Ukrainian forces are trying to slow down an ongoing Russian advance toward the city of Pokrovsk in Eastern Ukraine’s Dontesk region. The Ukrainian government has been evacuating civilians from the region, but constant shelling is making it dangerous. Kateryna Besedina has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. (Camera: Artyom Kokhan, Anna Rice)  
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Ukrainian officials said Wednesday Russian forces launched overnight attacks involving ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones, killing at least one person in Kyiv.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that three other people also were injured as a result of the attacks.

Kyiv emergency services reported fires and other damage at buildings in four districts in the city.

Ukraine’s military said missiles also targeted the city of Kryvyi Rih, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

The regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said on Telegram that Russian attacks damaged a school, hotel, administrative building and three apartment buildings.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down six missiles and 71 of the 123 drones that Russian forces deployed, the Ukrainian air force said.

Drone intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions.

“Putin is not preparing for peace – he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. “Right now, we need the unity and support of all our partners in the fight for a just end to this war.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday it shot down three Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region.
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Marc Fogel, an American teacher detained in Russia since August 2021 for bringing medically prescribed marijuana into the country, was freed by Moscow on Tuesday and headed back to the United States, the White House announced.

The 63-year-old history teacher, who had been serving a 14-year sentence, was expected to be reunited with his family in the eastern state of Pennsylvania by the end of the day.

He left Russian airspace aboard the personal aircraft of Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign affairs envoy who helped negotiate his release.

Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, said the U.S. and Russia “negotiated an exchange” to free Fogel but gave no details about what the U.S. side of the bargain entailed. In such deals in recent years, the U.S. has often released Russian prisoners that Moscow wanted in exchange.

Instead, Waltz cast the deal for Fogel’s release in broader geopolitical terms, saying it was “a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine,” an invasion Russia launched against its neighbor in February 2022, with hundreds of thousands killed or wounded on both sides.

Trump had vowed to broker an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine before taking office Jan. 20, but his aides more recently have said he hopes to do it within the first 100 days of his new administration, roughly by the end of April.

“Since President Trump’s swearing-in, he has successfully secured the release of Americans detained around the world, and President Trump will continue until all Americans being held are returned to the United States,” Waltz said. The recent release of six Americans held in Venezuela and Fogel’s freeing are the only publicly known instances.

Fogel had been traveling with a small amount of medically prescribed marijuana to treat back pain. Once convicted by a Russian court, he began serving his 14-year sentence in June 2022, with the outgoing administration of former President Joe Biden late last year classifying him as wrongfully detained.

Witkoff is a billionaire New York real estate executive and close friend of Trump’s. He previously had helped negotiate the six-week Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza initiated by Biden in the last months of his presidency.

Witkoff also had been secretly negotiating the deal for Fogel’s release. Online flight trackers spotted his presence in Moscow when he flew there on his private jet.

With the U.S. leading the way in the West’s opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was the first known trip to Moscow by a senior U.S. official since William Burns, then the Central Intelligence Agency director, flew to the Russian capital in November 2021, in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Russia from invading Ukraine.
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Europe says it will ease regulations on artificial intelligence at a key AI summit in Paris on Feb. 11, 2025, that brought together the U.S. and other global tech giants and politicians. But some experts see bigger challenges stalling the bloc’s ambitions to be an AI heavyweight, from the need to pool resources to attracting more investment and talent.

After U.S. President Donald Trump’s massive Stargate investment project and China’s DeepSeek startup, Europe wants to get a share of the artificial intelligence pie. Among other announcements at the Paris summit, co-host French President Emmanuel Macron outlined plans for $113 billion in private AI investment.

The two-day summit underscored tensions between fears of too much AI regulation and not enough.

“At this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new Industrial Revolution, one on par with the steam engine or Bessemer steel,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance told summit attendees Tuesday. “But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball.”

Macron, who’s been nicknamed France’s startup president, outlined caveats. He said advancing international governance of AI will enable the consolidation of trust, acceleration and innovation in order to set the rules for AI, which are necessary to move forward.

Currently, Europe’s AI industry lags behind those of the U.S. and China. But the right policies, some experts believe, can help close the gap.

“Europe really has pretty much everything else it needs to lead in AI or other complex technologies,” said Pierre Alexandre Balland, chief data scientist at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “The talent is absolutely incredible. … [T]he scale of the European economy is also huge … the education system. Essentially, we see a wind of change in the EU really led by France, and Emmanuel Macron is very much behind that.”

Beyond easing EU regulations, Balland sees bigger challenges — such as pooling European research and other resources, calling for investing pension funds to finance AI’s growth, and concentrating on a single AI hub in Europe.

“Paris is absolutely by far the leading AI ecosystem in Europe,” he said.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, senior fellow at Brussels-based Bruegel policy institute, agreed France is leading the way. She believes Europe should narrow its goals — focusing on areas like AI applications for robotics.

“Can the AI make the EU more competitive? No doubt,” Garcia-Herrero said. “But I think there’s many other issues that need to be solved beyond AI. The most important one is having a single market.”

Paris summit organizers have also pushed for commitments on making AI more ethical, accessible and environmentally sustainable.
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Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their “massive” regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.”

The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant.

Vance, setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union’s far tougher regulatory approach.

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added.

Vance criticized the “massive regulations” created by the EU’s Digital Services Act, as well as Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms.

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.

Vance is leading the American delegation at the Paris summit.

Vance also appeared to take aim at China at a delicate moment for the U.S. technology sector.

Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek freely distributed a powerful AI reasoning model that some said challenged U.S. technology leadership. It sent shares of American chip designer Nvidia down 17%.

“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.

But he said that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley: if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

Vance did not mention DeepSeek by name. There has been no evidence of information being able to surreptitiously flow through the startup’s technology to China’s government, and the underlying code is freely available to use and view. However, some government organizations have reportedly banned DeepSeek’s use.

Speaking after Vance, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he was fully in favor of trimming red tape, but he stressed that regulation was still needed to ensure trust in AI, or people would end up rejecting it. “We need a trustworthy AI,” he said.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also said the EU would cut red tape and invest more in AI.

In a bilateral meeting, Vance and von der Leyen were also likely to discuss Trump’s substantial increase of tariffs on steel.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit on Tuesday. A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI.

Altman promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration will ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the U.S. sue or investigate the industry’s biggest players.

Vance said the U.S. would champion American AI — which big players develop — he also said: “Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.”
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Senior advisers in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are preparing to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, according to an Associated Press interview with retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.

Kellogg, a special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said planning continues for talks with Zelenskyy at the annual conference. 

Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kellogg are among those who could participate in the sideline conversations with Ukraine’s president, AP reported. 

Trump has been critical about how much the war is costing the U.S. and has said European countries should repay the U.S. for helping Ukraine. 

During his campaign, Trump said if he were elected president, he would bring a swift end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but he did not specify how he would accomplish that. 

Recently, he has said that he wants to make a deal with Ukraine to continue U.S. support in exchange for access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.  

On Monday, AP reported the president said there are people currently working on a money-for-minerals-deal with Ukraine.  

“We have people over there today who are making a deal that, as we give money, we get minerals and we get oil and we get all sorts of things,” Trump said. 

Kellogg told AP that “the economics of that would allow for further support to the Ukrainians.”

Meanwhile, Russian drone attacks caused a fire in Kyiv, injured a woman in Sumy and damaged several homes, according to Ukrainian officials. 

The Russian military reported downing 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven in the Krasnodar region.

Nobody was hurt as a result of the fire in Kyiv, which was sparked in a non-residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Five houses were damaged and a woman was reportedly injured in the northeastern city of Sumy, regional governor Ihor Kalchenko said on Telegram.

 

Material from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
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French President Emmanuel Macron wants Europe to become a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, he told a global summit of AI and political leaders in Paris Monday where he announced that France’s private sector has invested nearly $113 billion in French AI.

Financial investment is key to achieving the goal of Europe as an AI hub, Macron said in his remarks delivered in English at the Grand Palais.

He said the European bloc would also need to “adopt the Notre Dame strategy,” a reference to the lightning swift rebuilding of France’s famed Notre Dame cathedral in five years after a devastating 2019 fire, the result of simplified regulations and adherence to timelines.

“We showed the rest of the of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver,” the French leader said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Union’s digital head, indicated that the EU is in agreement with simplifying regulations. The EU approved the AI Act last year, the world’s first extensive set of rules designed to regulate technology.

European countries want to ensure that they have a stake in the tech race against an aggressive U.S. and other emerging challengers. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to address the EU’s ability to compete in the tech world Tuesday.

Macron’s announcement that the French private sector will invest heavily in AI “reassured” Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI, that there will be “ambitious” projects in France, according to Reuters.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s head, told the gathering that the shift to AI will be “the biggest of our lifetimes.”

However, such a big shift also comes with problems for the AI community. France had wanted the summit to adopt a non-binding text that AI would be inclusive and sustainable.

“We have the chance to democratize access [to a new technology] from the start,” Pichai told the summit.

Whether the U.S. will agree to that initiative is uncertain, considering the U.S. government’s recent moves to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is attending the summit and expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday. Other politicians expected Tuesday at the plenary session are Chinese Vice Premier Zhan Guoqing and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. About 100 politicians are expected.

There are also other considerations with a shift to AI. The World Trade Organization says its calculations indicate that a “near universal adoption of AI … could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points” from what it is now but cautions that global “fragmentation” of regulations on AI technology and data flow could bring about the contraction of both trade and output.

A somewhat frightening side effect of AI technology is that it can replace the need for humans in some sectors.

International Labor Organization leader Gilbert Houngbo told the summit Monday that the jobs that AI can do, such as clerical work, are disproportionately held by women. According to current statistics, that development would likely widen the gender pay gap.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday. The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.  

A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.  

An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco.  

The faraway galaxy creating the ring is more than 4 billion light-years away. Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein. The process is known as gravitational lensing.

“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful,” lead author Conor O’Riordan of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.

Euclid rocketed from Florida in 2023. NASA is taking part in its mission to detect dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
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PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s leftwing party won most seats in the weekend parliamentary election but was left without a majority in the house, forcing it to look for an ally to form the next government, according to preliminary results released Monday.

The vote on Sunday was key in determining who will lead Kosovo as talks on normalizing ties with rival Serbia remain stalled and foreign funding for one of Europe’s poorest countries is in question.

The election marked the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s parliament completed a full four-year mandate. It was the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists that pushed Serbian forces out following a 78-day NATO air campaign.

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

With 88% of the votes counted, Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement Party, or Vetevendosje!, had won 41.3%, according to the Central Election Commission, the election governing body.

The Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders are detained at a Netherlands-based international criminal tribunal in The Hague and accused of war crimes, won 21.8% of the vote.

Next, with 17.8% support is the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, the oldest party in the country. The LDK lost much of its support after the death in 2006 of its leader, Ibrahim Rugova. The Alliance for Kosovo’s Future of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj garnered 7.7% of the votes.

Still, Kurti was upbeat, though his remarks gave nothing away about who he plans to ask to join his coalition government.

“The people won. Vetevendosje! won. We are the winners who will form the next Cabinet,” Kurti told journalists as his supporters took to the streets to celebrate.

The commission’s webpage was down temporarily on Sunday as it was overloaded “due to the citizens’ high interest to learn the results,” election body said. Results were collected manually.

A preliminary turnout after 92% of the votes counted was 40.6% — about 7% lower than four years ago.

The new 120-seat parliament reserves 20 seats for minorities regardless of election results, 10 of them for the Serb minority.

Kurti’s new term will face multiple challenges after Washington recently announced it was freezing foreign aid and the European Union, almost two years ago, suspended funding for some projects and initiatives. He also is under pressure to increase public salaries and pensions, improve education and health services, and fight poverty.

Kosovo, with a population of 1.6 million, is one of the poorest countries in Europe with an annual gross domestic product of less than $6,000 per person.

Kurti also is likely to try and repair ties with Western powers, at odds since his Cabinet took several steps that raised tensions with Serbia and Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs, including the ban on the use of the Serbian currency, the dinar, and dinar transfers to Kosovo’s Serbs.

Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority depends on Belgrade’s social services and payments.

The United States, the European Union and the NATO-led stabilization force in Kosovo, or KFOR, have urged the government in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to refrain from unilateral actions, fearing the revival of inter-ethnic conflict.

In Sunday’s election, Srpska Lista, the main party of the ethnic Serb minority, won 2.8% of the vote — just over half of its winnings four years ago.

The party’s leader, Zlatan Elek, said it was “the absolute winner of this election,” and thanked Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic for the “strong support for our people.”

KFOR had increased its presence in Kosovo after last year’s tensions with Serbia, as well as ahead of the election.

A team of 104 observers from the EU, 18 from the Council of Europe and about 1,600 others from international or local organizations, monitored the vote.
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LONDON — The Church of England’s elected governing body will gather Monday at a time of “unprecedented crisis” following a number of sexual abuse scandals.

The meeting of the General Synod will see members debate the Makin Review, a damning report which set out a series of failings around a Christian camp leader and serial abuser, John Smyth.

On Tuesday, a debate on a new way to handle safeguarding will also be held.

The meeting comes a month after the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby stepped down as head of the world’s Anglicans over failures in the Church of England’s handling of the Smyth case.

“There’s never been anything like this in our lifetime, because the Church is in an unprecedented crisis,” Synod member Ian Paul told the domestic PA news agency.

Paul said “the crisis we’re facing now is a result of gradual erosion over years of trust and confidence and lack of openness, lack of transparency.

“And suddenly the rafters, the rotten rafters, break, the roof collapses.”

Paul was one of the people behind a petition last year calling on Welby to resign.

Welby announced his resignation in November after an independent probe found that he “could and should” have formally reported decades of abuse by Church-linked lawyer Smyth to authorities in 2013.

‘Prolific’ abuser’

Smyth, who organized evangelical summer camps in the 1970s and 1980s, was responsible for “prolific, brutal and horrific” abuse of up to 130 boys and young men, according to the independent Makin Review.

It concluded the Church of England — the mother church of Anglicanism — covered up the “traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks,” which occurred in Britain, Zimbabwe and South Africa over several decades.

Stephen Cottrell, who became Archbishop of York in 2020, has temporarily replaced Welby while also tainted by scandal himself.

In December, the 66-year-old faced calls to stand down over claims he mishandled a sexual abuse case during his time as the Bishop of Chelmsford, in southeastern England.

Priest David Tudor remained in his post despite Cottrell knowing that the Church had banned him from being alone with children and had paid compensation to a sexual abuse claimant, the BBC reported.

Cottrell has said he is “deeply sorry that we were not able to take action earlier” but defended his actions.

In a fresh blow last month, the Bishop of Liverpool, John Perumbalath, said he was stepping down after a broadcaster aired allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him.

Perumbalath denied wrongdoing but said in a statement a “rush to judgment and my trial by media… has made my position untenable”.

He said a church safeguarding team had investigated the allegations and had found them “unsubstantiated” and the first allegation was investigated by the police who decided to take no further action.

Ahead of the synod meeting, Andrew Graystone, an advocate for abuse survivors, called on church leaders at the four-day meeting in London to show “radical humility.”

“No one wants another hand-wringing apology; no one wants another ‘lessons learned’ review; no one wants another reminder of how hard it is to be a bishop.

“We don’t want any more words at all. Instead, we want radical humility from the Archbishop (Cottrell) downwards.”

The Anglican Church is the established state church in England and dates back to King Henry VIII’s split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s.

King Charles III, its supreme governor, appoints archbishops on the advice of the prime minister.
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Climate change is rapidly altering the Arctic region, creating environmental danger, economic opportunity and geopolitical tension as the world’s major powers scramble to control newly accessible shipping lanes and resource deposits.
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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday told soldiers, police and other law enforcement officials from around the world that armed force can only be used for legitimate defense and must always respect international law.

The pontiff reappeared in public for the first time since he was diagnosed with bronchitis Thursday to celebrate an outdoor Jubilee Mass for the armed forces, police and security personnel. However, after a few words, he handed off his homily to an aide to read, saying he was having difficulty with his breath.

“I would like to recall the teaching of the Church in this regard: The Second Vatican Council says that those who exercise their profession in the ranks of the army in the service of their homeland should consider themselves as servants of the security and freedom of their people,” Francis said in his final prayer.

“This armed service must be exercised only for legitimate defense, never to impose dominion over other nations, and always observing international conventions regarding conflicts,” he added.

The pontiff launched a new appeal for peace, citing conflicts around the world, including Ukraine, the Middle East, Myanmar and Sudan.

“Let the weapons be silenced everywhere and let the cry of the people asking for peace be heard,” Francis said.

Since being diagnosed with bronchitis Thursday, the pope had continued his activities and audiences indoors at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican residence where he lives, until Sunday.

Francis has long battled health problems including long bouts of bronchitis. He uses a walker or cane when moving around his apartment and recently fell twice, hurting his arm and chin.

Speculation about the pope’s health is a constant in Vatican circles, especially after Pope Benedict XVI broke 600 years of tradition and resigned from the papacy in 2013.

Francis has said that he has no plans to resign anytime soon, even if Benedict “opened the door” to the possibility. In his autobiography “Hope” released this month, Francis said that he hadn’t considered resigning even when he had major intestinal surgery.
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VILNIUS — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said on Sunday they had successfully synchronized their electricity systems to the European continental power grid, one day after severing decades-old energy ties to Russia and Belarus.

Planned for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord is designed to integrate the three Baltic nations more closely with the European Union and to boost the region’s energy security.

“We did it!,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in a post on social media X.

After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network, established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 meters from the Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, earlier this week called the switch “a victory for freedom and European unity.”

The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after power cable, telecom links and gas pipeline outages between the Baltics and Sweden or Finland. All were believed to have been caused by ships dragging anchors along the seabed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has denied any involvement.

Poland and the Baltics deployed navy assets, elite police units and helicopters after an undersea power link from Finland to Estonia was damaged in December, while Lithuania’s military began drills to protect the overland connection to Poland.

Analysts say more damage to links could push power prices in the Baltics to levels not seen since the invasion of Ukraine, when energy prices soared.

The IPS/UPS grid was the final remaining link to Russia for the three countries, which re-emerged as independent nations in the early 1990s at the fall of the Soviet Union, and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.

The three staunch supporters of Kyiv stopped purchases of power from Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but have relied on the Russian grid to control frequencies and stabilize networks to avoid outages.
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GRANADA, SPAIN — Narco-musical Emilia Perez won best European film at Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars on Saturday, after social media posts by the movie’s star prompted a backlash in the middle of awards season. 

The mostly Spanish-language musical tells the story of a Mexican drug cartel boss who transitions to life as a woman and turns her back on crime.

Before the scandal broke, the film earned 13 Oscar nods, picked up four Golden Globes in January and won multiple prizes at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

But old social media posts by star Karla Sofia Gascon, in which she denigrates Islam, China and African American George Floyd, unleashed a scandal that has harmed her reputation and the film.

Voting for the Goya awards closed on Jan. 24, days before the posts were uncovered.

Spaniard Gascon, the first transgender woman nominated for an Oscar for best actress, has apologized for her posts and distanced herself from publicity for the film.

She lives near Madrid but did not attend the Goya awards ceremony in Granada.

The movie’s French director Jacques Audiard has called the posts “inexcusable” and “absolutely hateful.” 
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MUNICH, GERMANY — More than 200,000 protesters rallied in Munich, Germany, on Saturday against far-right extremism ahead of the country’s general election. 

The far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is in second place in recent polls and has prompted widespread protests across the country before voters cast their ballots on Feb. 23. 

The protest at Munich’s Theresienwiese — where Oktoberfest takes place each year — brought a significantly larger crowd than expected, according to the German dpa news agency. The event’s organizer estimated the crowd could be up to 320,000 people, many of whom carried signs against the AfD with slogans like, “Racism and hatred is not an alternative.” 

The protest was supported by activist groups as well as the Munich Film Festival, churches and Munich soccer clubs FC Bayern and TSV 1860, among others. Police told dpa that the demonstration was peaceful. 

Similar protests attracted large crowds Saturday in Hanover, Rostock and elsewhere in Germany, mirroring other demonstrations that have occurred across the country in recent weeks. 

Last month at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, a huge crowd blew whistles, sang antifascist songs and carried banners denouncing AfD. Activists said they hoped the rally also would draw attention to other far-right parties in Europe and the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. 

Demonstrators have recently also opposed Friedrich Merz, the center-right leader and front-runner in the upcoming election, and his Christian Democrats for last month sending to parliament proposals for tough new migration rules that received AfD’s backing. 

The protesters say Merz and his party broke Germany’s unwritten post-Nazi promise by all democratic parties to never pass any rule or resolution in parliament with the support of far-right, nationalist parties like the AfD. Merz insists his position is unchanged and that he didn’t and won’t work with the party. 

The 12-year-old AfD entered the national parliament in 2017, benefiting from then-Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s decision two years earlier to allow large numbers of migrants into the country. 
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not confirmed that he will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump next week but said the coming weeks may be “very intensive in diplomacy.”

Trump said on Feb. 7 that he is likely to meet with Zelenskyy next week. The site of the meeting “could be Washington,” he said, adding that he would not be going to Kyiv.

He also said he would “probably” be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin soon but did not give a time frame. Zelenskyy said it is important that he and Trump meet in person before the U.S. president meets with Putin.

Zelenskyy did not confirm a meeting with Trump but said diplomacy would be ramping up.

“The coming weeks may be very intensive in diplomacy, and we will do what’s needed to make this time effective and productive. We always appreciate working with President Trump,” he said shortly after Trump spoke.

“Weʼre also planning meetings and talks at the teams level. Right now Ukrainian and American teams are working out the details. A solid, lasting peace shall become closer.”

In his comments earlier at the White House, the U.S. president reiterated that he is interested in tying continued military aid to access to Ukraine’s raw materials.

“One of the things we’re looking at with President Zelenskyy is having the security of their assets. They have assets underground, rare earth and other things, but primarily rare earth,” he said.

“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things,” Trump said on Feb. 3.

He said on Feb. 7 that the United States wants “an equal amount of something” in exchange for U.S. support. “We would like them to equalize,” Trump said.

More than four dozen minerals, including several types of rare earths, nickel and lithium, are considered critical to the U.S. economy and national defense. Ukraine has large deposits of uranium, lithium and titanium.

Ukraine floated the idea of opening its critical minerals to investment by allies last year when it presented its plan to end the war and now suggests it could be open to a deal.

“If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal. We are only for it,” Zelenskyy said on Feb. 7, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees from its allies as part of any settlement of the war.

“Strong security always has many elements, and each one matters,” he said on X. “Ukraine possesses some of the largest strategic resource reserves in Europe, and protecting Ukraine also means protecting these resources.”

Less than 20% of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including about half its rare earth deposits, are under Russian occupation, Zelenskyy said in an interview with Reuters published on Feb. 7. Moscow could open those resources to North Korea and Iran if it maintains its hold on the territories.

“We need to stop Putin and protect what we have — a very rich Dnipro region, central Ukraine,” he told Reuters.

Zelenskyy is likely to further discuss the idea with allies next week at the Munich Security Conference.

Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said this week he plans to attend the conference but denied a report that he will present Trump’s plan for ending the war in Ukraine at the gathering, which starts Feb. 14.

Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said he had spoken to Kellogg about the battlefield situation, the safety of Ukrainian civilians and meetings at the annual security conference. He also said Ukraine is looking forward to Kellogg’s visit later this month.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and dpa.
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Sweden said Friday it wants to tighten its gun laws, following a lone gunman’s mass shooting of 10 people Tuesday with his licensed firearms at an education center in Orebro, about 200 kilometers west of Stockholm.

After killing seven women and three men between the ages of 28 and 68, the attacker apparently killed himself with one of his weapons.

The coalition government said in a statement that it has come to an agreement on a proposal restricting access to semiautomatic weapons, specifically citing the AR-15 rifle, which has been used in several U.S. shootings. It is “an example of a weapon that is compatible with large magazines and can cause a lot of damage in a short time,” the statement said.

“There are certain types of weapons that are so dangerous that they should only be possessed for civilian purposes as an exception,” the government said.

While it is not immediately clear what weapons were used in Tuesday’s shooting, Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told Reuters a ban on the AR-15 would be a “preventative measure.”

Sweden’s government also called for a reassessment of the requirements for hunting licenses that would allow Swedes to possess an AR-15, which could then be used, with some adjustments, in a mass shooting.

AR-15 rifles have been allowed in Sweden for hunting since 2023, Reuters reported and since then 3,500 licenses have been issued.

Police have not revealed what weapons were used in this week’s incident but have said that three rifles found near the suspect’s body were licensed to him. Police have seized a fourth gun also licensed to the suspect.

Police say they have not determined a motive for the shootings. However, Broadcaster TV4 has shown a video shot by a student hiding in a bathroom during the ordeal.  Someone can be heard in the video shouting, “You will leave Europe.”

The police have not released the nationalities of the victims, nor have they released the identity of the shooter.

The Swedish press, however, has identified the suspect as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, whom they describe as a recluse with mental health issues.  
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While Russia is still controlling Central Asian countries politically and economically, those states are also looking for new partners, especially with China, to help ensure their own development. And according to the regional experts, even if the U.S. starts a tough policy against Beijing, it will not have a serious impact on Central Asia, and they will not stop their economic relations with China. 

Click here for the full story in Uzbek. 
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The U.S. special envoy to Russia and Ukraine said Thursday the U.S. plans to significantly step up pressure on Russia through sanctions to end the war in Ukraine. 

In an exclusive interview with the New York Post, Special Envoy Keith Kellogg said there is a lot of room to increase sanctions on Russia, particularly in Russia’s energy sector. He characterized sanctions enforcement on Russia as “only about a 3” on a scale of 1 to 10 on “how painful the economic pressure can be.” 

Kellogg told the Post he understands that both Moscow and Kyiv will have to make concessions to end what he called the “industrial-sized” killing in the war. 

In the interview, Kellogg also was critical of the approach by the administration of former President Joe Biden of “supporting Ukraine as long as it takes,” calling it “a bumper sticker, not a strategy.” 

Kellogg said the Trump administration is focused on a “holistic approach” to ending the war, combining support for Ukraine with increased pressure on Russia. 

Kellogg’s Chief of Staff Ludovic Hood echoed those sentiments when he told the GLOBSEC Transatlantic Forum in Washington on Thursday, “Nothing’s off the table at this stage” as far as negotiations for a peace deal. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s presidential website reported the U.S. special envoy also spoke Thursday with Ukraine’s head of the office of the president, Andriy Yermak. In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said the two discussed Kellogg’s upcoming visit to Ukraine, as well as the situation on the front lines and security issues for Ukrainian civilians.  

The statement said the two gave “special attention” in their conversation to the upcoming Munich Security Conference, scheduled to begin in one week. 

In a separate interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Yermak stressed the importance of “active engagement” between Ukraine and the Trump administration, particularly as any peace negotiations. 

Yermak emphasized the importance of keeping the Trump White House up to date and providing accurate information about the battlefield situation. He said direct communication with U.S. partners is crucial for establishing a shared position, because it is impossible to form any peace plans without Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, in the latest reports from the battlefield, Ukraine’s air force reported Friday – from its Telegram social media account – Russian attacks across multiple Ukrainian regions killed at least three civilians and injured five over the past 24 hours.  

The report said Ukrainian air defenses shot down 81 of 112 Shahed combat drones and decoy drones Russia launched over nine oblasts, or regions, while 31 other drones were lost without causing damage.

From his Telegram account, Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian shelling killed one person and wounded five others, and two high-rise buildings and six private houses were damaged. 

The regional administration in Sumy Oblast says two people were killed when Russian shelling destroyed a two-story apartment building. The report said the victims’ bodies were found in the rubble as rescue crews cleared the area and there are fears more bodies could be found.  

 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday authorized economic and travel sanctions targeting people who work on International Criminal Court investigations of U.S. citizens or U.S. allies such as Israel, repeating action he took during his first term.  

The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israel’s Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu, who — along with his former defense minister and a leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas — is wanted by the ICC over the war in the Gaza Strip.  

It was unclear how quickly the U.S. would announce names of people sanctioned. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan. 

The ICC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The sanctions include freezing any U.S. assets of those designated and barring them and their families from visiting the United States. 

The 125-member ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression against the territory of member states or by their nationals. The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.  

Trump signed the executive order after U.S. Senate Democrats last week blocked a Republican-led effort to pass legislation setting up a sanctions regime targeting the war crimes court.  

The court has taken measures to shield staff from possible U.S. sanctions, paying salaries three months in advance, as it braced for financial restrictions that could cripple the war crimes tribunal, sources told Reuters last month. 

In December, the court’s president, judge Tomoko Akane, warned that sanctions would “rapidly undermine the Court’s operations in all situations and cases, and jeopardize its very existence.”

Russia has also taken aim at the court. In 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia has banned entry to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan and placed him and two ICC judges on its wanted list. 
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Azerbaijani authorities detained two more journalists this week, bringing the number held in the past year to nearly two dozen.

Police on Wednesday arrested Shamshad Agha, of the news website Argument, and Shahnaz Beylargizi of Toplum TV. A court in the capital, Baku, on Thursday ordered the journalists to be held in pretrial detention for two months and one day, and three months and 15 days respectively, according to their lawyers.

The journalists are charged with smuggling — a charge used in several other cases since November 2023, as authorities detained at least 23 journalists.

Many of those currently detained had worked for the independent outlets Abzas Media and Meydan TV.

All the journalists being investigated since November 2023 have denied wrongdoing, and media watchdogs say they believe the cases are designed to silence media.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, said that Agha’s arrest “underscores a grim intent by Azerbaijani authorities to silence and further restrict the country’s small and embattled independent media community.”

“Azerbaijan’s government should immediately reverse its unprecedented media crackdown and release Agha along with all other unjustly jailed journalists,” said a statement from CPJ’s Gulnoza Said.

Bashir Suleymanli, who is head of the Baku-based legal assistance group known as the Institute of Civil Rights, believes that the arrests are an attempt by authorities to stifle free speech.

“It seems that the process will continue until the complete elimination of independent journalism in the country,” he told VOA.

Lawmaker Bahruz Maharramov, however, says the arrests are not a press freedom issue.

“Law enforcement agencies have taken relevant measures based on facts and irrefutable evidence, the authenticity of which is beyond doubt,” he told VOA. “Of course, since such media organizations are formed more as instruments of influence of the West, the legal and judicial measures taken against them are observed with inadequate reactions from the West.”

Based in Azerbaijan, human rights activist Samir Kazimli says that independent media and news outlets critical of the government are undergoing a difficult period.

“If this policy of repression does not stop, independent media in Azerbaijan may be completely destroyed,” he told VOA.

Kazimli said that the international community, including rights groups, politicians and U.S. and European officials “must take steps using urgent and effective mechanisms to stop the Azerbaijani authorities’ attacks on civil society and independent media.”

One of the journalists detained this week had recently spoken out about concerns for the future of independent media in Azerbaijan.

“The lives of all independent journalists are in danger,” Agha told VOA in January.

The editor of Argument, a news website covering democracy, corruption and human rights, said he has been banned from leaving the country since July.

The research organization Freedom House describes Azerbaijan as an “authoritarian regime” and states that authorities have “carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years.”

Elshan Hasanov of the Political Prisoners Monitoring Center told VOA that the total number of detainees documented by the Azeri nonprofit is 331.

Azerbaijani authorities reject criticism on detainees as biased.

Parliamentarian Maharramov told VOA that media in the country are free and that conditions for providing everyone with information, including diversity of opinion and freedom of action in the media sector as a whole, are fully ensured.

Azerbaijan is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, according to data by the CPJ. The country ranks 164 out of 180 on the Press Freedom Index, where 1 shows the best environment for media. 

This story originated in VOA’s Azeri Service.
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Police in Sweden investigating the nation’s worst mass shooting said at a news briefing Thursday that the scene at an adult learning center was an “inferno” of smoke, with injured and dead victims.

The attack on Tuesday left 10 people dead, including the suspected shooter, at Campus Risbergska in the city of Orebro, about 200 kilometers west of Stockholm. The facility offers adult courses, including Swedish language classes for immigrants. Law enforcement officials say the shooter, who Swedish media have identified as 35-year-old Rickard Andersson, may have been a student at the center.

Law enforcement officials have not officially identified the suspect, whose cause of death remains unclear.

Orebro police Chief Lars Wiren said at the news conference Thursday that about 130 officers arrived at the scene within 10 minutes of an alarm, where they found “dead people, injured people, screams and smoke.”

As officers entered the building, they reported it was partially filled with smoke, making it difficult for them to see. They reported gunfire that they believed was directed at them but reportedly did not return fire.

Police said the smoke was not caused by fire but by “some sort of pyrotechnics.” Several officers had to seek medical treatment for smoke inhalation.

Chief investigator Anna Bergkvist said Thursday that the suspect had a license for four guns, all of which have been confiscated.

“Three of those weapons were next to him when police secured him inside the building,” she said.

Bergkvist said investigators have not determined a motive for the mass shooting, telling Agence France-Presse that “multiple nationalities, different genders and different ages” were among those who were killed.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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