ROME — Italy’s prime minister addressed growing criticism Saturday of the repatriation of a Libyan warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court, as Giorgia Meloni cited an appeals court order and security concerns.

The repatriation of Ossama Anjiem to Libya, a key partner in Europe’s efforts to keep migrants from crossing the Mediterranean and landing on its shores, sparked outrage from human rights groups and questions from Italy’s opposition parties.

Meloni said her government will ask the ICC to clarify why it took months to issue the arrest warrant for Anjiem, also known as Ossama al-Masri, and why it was issued only after he traveled through at least three European countries.

“Al-Masri was released by an order of Rome’s Court of Appeal … It was not a government choice,” Meloni told journalists during a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Italy has close ties to Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli and relies on it to patrol its coasts and prevent migrants from leaving. Any trial of al-Masri in The Hague could bring unwanted attention to Italy’s migration policies and its support of Libya’s coast guard.

Al-Masri leads the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a notorious network of detention centers run by the government-backed Special Deterrence Forces. He was arrested Sunday in Turin, where he reportedly attended the Juventus-Milan soccer match the night before.

The ICC warrant, dated the day before his arrest, accused al-Masri of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Mitiga prison, starting in 2015, that are punishable with life in prison. The court said he was accused of murder, torture, rape and sexual violence. The prison holds political dissidents, migrants and others.

Human rights groups for years have documented abuses in Libyan detention facilities where migrants are kept.

The ICC said the arrest warrant was transmitted to member states Saturday, including Italy, and that the court had told Italy to contact it “without delay” if it ran into problems cooperating with the warrant.

But Rome’s court of appeals ordered al-Masri freed Tuesday, citing a “procedural error” in his arrest. The ruling said Justice Minister Carlo Nordio should have been informed ahead of time since the ministry handles all relations with the ICC.

Al-Masri was sent to Libya aboard an aircraft of the Italian secret services.

The ICC said it had not been given prior notice of the appeals court’s decision, as required, and was “yet to obtain verification from the authorities on the steps reportedly taken.”

Meloni said Italy’s government, “faced with a dangerous individual, decided to expel him immediately and, as it happens in many cases with dangerous prisoners who are repatriated, didn’t use a regular flight, also for passengers’ safety.”

She said Italy will provide all needed clarifications to the ICC.

Opposition parties have asked Meloni to urgently explain the “very serious” development, while calling on the justice minister to resign.
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HALLE, GERMANY — Tens of thousands of Germans rallied Saturday against the far right ahead of next month’s legislative elections, as U.S. tech billionaire Elon Musk again endorsed the anti-immigrant AfD party.

Musk, speaking by video link, told thousands of AfD supporters gathered in the eastern city of Halle that their party was “the best hope for the future of Germany.”

AfD supporters at the rally shouted their approval as party co-leader Alice Weidel looked on smiling.

Meanwhile, protesters against the AfD turned out in cities across Germany.

The largest gatherings took place in Berlin and Cologne, police revising their turnout figures upward to 35,000 and 40,000 respectively.

The protesters in Berlin used their mobile phones to form “a sea of light for democracy” in front of the Brandenburg Gate, holding letters forming the word “Resistance.”

AfD polling a record

AfD is polling at about 20% before Germany’s February 23 elections, a record for a party that has shattered a decades-old taboo in post-war Germany against supporting the far right.

The mainstream conservative CDU/CSU alliance leads with about 30%, with CDU leader Friedrich Merz the favorite to become chancellor after the elections.

Musk, a close associate of U.S. President Donald Trump, told the AfD rally the election was important.

“I think it could decide the entire fate of Europe, maybe the fate of the world,” he said.

Musk has rattled European politicians in recent weeks with comments on his social platform X supporting AfD and far-right politicians in other countries, including Britain.

Like Trump, the AfD opposes immigration, denies climate change, rails against gender politics, and has declared war on a political establishment and mainstream media it claims limit free speech.

Peaceful protests

The anti-AfD rallies took place in about 60 towns following calls from a variety of organizations, attracting more people than the police expected.

The protests passed peacefully, with banners saying, “Nazis out” or “AfD is not an alternative,” a reference to the far-right party’s full name “Alternative for Germany.”

The CDU’s Merz also came in for criticism. Many protesters fear he is tempted to break his party’s policy of refusing to enter into coalition talks with the AfD.

There was also a protest in the southern city of Aschaffenbourg, where a deadly knife attack recently by an Afghan migrant further inflamed the debate over immigration.

Several thousand also turned out in the eastern city of Halle, where the AfD rally was addressed by Musk, leading to a few incidents.

Halle police said they had opened criminal investigations for offenses including assault, insults and disrupting traffic. They said they would also be taking action against 21 people who tried to force a barrier.
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HAIFA, ISRAEL — Naftali Furst will never forget his first view of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, on Nov. 3, 1944. He was 12 years old.

SS soldiers threw open the doors of the cattle car, where he was crammed in with his mother, father, brother, and more than 80 others. He remembers the tall chimneys of the crematoria, flames roaring from the top.

There were dogs and officers yelling in German “Get out, get out!” forcing people to jump onto the infamous ramp where Nazi doctor Josef Mengele separated children from parents.

Furst, now 92, is one of a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors able to share first-person accounts of the horrors they endured, as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ most notorious death camp. Furst is returning to Auschwitz for the annual occasion, his fourth trip to the camp.

Each time he returns, he thinks of those first moments there.

“We knew we were going to certain death,” he said from his home in Haifa, northern Israel, earlier this month. “In Slovakia, we knew that people who went to Poland didn’t return.”

Strokes of luck

Furst and his family arrived at the entrance to Auschwitz on Nov. 3, 1944 -– one day after Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the cessation of the use of the gas chambers ahead of their demolition, as the Soviet troops neared. The order meant that his family wasn’t immediately killed. It was one of many small bits of luck and coincidences that allowed Furst to survive.

“For 60 years, I didn’t talk about the Holocaust, for 60 years I didn’t speak a word of German even though it’s my mother tongue,” said Furst.

In 2005, he was invited to attend the ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, where he was liberated on April 11, 1945, after being moved there from Auschwitz. He realized there were fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors who could give first-person accounts, and he decided to throw himself into memorial work. This will be his fourth trip to a ceremony at Auschwitz, having also met Pope Francis there in 2016.

Some 6 million European Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust — the mass murder of Jews and other groups before and during World War II. Soviet Red Army troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on Jan. 27, 1945, and the day has become known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. An estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Just 220,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and more than 20% are over 90.

A meeting place after the war

Furst, originally from Bratislava, then part of Czechoslovakia, was just 6 when the Nazis first started implementing measures against the country’s Jews.

He spent ages 9 to 12 in four different concentration camps, including Auschwitz. His parents had planned to jump off of the cattle car on the way to the camp, but people were packed so tightly they couldn’t reach the doors.

His father instructed the entire family, no matter what, to meet at 11 Sulekova St. in Bratislava after the war. Furst and his brother were separated from their mother. After numbers were tattooed on their arms, they also were taken from their father. They lived in Block 29, without many other children. As the Soviet army closed in on the area, so close they could hear the booms from the tanks, Furst and his brother, Shmuel, were forced to join a dangerous journey toward Buchenwald, marching for three days in the cold and snow. Anyone who lagged behind was shot.

“We had to prove our desire to live, to do another step and another step and keep going,” he said. Many people gave up, longing to end the hunger and thirst and cold, and just sat down, where they were shot by the guards.

“We had this command from my father: ‘You must adapt and survive, and even if you’re suffering, you must come back,'” Furst recalled.

Furst and his brother survived the march, and an open-car train ride in the snow, but they were separated at the next camp. When Furst was liberated from Buchenwald, captured in a famous photo that included Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel in the bunkbeds, he was sure he was alone in the world.

But within months, just as Furst’s father had instructed, the four family members reunited at the address they memorized, the home of family friends. The rest of their family –- grandparents, aunts, uncles — were all killed. His family later moved to Israel, where he married, had a daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, with another on the way.

‘We couldn’t imagine this tragedy’

On Oct. 7, 2023, Furst awoke to the Hamas attack on southern Israel, and immediately thought of his granddaughter, Mika Peleg, and her husband, and their 2-year-old son, who live in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza where scores of people were killed or kidnapped.

“It just kept getting worse all day, we couldn’t get any information what was happening with them,” said Furst. “We saw the horrors, that we couldn’t imagine this type of horror is happening in 2023, 80 years after the Holocaust.”

Toward midnight on Oct. 7, Peleg’s neighbors sent word that the family had survived. They spent almost 20 hours locked inside their safe room with no food or ability to communicate. Her husband’s parents, who both lived on Kfar Aza, were killed.

Despite his close connection, comparisons between Oct. 7 and the Holocaust make Furst uncomfortable.

“It’s awful and terrible and a catastrophe, and hard to describe, but it’s not a Holocaust,” he said. As awful as the Hamas attack was for his granddaughter and others, the Holocaust was a multi-year “death industry” with massive infrastructure and camps that could kill 10,000 people a day for months at a time, he said.

Furst, who was previously involved in coexistence work between Jews and Arabs, said his heart also goes out to Palestinians in Gaza, although he believes Israel needed to respond militarily. “I feel the pain of everyone who is suffering, everywhere in the world, because I think I know what suffering is,” he said.

Furst knows that he is one of very few Holocaust survivors still able to travel to Auschwitz, so it’s important for him to be present there to mark the 80th anniversary.

These days, he is telling his story as many times as he can, taking part in documentaries and movies, serving as the president of the Buchenwald Prisoner’s Association and working to create a memorial statue at the Sered’ concentration camp in Slovakia.

He feels a responsibility to be the mouthpiece for the millions who were killed, and people can relate to the story of a single person more than the hard numbers of 6 million deaths, he said.

“Whenever I finish, I tell the youth, the fact that you were able to see living testimony (from a Holocaust survivor) puts a requirement on you more than someone who did not: you take it on your shoulders the obligation to continue to tell this.” 
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KYIV, UKRAINE — Moldovan President Maia Sandu visited Kyiv on Saturday for talks with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid growing tensions in Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist enclave of Moldova that neighbors Ukraine.

The territory, which has a population of half a million, has seen heating, hot water and electricity cut-offs since the start of the year because a Kyiv-Moscow gas transit contract that had allowed Russian gas to flow there has expired.

“We’ll discuss security, energy, infrastructure, trade and mutual support on the EU path,” Sandu wrote on X as she arrived in the Ukrainian capital.

There was a demonstration in Transnistria on Friday to call on Moldova to facilitate the transit of Russian gas and end the energy crisis, local media reported.

Transnistria used to receive gas from Russia via a pipeline that crossed Ukraine and Moldova.

Kyiv has refused to renew the transit contract, which expired on Jan. 1, abruptly ending Russian gas supplies to Transnistria, which has declared a state of emergency.

The rest of Moldova has been spared gas cuts thanks to gas and electricity imports from neighboring Romania.

With Ukraine’s struggle against a Russian invasion nearly in its fourth year, Moldova is afraid the conflict could expand onto its territory in case of Russian attempts to destabilize Transnistria.

In an interview with AFP, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean on Wednesday accused Moscow of trying to generate “instability” in Moldova. He said the crisis could only be resolved if Russian troops stationed in Transnistria since a war against Moldova in 1992 are pulled out.
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New online videos recently investigated by VOA’s Russian and Ukrainian services show how artificial intelligence is likely being used to try to create provocative deepfakes that target Ukrainian refugees. 

In one example, a video appears to be a TV news report about a teenage Ukrainian refugee and her experience studying at a private school in the United States.

But the video then flips to footage of crowded school corridors and packets of crack cocaine, while a voiceover that sounds like the girl calls American public schools dangerous and invokes offensive stereotypes about African Americans. 

“I realize it’s quite expensive [at private school],” she says. “But it wouldn’t be fair if my family was made to pay for my safety. Let Americans do it.” 

Those statements are total fabrications. Only the first section — footage of the teenager — is real. 

The offensive voiceover was likely created using artificial intelligence (AI) to realistically copy her voice, resulting in something known as a deepfake. 

And it appears to be part of the online Russian information operation called Matryoshka —‚ named for the Russian nesting doll — that is now targeting Ukrainian refugees. 

VOA found that the campaign pushed two deepfake videos that aimed to make Ukrainian refugees look greedy and ungrateful, while also spreading deepfakes that appeared to show authoritative Western journalists claiming that Ukraine — and not Russia — was the country spreading falsehoods. 

The videos reflect the most recent strategy among Russia’s online disinformation campaign, according to Antibot4Navalny, an X account that researches Russian information operations and has been widely cited by leading Western news outlets. 

Russia’s willingness to target refugees, including a teenager, shows just how far the Kremlin, which regularly denies having a role in disinformation, is prepared to go in attempting to undermine Western support for Ukraine. 

Targeting the victims  

A second video targeting Ukrainian refugees begins with real footage from a news report in which a Ukrainian woman expresses gratitude for clothing donations and support that Denmark has provided to refugees. 

The video then switches to generic footage and a probable deepfake as the woman’s voice begins to complain that Ukrainian refugees are forced to live in small apartments and wear used clothing. 

VOA is not sharing either video to protect the identities of the refugees depicted in the deepfakes, but both used stolen footage from reputable international media outlets.  

That technique — altering the individual’s statements while replicating their voice — is new for Matryoshka, Antibot4Navalny told VOA.  

“In the last few weeks, almost all the clips have been built according to this scheme,” the research group wrote. 

But experts say the underlying strategy of spoofing real media reports and targeting refugees is nothing new. 

After Russia’s deadly April 2022 missile strike on Ukraine’s Kramatorsk railway station, for example, the Kremlin created a phony BBC news report blaming Ukrainians for the strike, according to Roman Osadchuk, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. 

During that same period, he noted, Russia also spread disinformation in Moldova aimed at turning the local population against Ukrainian refugees.

“Unfortunately, refugees are a very popular target for Russian disinformation campaigns, not only for attacks on the host community … but also in Ukraine,” Osadchuk told VOA. 

When such disinformation operations are geared toward a Ukrainian audience, he added, the goal is often to create a clash between those who left Ukraine and those who stayed behind. 

Deepfakes of journalists, however, appear designed to influence public opinion in a different way. One video that purports to contain audio of Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, for example, claims that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is just a bluff. 

“The whole world is watching Ukraine’s death spasms,” Higgins appears to say. “There’s nothing further to discuss.” 

In another video, Shayan Sardarizadeh, a senior journalist at BBC Verify, appears to say that “Ukraine creates fakes so that fact-checking organizations blame Russia,” something he then describes as part of a “global hoax.” 

In fact, both videos appear to be deepfakes created according to the same formula as the ones targeting refugees. 

Higgins tells VOA that the entirety of the audio impersonation of his own voice appears to be a deepfake. He suggests the goal of the video was to engage factcheckers and get them to accidentally boost its viewership. 

“I think it’s more about boosting their stats so [the disinformation actors] can keep milking the Russian state for money to keep doing it,” he told VOA by email. 

Sardarizadeh did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.  

Fake video, real harm  

The rapid expansion of AI over the past few years has drawn increased attention to the problem of deepfake videos and AI images, particularly when these technologies are used to create non-consensual, sexually explicit imagery. 

Researchers have estimated that over 90% of deepfakes online are sexually explicit. They have been used both against ordinary women and girls and celebrities. 

Deepfakes also have been used to target politicians and candidates for public office. It remains unclear, however, whether they have actually influenced public opinion or election outcomes. 

Researchers from Microsoft’s Theat Analysis Center have found that “fully synthetic” videos of world leaders are often not convincing and are easily debunked. But they also concluded that deepfake audio is often more effective.

The four videos pushed by Matryoshka — which primarily uses deepfake audio — show that the danger of deepfakes isn’t restricted to explicit images or impersonations of politicians. And if your image is available online, there isn’t much you can do to fully protect yourself. 

Today, there’s always a risk in “sharing any information publicly, including your voice, appearance, or pictures,” Osadchuk said. 

The damage to individuals can be serious.   

Belle Torek, an attorney who specializes in tech policy and civil rights, said that people whose likenesses are used without consent often experience feelings of violation, humiliation, helplessness and fear. 

“They tend to report feeling that their trust has been violated. Knowing that their image is being manipulated to spread lies or hate can exacerbate existing trauma,” she said. “And in this case here, I think that those effects are going to be amplified for these [refugee] communities, who are already enduring displacement and violence.” 

How effective are deepfakes? 

While it is not difficult to understand the potential harm of deepfakes, it is more challenging to assess their broader reach and impact. 

An X post featur phony videos of refugees received over 55,000 views. That represents significant spread, according to Olga Tokariuk, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 

“It is not yet viral content, but it is no longer marginal content,” she said. 

Antibot4Navalny, on the other hand, believes that Russian disinformation actors are largely amplifying the X posts using other controlled accounts and very few real people are seeing them. 

But even if large numbers of real people did view the deepfakes, that doesn’t necessarily mean the videos achieved the Kremlin’s goals. 

“It is always difficult … to prove with 100% correlation the impact of these disinformation campaigns on politics,” Tokariuk said. 

 Mariia Ulianovska contributed to this report.
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BELGRADE, SERBIA — A woman rammed a car into a crowd of anti-government protesters in Serbia’s capital and injured one of them Friday, police said, as a student-led strike shut down businesses and drew tens of thousands of people to demonstrations around the country.

The nationwide protests took place on the same day that President Aleksandar Vucic held a big afternoon rally with thousands of supporters in the central town of Jagodina, his coalition stronghold, to counter the persistent anti-government protests that have challenged his tight grip on power for nearly three months.

Vucic told his supporters that the country has been “attacked both from outside and inside” by the anti-government protests.

“It is not accidental that that they have attacked Serbia from abroad,” Vucic said, pointing out Serbia’s friendly relations with Russia and China, and a refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow because of the war in Ukraine.

“That is what they want to crush, but we must not allow it. That is our strength,” he told the cheering crowd.

Call for talks

Vucic also called for a dialogue with the striking students, who have received widespread support from all walks of life in Serbia, at the same time weakening popular support for his party. The students have rejected negotiations on their demands with Vucic.

The protesters have blocked traffic daily in Serbia to protest the deaths of 15 people killed in the November collapse of a train station canopy that critics have blamed on government corruption.

The government denies blame for the deaths.

Police in Belgrade said that they detained the 24-year-old driver who rammed into a crowd of protesters in a section of the city called New Belgrade. The injured victim, a 26-year-old woman, was hospitalized; her condition was described as stable.

A similar incident took place during a blockade last week in Belgrade, when a car rammed into protesting students, seriously injuring a young woman.

Many in Serbia believe the huge concrete canopy at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad fell down because of sloppy reconstruction work that resulted from corruption.

Weekslong protests demanding accountability for the crash have been the biggest since Vucic came to power more than a decade ago. He has faced accusations of curbing democratic freedoms despite formally seeking European Union membership for Serbia.

It wasn’t immediately possible to determine how many people and companies joined the students’ call for a one-day general strike on Friday. They included restaurants, bars, theaters, bakeries, shops and bookstores.

“Let’s take freedom in our hands,” students told the citizens in their strike call.

At his rally in Jagodina, Vucic announced the formation in March of a nationwide political movement in the style of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia movement to help ensure the dominance of his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party.

“You are all welcome to the movement of big change and future,” Vucic said. He said that the movement will include people who aren’t members of any political party.

“We need new energy,” Vucic said.

Foreign influence alleged

The president and the country’s mainstream media have accused the students of working under orders from foreign intelligence services to overthrow the authorities while pro-government thugs have repeatedly attacked protesting citizens.

The 15-minute traffic blockades on Friday started at 11:52 a.m., the exact time of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad.

Serbian universities have been blockaded for two months, along with many schools. A lawyers association also has gone on strike, but it remained unclear how many people stayed away from work in the state-run institutions on Friday.

Protest marches were held Friday in Belgrade, Novi Sad, the southern city of Nis and other smaller cities — even in Jagodina before Vucic’s arrival.

“Things can’t stay the same anymore,” actor Goran Susljik told N1 regional television. “Students have offered us the possibility of change.”

Serbia’s prosecutors have filed charges against 13 people for the canopy collapse, including a government minister and several state officials. But the former construction minister, Goran Vesic, has been released from detention, fueling doubts about the investigation’s independence.

The main railway station in Novi Sad was renovated twice in recent years as part of a wider infrastructure deal with Chinese state companies.
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WASHINGTON — Ahead of Belarus’ presidential election this weekend, a media advocacy group filed a complaint Friday with the International Criminal Court accusing the country’s longtime leader of crimes against humanity against journalists.

The complaint, filed by Reporters Without Borders, known by French acronym RSF, accuses President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating a harsh crackdown on independent media that began after he claimed victory in the disputed 2020 election.

That election was widely seen as rigged, with opposition candidates jailed or forced to flee. Security forces violently suppressed the subsequent mass protests.

Paris-based RSF cited in its complaint the imprisoning and persecution of journalists and displacement of media workers as examples of crimes against humanity.

“RSF calls on the ICC Prosecutor to include these crimes against journalists in its preliminary investigation,” Antoine Bernard, RSF’s director of advocacy and assistance, said in a statement.

Since the crackdown on independent media began, Belarus has ranked among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Belarusian media experts say the dire environment has made it harder to access credible information.

“The Belarusian information space is tightly controlled by the government,” Natalia Belikova, the head of international cooperation at Press Club Belarus, told VOA from Warsaw.

Repression against journalists and activists has been increasing in the lead up to the election, she said. Press Club Belarus counts more than 40 journalists currently jailed in the country.

The European Parliament and exiled Belarusian leader Svetlana Tikhanovskayahave condemned the upcoming election in Belarus as a sham.

Since 2020, the Belarusian government has pressured independent media through raids on news outlets, blocking websites and designating media organizations as “extremist.”

The harsh environment forced some reporters to quit their jobs. Meanwhile, hundreds of other journalists fled into exile, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

“For five years, the Belarusian regime has systematically persecuted independent voices, starting with journalists,” Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said in a statement.

Belikova said she thinks the complaint to the ICC is significant.

“On the level of raising the profile of repression in Belarus, especially against journalists and free press, I think this is a very important move,” she said.

But Belikova added that she wasn’t sure whether the complaint will improve the crisis facing Belarusian journalists.

The office of the ICC prosecutor said it does not comment on complaints but confirmed it had received one from RSF.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment for this story.

The assault on independent media has created an environment where state-run propaganda can thrive, according to analysts.

Beginning last week, the Belarusian state-run television network ONT has aired a series of propaganda films that feature three jailed journalists. The journalists are seen in prison facilities, looking emaciated and exhausted as they are asked questions.

The journalists — Ihar Losik and Andrey Kuznechyk, who work for VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Ihar Karney, who previously contributed to RFE/RL — are jailed on charges that press freedom groups view as politically motivated.

The ONT propaganda series accused the journalists of trying to “set Belarus on fire.”

“It is a very bad and malicious practice. It is against all human rights,” Belikova said about the interviews.

Belikova said the interviews were likely intended to discredit RFE/RL in the eyes of Belarusians. RFE/RL’s Belarusian Service is one of the main independent outlets delivering independent news to people inside the country.

RFE/RL said it had no comment on the interview series.

Despite the proliferation of state-run propaganda, Belarusians still regularly access banned news sites.

The five biggest sites had over 17 million visits in December 2023, according to a 2024 JX Fund report. Belarus has a population of around 9 million people.
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LONDON — A London judge on Friday rejected a U.S. mother’s challenge to be extradited to Colorado to face murder charges in the deaths of two of her young children.

Judge John Zani said in Westminster Magistrates Court that it would now be up to the British Home Secretary to order Kimberlee Singler returned to the United States.

Singler, 36, is accused of two counts of first-degree murder in the December 2023 shooting and stabbings of her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and one count of attempted murder in the knife slashing of her 11-year-old daughter. She also faces three counts of child abuse and one count of assault.

Singler’s attorney had argued that sending her back to the U.S. would violate European human rights law, in part, because she faces a sentence of life in prison without parole in Colorado if convicted of first-degree murder. Such a sentence would be inhumane because it offers no prospect for release even if she is rehabilitated, attorney Edward Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald said that despite an option for a Colorado governor to commute her sentence at some point, it was “political suicide” to do so.

Experts for the defense had originally said that a life sentence had never been commuted in Colorado. But prosecutors later found that Governor John Hickenlooper in 2018 commuted life sentences of five men convicted of murder.

The defense countered that three of those sentences were not life without parole and two were for men who committed their crime between the ages of 18 and 21, which is sometimes considered a mitigating factor at sentencing because of their relative youth.

“This defendant, Kimberlee Singler, has no real prospect of release no matter what progress she makes” behind bars, Fitzgerald said.

Prosecutor Joel Smith said the judge only had to consider if there is a mechanism that could allow Singler to be freed someday.

“Prospect of release — that is not your concern,” Smith told the judge at a hearing in December.

Zani said in his ruling that there was an option in Colorado to release an inmate serving a life sentence.

“I am satisfied that the defendant has failed to vault the hurdle necessary in order to succeed in the challenges raised,” the judge said.

Fitzgerald said he planned to appeal.

Singler has denied that she harmed her children. She told police that her ex-husband had either carried out the killings or hired a hitman.

Singler had superficial knife wounds and was initially treated as a victim.

But that changed when her surviving daughter, who initially said she had been attacked by an intruder, told police her mother tried to kill her.

After her daughter changed her story, police sought to arrest Singler on Dec. 26, but she had fled. She was found four days later in London’s posh Chelsea neighborhood and arrested.

The girl told police that her mother gave the children milk with a powdery substance to drink and told them to close their eyes as she guided them into a sibling’s bedroom, prosecutors said.

Singler cut her neck and, as the girl begged her to stop, she slashed her again. The girl said her mother had a gun.

“The defendant told her that God was telling her to do it and that the children’s father would take them away,” Smith said at a previous hearing.

Police found Aden Wentz, 7, and Elianna “Ellie” Wentz, 9, dead when they entered the Colorado Springs apartment on Dec. 19. They had been shot and stabbed.

Although Singler blamed her husband, authorities said he had a solid alibi backed up by GPS records that showed he had been driving a truck at the time of the killings.
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Officials in Ukraine say Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack Friday killing at least two civilians, wounding several others and damaging commercial and residential buildings.

The interior ministry said two victims were killed by drone debris in the central Kyiv region. It said a multistory residential building and commercial buildings were among the infrastructure that sustained damage during the attack.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed some 120 drones over a dozen regions, including Moscow, overnight Friday, launched by Ukraine.

No casualties were reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he would talk soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to push the Russian leader to end his nearly three-year war on neighboring Ukraine.

“Millions of young lives are being wasted. That war is horrible,” Trump, via video link from Washington, told global business leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He said that “Ukraine is ready to make a deal,” although no peace negotiations have been announced. “This is a war that never should’ve started.”

Trump, three days into his second term in the White House, said he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to cut global oil prices, now about $77 a barrel, to curb Russia’s oil revenues, which it uses to fund the war.

“If the price comes down,” Trump said, “the war in Ukraine will end immediately.”

“It’s so important to get that done,” he said. “It’s time to end it.”

Trump’s new remarks on the war came a day after he described the conflict as a “ridiculous war” and told Putin in a social media message that if he didn’t move to end it, the U.S. would impose new tariffs, taxes and sanctions on Russian exports to the West.

But the Kremlin was unmoved by Trump’s threat, saying Thursday it did not see any particularly new elements in U.S. policy toward Russia.

“He likes these methods, at least he liked them during his first presidency,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Peskov said Russia remains ready for “mutually respectful dialogue” with the United States as Trump starts a four-year term in the White House.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Italy’s highest court on Thursday upheld the slander conviction of American defendant Amanda Knox in a case related to the sensationalized 2007 murder of her British roommate.  

Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss, Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, by falsely accusing him of murdering Meredith Kercher.  

A 21-year-old exchange student, Kercher was found stabbed to death in 2007 in the Perugia apartment she shared with Knox.  

While being interrogated, Knox, who was 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against Lumumba. Knox later wrote a handwritten note questioning her false accusation. 

Last year, an appeals court in Florence handed Knox a three-year sentence for wrongly accusing Lumumba.  

Knox, now 37 years old, had already served nearly four years during the investigation, initial murder trial and first appeal. She was convicted twice before Italy’s highest court finally exonerated her of the crime in 2015. She is not at risk of any more jail time.  

Knox had appealed the slander conviction based on a European Court of Human Rights ruling that said her rights had been violated by police failure to provide a lawyer and adequate translator during a lengthy night of questioning just days after Kercher was killed.  

With the appeal, Knox was aiming to clear her name in Rome’s Court of Cassation in the last remaining legal case against her following a nearly two-decades-long legal saga.  

But on Thursday, Judge Monica Boni confirmed the slander conviction.  

Knox, who did not attend the court, maintained her innocence in a post on X.  

“It’s a surreal day,” Knox said. “I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit.” 

Knox’s lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said he was surprised by the conviction. 

“We cannot believe it. A totally unjust decision for Amanda and unexpected in our eyes,” he said. “We are incredulous.” 

But Lumumba said he was satisfied with the verdict.  

“Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life,” he told The Associated Press.  

Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was eventually found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in prison for killing Kercher. He was released in 2021 after serving most of his sentence. He denied killing Kercher.  

Knox’s lengthy legal saga was fodder for tabloids around the world and spawned books, movies and documentaries.  

Knox herself is currently producing a Hulu mini-series about her wrongful conviction and fight to clear her name. Social activist Monica Lewinsky is also producing the series.  

Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.  
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