Category: Wires

YEREVAN, Armenia — Vice President JD Vance landed in Armenia on Monday — a country that no sitting U.S. vice president or president has visited before — as the Trump administration offered economic opportunities while it works to advance a U.S.-brokered deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan.

Vance and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed an agreement to push forward negotiations on a civil nuclear energy deal, and Vance said the U.S. was ready to export advanced computer chips and surveillance drones to Armenia, and invest in the country’s infrastructure.

The visit comes after Pashinyan joined a deal at the White House in August with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev where the leaders signed agreements reaffirming their commitment to signing a peace treaty. The text of the treaty was initialed by foreign ministers, which indicates preliminary approval. But the leaders have yet to sign the treaty and parliaments have yet to ratify it.

“Peace is not made by cautious people,” said Vance, who planned to travel to Azerbaijan on Tuesday. “Peace is not made by people who are too focused on the past. Peace is made by people who are focused on the future.”

The August deal between the two former Soviet republics calls for the creation of a major transit corridor dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It is expected to connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 20-mile-wide patch of Armenian territory.

The land bridge had been a sticking point in resolving a conflict that lasted for nearly four decades over control of the Karabakh region, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh. The region had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994. A six-week war in 2020 resulted in Azerbaijan regaining control of parts of the region and the surrounding areas. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a blitz that forced the separatist authorities to capitulate. After Azerbaijan regained full control of Karabakh, most of its 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.

Vance said that the Armenian prime minister had his endorsement in upcoming elections and he emphasized that the country was among the oldest to have identified as Christian.

Pashinyan expressed his gratitude toward President Donald Trump and Vance, noting that he had accepted an invitation to participate in the first meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace on Feb. 19 in Washington. The group, founded by Trump, is overseeing the ceasefire plan in Gaza.

He said Vance’s visit was “of truly historic and symbolic importance” and it “reflects the depth of the strong and strategic partnership forged between the Republic of Armenia and the United States of America.”

The vice president and his wife, Usha, arrived in Yerevan after spending four days in Milan at the Winter Olympics with their family. They were greeted with a red carpet, an honor guard, and a delegation of officials. Armenian and American flags hung from poles from as the delegation drove to the vice president’s meeting, with some demonstrators on the side of the road, including one with a sign that said, “Does Trump support Devils?”

LONDON — King Charles III is ready to “support’’ U.K. police examining claims that the former Prince Andrew gave confidential information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Buckingham Palace said on Monday.

The statement came after Thames Valley Police said Monday that they were ”assessing” reports that the former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, sent trade reports to Epstein in 2010. The department, which serves an area west of London that includes Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home, previously said it was evaluating allegations that Epstein flew a young woman to Britain to have sex with Andrew, also in 2010.

“The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct,’’ the palace said in a statement. “While the specific claims in question are for Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect.’’

The statement is just the latest effort by the palace to distance the royal family from Mountbatten-Windsor as the U.S. Justice Department’s release of more than 3 million pages of documents from its investigation into Epstein reveal more embarrassing details about the relationship between the two men. Earlier in the day, Prince William and Princess Catherine released their own statement saying they have been “deeply concerned” by recent revelations.

The palace also reiterated Charles and Queen Camilla’s concern for the victims of Epstein’s abuse.

“As was previously stated, Their Majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse,’’ the palace said.

The jeopardy faced by the royal family could be seen Monday when Charles visited Lancashire, in northwest England. While most of the crowd clapped, cheered, and waved flags, one person shouted, “How long have you known about Andrew?”

Concerns about Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Epstein have dogged the royal family for more than a decade.

The late Queen Elizabeth II forced her second son to give up royal duties and end his charitable work in 2019 after he tried to explain away his friendship with Epstein during a catastrophic interview with the BBC. After more details about the relationship emerged in a book published last year, Charles stripped him of the right to be called a prince and ordered him to move out of a royal residence close to Windsor Castle.

But the Justice Department documents have brought new attention to Mountbatten-Windsor as reporters home in on dozens of email exchanges between Epstein and the former prince, many of which took place after the financier was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.

Correspondence unearthed in recent days appears to show that Mountbatten-Windsor sent Epstein copies of his reports from a 2010 tour of Southeast Asia, which he undertook as Britain’s envoy for international trade. An earlier email appears to show Andrew sharing his itinerary for the two-week trip to Hanoi, Saigon, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong with Epstein.

“We can confirm receipt of this report and are assessing the information in line with our established procedures,” Thames Valley police said in a statement released on Monday.

Adding to the storm, a U.S.-based attorney said on Feb. 1 that he represented a woman who alleges Epstein flew her to Britain to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor. The encounter took place at Royal Lodge, the former prince’s longtime home in Windsor, the attorney said in an interview with the BBC.

Police previously said they were assessing this report.

The king last week forced Mountbatten-Windsor to move out of Royal Lodge months ahead of schedule. Anger over Mountbatten-Windsor’s living arrangements had grown amid concern that he was still reaping rewards from his status as a royal even though he is no longer a working member of the royal family.

Mountbatten-Windsor is now living on the king’s Sandringham estate in eastern England. He will live temporarily at Wood Farm Cottage while his permanent home on the estate undergoes repairs. Unlike Royal Lodge, which is owned by the crown and managed for the benefit of taxpayers, Sandringham is owned privately by the king.

Thames Valley Police began its latest inquiry after Graham Smith, chief executive of the antimonarchy group Republic, reported Mountbatten-Windsor for suspected abuse of public office and violations of Britain’s Official Secrets Act.

Smith, whose group seeks to replace the king with an elected head of state, compared Mountbatten-Windsor’s correspondence with Epstein to earlier revelations about Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., who is already the subject of a police investigation into whether he shared sensitive information with Epstein. Those communications were also revealed in the Justice Department documents.

“I cannot see any significant difference between these allegations and those against Peter Mandelson,” Smith said on social media.

ROME — The Vatican has given the green light, again, to beatify Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the popular U.S. radio and TV preacher whose path to sainthood was derailed first by a lengthy court battle over his remains and then by concerns about how he handled clergy sexual misconduct cases.

After a rare six-year delay to investigate the concerns, Sheen’s beatification can now take place in Peoria, Ill., as originally planned, the Peoria diocese announced Monday.

No new date for the ceremony, the last major step before possible sainthood, was immediately announced. But the Vatican’s approval now sets the stage for the Illinois-born Sheen to be beatified during the pontificate of the Illinois-born Pope Leo XIV.

“The Holy See has informed me that the cause for the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen can proceed to beatification,” Peoria Bishop Louis Tylka said in a written and video statement on the websites of the diocese and the Sheen foundation. “We are working with the Dicastery of the Causes of Saints at the Vatican to determine the details for the upcoming beatification.”

Sheen was an enormously effective evangelizer in the 20th century U.S. church, who in some ways pioneered televangelism with his 1950s television series, Life Is Worth Living. According to Catholic University of America, where he studied and taught before he was made a bishop, Sheen won an Emmy Award, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, “and became one of the most influential Catholics of the 20th century.”

Pope Francis had confirmed a miracle attributed to Sheen’s intercession on July 6, 2019, and had set his beatification for Dec. 21 that year in Peoria. But with less than three weeks’ notice, the Vatican postponed the ceremony indefinitely.

It acted after the diocese of Rochester, N.Y., where Sheen served as bishop from 1966-1969, asked for further investigation into Sheen’s tenure and “his role in priests’ assignments.”

The concerns focused on Sheen’s handling of two cases of priests accused of sexual misconduct. Sheen was never accused of abuse himself. A top canonical affairs official from Peoria, Monsignor James Kruse, said in 2019 that an investigation had cleared Sheen of any wrongdoing. Kruse later complained that the Rochester diocese was “sabotaging” the cause, writing a lengthy essay that had been posted on the official Sheen beatification site but later taken down.

Peoria Bishop Tylka’s statement made no reference to the concerns that prompted the delay in 2019.

The 2019 investigation was the latest obstacle to hinder Sheen’s cause, coming after an expensive, yearslong legal battle between Sheen’s relatives in Peoria and the New York City archdiocese over his final resting place.

Sheen, who died in 1979, was interred under the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. His remains were returned to Peoria in 2019 after a court ruled Sheen’s niece could bury him there.

Among those celebrating the Vatican’s new green light to beatify Sheen was the Pontifical Missions Societies in the U.S., the Vatican’s main missionary fundraising office in the U.S., which Sheen headed from 1950-1966. Sheen left most of his patrimony, including writings and audio recordings, to the organization, which raises money for the Catholic Church in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other mission areas.

“It is profoundly moving that, in God’s providence, the first U. S. — born pope is able to advance the cause of his fellow Illinois native, the most iconic evangelizer ever produced by the American Church,” Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the office, said in a statement.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A new video from the day of the Brown University shooting that killed two students and injured nine others was released Monday, with city officials saying they had withheld other footage and redacted the most graphic, violent images to avoid harming victims.

“This was a difficult process to both maintain our commitment to transparency, to respond to requests from the media and the public’s right to know exactly what happened, but also balancing what we know are potential, really serious downside effects of releasing some of this information,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at a news conference.

News outlets across the U.S. and other countries had been requesting body camera footage, audio clips, and other public records since shortly after the shooting took place in mid-December.

Material shows police response to the shooting

The newly released material includes audio of a campus police officer calling city police at 4:07 p.m. “This is Brown police. We have confirmed gunshots at 184 Hope Street,” the officer said. “We do have a victim but we do not know where they are.”

Four minutes later, campus police called back with an update: “We have a suspect description, wearing all black and a ski mask, unknown travel direction.”

Separately, the city released roughly 20 minutes of body camera footage of the officer in charge of the initial response to the shooting. The heavily redacted footage shows a chaotic and confusing scene of officers not knowing if the shooter was still in the building and attempts to quickly find a safe spot to send the students evacuated from the building. Scattered backpacks, gloves, and other items can be seen as officers scour the building looking for a possible shooter and victims.

“Let’s get these rescues in, where are we staging rescue?” the officer, who was not identified, says in the video.

He later cautions other officers, “Shooter might still be in the building, so use caution alright.”

Long portions of the video are either blacked out or with the audio redacted. The video is often blocked by the officer’s arms in front of the camera. Officials defended their decision, made in consultation with city lawyers, to release only one video, saying it offered the most “comprehensive” view. Smiley argued that releasing more videos would not answer the harder question of why the shooter chose to attack the university.

“Why did this person do this? None of those videos are going to answer that question. None of them,” Smiley said.

Other audio captures officers describing a possible sighting of the shooter on the second floor of another building and a report of a suspect being taken into custody. That person turned out to be a maintenance worker. It’s unclear when officers realized they had the wrong person in custody, but within minutes, one officer instructs them “We’re gonna work on the premise that that’s not him. We’re gonna conduct a secondary search.”

The city released those records Monday, saying they waited at the request of the victims′ families until after a memorial service was held the previous week on Brown’s campus. Smiley said he had spoken to the victims and their families in recent days.

“Many of their kids are working really hard at moving forward and moving on, and releases like today they fear will make it harder to move forward,” he said, describing them as “remarkably strong and resilient.”

Details of the shooting

On Dec. 13, gunman Claudio Neves Valente, 48, entered a study session in a Brown academic building and opened fire on students, killing 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and wounding nine others.

A newly released police incident report reiterated the emotional moments law enforcement had previously shared about hospitalized victims responding to photos of the suspected shooter.

One victim “quickly froze, physically pushed back” and began crying and shaking as she confirmed the image matched the person who shot her. Another victim “took a deep breath, shut his eyes, changed his breathing pattern and confirmed that the shooter he saw in the hallway appeared to be the person in the photos presented.”

Authorities say Neves Valente, who had been a graduate student at Brown studying physics during the 2000-01 school year, also fatally shot Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at Loureiro’s Boston-area home.

Neves Valente, who had attended school with Loureiro in Portugal in the 1990s, was found dead days after the shooting in a New Hampshire storage facility.

The Justice Department has since said Neves Valente planned the attack for years and left behind videos in which he confessed to the killings but gave no motive. The FBI recovered the electronic device containing the series of videos during a search of the storage facility where Neves Valente’s body was found.

WASHINGTON — Beyond the car windows being smashed, people tackled on city streets — or even a little child with a floppy bunny ears snowcap detained — the images of masked federal officers have become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

Not in recent U.S. memory has an American policing operation so consistently masked its thousands of officers from the public, a development that the Department of Homeland Security believes is important to safeguard employees from online harassment. But experts warn masking serves another purpose, inciting fear in communities, and risks shattering norms, accountability, and trust between the police and its citizenry.

Whether to ban the masks — or allow the masking to continue — has emerged as a central question in the debate in Congress over funding Homeland Security ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline, when it faces a partial agency shutdown.

“Humans read each others’ faces — that’s how we communicate,” said Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs’ Association.

“When you have a number of federal agents involved in these operations, and they can’t be identified, you can’t see their face, it just tends to make people uncomfortable,” he said. “That’s bringing up some questions.”

Democrats demand ‘masks off’

Masks on federal agents have been one constant throughout the first year of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.

What began as a jarring image last spring, when plain-clothes officers drawing up their masks surrounded and detained a Tufts University doctoral student near her Massachusetts home, has morphed into familiar scenes in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities. The shooting deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal immigration officers during demonstrations against ICE raids in Minneapolis sparked widespread public protest and spurred lawmakers to respond.

“Cameras on, masks off” has become a rallying cry among Democrats, who are also insisting the officers wear body cameras as a way to provide greater accountability and oversight of the operations.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol that unmasking the federal agents is a “hard red line” in the negotiations ahead.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement says on its website that its officers “wear masks to prevent doxing, which can (and has) placed them and their families at risk. All ICE law enforcement officers carry badges and credentials and will identify themselves when required for public safety or legal necessity.”

Fueled with funds from Trump’s big tax cuts bill, which poured some $170 billion into Homeland Security, ICE has grown to be among the largest law enforcement operations in the nation. Last year, it announced it had more than doubled its ranks, to 22,000, with rapid hiring — and $50,000 signing bonuses. Homeland Security did not respond to an emailed request for further comment.

Most Republicans say the current political climate leaves the immigration officers, many of them new to the job, exposed if their faces and identities are made public.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said he just can’t agree with Democrats’ demand that officers unmask themselves.

“You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home,” he said. “That’s just the reality of the world that we’re in.”

ICE stands apart with masks

It appears no other policing agency in the country regularly uses masking on a widespread basis. Instead, masks are used during special operations, particularly undercover work or at times during large crowd control or protest situations, and when there is inclement weather or individual health concerns.

Experts said only perhaps during the Ku Klux Klan raids or in the Old West has masking been a more widely used tool.

“It is without precedent in modern American history,” said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Naureen Shah in Washington.

She said the idea of masked patrols on city streets seeking immigrants can leave people scared and confused about who they are encountering — which she suggested is part of the point.

“I think it’s calculated to terrify people,” she said. “I don’t think anybody viscerally feels like, OK, this is something we want to become a permanent fixture in our streets.”

Toward the end of the first Trump administration, Congress sought to clamp down after masked federal agents showed up in 2020 to quell protests in Portland, Ore., and other cities. A provision requiring agents to clearly identify themselves was tucked into a massive defense authorization bill that Trump assigned into law.

Last year, California became the first state in the nation to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces. The Trump administration’s Justice Department sued, saying the state’s policies “create risk” for the agents.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the part of the California law that would ban federal immigration agents from covering their faces, but they will still be required to wear clear identification showing their agency and badge number.

Judge Christina Snyder said she issued the initial ruling because the mask ban as it was enacted did not also apply to state law enforcement authorities, discriminating against the federal government. The ruling could have national implications as states grapple with how to deal with federal agents enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

It left open the possibility of future legislation banning federal agents from wearing masks if it applied to all law enforcement agencies, with Snyder writing “the Court finds that federal officers can perform their federal functions without wearing masks.” The ruling will go into effect Feb. 19.

Police seek middle ground, advocates say unmasking not enough

Smith, of the sheriffs’ association, said there’s no easy answer to the current masking debate.

He suggested perhaps a middle ground could be reached — one that would allow officers to wear masks, but also require their badge or other identifying numbers to be prominently displayed.

Advocates said while unmasking the federal agents would be an important step, other restraints on immigration enforcement operations may be even more so.

They are pushing Congress to curb the ability of ICE officers to rely on administrative warrants in immigration operations, particularly to enter people’s homes, insisting such actions should be required to use judicial warrants, with sign-off from the courts.

There is also an effort to end roving patrols — the ability of immigration officers to use a person’s race, language, or job location to question their legal status, sometimes called “Kavanaugh stops” after Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion to a Supreme Court decision last summer.

Greg Chen, senior director of government affairs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said because Congress gave Homeland Security such robust funding in the tax cuts bill, “That’s why the policy reforms are so important right now to bring the agency in check.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), who recently returned from Minnesota, said the weight of the masked enforcement operation can be felt in ways that impact everyone — regardless of a person’s own immigration status.

“It’s a very a heavy presence of surveillance and intimidation,” she said. “No one is exempt.”