Category: World – Crime

CloseZelensky claims Russia lost 35,000 military personnel in DecemberDonald Trump’s senior negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Kyiv's European allies in Paris today in the latest push for a peace deal.
More than 27 leaders will converge on the French capital to finalise a proposal on security guarantees that can be taken to Russia.
The key issues to be discussed by the Coalition of the Willing-led talks include which countries are prepared to deploy peacekeeping troops and what the remit of any force overseeing a ceasefire might be. Russia has said it won't accept troops from Nato countries on Ukrainian soil.
Zelensky says the allies need to ensure that Russia doesn't repeat its invasion if a peace agreement is signed, and has signalled that Ukraine is ready to fight on if Moscow does not agree to a ceasefire.
Ahead of the talks, Zelensky carried out a top-level reshuffle of his administration and replaced the..

Donald Trump has issued a catalogue of threats against several countries after American troops captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
The US president has followed Mr Maduro’s shock arrest with threats against Colombia, Mexico, Greenland, Iran and Cuba.
Mr Maduro will appear in a New York court at 12pm ET (5pm GMT), where he faces charges of narco-terrorism, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. He faces decades to life in prison on each count if convicted.
As the fallout over Mr Maduro’s arrest continues, The Independent looks at every country Mr Trump has recently threatened, after his boast that “American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again.”
VenezuelaFor months, the US has been striking what it describes as Venezuelan “drug boats”, which it claims are carrying narcotics to the US.
Since the first strike in September, Mr Trump has orde..

CloseRussia releases video of drone it says was used in alleged attack on Putin residenceDonald Trump denied that Ukraine targeted Russian president Vladimir Putin’s residence last week, days after saying news of the drone attack had left him “very angry”.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force ‍One on Sunday, Trump said that while “something happened nearby”, US officials did not find Putin's residence was targeted specifically.
“I don't believe that strike happened,” he said. European officials claimed Moscow had made the allegation to undermine peace efforts.
Last week, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine had fired a wave of drones at Putin’s residence in northwestern Novgorod region.
As Russia and Ukraine continued to exchange attacks in the new year, Kyiv recorded its first civilian casualty of 2026 in the early hours of Monday.
The Russian defence ministry accused Ukraine of targeting Moscow with drones every day of 2026 so far, saying this was an escala..

Close'Captured' Maduro walks DEA hallway: Official White House account releases videoVenezuelan president Nicolas Maduro was set to appear in a New York court on Monday to face drug and weapons charges after he was captured by U.S. forces.
Maduro is set to appear in the court of district judge Alvin Hellerstein at noon ET.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio suggested that America would not govern Venezuela day-to-day other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine”, a walkback on president Donald Trump’s insistence that Washington would run the South American country.
Rubio insisted that the U.S. was not at war with Venezuela after some Democratic lawmakers described the military operation to seize Maduro as an “act of war”.
Trump, meanwhile, warned that Venezuela's new leader Delcy Rodríguez could end up with a fate worse than Maduro if she “doesn’t do what’s right” after she was sworn in as acting president.
He also threatened military action could extend to Colombia, urg..

CloseWitness to Swiss blaze 'shocked for life' after seeing victims burningSwiss authorities have opened an investigation into two managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year's party left 40 people dead.
The two are suspected of negligent homicide, negligent bodily harm and causing fire by negligence, police said in a statement, days after the deadly blaze at Le Constellation in the popular ski resort of Crans-Montana.
Swiss authorities have identified the first eight victims from the devastating Le Constellation bar fire as Swiss nationals aged between 16 to 24 years.
Sparkler candles on champagne bottles have been identified as the likely cause of the incident that also injured 119.
The families of the 40 killed in the New Year's Eve fire have faced an agonising wait for information, with several saying they have been given no details at all in the days since.
“I'm living a nightmare, a nightmare. Either I find my son in the morgue, or I find him in critic..

Zohran Mamdani called Donald Trump personally to object to the U.S. military action in Venezuela, saying that the operations in South America would “directly impact New Yorkers.”
“I called the president and spoke with him directly to register my opposition to this act,” Mamdani said at a press conference Saturday, adding that he had told the president he was “opposed to a pursuit of regime change [and] to the violation of federal and international law.”
The New Yorker mayor, who officially assumed office Thursday, did not share any further information about the call, though his aides said that he had been the one to initiate the call – which was described as “brief.”
“I registered my opposition, I made it clear and we left it at that,” he said.
Mamdani, who once referred to the president as a “fascist,” also expressed his dismay at the operations online Saturday, and the intention of the administration to hold captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro at a detention center in Brookl..

Sixteen-year-old Arthur Brodard went to the Le Constellation bar with friends to celebrate the New Year. Nearly 48 hours after a devastating fire, his mother still held out hope he might be one of the six injured people who remained unidentified after one of Switzerland’s worst tragedies.
Those half-dozen people gave a glimmer of hope for families whose loved ones were missing in the aftermath of the fire at the Alpine ski resort of Crans-Montana that killed 40 people and injured 119 others, 113 of whom have been formally identified.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Laetitia Brodard, from Lausanne, Switzerland, told reporters. “I want to know, where is my child, and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
The severity of the burns has made it difficult to identify both the injured and deceased, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside..

President Donald Trump has again appeared to misidentify a bird species in a series of ranting social media posts about wind turbines, claiming, “Eagles going down!”
Trump has continued his smear campaign against wind turbines by claiming millions of birds are being killed by the energy producers and sharing photos that he incorrectly says are dead bald eagles.
In his latest attack against wind turbines, Trump shared a photo to Truth Social Friday of a bird lying limp in front of a wind farm and captioned it, “Eagles going down!” But the raptor in the photo is not America’s favorite bird. It’s a red kite killed in Spain, according to a 2011 article from The Telegraph.
In another post Friday, Trump shared a photo appearing to show a flock of birds flying near a wind turbine and wrote, “Killing birds by the millions!” The picture was shared on the photo site Flickr in 2006 by the Taiwanese environmental group Changhua Coast Conservation Action.
open image in galleryPresident Donald Trump..

CloseRussia releases video of drone it says was used in alleged attack on Putin residenceThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has told US president Donald Trump that Ukraine did not attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, contradicting Russian claims that Ukrainian drones targeted one of the Russian president’s residences.
US intelligence assessed the allegation as false, indicating Putin misrepresented the incident.
Earlier, Russia released videos of alleged drone wreckage and claimed it had decoded files proving the attack, but Ukraine called the footage “laughable” and accused Moscow of staging the incident to derail the peace talks.
Meanwhile, the two countries exchanged drone strikes on each other’s energy grids as the New Year began, according to local officials.
On New Year’s Eve, Russia claimed Ukrainian drones struck a cafe and hotel in the occupied village of Khorly, Kherson region, killing 24 and injuring at least 50, with one drone reportedly carrying an incendiary mixture…

The French government has defended its decision to grant citizenship to Hollywood actor George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
Officials said that the couple were naturalised because “they contribute, through their distinguished actions, to France’s international influence and cultural outreach”.
The naturalisations, which also include their twins Ella and Alexander, were announced last weekend in the Journal Officiel, the official gazette for French decrees.
However, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, a junior minister at the Interior Ministry, expressed misgivings on Wednesday. She suggested that some French compatriots might believe the star couple received special treatment, given the actor’s own admission that his French is “horrible, horrible”.
Speaking to France Info, she said: “The message being sent is not good.”
She added: “There is an issue of fairness that, in my eyes, is absolutely essential.”
open image in galleryGeorge and Amal Clooney have been granted F..