U.S.-mediated talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Geneva, Switzerland, broke off on Wednesday without any significant progress or indication that Russia was ready to step back from its maximalist demands for subjugating Ukraine.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, tersely said the talks had been “difficult but businesslike” and had ended after just two hours of discussions on Wednesday following longer conversations the previous day.
The reappearance of Medinsky, known to be a hard-line aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as head of the Kremlin’s delegation had signified that Russia was digging in its heels on core demands — including significant cuts to the Ukrainian military, the dismantling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and guarantees for Ukraine’s neutrality, analysts said.
Moscow has insisted that these steps are required to address what it describes as the “root causes” of the war. Ukraine’s position is that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked and that Moscow should end its illegal war of aggression and remove its troops that are occupying Ukrainian territory.
Russian analysts said Moscow’s demands encompassed a far wider spectrum of issues than the territorial swaps proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration as a path to end the war.
“As long as there is an armed anti-Russia on Ukrainian territory, there can be no peace,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst. “I don’t think anyone had any big hopes that the talks would end in success. The positions are very, very far from each other.”
“The idea of territorial swaps for peace is not Russia’s idea,” Markov added. “It is Trump’s.”
Proponents of territorial exchanges envision that Russia would withdraw from some areas it occupies in Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing its military from parts of the heavily fortified Donbas area, which Putin has failed to capture during four years of full-scale war.
Zelensky’s administration has previously said it could agree to withdraw troops from the Donbas area. But Kyiv has said it would agree to a pullback only if the region becomes a demilitarized zone and if the United States first provides legally watertight security guarantees.
Zelensky told reporters on Wednesday that the talks on “political” issues such as Russian demands for Ukraine to withdraw its forces from “the east” were “not easy” and that differences remain. But Zelensky also sought to put a positive spin on some of the trilateral discussions between Russia, the United States and Ukraine in Geneva, saying they had been “constructive” on ways to monitor any potential ceasefire.
Zelensky appealed again at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend for U.S.-backed guarantees before he signs on to any deal with Russia to end the war. “Those guarantees answer the main question: how long there will be no war again,” he said then.
The direct talks between Russia and Ukraine have stalled for weeks over core differences, namely territorial concessions, control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russia in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and questions about Western guarantees for Kyiv, according to two European diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
“So far the Russian position is no boots on the ground from NATO allies, so there are outstanding points: territory, security guarantees and the future of the Zaporizhzhia plant,” one of those diplomats said. “Those are the big sticking points, so we need to see if it really happens.”
In meetings with U.S. officials late last year, Ukraine’s chief European backers were encouraged by the U.S. interest in playing a role in securing a settlement to the war. France and Britain have led a coalition of allies planning ways to provide Ukraine with a U.S.-backed bulwark against future attack, including with some European troops and air or sea power.
Still, the Trump administration appeared to want to sign a deal before fully committing, while Kyiv has maintained it needs the Western protection baked into any settlement, the diplomats said. Russia, meanwhile, has ruled out any presence of Western soldiers in Ukraine.
Zelensky, who met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend, has stressed Kyiv’s refusal to cede territory in the east that Russia does not militarily control and said Ukraine could only hold elections if there is a ceasefire.
Analysts said it was clear the Kremlin had no intention of making any concessions.
“As long as Putin is in power, Russia isn’t paralyzed by widespread protests, and there is at least some money left in the budget for weapons, the war will continue,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, in a post on X. “The Kremlin will not make significant concessions even if faced with a protracted financial and economic crisis.”
“That means there will be no final settlement either now or in the foreseeable future,” Stanovaya added. “Negotiations may intensify, a short-term ceasefire is possible, and documents may even be signed. But overall, this simulation of negotiations can only lead to the simulation of a ceasefire and the simulation of a settlement.”
Russia has been facing increasing economic pressure after the U.S. administration imposed tough new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in October.
The measures caused Russian oil revenue to plummet as Moscow was forced to accept discounts of more than $20 per barrel on its exports. Economists have warned of a nonpayment crisis as the economy grinds to a halt amid high inflation and high interest rates of 15.5% imposed by the Central Bank.
Analysts say there are concerns in the Kremlin that Moscow could face a narrowing window to reach an advantageous deal because the Trump administration could grow distracted as midterm elections near — and then potentially could be weakened by the results.
Stephen Colbert isn’t backing down in an extraordinary public dispute with his bosses at CBS over what he can air on his late-night talk show.
On The Late Show Tuesday, Colbert said he was surprised by a statement from CBS denying that its lawyers told him he couldn’t show an interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico — which the host said had happened the night before.
He then took a copy of the network statement, wrapped it in a dog poop bag, and tossed it away.
Colbert had instead shown his Talarico interview on YouTube, but told viewers why he couldn’t show it on CBS. The network was concerned about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr trying to enforce a rule that required broadcasters to give “equal time” to opposing candidates when an interview was broadcast with one of them.
“We looked and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career going back to the 1960s,” Colbert said.
Although Carr said in January he was thinking about getting rid of the exemption for late-night talk shows, he hadn’t done it yet. “But CBS generously did it for him,” Colbert said.
Not only had CBS been aware Monday night that Colbert was going to talk about this issue publicly, its lawyers had even approved it in his script, he said. That’s why he was surprised by the statement, which said that Colbert had been provided “legal guidance” that broadcasting the interview could trigger the equal time rule.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Colbert said. “For the record, I’m not even mad. I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network. I’ve never had one.”
He said he was “just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.” CBS is owned by Paramount Global.
Colbert is a short-timer now at CBS. The network announced last summer that Colbert’s show, where President Donald Trump is a frequent target of biting jokes, would end in May. The network said it was for economic reasons but others — including Colbert — have expressed skepticism that Trump’s repeated criticism of the show had nothing to do with it.
This week’s dispute with Colbert also recalls last fall, when ABC took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for a remark made about the killing of conservative activist founder Charlie Kirk, only to reinstate him following a backlash by viewers.
As of Wednesday morning, Colbert’s YouTube interview with Talarico had been viewed more than five million times, or roughly double what the comic’s CBS program draws each night. The Texas Democrat also reported that he had raised $2.5 million in campaign donations in the 24 hours after the interview.
Deep in South Africa’s wine country near the town of Robertson, past rows of tin shacks and up a gravel road where barefoot children play, sits a little piece of Russia.
The apricot-hued building with its curved dome proclaims its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church on a sign in Afrikaans. The interior is adorned with icons, rugs, and candle stands, things more familiar to a place of worship in, say, St. Petersburg than South Africa’s Western Cape. But the outpost is just one of hundreds of similar churches that have spawned across Africa.
The continent has long been a target for Russia. The Soviet Union supported decolonialization and aided new independent states during the Cold War while the West engendered mistrust with policies such as doing little to oppose apartheid in South Africa.
Now, faced with more sanctions over its war in Ukraine and a new geopolitical era, Moscow is trying to leverage its old, soft power ties again in the absence of any significant economic hard power.
Recent years have seen China dominate, becoming Africa’s biggest trading partner and investing in roads, railways, and ports. The broader aim might be diplomatic, to garner international support from a continent with 54 votes at the United Nations. The Kremlin and its proxies, though, are also leaning on African countries for recruits to bolster its army and the workforce making munitions it uses in Ukraine.
“Russia is trying to develop its policy of influence in all African countries,” said Thierry Vircoulon, coordinator of the Observatory of Central and Southern Africa at the French Institute of International Relations, known as IFRI. “They want to project the image of a great country that is friendly to all Africans.”
A Chinese destroyer and Russian and Iranian corvettes at Simon’s Town harbor in Cape Town on Jan. 9 ahead of multinational naval exercises.
President Vladimir Putin recently created a Kremlin department to coordinate Russia’s interactions and policies with nations personally selected by him. There will be a special team to look after Africa policy, two people familiar with the situation said.
Early on in its war against Ukraine, there were donations of a small amount of fertilizer and grains to African nations to help alleviate shortages caused by the full-scale invasion in February 2022. More recently, Putin ordered ships to sail around Africa, ostensibly to help countries such as Morocco and Senegal map out their stocks of fish.
What’s increasingly visible is the linguistic and cultural push. Russia has opened seven centers known as Russian Houses across the continent and plans more, holding talks over a new site in Namibia in early December. Russian, meanwhile, is being introduced at universities in cities including Abidjan in Ivory Coast and Harare in Zimbabwe.
In 2024, the foundation led by Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova opened a lecture hall at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, to facilitate the teaching of the language.
More than 32,000 students from Africa are currently studying at Russian universities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in December. Since 2020, the number of scholarships allocated to the African continent in Russia has nearly tripled, reaching more than 5,300 places. They are following in the footsteps of African leaders, many of whom had military or academic training in the USSR.
The Russian embassy in South Africa posted an advertisement for them in December and a politician in Lesotho facilitated sending students to Moscow-based Synergy University earlier in the year.
And, of course, there’s religion — a way of wielding influence going back to Christian missionaries in colonial times. In less than three years, the Russian Orthodox Church expanded to at least 34 countries in Africa from four, grew the number of clergy to 270 and registered 350 parishes and communities as of June 2024, the latest figures available from the church.
The geographical expansion might be the most significant in the Russian Orthodox Church’s history, Yuri Maksimov, chairman of the Africa Exarchate’s mission department, wrote in a 2025 academic paper.
The Russians attracted priests with better salaries, promises of church construction and rapid promotion, according to a study by Father Evangelos Thiani, an academic and Kenyan priest in the Greek Orthodox Church.
Russian orthodoxy welcomed Alexey Herizo, a Madagascan priest in the capital, Antananarivo, with “open arms.” He did online training with a seminary in Moscow, then practical training on site in 2023 for three months before being ordained as a deacon and then a priest within a few days.
That was after years of waiting for the Greek Orthodox Church to accept him, said Alexey, his religious name. The salaries provided by the Russian church allow us “to live decently, take care of our family’s health, and provide for our children’s education,” he said.
The church in Robertson affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Expanding outreach
It’s hard to estimate the number of worshipers the church has now in communities where religion and social conservatism play a large role in everyday life. The church on the outskirts of Robertson, a town named after a Scottish protestant, switched to the Russian branch of the Orthodox faith in 2022. It’s now home to a small congregation of largely white, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans.
While Russian Orthodox churches in South Africa have mainly recruited from Afrikaans communities, with its conservative values appealing to elements of that group, they have also been seeking to add to their numbers with outreach programs to rural, Black communities.
The expansion is aimed at “trying to pull more countries into their orbit,” said Tom Southern, director of special projects at the Centre for Information Resilience, who has looked at the growth. “It’s like spiritual colonialism.”
Russia’s longstanding ties with Africa loosened following the collapse of communism as the country turned to the West. The continent came back into focus after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and relations with the United States and Europe soured.
A report by the European Parliament said Moscow has military cooperation agreements with 43 African countries and is a key supplier of arms. Wagner Group paramilitaries were active trying to fight rebels in places like Mali, though the group has since been disbanded and folded into the government’s Africa Corps. Companies linked with Wagner, meanwhile, had contracts across the continent in security, oil services, and gold mining.
African countries have vast economic and human potential and are playing an increasingly significant role in global politics, Putin said in a written address to the plenary session of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum conference in Cairo in December. Lavrov, his foreign minister, told the event that Russia plans to have trade missions operating in 15 African countries by the end of 2026.
A Russian warship in January joined naval exercises held off the coast of South Africa along with vessels from China, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The Russian embassy said they focused on maritime security.
Russia’s renewed push into Africa lacks the financial resources of its geopolitical rivals, though. While China is sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest trade partner, Russia ranks 33rd and is superseded by the UAE, U.S., Japan, and eight European nations.
China has built infrastructure in nations from Cameroon to Kenya while the UAE and other wealthy gulf states have become major sources of foreign money in recent years. The European Union is the biggest investor in South Africa and 600 American companies operate in the country.
Putin hosted a Russia-Africa summit in 2019 attended by 43 heads of state, while the second one in 2023 attracted just 17. The Kremlin blamed the low attendance on “unprecedented pressure” from the U.S. and its allies.
There’s an increasing effort to counter that. With President Donald Trump upending the world order with trade tariffs, rivalry with China and more recently the capture of Venezuela’s president, Russia is trying to assert its narratives in Africa.
The state-owned Sputnik news service is hiring South African journalists and in 2026 plans to open a bureau in the country. It would be the second in Africa, following Ethiopia in early 2025, said Viktor Anokhin, who will run the operation. “Our main goal, as it always has been, is to provide an alternative source of news,” Anokhin said when called by Bloomberg. “A balanced offering.”
Recruiting manpower
Russia has sponsored disinformation campaigns and stoked instability in conflict-ridden nations, according to research groups including the European Council on Foreign Relations. The country is also accused of using Africans to aid its war effort in Ukraine.
One of them was Alabuga Start, a recruitment arm of Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. It set itself a target of hiring thousands of African women between the ages of 18 and 22, saying they will work in fields such as hospitality and construction.
Most of the young women end up in a military equipment factory, according to the authors of three reports from organizations including the Institute for Science and International Security.
“African women typically don’t have access to as many opportunities in life, opportunities to get a well-paying job, opportunities to get an education, opportunities to travel,” said Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at Washington-based ISIS. “The Alabuga Start program really provides on the surface all those benefits. But in reality, they’re working in a drone production factory.”
Alabuga didn’t respond to requests for comment, while the Russian embassy in South Africa said in August it had no evidence that the rights of those recruited by Alabuga were being violated, describing reports as “biased.”
On the battlefield, Ukraine estimates that more than 1,400 Africans are fighting for Russia. Kenya’s foreign minister said in November at least 200 Kenyans had been recruited to Russia’s military, often after being told they would work as security guards or drivers.
A report this month by All Eyes on Wagner, a nonprofit research group, said Russia has recruited from about 35 African countries and provided the names of about 300 Africans killed while fighting for Russia.
In South Africa, where fighting for a foreign military or assisting it is a crime, a daughter of former President Jacob Zuma is being investigated by the police for allegedly helping to recruit about 20 men for Russia’s military. She told them they were going on a bodyguard training course.
Separately, South Africa arrested and charged state radio presenter Nonkululeko Mantula and four men she allegedly recruited for the Russian military. Her trial is due to start in April. Bloomberg reported on Jan. 7 that Russia targeted South African video gamers as part of the recruitment drive, according to documents involving two men who left to fight.
South Africa, Kenya, and Botswana have announced investigations into how their nationals became involved in fighting for Russia. South Africa and Lesotho have publicly warned against accepting some job opportunities and scholarships in Russia.
Worshipers enter the Cathedral of St. Sergius of Radonezh on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
Religious leaders
The widening footprint of the church is symbolic of Russia’s desire to sway Africans to its cause.
In a 2022 news conference to celebrate the first year of work in Africa, Leonid Gorbachov, the then Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, said the church works with Russian government agencies and was in talks with the government about the exarchate’s needs.
“It is religious leaders in Africa who remain the most trusted and respected, with religion taking center stage in politics, elections and developmental concerns,” Father Thiani, the Kenyan priest and academic, wrote in the July 2024 paper published by Studies in World Christianity. “The use of religion for entering Africa is therefore an ideal form of Russian soft power.”
Churches now range from rural outposts in Kenya, Madagascar and the one in Robertson to the St. Sergius of Radonezh cathedral on the outskirts of Johannesburg, which is adorned with grand golden cupolas. Founded in 2003, it was — until the establishment of the Africa Exarchate — the only Russian Orthodox Church in sub-Saharan Africa.
The activities of the Russian Orthodox Church have raised concerns in a number of countries outside Africa.
The Czech government placed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on its sanctions list in April 2023. It cited his support for the invasion of Ukraine, a country who’s church declared full independence from the Moscow patriarchate in 2022.
In Moldova, a former Soviet state with eyes on EU membership, the government has described the Moscow-linked church as a tool of Russian influence aimed at spreading propaganda and causing instability.
Priests spoken to by Bloomberg denied the church expansion in Africa was related to Russia’s political objectives.
Nicholas Esterhuizen, who runs the Saint John of The Ladder Church above a café in Cape Town, said ties with Russia were spiritual and “transcend the current political climate.”
“If the state is the problem, if the state is at war, why do you need to draw the church into the state? The president is not a leader of the church,” said Daniel Agbaza, a Russian Orthodox priest in Nigeria, where a new church is being built in Benue State. “Because it is called Russian does not mean that it is a Russian government church.”
DNA from gloves found a few miles from the Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie did not match any entries in a national database, authorities said Tuesday, the 17th day of her disappearance.
“There were no DNA hits in CODIS,” the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said, referring to the national Combined DNA Index System.
“At this point, there have been no confirmed CODIS matches in this investigation,” the department said, suggesting that other DNA samples had been put through the system.
CODIS is a storehouse of DNA taken from crime suspects or people with convictions. Any hits could identify possible suspects in Guthrie’s disappearance.
The sheriff’s department said it’s looking to feed DNA evidence into other “genetic genealogy” databases. It did not elaborate.
Investigators, meanwhile, were seen inspecting exterior cameras at a neighbor’s house Tuesday. Vehicles were also arriving and departing from Guthrie’s Tucson-area home while a thick line of news media watched from the street.
The 84-year-old mother of NBC Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie was reported missing from her home on Feb. 1 after spending the previous night with family, police said. Her blood was detected on the porch.
A porch camera recorded video of a man with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, a jacket and gloves. The FBI said the suspect is about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build.
Gloves were found about 2 miles from Guthrie’s home. The FBI has said that the gloves appeared to match those worn by the man in the video.
“There is additional DNA evidence that was found at the residence, and that is also being analyzed,” the sheriff’s department said.
In addition, the department said it’s working with experts to try to locate Guthrie by detecting her heart pacemaker.
Parsons Corp. said its BlueFly device, which weighs less than a pound and has a range of up to 218 yards, can detect signals from wearable electronics and medical devices. The company said the technology has been used from the air and on the ground in Arizona. It declined further comment about the search.
The sheriff’s department released numbers to show how the public is reacting to Guthrie’s disappearance and the appeal for any information. There were 28,000 phone calls from Feb. 1-16, a 54% increase over the same period a year ago. Not all calls were tips.
Savannah Guthrie posted an Instagram video Sunday in which she issued an appeal to anyone with information about what happened to her mother.
“It is never too late to do the right thing,” she said. “And we are here. And we believe in the essential goodness of every human being, that it’s never too late.”
ILULISSAT, Greenland — When he was growing up in a village in northern Greenland, Jørgen Kristensen’s closest friends were his stepfather’s sled dogs. Most of his classmates were dark-haired Inuit; he was different. When he was bullied at school for his fair hair — an inheritance from the mainland Danish father he never knew — the dogs came to him.
He first went out to fish on the ice with them alone when he was 9 years old. They nurtured the beginning of a lifelong love affair and Kristensen’s career as a five-time Greenlandic dog sled champion.
“I was just a small child. But many years later, I started thinking about why I love dogs so much,” Kristensen, 62, told the Associated Press.
“The dogs were a great support,” he said. “They lifted me up when I was sad.”
For more than 1,000 years, dogs have pulled sleds across the Arctic for Inuit seal hunters and fishermen. But this winter, in the town of Ilulissat, around 186 miles north of the Arctic Circle, that’s not possible.
Instead of gliding over snow and ice, Kristensen’s sled bounces over earth and rock. Gesturing to the hills, he said it’s the first time he can remember when there has been no snow — or ice in the bay — in January.
The rising temperatures in Ilulissat are causing the permafrost to melt, buildings to sink, and pipes to crack but they also have consequences that ripple across the rest of the world.
The nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier is one of the fastest-moving and most active on the planet, sending more icebergs into the sea than any other glacier outside Antarctica, according to the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO. As the climate has warmed, the glacier has retreated and carved off chunks of ice faster than ever before — significantly contributing to sea levels that are rising from Europe to the Pacific Islands, according to NASA.
Jørgen Kristensen rides with his sled dogs in Ilulissat, Greenland, on Jan. 27.
In the 1980s, winter temperatures in Ilulissat regularly hovered around -13 Fahrenheit in winter, Kristensen said.
But nowadays, he said, there are many days when the temperature is above freezing — sometimes it can be as warm as 50 degrees.
Kristensen said he now has to collect snow for the dogs to drink during a journey because there isn’t any along the route.
Although Greenlanders have always adapted — and could make dog sleds with wheels in future — the loss of the ice is affecting them deeply, said Kristensen, who now runs his own company showing tourists his Arctic homeland.
“If we lose the dog sledding, we have large parts of our culture that we’re losing. That scares me,” he told AP, pressing his lips together and becoming tearful.
A sled dog stands as the northern lights shine over Ilulissat, Greenland, on Jan. 28.
The sea ice is disappearing
In winter, hunters should be able to take their dogs far out on the sea ice, Kristensen told AP. The ice sheets act like “big bridges,” connecting Greenlanders to hunting grounds but also to other Inuit communities across the Arctic in Canada, the United States, and Russia.
“When the sea ice used to come, we felt completely open along the entire coast and we could decide where to go,” Kristensen said.
This January, there was no ice at all.
Driving a dog sled on ice is like being “completely without boundaries — like on the world’s longest and widest highway,” he said. Not having that is “a very great loss.”
Several years ago, Greenland’s government had to provide financial support to many families in the far north of the island after the sea ice did not freeze hard enough for hunting, said Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents Inuit people from across Arctic nations.
The warming weather also makes life more dangerous for fishermen who have swapped their dog sleds for boats, because there is more rain instead of snow, said Morgan Angaju Josefsen Røjkjær, Kristensen’s business partner.
When snow falls and is compressed, air is trapped between the flakes, giving the ice its brilliant white color. But when rain freezes, the ice that forms contains little air and looks more like glass.
A fisherman can see the white ice and try to avoid it, but the ice formed from rain takes on the color of the sea — and that’s dangerous because “it can sink you or throw you off your boat,” said Røjkjær.
Climate change, Olsvig said, “is affecting us deeply,” and is amplified in the Arctic, which is “warming three to four times faster than the global average.”
Greenlandic sled dogs stand in Ilulissat, Greenland, on Jan. 27.
The glaciers are melting
Over the course of his lifetime, the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier has retreated by about 25 miles, said Karl Sandgreen, 46, the head of Ilulissat’s Icefjord Center, which is dedicated to documenting the glacier and its icebergs.
Looking out of the window at hills which would normally be covered with snow, Sandgreen described mountain rock revealed by melting ice and a previously ice-covered valley inside the fjord where “there’s nothing now.”
Pollution is also speeding up the ice melt, Sandgreen said, describing how Sermeq Kujalleq is melting from the top down, unlike glaciers in Antarctica which largely melt from the bottom up as sea temperatures rise.
This is exacerbated by two things: black carbon, or soot spewed from ship engines, and debris from volcanic eruptions. They blanket the snow and ice with dark material and reduce reflection of sunlight, instead absorbing more heat and speeding up melting. Black carbon has increased in recent decades with more ship traffic in the Arctic, and nearby Iceland has periodic volcanic eruptions.
Many Greenlanders told AP they believe the melting ice is the reason Trump — a leader who has called climate change “the greatest con job ever” — wants to own the island.
Since Trump returned to office, fewer climate scientists from the U.S. have visited Ilulissat, Sandgreen said. The U.S president needs to “listen to the scientists,” who are documenting the impact of global warming, he said.
Jørgen Kristensen gets on a boat by an iceberg at Disko Bay near Ilulissat, Greenland, on Jan. 29.
Teaching children about climate change
Kristensen said he tries to explain the consequences of global warming to the tourists who he takes out on dog sled rides or on visits to the icebergs. He said he tells them how Greenland’s glaciers are as important as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
International summits, such as the United Nations climate talks in November in the Amazon gateway city of Belem, play a role, but it’s just as important to “teach children all over the world” about the importance of ice and oceans, alongside subjects like math, Kristensen said
“If we don’t start with the children, we can’t really do anything to help nature. We can only destroy it,” Kristensen said.
PAWTUCKET, R.I. — The person who opened fire Monday during a youth hockey game at a Rhode Island ice rink was specifically targeting family members, killing an ex-wife and son as many fans dived for cover while a handful rushed the shooter to stop the attack, authorities said.
Pawtucket Chief of Police Tina Goncalves said the shooter’s ex-wife Rhonda Dorgan and adult son Aidan Dorgan were killed and three others were injured: Rhonda Dorgan’s parents, Linda and Gerald Dorgan, and a family friend Thomas Geruso, all of whom remained in critical condition Tuesday afternoon, Goncalves said
Police identified the shooter as 56-year-old Robert Dorgan, who died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Dorgan also went by the names Roberta Esposito and Roberta Dorgano, authorities said.
Goncalves said there was “no indication” there would be violence at the ice rink in Pawtucket on Monday afternoon, adding that Dorgan had been to many hockey games to watch family members play before without incident.
Gender identity apparently was a contributing factor to Dorgan’s wife filing for divorce in 2020 after nearly 30 years of marriage.
Court filings show Rhonda Dorgan initially wrote “gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits” as reasons for filing but crossed that out and wrote “irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage.”
Court documents show that two shared the same last name even prior to getting married. Authorities have not provided additional details about the same name.
Under the name Roberta Dorgano, Dorgan posted on X that Rhonda Dorgan “hates the person who stole her husband” while posting about the couple’s marital troubles in 2018. A year later Dorgan wrote on social media: “Transwoman, 6 kids: wife – not thrilled,” and encouraged people to not let being transgender stop them from creating a family.
A day before the shooting, Dorgan responded on X to anti-transgender posts by actor Kevin Sorbo and Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones by saying that constant criticism of transgender people is “why we Go BERSERK.”
Brutal attack ended when fans rushed to stop shooter
Goncalves on Tuesday credited several “good Samaritans” who intervened and quickly stopped the attack
At least three bystanders were able to contain Dorgan in the middle of the stands as the crowd fled and ran around them, but said Dorgan was still able to reach for a second firearm and died of a self-inflicted gunshot, Goncalves said.
The hockey game was livestreamed by LiveBarn, a streaming platform for youth sporting events, whose videos have been shared on social media showing players on the ice as popping sounds are heard. Chaos quickly unfolds as players on benches dive for cover, those on the ice frantically skate toward exits and fans flee their seats.
LiveBarn’s social media account has been issuing warnings to those who shared the video that they do not have permission to do so.
Michael Steven, who recorded video after the shooting, recalled crying parents trying to locate their children outside the arena and young people being taken out on stretchers.
“It happens far too often in our nation,” Steven told reporters.
Members of the community held a vigil at Slatersville Congregational Church in North Smithfield in the evening Tuesday.
“It’s absolutely mind-boggling that this could happen to people we know and love and support through everything,” said Amy Goulet, whose son is a hockey player in the community.
Shooter known for bad temper, coworker says
Dorgan was an employee of General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, a ship building facility in Bath, Maine, that contracts with the U.S. Navy, David Hench, a spokesperson for the shipyard, said Tuesday. Coworkers said Dorgan often used the first name Roberta at work.
A colleague, Destiny Mackenzie, recalled that Dorgan used the women’s bathroom and said the two of them would often talk about family. Mackenzie said Dorgan’s ex-wife never came up in conversation but a hockey-playing son was a frequent topic.
“What was supposed to be some seniors’ only chance at playoff games is now ruined,” she wrote in a message to The Associated Press. “Images that these kids and family’s now have to live with. That’s who I send my condolences to is those families.”
Mackenzie said Dorgan had a bad temper that sometimes led to screaming matches with colleagues.
Another coworker said Dorgan appeared to be split on the issue of transgender acceptance, one second being proud of transitioning and the next, embarrassed. That coworker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of workplace reprisals, said they knew Dorgan owned guns but was unsure how many.
Dorgan briefly served in the Marine Corps, enlisting on April 26, 1988, according to military records provided by the service. Less than three months later, on July 13, Dorgan was separated from the service with the lowest military rank.
Maj. Jacoby Getty, a Marine Corps spokesman, told The Associated Press that the rapid discharge indicated Dorgan’s character “was incongruent with Marine Corps’ expectations and standards.”
Getty declined to provide more detail.
Monday’s shooting came nearly two months after the state was rocked by a shooting at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, as well as left a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor dead. Authorities later found Claudio Neves Valente, 48, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a New Hampshire storage facility.
“Our state is grieving again,” Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee said in a statement. “As governor, a parent, and a former coach, my heart breaks for the victims, families, students, and everyone impacted by the devastating shooting at Lynch Arena in Pawtucket.”
GENEVA, Switzerland — Iran announced the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday for live fire drills in a rare show of force as its negotiators held another round of indirect talks with the United States over the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear program.
It was the first time Iran has announced the closure of the key international waterway, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes, since the U.S. began threatening Iran and rushing military assets to the region. It was not immediately clear if the strait had been closed, but such a rare and perhaps unprecedented move could further escalate tensions that threaten to ignite another war in the Middle East.
As the talks began, Iran’s state media announced that Iranian forces had fired live missiles toward the strait and would close it for several hours for “safety and maritime concerns.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meanwhile warned that “the strongest army in the world might sometimes receive such a slap that it cannot get back on its feet.”
Iranian diplomat sees ‘new window’ in talks
Iran’s foreign minister later adopted a different tone, expressing optimism about the talks and saying “a new window has opened” for reaching an agreement.
“We are hopeful that negotiations will lead to a sustainable and negotiated solution which can serve the interests of relevant parties and the broader region,” Abbas Araghchi told a U.N. disarmament conference after leading the Iranian delegation at the talks held in Geneva.
He added that Iran “remains fully prepared to defend itself against any threat or act of aggression,” and that the consequences of any attack on Iran would not be confined to its borders.
He made no specific mention of the military drills or the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump, who scrapped an earlier nuclear agreement with Iran during his first term, has repeatedly threatened to use force to compel Iran to agree to constrain its nuclear program. Iran has said it would respond with an attack of its own. Trump has also threatened Iran over the killing of protesters.
Vance says talks went well ‘in some ways’
Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led the U.S. delegation at the latest indirect talks, held inside the residence of the Omani envoy to Geneva. Oman, a longtime regional mediator, had hosted an earlier round on Feb. 6.
There was progress in the talks but many details remained to be discussed, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Iranian delegation said they would present more detailed proposals in the next two weeks to narrow gaps, the official said.
“In some ways, it went well,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News Channel after he spoke with Witkoff and Kushner. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.”
Araghchi, who led the Iranian side, also said he met with Director-General Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday in Geneva. The Iranian minister said they discussed the agency’s role in helping to achieve an agreement.
A live fire drill
Iran said its Revolutionary Guard started a drill early Monday in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of Oman, which are crucial international shipping routes. It was the second time in recent weeks that Iran has held a live fire drill in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran often carries out military drills in the strait that can impede maritime traffic, but the announced closure went a step further. Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Iran last closed the strait during the war with Iraq in the 1980s, when it mined the waterway.
He said the latest announcement was a clear message to the international community that any strike on Iran would have global impact.
Khamenei meanwhile stepped up his warnings to the U.S. over its buildup of military forces in the region.
“Of course a warship is a dangerous apparatus, but more dangerous than the warship is the weapon that can sink the warship,” Khamenei said, according to Iranian state TV.
He also warned the U.S. that “forcing the result of talks in advance is a wrong and foolish job.”
U.S. increases military presence
Last week, Trump said the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, was being sent to the Mideast. It will join the USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying guided-missile destroyers, which have been in the region for three weeks.
U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone that approached the Lincoln on the same day last week that Iran tried to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Gulf Arab nations have warned any attack could spiral into another regional conflict in a Mideast still reeling from the Israel-Hamas war.
The Trump administration is seeking a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program and ensure it does not develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it is not pursuing weapons and has so far resisted demands that it halt uranium enrichment on its soil or hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinians in Gaza are preparing to welcome the Muslim holy month of Ramadan under a fragile ceasefire deal, but many say the challenges of their daily lives and the losses of the Israel-Hamas war are dampening the typically festive spirit.
“There is no joy after we lost our family and loved ones,” said Gaza City resident Fedaa Ayyad. “Even if we try to cope with the situation, we can’t truly feel it in our hearts. … I am one of those who cannot feel the atmosphere of Ramadan.”
In Gaza, the first day of the holy month is Wednesday. During Ramadan, observant Muslims fast daily from dawn to sunset. In normal circumstances, the month often brings families and friends together to break their fast in joyous gatherings. For Muslims, it’s a time for increased worship, religious reflection, and charity.
Circumstances in Gaza are far from normal. Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and caused widespread destruction and displaced most of the territory’s residents. Israel launched the offensive after Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostage in their attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
As Gaza residents visited markets this week, some lamented that economic woes cast a pall on the month.
“There is no cash among the people. There is no work. It’s true that it is Ramadan, but Ramadan requires money,” said Gaza City resident Waleed Zaqzouq. He said merchants should consider people’s financial hardships.
Before the war, “people lived a dignified life,” he said. “The situation has completely changed in the war, meaning people have been devastated and worn down.”
Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones, killing more than 600 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not distinguish between civilians and militants.
Militants have carried out shooting attacks on Israeli troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed.
Gaza’s winter has highlighted the grim conditions of the displaced residents and the many needs of the enclave and its people. Severe cold has caused child deaths in Gaza, and torrential rain has flooded displacement camps and collapsed already badly damaged buildings.
“There is much that has changed from this Ramadan to Ramadan before the war,” said Raed Koheel, who lives in Gaza City. “In the past, the atmosphere was more delightful. The streets were lit up with decorations. All streets had decorations. Our children were happy.”
Still, amid the hardships, some in the Gaza Strip have worked to bring a taste of Ramadan’s festivities.
Surrounded by ruins and crumbled buildings in Khan Younis, calligrapher and artist Hani Dahman dipped his brush in paint and wrote “Welcome, Ramadan” in Arabic as children watched.
“We are here in Khan Younis camp, trying to bring happiness to the hearts of children, women, men and entire families,” Dahman said. “We are … sending a message to the world that we are people who seek life.”
Strands of Ramadan decorations were hung among the ruins. Mohammed Taniri watched the decorations take shape.
“When they provide such beautiful, simple decorations, it brings joy to the children,” he said. “Despite all the hardships, they are trying to create a beautiful atmosphere.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s top spokesperson is leaving the Trump administration, officials said Tuesday, a departure that comes amid falling public approval ratings for the president’s mass deportation agenda.
Tricia McLaughlin, whose regular Fox News appearances made hera face of the administration’s hard-line immigration agenda, is leaving just over a year into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s tenure leading the agency. The move comes after DHS and the White House have scrambled to tamp down public outrage over the killings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last month.
McLaughlin informed colleagues Tuesday of her departure. She had begun planning to leave in December but extended her stay to help the administration deal with the fallout of the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, according to people briefed on her exit. Politico first reported on McLaughlin’s departure.
Confirming McLaughlin’s decision in a post on X on Tuesday, Noem cited her “exceptional dedication, tenacity, and professionalism” and said she “has played an instrumental role in advancing our mission to secure the homeland and keep Americans safe.”
In a statement, McLaughlin thanked Noem and President Donald Trump, saying she is “immensely proud of the team we built and the historic accomplishments achieved by this Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.”
McLaughlin said she will be replaced by her deputy, Lauren Bis, and DHS’s public affairs team is adding Katie Zacharia, a Fox News contributor.
Noem’s chief spokeswoman built a reputation as a fierce defender of the administration’s handling of immigration and ofthe secretary’s leadership, frequently sparring with reporters on social media and appearing on cable news programs. But her forceful pronouncements have drawn criticism from Democrats and immigrant rights groups, who point to incidents in which statements she made were later contradicted in court or in video footage recorded by witnesses.
McLaughlin joined other administration officials in quickly declaring that Good had committed “an act of domestic terrorism” before she was shot to death by an immigration officer. McLaughlin also said a Venezuelan immigrant had “mercilessly beat” a federal law enforcement officer in Minneapolis. The charges against that man were dropped after the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis said that “newly discovered evidence” was “materially inconsistent with the allegations” the officers had made.
In those and other incidents, McLaughlin quickly made statements supporting actions by officers before investigations had transpired — something that Democrats and some Republicans have also criticized Noem for doing.
Christopher Parente, an attorney for Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot multiple times by a Border Patrol agent in Chicago in the fall, asked a federal judge for permission to release body-camera footage and other evidence that he said was necessary to demonstrate that McLaughlin and other senior administration officials had falsely accused Martinez of being a domestic terrorist and of doxing federal agents.
Martinez was indicted on federal charges of assault and attempted murder of a federal employee with a deadly or dangerous weapon after the shooting. But a federal judge dismissed the case in November after prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois requested that the charges be dropped. Prosecutors didn’t state a reason for the dismissal, although attorneys for the defendant criticized the weakness of the government’s case from the start.
Under McLaughlin, critics say, the DHS public affairs office has produced a skewed view of immigration enforcement. Officials have refused to publish detailed reports of how many immigrants have been arrested and deported. The agency’s messaging has mainly publicized the arrests of immigrants who commit crimes, even though public records show that a majority of migrants who have been detained do not have criminal records.
“We are pleased with this resignation,” Parente told the Washington Post when asked about McLaughlin’s departure. “Unless Pinocchio is applying for the position, we believe her replacement will be a great improvement and hopefully work to start repairing the credibility of DHS.”
Critics said that DHS’s public affairs office has refused to publish detailed reports of how many immigrants have been arrested and deported. The agency’s messaging has mainly publicized the arrests of immigrants who commit crimes, even though public records show that a majority of migrants who have been detained do not have criminal records.
McLaughlin also has repeatedly attacked federal judges who have ruled against the administration, calling them “unhinged,” “deranged” and “disgusting and immoral.” In some cases, she has accused judges of endangering immigration agents or the public through their rulings.
David Lapan, a DHS spokesman in Trump’s first administration, said he hopes McLaughlin’s replacement “stays away from the belligerent, attacking approach that she took.”
“The mis- and disinformation that comes out hurts the trust and credibility of the organization, and they can’t afford to have that continue,” Lapan said.
But McLaughlin’s combative approach won public praise from Trump last month.
“Great job by wonderful TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, DHS Assistant Secretary, on the Sean Hannity Show,” Trump posted on social media. “Many Illegals from around our Nation charged with serious crimes this week. Tricia really knows her ‘STUFF!’”
Democrats have criticized DHS’s posts on social media for disparaging immigrants and posting paintings that depict scenes of a predominantly White America. One post featured an ICE recruitment promotion that stated, “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a phrase that has been associated with a song embraced by white nationalists.
McLaughlin defended that promotion, telling the Post in a statement last month: “The fact that people would like to cherry pick something of white nationalism with the same title to make a connection to DHS law enforcement is disgusting.”
McLaughlin was still posting on X on Tuesday — disputing an NBC News report of growing tensions between DHS leadership and Coast Guard officials over Noem’s use of the military branch’s resources, which she oversees. The Post has also reported on the strained relationship between DHS and the Coast Guard, including Noem’s decision to spend $200 million on new Coast Guard jets for use by senior DHS officials and her move into military housing typically reserved for the Coast Guard commandant.
Before her tenure at DHS, McLaughlin was a senior adviser and communications director for Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign. She joins other senior DHS officials who have left the department in recent weeks, including Madison Sheahan, who last month stepped down from her role as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deputy director to mount a campaign against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio.
CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert rebuked his own network Monday night, claiming that lawyers for parent company Paramount Skydance prohibited him from airing an interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, over concerns it would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s equal time rule.
“You know who is not one of my guests tonight?” Colbert asked his audience. “That’s Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”
In response, the studio audience booed.
“Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on,” Colbert continued. “And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.” A representative for Paramount Skydance did not respond to a request for comment.
Colbert launched into a segment about the FCC’s equal time rule, which requires broadcasters to provide equal opportunity to political candidates. News and talk show interviews have traditionally been exempt from the mandate. But in January, the FCC, issued a public notice saying that daytime and nighttime talk shows would have to apply for a exemptions to the equal time rule for each of their programs.
“Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” the FCC’s notice read.
At the time, Anna M. Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, called the notice “misleading” and said nothing has changed about the FCC’s requirements.
In a statement Tuesday, Gomez wrote that CBS’s decision is an example of “corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech” and said that the FCC has “no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes.”
“CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing,” she said.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, CBS defended itself and pushed back against Colbert’s account.
“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” a spokesperson for the network said in a statement. “The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
Colbert is already on his way out of CBS, set to depart the network in May when his show goes off the air. CBS announced over the summer that it is canceling The Late Show, the long-running talk show once hosted by David Letterman, which it claimed is “purely a financial decision.”
Led by Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC in President Donald Trump’s second term has remade itself as a speech enforcer tackling perceived liberal bias in the media industry. Carr’s speech agenda has been marked by investigations of media companies and threats to take action against broadcasters that do not follow rarely enforced FCC rules. He has frequently invoked a little-used “news distortion” policy as justification, a practice condemned by a bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners in a November letter.
Following on-air comments in September by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, Carr suggested on a podcast that the agency could take action against the network and its parent company Disney, which owns broadcast licenses across the country.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson about Kimmel. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Carr drew bipartisan criticism for his role in the episode, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) likening him to a cinema mafioso. ABC suspended Kimmel for several days in September.
Last summer the FCC approved an $8 billion deal for David Ellison’s Skydance to buy CBS parent company Paramount after a series of concessions. Skydance pledged to conduct a review of CBS’s programming and agreed to refrain from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. It also appointed an ombudsman with Republican Party ties to handle claims of bias.
In July, CBS also settled a lawsuit from Trump, who claimed that a 60 Minutes interview with political rival Kamala Harris was “deceitful” in its editing. Colbert claimed the $16 million settlement was a “big, fat bribe.” The network canceled The Late Show three days later.
Colbert’s criticism also comes amid another corporate pursuit for Paramount Skydance.
The company is trying to persuade Warner Bros. Discovery to accept its hostile bid to buy the company rather than sell to Netflix. It’s unclear whether the FCC would have a role in such a deal, even if Paramount is involved, because no broadcast spectrum licenses would be changing hands. Still, any deal of this size would need government approval, probably from Trump’s Justice Department, where antitrust chief Gail Slater just resigned.
In December, Trump has said he would be “involved” in vetting the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal, which has massive implications for Hollywood, movie theaters and streaming. More recently, Trump backtracked, saying he is “not involved” in the deal.
Talarico, 36, has been a member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2018 and more recently has been a rising star in the Democratic Party. He is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, which is holding its primary contests on March 3.
Though Colbert’s interview with Talarico didn’t broadcast over the airwaves, it was made available on YouTube.
“This is the party that ran against cancel culture,” Talarico told Colbert. “Now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture — the kind that comes from the top.”
