 6 and Thursday. The eggs, which contained the live chicks of game birds, racing pigeons or other birds where there is a market, are considered live animals and are highly regulated at US borders.

Heightened vigilance has arisen as agriculture officials work to slow the spread of avian influenza, or “bird flu.” Fresh or raw eggs have generated much attention due to the food staple's skyrocketing cost, which producers have blamed on the latest outbreak of the bird flu.

Egg prices have doubled since January 2024, as egg producers claim accusations of price gouging are misguided and false.

While CBP has reported a 48% increase in raw or fresh eggs at northern and southern border ports into the US compared with last year, hatching eggs have also increased with an uptick reported as recently as last month at Kentucky's port of entry at Louisville International Airport.

The first seized hatching egg shipments arrived from Turkey, heading to New York and Nevada. The latest shipment arrived from Romania and was headed for Costa Rica.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected what could be a chemical relic of long-ago life on Mars: long-chain organic molecules.

The molecules — found after reanalysis of data on a sample drilled from a dried-up lake — likely derived from fatty acids, a common building block of cell membranes on Earth.

The finding, published in a scientific journal, is not a definite detection of past life — the fatty acids could have formed without life. But it’s another tantalizing hint. It also suggests Curiosity’s successor, Perseverance, will find similar molecules, says Jack Mustard, a planetary scientist at Brown University.

The latest result comes from a mudstone sample called Cumberland that the rover drilled in 2013, less than a year into its journey, and then analyzed in its onboard chemistry lab, the Sample Analysis on Mars instrument. In 2015, the scientific team reported preliminary signs of long-chain organics in that sample.

But that result fizzled out, as they weren’t able to identify the molecules and rule out the possibility that they might be contaminants from Earth.

“It’s been a long journey to this point,” says Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and co-author of the new paper. Perseverance is collecting samples on Mars to return to labs on Earth, where scientists will be able to reach more definitive conclusions on the molecules’ origins.

A prominent Indian comedian is under investigation following quips at a comedy club about a high-ranking politician.

Kunal Kamra, known for his quips about popular culture and politics, is standing by his right to make jokes after an angry mob attacked the club where he had made an onstage jibe about the state’s deputy chief minister, Eknath Shinde.

The case is the latest to underscore the country’s declining freedoms and the sensitivities of India’s right-wing politicians, some of whom have called for the artist’s arrest.

Kamra did not explicitly name the politician but, in a song, refers to him as a “gaddar,” or “traitor” — taken to be a reference to Shinde’s leadership of a rebellion in 2022 that caused the state’s previous government to collapse.

The joke sparked a furious backlash within Shinde’s Hindu supremacist Shiv Sena political party. An angry mob later descended upon The Habitat comedy venue where Kamra had performed in Mumbai. Police are also investigating the alleged vandalism.

Freedom of speech is enshrined in India’s democratic constitution, but comedians in the world’s largest democracy have faced the wrath of angry politicians for their jokes. Kamra, meanwhile, said the investigation into his comments “does not change the nature of his right” to make fun of politicians.

The ancestral home of the co-founder of Harley-Davidson motorcycles has been saved from demolition.

The Davidson Cottage, located in the Angus village in Scotland, was home to William C. Davidson. He emigrated to America in 1857, where three of his children (Arthur, Walter, and William) joined 20-year-old William Harley to create the iconic Harley-Davidson company.

The once-derelict property was painstakingly restored over many years by biker aficionados who transformed it into a re-creation of a mid-19th century dwelling. However, the property went on the market once again, which required another push to save the building.

The Davidson Legacy Preservation Group was formed and won a matching grant from the UK government Community Ownership Fund. But the group needed to raise more than £300,000 to obtain keys to the cottage.

After a three-year campaign and many individual donations, the Harley-Davidson Company stepped in at the last minute to provide the final funding to get the team over the line. The current location of Harley-Davidson’s corporate headquarters is where the company produced its first 50 motorcycles.

In 1901, 20-year-old mechanical engineer William S. Harley drew up plans for a small engine for a regular pedal bicycle frame. He and his childhood friend Arthur Davidson and his two brothers Walter and William worked on their motor bicycle, finishing it in 1903. The rest is history.