Since the collapse of the roof at the Jet Set nightclub in Santo Domingo in the early hours of Tuesday, the death toll has climbed steadily.

The popular club, which has operated for fifty years, was hosting a merengue concert attended by politicians and athletes when the roof of the one-storey building caved in and fell onto the busy dancefloor.

98 people have now been confirmed dead, among them popular Dominican singer and star of merengue Rubby Pérez, who was performing on stage during the incident.

Around 160 people were injured.

While rescue crews were still searching for survivors in the rubble, crowds anxiously gathered at the venue to hear news from missing family members.

Many people were also waiting at the Institute of Forensic Science to identify bodies.

The Dominican authorities have not yet commented on the incident, although an investigation into the causes of the roof collapse is expected.

The new 30% tariffs set to be imposed on South Africa by the Trump administration will threaten 35,000 jobs in the country’s citrus-growing sector and the economies of entire towns, a farmers group said Tuesday.

The Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa said the impending reciprocal tariffs, due to come into effect on Wednesday, will be deeply damaging to South Africa’s largest agricultural export.

The group said the tariffs would likely make South African citrus fruits cost $4.25 more per carton for American consumers. South Africa provides citrus to the U.S. market when it is out of season there.

South Africa is the second-biggest exporter of oranges behind Spain and the world’s fourth-largest exporter of soft citrus fruits, according to the World Citrus Organization.

South Africa sends around 5%-6% of its citrus exports to the United States, which is more than 6.5 million cartons per year, the growers’ association said, but some rural towns were specifically geared to and heavily dependent on the U.S. market.

The farmers’ group cited the case of the town of Citrusdal, near Cape Town, and said it faced major job losses and “maybe even total economic collapse” because it was built on exporting citrus to the U.S. It said there were other rural towns like it.

“There is immense anxiety in our communities,” said Gerrit van der Merwe, the chairman of the Citrus Growers’ Association and a citrus farmer near Citrusdal.

The group said the tariffs were due to come into effect the same week the first citrus fruit of the South African season was being packed to be exported to the U.S. It said it was urgently calling on the South African government to prioritize negotiations with the U.S. on tariff reductions or exemptions on citrus.

“Citrus is not produced in a factory,” Citrus Growers’ Association CEO Boitshoko Ntshabele said. “(South African) citrus growers do not compete with U.S. citrus growers. Quite the opposite. Our high-quality produce sustains consumer interest when U.S. local citrus is out of season, eventually benefitting U.S. growers when we hand over at the end of our season.”

South Africa, the most diverse economy in Africa, has been especially hard-hit by the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump’s cuts to U.S. foreign aid removed significant funding from South Africa’s AIDS program, which is the largest in the world and treats around 5.5 million people. Trump has also issued an executive order stopping other federal funding to South Africa over what he said was the South African government’s mistreatment of white minority farmers, many of whom could now be negatively impacted by his new tariffs.

Opening statements are expected Tuesday in the trial of a man accused of torturing political opponents of Gambia’s former military dictator Yahya Jammeh nearly 20 years ago, the latest international trial tied to his regime.

Federal prosecutors invoked a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

Michael Sang Correa, a citizen of Gambia, was indicted in 2020 while living in the United States. He is charged with being part of a conspiracy to mentally and physically torture people suspected of involvement in a failed 2006 coup in Gambia.

Prosecutors say Correa was part of a military unit known as the “Junglers” that reported directly to Jammeh. They say he and his alleged co-conspirators allegedly kicked and beat detainees using pipes and wires, sometimes covering the victims’ heads with plastic bags, and also administering electric shocks to their bodies, including their genitals.

His attorneys plan to argue that Correa was coerced to participate and acted under duress, according to court filings. Prosecutors and the defense have agreed that there is information indicating that members of the Junglers who did not carry out Jammeh’s orders without question would be killed.

Jammeh was a 22-year dictator of Gambia, a country surrounded by Senegal except for a small Atlantic coastline, and was accused of ordering opponents tortured, jailed and killed. He lost a presidential election and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017 after initially refusing to step down.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016, but he remained and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after 2016, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

According to Human Rights Watch, Correa is the third person to be tried under a U.S. law that allows people to be charged with committing torture abroad. The two others who have been previously tried were both U.S. citizens and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.

Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, was convicted in 2008 in connection with torture committed in Liberia from 1997 to 2003.

In 2023, Ross Roggio of Pennsylvania was convicted of torturing an employee in Iraq while being accused of operating an illegal manufacturing plant in Kurdistan.

Other countries have also prosecuted those tied to Jammeh’s regime.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.