NEWS

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says Europe will not ‘tolerate unthinkable behaviour, such as digital undressing of women and children’.

The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, regarding the creation of sexually explicit fake images of women and minors.

The commission announced on Monday that its investigation would examine whether the AI tool used on X has met its legal obligations under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires social media companies to address illegal and harmful online content.

Brussels said the investigation would examine whether X had properly mitigated “risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material”.

In a statement to the AFP news agency, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe will not “tolerate unthinkable behaviour, such as digital undressing of women and children”.

“It is simple – we will not hand over consent and child protection to tech companies to violate and monetise. The harm caused by illegal images is very real,” she added.

Grok has faced a recent outcry after it was uncovered that users could ask the chatbot to create deepfakes of women and children by simply using prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes”.

EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said the rights of women and children in the EU should not be “collateral damage” of X’s services.

“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” Virkkunen said in a statement.

X has been under investigation by the EU over its digital content rules since December 2023.

This month, Grok said it would restrict image generation and editing to paying customers after criticism of the tool’s capabilities.

A nonprofit organisation, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, published a report last week that found Grok had generated an estimated 3 million sexualised images of women and children in a matter of days.

In December, the EU ordered X to pay a 120-million-euro ($140m) fine for violating the DSA’s transparency obligations.

The EU is not the only body investigating Grok’s tool; the United Kingdom’s media regulator, Ofcom, announced it had launched an investigation into X to determine whether it had complied with requirements under the UK’s Online Safety Act.

An overnight explosion at a biscuit factory in Trikala, Greece, has killed at least four workers. Investigators are working to determine the cause of the blast, which authorities believe may have originated near the factory’s ovens.

In 2007, Gustavo Petro was visiting Washington, DC, when he made an unusual request: to accompany his host’s friend on a school pickup run.

At the time, Petro was a rising star in the Colombian Senate who was in the United States to receive the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award for exposing politicians’ ties to paramilitary groups. His host was Sanho Tree, director of drug policy at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

“That’s something I can’t do in Colombia,” Tree remembered Petro telling him. “If your assassins know you’re going to pick up your kid at a certain time, that’s extremely dangerous.”

Such dangers were not new to Petro.

He began his career being hunted by soldiers as an armed rebel with the M-19, an underground student movement that sought a fairer, more democratic Colombia. After laying down his rifle, he became a whistleblowing senator, holding hearings on the shadowy alliance between politicians and paramilitary groups that reached the highest echelons of power – and earned him a price on his head from a paramilitary leader.

Throughout, he has pursued the same issues in a country torn apart by decades of armed conflict and where land has long been concentrated in the hands of the wealthy few.

“One thing we can say about Petro is that he’s been consistent,” said Alejandro Gaviria, Petro’s former education minister, who has been both a critic and ally of the president.

“If you watch an interview of his 20 years ago, he has exactly the same ideas. Then he was talking about peace, land reform; he was even ahead of his time talking about environmental issues.”

In 2022, Petro was elected the first left-wing president of the South American country and entered the presidential palace with promises to lead Colombia in a more equitable, eco-friendly direction.

On the international stage, he has been a rare figure among Latin American leaders as an outspoken critic of US President Donald Trump. After the US attacked Venezuela in early January and abducted the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, Trump threatened military action against Colombia. The former rebel responded by saying he would “take up arms” again to defend Colombia. A detente soon followed after a phone call between the leaders.

As Petro has struggled to put his ideas into practice throughout his term and faced tensions with Trump, what drives Colombia’s president?

Bookish rebel

Petro was born in 1960 to a middle-class family in the Caribbean coastal town of Cienaga de Oro, but spent much of his childhood in the rainy capital, Bogota, and his teenage years in the city of Zipaquira.​

From a young age, he questioned authority.

“He likes discussion, but not dogma,” his father, Gustavo Petro Sierra, once said in an interview where he recalled an incident when his son was three. He had tried to punish his son by slapping his hand, but missed and accidentally struck his face. Petro had looked his father in the eye and yelled, “Don’t hit me in the face, Dad!”

Petro’s father, a teacher, inspired his son’s love of reading, and Petro was particularly influenced by the celebrated novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His father gave him a copy as a birthday gift when he was a child, according to former Culture Minister Juan David Correa, who met Petro in 2021 as the editor of his memoir.

The magical realism epic immortalises Colombia’s civil wars and class struggles through the saga of the Buendia family through the 19th and early 20th centuries. After independence from Spain in 1810, Colombia experienced intermittent warfare between its two main political factions: the secular, reformist Liberals and the Conservatives, who wanted to maintain the Catholic, colonial status quo.

“That was a book that was definitive in our lives as Colombians,” explained Correa, noting Petro’s belief that Colombians must know their history.

“We have to know who these oligarchies or aristocracies are that ruled the country over the past 200 years of solitude [since independence], as [Petro] called it.”

In the colonial era, the Spanish oversaw a feudal-like system in which landless campesinos (rural workers) toiled for a pittance on behalf of wealthy landowners. In the Colombia that Petro grew up in, this system persisted. Even at the dawn of the new millennium, only 1 percent of landowners possessed half the arable land.

As a boy, Petro’s mother, Clara Nubia Urrego, would tell him stories about the turmoil in the country, including the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. Gaitan, a presidential candidate for the Liberals, called for reforms, including land distribution, which landowners fiercely opposed. His murder in 1948 kicked off a decade of bloodshed, known as La Violencia, between Liberal armed rebels and the Conservative government.

A truce in 1958 led to a power-sharing arrangement between the Liberal and Conservative parties, known as the National Front. Things had seemingly calmed by the early 1960s, but in 1964, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the remaining Liberal rebels roaming the countryside came together as the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).

Meanwhile, the National Front blocked any legitimate alternatives, going so far as to rig the election on April 19, 1970 against the populist ANAPO (National Popular Alliance), which attracted people fed up with the two-party system, including Petro’s mother, who had joined the party. Seeing his mother’s sadness at the election results became Petro’s political awakening. He was 10.

At his Catholic school in Zipaquira, Petro and three other friends formed a study group and pledged to dedicate their lives to a better Colombia. They read Alternativa, a left-wing magazine founded by Garcia Marquez, which ran interviews with Chilean and Argentinian rebels and criticised the US sway over Latin America. They became involved with local unions, bringing together workers, salt miners and teachers.

In his memoir, Petro recalls his “communist” beliefs did not make him popular with priests or his classmates whose parents hung portraits of Spain’s fascist dictator General Francisco Franco on their walls. But he credits his high school as the place where he learned about liberation theology, a strand of Catholicism that advocates uplifting the oppressed.

“Since then, love for the poor has remained by my side,” he wrote.

“I didn’t learn that from Marxism, but from liberation theology.”

Occupying a hillside

In 1978, after enrolling at university in Bogota to study economics, Petro was handed a document by Pio Quinto Jaimes, a teacher involved in activist circles. It outlined the goals of an underground student movement known as the 19th of April Movement or M-19, named after the 1970 election. Jaimes was impressed by Petro’s work with the unions and considered him a worthwhile prospect for the group.

Although often described as “urban guerrillas”, M-19 was distinct from the uniformed rebels of the FARC or the ELN. Whereas the FARC recruited from rural workers and wanted a Cuban-style Marxist revolution, M-19 mainly consisted of politicised students who sought social democracy, denied by the two-party system.

Unlike the FARC’s camouflaged commandos, who would raid army outposts before disappearing into the jungle, M-19 operated in the cities and preferred symbolic stunts such as stealing the sword of Simon Bolivar, Colombia’s 19th-century liberation hero, from a Bogota museum.

“Bolivar has not died,” read a note they left behind. “His sword continues his fight. It now falls into our hands, where it is pointed at the hearts of those who exploit Colombia.”

The M-19 hijacked milk trucks to redivert the goods to poorer neighbourhoods, and orchestrated kidnappings targeting Colombia’s wealthy elite.

Petro read the document from cover to cover.

“The movement connected me with the reality of the country, with my mother’s stories about Gaitan, Bolivar, and the ANAPO,” he wrote in his memoirs. “It was as if it had struck a chord that intensely stirred some fibres within me.”

Petro, along with two of his high school study group friends, joined the M-19.

Although he learned to use a gun, he did not take part in armed operations. He was instead tasked with disseminating propaganda. He took on the nom de guerre Aureliano, after a rebel leader in Marquez’s novel.

After graduation, Petro returned to Zipaquira and was elected an ombudsman, a public advocate, in 1981, to hear residents’ complaints about the local government.

In the early 1980s, Petro edited a newsletter – Letter to the People – where he called on readers to occupy a hillside on the outskirts and turn it into a housing project for poor people. Some 400 impoverished families answered the call and found 22-year-old Petro and a group of young activists measuring out 6-by-12 metre (19.7×39.4 feet) plots. There were no wells or sewage, and residents had to collect rainwater.

The squatters were eventually granted permission to stay by the mayor, and the community evolved into a neighbourhood named Bolivar 83.

‘My youth was over’

By 1984, as peace negotiations between the government and M-19 gained momentum, Petro publicly acknowledged his involvement in the group.

“I did so at a demonstration that was one of the largest in the municipality’s history,” he said in an interview. “From then on, my life changed. My youth was over.”

After telling the crowd he belonged to M-19, Petro stepped back to applause.

But not everyone was pleased.

Petro’s father, who had no idea about his son’s secret life, was shocked by the risks he had been taking.

The talks with the government soon fell apart, meaning M-19 members were once again targets for arrest. Petro was forced to go underground.

He lay low in Bolivar 83, sleeping in different beds each night, and wore a disguise, a yellow dress and a wig, pretending to be a woman.

Around this time, Petro had a psychedelic revelation under the guidance of a shaman on a sacred mountain. Drinking ayahuasca, a powerful Amazonian brew, he experienced intense visions. The first showed an Indigenous princess descending from above as he was enveloped by roots.

“What does this mean?” he asked the shaman.

“Well, you are like a spirit taking care of nature,” the spiritual healer replied.

Petro, who recounted this experience in the book Children of the Amazon (2023), said this was the moment he realised his responsibility towards the environment. His second vision was more troubling: he saw his own death during an ambush.

In October 1985, soldiers poured into Bolivar 83, scouring the neighbourhood for M-19 rebels and intimidating residents. A terrified boy revealed the secret tunnels where Petro was hiding.

Petro was arrested, tortured for four days in a military barracks, and imprisoned. He served 16 months for possession of weapons, which he claimed were planted.

While imprisoned, he missed the birth of his first son, Nicolas. Katia Burgos, his wife, who he had known since childhood, was also with M-19.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s internal armed conflict escalated beyond the rebels and the government.

The rise of narcos

The emergence of drug cartels or narcotics traffickers, aka narcos, added another dimension to the conflict.

Cocaine, a white powder refined from coca leaves, gained popularity in the 1970s, fuelled partly by US disco culture. Initially, Colombia was mainly a transit point for cocaine smuggled from Peru or Bolivia, but it was not long before coca cultivation expanded within Colombia, soon becoming the most viable livelihood in rural areas.

Cocaine barons and other wealthy businessmen began bankrolling private armies and paramilitaries to protect their families and property from armed rebels.

Although both were engaged in criminal activities, the rebels sought to overthrow the ruling elite, but the narcos wanted to become part of it, pitting them on opposite sides of the conflict.

After his release from Bogota’s La Modelo prison in 1987 at age 26, the unease of Petro’s rebellion days stuck with him, and he even took to sleeping with an assault rifle under his bed.

The following year, he met Mary Luz Herran, an ardent M-19 member since she was 14. They would go on to marry and have two children, a daughter named Andrea and a son named Andres, before splitting.

Soon after they met, in 1990, the M-19 became the first significant rebel group to demobilise, transforming into the M-19 Democratic Alliance party.

But it was a dangerous time to be in Colombian politics.

In the 1980s and 90s, some 6,000 members of the left-wing Patriotic Union party were killed by narcos, paramilitaries and the security services.

M-19 were not spared, either. In 1990, their presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro, was shot on board a passenger plane mid-flight.

While serving a term in Congress, Petro began receiving death threats from a paramilitary group called Colsingue, or Colombia Without Guerrillas, and for his and his family’s safety, he agreed to a diplomatic posting in Belgium in 1994. While there, he studied environmentalism and economics at the University of Louvain, and he became deeply interested in the work of Romanian economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who warned that while the global economy relies on constant growth, the Earth cannot be exploited forever.

But Petro grew restless in Brussels. “I felt bored, nostalgic, and eager to return to the political arena,” he writes in his memoirs.

He returned to Colombia, where he was re-elected to Congress in 1998. Two years later, he met his third wife, then a 24-year-old law student named Veronica Alcocer. They soon married, and despite initial tension with Veronica’s father — whom Petro described as an “almost fascist” in an interview with a Colombian magazine — Petro and his father-in-law grew close through their shared love of reading and intellectualism. His funeral in 2012 was one of the few times Petro cried in public. They have two daughters, ​​Sofia and Antonella.

Meanwhile, in a bid to start peace talks in 1998, then-President Andres Pastrana conceded territory roughly the size of Switzerland to Colombia’s largest armed group, the FARC. It was meant to be neutral ground, but the rebels used it to recruit and train child soldiers, grow coca, hold captives and enforce their own brand of justice.

Enter Alvaro Uribe. A right-wing hardliner, Uribe won the 2002 presidential election by promising to quash the rebels with an iron fist.

With US support, Uribe’s beefed-up military inflicted devastating defeats on the FARC. Washington had an interest in stopping the flow of cocaine from the source to the US, and in the 2000s and 2010s, Colombia was the third-largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt.

Defying death squads

Overall, security improved, but the Uribe era revealed that the authorities had been colluding with paramilitaries for years. While presenting themselves as anti-communist vigilantes, the paramilitaries were responsible for the lion’s share of civilian deaths, terrorising vast swaths of the country.

In one particularly brutal episode in 1997, a band of armed men descended on the village of El Aro in Antioquia. Villagers were brutally tortured and raped, and up to 17 people were killed. The paramilitaries burned the village down as they left, and witnesses reported seeing a helicopter circling above — a yellow aircraft belonging to the Antioquia governor’s office, which at the time was occupied by Uribe.

The ghosts of El Aro were reawakened in the parapolitica (para-politics) scandal of 2006 after journalists and prosecutors revealed that several lawmakers were in league with far-right paramilitary groups, allowing them to murder and intimidate opponents while enriching themselves through bribes and illegal land grabs.

What happened next became one of the defining periods of Petro’s career. He held public hearings and accused the perpetrators of the El Aro massacre of operating with Uribe’s blessing while he was governor, such as by helping establish civilian “self-defence” groups as a front for the militias.

“Why the silence, Mr President?” Petro pressed him at a hearing. “Or does the government accept that violent narcoterrorists have a presence in its ranks?”

The then-president fired back, calling the senator a “terrorist in civilian clothes”. Uribe’s alleged paramilitary ties later landed him in a years-long court case from 2012, ending in his conviction for witness tampering last year, which was soon overturned on appeal.

Having lost comrades like Pizarro to the bloody purges of the 1980s and 90s, Petro knew all too well what he was up against. The scandal established him as a fearless crusader, but won him few friends.

“He was the one to [expose the paramilitaries] at a time when it was incredibly dangerous,” said Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, a human rights advocate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

“The impunity was so rampant … he was speaking to a Congress where 30 percent of it was linked to these groups.”

Tree, who nominated Petro for the human rights award in DC, remembered how the senator was on edge during this period.

“When I would meet with him in the mid-2000s in Bogota, he couldn’t stand near a window, and every night he had to go home by a different route,” Tree recalled.

Petro’s paranoia about standing near windows was not unwarranted; Salvatore Mancuso, the strongman behind the El Aro massacre, later confirmed that Petro’s name had indeed been on his hit list.

Mayor of Bogota

In 2010, Petro launched his first presidential bid but found himself at odds with his own party, the Democratic Pole, which sidelined him in favour of another candidate. Petro ran anyway and came in third overall.

He founded a new party, Humane Colombia, and successfully ran for mayor of Bogota in 2011.

While the previous mayor and his brother profited from corruption, Petro implemented many progressive reforms. A ban on brandishing firearms in public saw murder rates plunge to a three-decade low. Petro’s administration addressed animal cruelty, stopping the practices of using horse-drawn carts for rubbish collection and bullfighting, and pioneered mobile clinics for homeless drug users, treating addiction as a matter of public health.

“We were the first organisation to propose these [drug] reform ideas,” said Julian Quintero, director of Social Technical Action (ATS), a Bogota-based NGO focused on harm reduction and drug policy reform.

“Petro participated with us, and he sort of embraced the proposals we made to him.”

But Quintero noted that Petro’s governing style was also uneven, characterised by a rapid turnover of staff – a preview of his presidential years.

“Petro did very well as a senator because he’s a very good analyst who trembles with accusations when he’s in the opposition,” Quintero said.

“But when he takes office, he doesn’t stand out for his bureaucratic and technical skills. He’s not a good administrator. He changes teams very quickly, not allowing for continuity in his projects.”

Moreover, he added, in Colombia, “the left isn’t used to governing”.

Quintero noted that deeply entrenched right-wing interests also made Petro’s job more difficult. A failed attempt to overhaul the capital’s waste management system in 2013 ignited a political battle that saw Petro ousted from office by the arch-conservative Attorney General Alejandro Ordonez. That decision drew mass protests, and Petro was reinstated a month later – a sign that his brand of politics was gaining momentum.

Path to victory

In 2010, Petro had lost his presidential bid to Juan Manuel Santos, Uribe’s defence minister, who oversaw his campaign against the FARC in the 2000s. But it was Santos who – to Uribe’s dismay – brokered peace with the rebels in 2016.

When Uribe’s protege Ivan Duque took office in 2018, however, the government largely abandoned that agreement, and violence surged.

“[The Uribe faction] wanted a candidate, basically a puppet, who was to rip up the peace agreement and not let it advance,” WOLA’s Sanchez-Garzoli explained.

Armed groups, including rogue FARC commanders, drug cartels and paramilitaries, rushed to fill the power vacuum, where they once held sway.

Then, in 2021, Duque’s attempt to raise taxes prompted mass protests that were met with police brutality and dozens of deaths. The unrest and growing public disillusionment with the status quo, now fully exposed by the collapsing peace process and the pandemic-ravaged economy, meant Colombia finally had an opening for its first progressive president; a break from the conservative elite such as Uribe and Duque, who came from, and represented the interests of, the wealthy landowning class.

A leftist coalition called the Historic Pact rallied behind Petro for the 2022 elections.

Eager to include Liberals as well, Petro reached out to economist and former government official Gaviria.

“It’s kind of funny because when you see him at a rally, he’s really energised, but in a one-on-one interaction, he is timid, he is quiet, he is difficult to engage in conversation,” Gaviria said, recalling Petro’s visit to his home as he tried to build a coalition.

“When he visited my apartment, I was trying to ask him questions, and he never said anything to me. He stayed silent for five minutes.”

The presidential hopeful eventually proposed that Gaviria, then the Liberals’ presidential candidate, ally with his progressive forces.

Ultimately, in the second round of the election, Gaviria threw his support behind Petro, who offered him a place in his new cabinet as education minister when he took office that August.

International stage

As president, Petro took his message to the world. At his first United Nations speech, he warned, “the jungle is burning” while global powers were fighting over drugs and resources. He highlighted what he saw as the hypocrisy of vilifying cocaine while protecting coal and oil.

“What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil?” he asked. With Colombia’s cocaine industry having fuelled decades of civil war, Petro has called for cocaine legalisation, calling the so-called war on drugs a failure.

“Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky,” he told a broadcast government meeting in February 2025.

In confronting the climate crisis, he has halted fracking and new gas projects to shift Colombia towards clean energy. In an economy reliant on fuel exports, however, this decision has been met with fierce scrutiny.

Petro has also sought to address the country’s armed conflict.

Influenced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who believed true forgiveness meant forgiving the unforgivable, Petro presented Congress with a plan to bring all remaining cartels, armed rebels and paramilitaries to the table, including by suspending arrest warrants and empowering local leaders as mediators.

The plan was called “Total Peace”.

‘A dream’

Petro’s peace initiative was put to the test in Buenaventura, a key Colombian port on the Pacific Coast. The port had long been a strategic hub for cocaine smugglers loading cargo onto ships bound worldwide.

Then, in 2019, a deadly turf war exploded. Residents were terrified to leave their homes. In desperation, local archbishop Ruben Dario Jaramillo performed a mass exorcism of the city by spraying the streets with holy water from a convoy of vehicles.

But in October 2022, the leaders of two rival gangs met and shook hands at a church service, thanks to a truce brokered by Jaramillo, building on the Total Peace initiative. The following six weeks saw only one killing, compared with the previous monthly death toll of 25.

The broader peace plan, however, has had flaws. Anticipating a deal, armed groups consolidated their positions to get the upper hand in negotiations while taking advantage of ceasefires to recruit and resupply.

As Quintero observed, the groups calling themselves “guerrillas” today are mostly criminal gangs using the label to legitimise their actions. “There are no guerrillas with the ideology to overthrow the state,” he said.

“[Instead], today there are gangs of very well-armed drug traffickers posing as guerrillas.”

The two most problematic ones are the Gulf Clan and the ELN. The Gulf Clan is a powerful narco-paramilitary crime syndicate demanding talks to negotiate their surrender while aggressively expanding its empire. The ELN continues to carry out attacks and kidnappings and is battling a renegade FARC faction in the dense jungles of Catatumbo, a fertile coca-growing region near Venezuela, displacing tens of thousands of people and prompting Petro to declare a temporary state of emergency last January.

Gaviria said that while reining in heavily armed drug dealers hiding in mountains and jungles would be challenging for any government, Petro has not really had a plan.

“He thought political will was enough to achieve Total Peace, which is completely wrong,” Gaviria said.

He compared Petro’s approach with Santos’s.

“Santos had a strategy, a group negotiating with the FARC. He met with that group every week, having conversations with his experts around the world … he was very disciplined in the way he was conducting this difficult topic.

“Petro was just completely different. No strategy at all,” Gaviria added. “Big announcements and political will. [Petro] thought that was enough, and now we know that no, it was not enough, especially if you’re dealing with such a complex problem.

“Total Peace was not a strategy. Total Peace was an idea, a dream.”

The chaotic nature of Petro’s cabinet has also complicated matters. The turnover rate is high, averaging a new minister every 19 days. Gaviria resigned in early 2023, along with three other ministers, during a fallout over health reforms. And 13 ministers lost or left their jobs in just three months between late 2024 and early 2025.

“I think this is a direct result of his style of policymaking,” said Gaviria, describing it as “undisciplined”.

Petro tends to replace ministers with loyalists and former members of the M-19, while publicly squabbling with former staff and accusing them of disloyalty. Some connect Petro’s perilous past to this governing style.

“Petro has a paranoid style of government that almost defines him,” said Gaviria.

“He is always thinking that there is a conspiracy against him. And probably this idea is related to being a former guerrilla member and living [in hiding].”

Correa agreed, noting that Petro does not trust many people.

The replacements he selects, too, are not necessarily the best-qualified.

For example, Sanchez-Garzoli believes the ELN peace process collapsed because Petro appointed “an ideologue and less of a real negotiator”.

“They basically blew apart a process that could have demobilised thousands,” she explained.

For Gaviria, Petro is these days more interested in ideological battles on social media than in leading the country. “I think he knows that he has not been an effective president,” he said. “Governing a country can be difficult, boring … [and to be successful] you have to engage in difficult conversations. You have to change your mind.”

Petro, he believes, has struggled to accept that “tragic destiny”.

Legacy

Petro’s advocacy on Palestine – and the severing of diplomatic ties with Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza – the climate crisis, drug reform and willingness to confront Trump have won him international praise. Trump, without any evidence, has accused Petro of running cocaine mills and called him a “sick man” on several occasions.

Back home, Petro points to having reduced poverty and infant mortality rates, increased agricultural production, and provided greater access to education, but his criticised peace strategy has failed to deliver broad demobilisation, and stark inequality persists. His approval rating has dropped from 56 percent when he took office to almost 36 percent.

Petro’s presidency has been overshadowed by scandals, including his eldest son Nicolas’s arrest for alleged money laundering linked to narco campaign funding. He calls such attacks targeting his inner circle “lawfare”, aimed at weakening him, something he experienced when he was briefly ousted as mayor of Bogota.

“The first thing they tried to destroy was my family,” he told Spanish daily El Pais last February. “They wanted to destroy the emotional ties because a man without emotional ties becomes hard, bad, and errs.”

He conceded that the presidency is a role that brings him “absolute unhappiness”.

As Petro faces the end of his presidency this year, his legacy may be that of a polarising figure, a revolutionary who tried to overthrow the system from within — yet was unable to solve Colombia’s toughest challenges.

Still, Petro’s supporters see his presidency as the start of a social transformation.

“Our country is a very conservative society; our values, our classism are very, very evident,” said Correa.

“I think that it will take two generations to reconstruct the society … And I think that this government represents only a beginning, a seed for the new generation.”

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders says it will provide Israeli authorities with the personal details of some of its Palestinian and international staff working in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.

But critics warn Israel, whose army has killed more than 1,700 health workers – including 15 employees of the charity, also known by its French initials MSF – during the genocide in Gaza, could use the information to target more humanitarian workers in the besieged Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

MSF said it faced an “impossible choice” to either provide the information or be forced by Israel to suspend its operations.

On January 1, Israel withdrew the licences of 37 aid groups, including MSF, the Norwegian Refugee Council and International Rescue Committee and Oxfam, saying they failed to adhere to the new “security and transparency standards”.

The measure could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation for people in war-shattered Gaza, as they endure continued attacks.

Here’s what you need to know:

Why did Israel corner NGOs?

Last year, Israel said it would suspend aid groups that did not meet new requirements on sharing detailed information about their employees, funding and operations.

According to rules set out by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, the information to be handed over includes passports, CVs and names of family members, including children.

It said it would reject organisations it suspected of inciting racism, denying the state of Israel’s existence or the holocaust. It would also ban those it deems as supporting “an armed struggle by an enemy state or a terrorist organisation against the State of Israel”.

The measures were roundly condemned, given that Israel has weaponised aid throughout the genocide and falsely accused the United Nations humanitarian agencies of working with Hamas fighters and sympathisers.

Israel has also accused MSF – without providing evidence – of employing people who fought with Palestinian groups.

MSF said it would “never knowingly” employ people engaging in military activity.

Why did MSF agree to Israel’s demands?

MSF runs medical services in Gaza as well as the occupied West Bank, providing critical and emergency medical care, including surgical, trauma, and maternal care. It also helped run field hospitals in Gaza during two years of Israeli genocide.

In a statement on Saturday, MSF said following “unreasonable demands to hand over personal information about our staff”, it has informed Israeli authorities that, as an exceptional measure, “we are prepared to share a defined list of Palestinian and international staff names, subject to clear parameters with staff safety at its core”.

It said MSF’s Palestinian employees agreed with the decision after extensive discussions.

“We would share this information with the expectation that it will not negatively affect MSF staff or our medical humanitarian operations,” MSF said. “Since 1 January 2026, all arrivals of our international staff into Gaza have been denied and all our supplies have been blocked.”

How have observers reacted?

MSF’s decision was condemned by some doctors, activists and campaigners, saying it could endanger Palestinians.

A former MSF employee, who requested to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera, “It is extremely concerning, from a duty of care perspective, from a data protection perspective, and from the perspective of the most foundational commitment to humanity, that MSF would make a decision like this.”

“Staff are extremely concerned for their wellbeing and futures. Other NGOs have been in uproar, since it further exposes their decision not to concede to Israel’s demands,” they said. “MSF faces profoundly difficult decisions – concede to the demands of a genocidal regime, or refuse and face complete expulsion and an abrupt end to all health activities in the coming weeks. But what is humanitarianism under genocide? There must be alternatives – alternatives that demand a much bolder and more disruptive approach to humanitarianism amid such brutal political decline.”

Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza several times, said, “The moral bankruptcy lies in the implication that during a genocide, Palestinians are capable of making free consent. Their employees have as much choice as the Palestinians who knowingly went to their death at the feeding stations to feed their families.”

He added that the decision was “in clear contravention” of European Union data protection laws.

Hanna Kienzler, a professor of global health at King’s College London, said on X, “MSF, you have withdrawn your teams from war-affected settings before when you felt a mission’s integrity and/or safety were compromised. What makes you think Palestinian staff can be treated like cannon fodder so you can continue your mission in Gaza?”

Have other groups heeded Israel’s demands?

Israel says 23 organisations have agreed to the new registration rules. The others are understood to be weighing their decisions.

Al Jazeera contacted Oxfam and is awaiting a response.

Is aid being delivered to Gaza?

Gaza has been pulled back from the brink of famine, but needs far more aid to support the population amid continued Israeli attacks – more than 400 people have been killed since a fragile ceasefire came into place in October, large-scale displacement and a healthcare crisis.

Food shortages persist.

Israel said it would commit to allowing 600 aid trucks per day to enter the Strip, but in reality, only 200 or so are being let in, locals say.

At least five health centres in the Lubero territory of the North Kivu region were shut down following persistent attacks and civilian killings by the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

On the night of Jan. 21,  the rebels killed five civilians, injured many others, and destroyed at least ten houses during an attack that took place in the Mavwe-Mavwe village. 

Congolese officials revealed that the health centres recently shut down include Mausa, Pombi, Mandelya, Musenge, and the Masoya referral health facility, which was closed last week. The awful situation intensifies the dire humanitarian crisis in the region, which is heavily impacted by insecurity.

Some civil society organisations have expressed concerns over the authorities’ silence amid persistent insecurity, which has paralysed all socio-economic activities within the Baswagha chiefdom, leaving the people feeling completely abandoned.

“In view of the situation we are passing through, we think the nurses have very much helped the population. Already, members of armed groups and their wives receive medical treatment free of charge. The pressure on the Biambwe health centre has forced our nurses to close down our structure. That complicates the lives of the population, because all the health facilities have closed their doors in Mandelia, Pombi, Mausa, Masoya, and Musenge. They have locked themselves everywhere,” said Kambale Muthano, the leader of the Congolese New Civil Society.

Kambale noted that the civil society community has no issues with health agents. He said their main demand from the government is to guarantee the safety of the populations, including healthcare facilities, so that health professionals can work under suitable conditions.

Amid the ongoing crisis, however, health professionals have made an urgent appeal to military authorities to intervene and reactivate “Operation Shujaa”, a joint military effort between the Congolese army and the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF).

Since 2024, the Mwenye tribal group in the North Kivu region has been gripped by chronic instability marked by the massacre of civilians, massive displacement of populations, the closure of schools, and health facilities. A similar incident occurred in 2022 when eighteen healthcare facilities in Kamango were shut down due to repeated attacks by the  Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, leaving civilians at risk. 

Lebanese government says it documented 2,036 Israeli breaches of Lebanon’s sovereignty in the last three months of 2025.

Lebanon has filed a complaint with the United Nations about repeated Israeli violations of a November 2024 ceasefire, calling on the Security Council to push Israel to end its attacks and fully withdraw from the country.

The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants said the complaint, sent on Monday, stressed that Israeli abuses are a “clear” violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

The ministry said it called on the 15-member body to compel Israel to “completely withdraw to beyond the internationally recognised borders”, end its repeated violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and release Lebanese prisoners it is holding.

“The complaint included three tables detailing Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty on a daily basis during the months of October, November and December 2025. The number of these violations amounted to 542, 691 and 803 respectively, totaling 2,036 violations,” it added.

The complaint was made a day after Israel launched a wave of air strikes across Lebanon, killing at least two people.

Despite the 2024 ceasefire, the Israeli military has been launching near-daily attacks in Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people. In November last year, the UN put the number of civilians killed in Israeli attacks at at least 127.

Israel also continues to occupy five points within Lebanese territory as it blocks the reconstruction of several border villages that it levelled to the ground, preventing tens of thousands of displaced people from returning to their homes.

Meanwhile, Israel is estimated to be holding more than a dozen Lebanese prisoners, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians who were taken from border villages in 2024. Israel has resisted calls to submit a list of the Lebanese citizens it is holding, leaving the fate of many missing people in southern Lebanon in limbo.

Israeli forces have also repeatedly opened fire at peacekeepers in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon.

The Foreign Ministry in Beirut said on Monday that “it called for pressure to be exerted on Israel to stop its attacks on UNIFIL, which continues to make the ultimate sacrifices to bring security and stability to the region.”

Lebanon has filed similar complaints to the UN in the past, but Israeli attacks have not relented.

On Monday, Israeli drones dropped two stun grenades in the southern village of Odaisseh, Lebanese news outlets reported.

Israel had severely weakened Hezbollah in an all-out war late in 2024, killing most of the group’s military and political leaders. Israel’s campaign has helped it establish a new balance of power and allowed it to launch regular assaults in Lebanon without a response.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has been pushing to disarm Hezbollah.

This month, Beirut said it had completed the removal of the group’s weapons south of the Litani River, 28km (17 miles) from the Israeli border.

Despite that announcement, Israeli air strikes have continued both south and north of the Litani.

Hezbollah has tacitly agreed to disarmament south of the Litani in accordance with UN Resolution 1701, but it has warned that it will not completely give up its weapons, arguing that they are necessary to stop Israel’s expansionism.

The next phase of the Lebanese government’s plan to remove Hezbollah’s weapons will target the region about 40km (25 miles) north of the Litani River to the Awali River.

Storm Chandra is hitting hot on the heels of Goretti and Ingrid, bringing more soaking rains with little time between for the water to flow away and the rivers fully recover.

This continuing rain really heightens the flood risk.

The wind will also be a threat, as strong winds from Goretti and Ingrid have already battered parts of the UK this month, notably in south-west England.

As a result, many structures may have been weakened, trees may have been left vulnerable as well as power lines.

Blessing William crouched by the stream in Bole-3 at dawn, scrubbing pots and dishes. The water surface had a milky tint, and a faint aftertaste lingered each time she drank from it. Still, this remains the only source of flowing water for her family and the wider community.

As a child, the 30-year-old mother of four used to come to the local stream to wash, fetch water, and swim. Back then, the water was clear and safe to drink without filtration.

“There are a lot of changes now,” she said. “We now struggle to get clean water.” 

Her experience reflects a wider reality of over 500 residents in Bole-3, a community you would describe as disadvantaged. There is no electricity, no proper road network, and no primary health care centre. For decades, the local stream has been its most precious resource.

Today, the stream has dwindled to a shallow trickle. Large stretches of the riverbed lie exposed, the current barely moving. In July 2024, white sediments began to cloud the stream, and many residents complained of a strange aftertaste that lingered on their tongues after drinking.

What went wrong?

These changes began shortly after a company run by Chinese nationals started mining operations in the community. Located in Yola-South, Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria, Bole-3 sits atop large deposits of fluorite beneath its rocky ground. When the mining company arrived a year ago, it built a dam to supply water for washing extracted minerals, which residents say has reduced the stream’s flow and contaminated the remaining water.

“As a result of how they blocked it to construct the dam, we don’t have enough water flowing into the stream this year,” Williams Ayuba, the village head, told HumAngle. “Although the water level naturally dwindles in November every year, it has not been this severe.”

When the community’s only borehole collapsed, water scarcity worsened. The village head mobilised some residents to meet with the company. The borehole was later repaired by the company’s representatives, but it stopped functioning three months later. However, the community has been unable to reach the company since then. 

Like several other residents, all of Blessing’s children, who drink from the river, have been coming down with diarrhoea, which she described as chronic. 

Celestina Jasckson, another resident of the Bole-3 community, echoes Blessing’s concern. “The water gives us diarrhoea all the time, and that’s how we are suffering,” she said, adding that she continues to consume it despite the risks.

However, diarrhoea is not the only health issue locals have been battling since the suspected contamination became pronounced in Bole-3. Eden Dimas, a healthcare provider who runs the only dispensary in the community, noted that “a lot of residents” have been arriving at the centre regularly with rashes covering different parts of their bodies.

“I am sure it is the chemicals. You could taste it while drinking the water,” Eden said.

The skin condition remains undiagnosed as the dispensary lacks lab equipment. The facility does not admit patients or offer delivery services; it only administers painkillers and provides other basic treatments. For childbirth and more complex care, residents travel an hour to a primary healthcare centre in Lakare, a neighbouring community. 

When cases exceed what he can manage locally, Eden often refers residents with issues like the itchy skin to hospitals in Yola, the state capital, where many cannot afford treatment.

In the past, Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria, the Christian denomination that owns the dispensary, used to supply drugs whenever stocks were running short, but that has dwindled, leaving the dispensary barely functional. Part of the building has even been converted into a single room now occupied by a family.

Eden now buys drugs from Yola only when a sick person provides money for medication.

The stream and the unnamed mine

As contamination of the stream worsened, locals dug small ponds nearby. HumAngle learned from residents that the water in the pond is less polluted than that of the stream, so while the main stream serves their other needs, they use the pond for drinking and cooking. 

“We did everything we could. We wrote to the company, but we have not seen any results yet. It’s like we don’t have anyone to help us,” the village head said. He added that locals have now resigned themselves to their fate.

Residents in Bole-3 refer to the mining company as the “China Company”. It is located on the outskirts of the host community, and it takes less than an hour by motorcycle to reach the mine.

The mine stretches across a wide, open area covered with fluoride and some monazite rocks. Fluorite is a valuable mineral that is used in refining hydrofluoric acid, aluminium smelting agents, optical lenses, gemstones for jewellery, flux for steelmaking, ceramics, and opalescent glass. 

When HumAngle visited the mine, heaps of smaller rocks were scattered around, and labourers were also seen working under the watch of a Chinese supervisor.

Philip Ezra*, a Bole-3 resident, worked at the mine but resigned due to frequent illness and severe body aches. He was responsible for manual excavation and sorting, working at least 10 hours daily for a monthly compensation of ₦70,000. 

During his employment, he recalled that a small pond had been dug at the mine for workers’ water consumption. “As time went by, I began to come down with typhoid and realised that it was from the water. I was always weak,” he said. “The water conditions and the strenuous nature of the work made me sick.”  

When he returned home in June 2025 after resigning, Philip observed that the stream level had dropped and the water quality had deteriorated. “I noticed that the water tasted like the one from the labourer’s pond at the site,” he said. 

Like other residents, Philip believes the significant reduction in water level in the stream is due to the dam built around the mine. “They trapped a large quantity of water from the source and turned it into a source for washing extracted minerals and carrying out other mining activities,” he said. 

When HumAngle visited the mine, the supervisors did not respond to the inquiries. A letter submitted in November last year has yet to receive a response. 

No signage at the site shows the company’s name, and workers who spoke to HumAngle claimed they did not know it. One employee, who asked not to be named, said the company was licensed and approved by the state government, but that “its name had yet to be formally ascribed”. 

This explanation is highly unlikely, as companies registering with the Corporate Affairs Commission and the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office are required to provide a name and board details. We reached out to the Adamawa Ministry of Environment and Natural Development and have not received a response. 

To independently verify residents’ claims, HumAngle collected water samples from the Bole-3 stream in November 2025 and submitted them for laboratory analysis at Modibbo Adama University, a public research institution in Yola. The samples were tested twice for fluoride concentration and overall water quality, including heavy metal levels.

A Yola-based laboratory scientist who analysed and interpreted the results, and asked not to be named, said the water was unsafe for drinking, cooking, bathing, or other domestic use.

According to the scientist’s interpretation of the findings, the samples contained elevated levels of heavy metals, including Lead, Cadmium, Copper, and Chromium. Prolonged exposure to these substances, the scientist explained, can cause chronic diarrhoea, skin rashes, gastrointestinal irritation, and other long-term health problems.

“The health symptoms reported by residents, particularly skin rashes and chronic diarrhoea, are consistent with known effects of chronic heavy-metal exposure,” the scientist added. 

Expert recommends solutions 

In communities with long-standing mining activities, exposure to toxic dust and heavy metals poses severe health risks. A study at Arufu, a mining community in Wukari, Taraba State, found high concentrations of heavy metals, and the water was declared unsafe for consumption.

“There are rocks that bear the fluoride. So, naturally, it can enter through the dissolution of fluoride-bearing minerals in all these soils. However, human activities can also elevate fluoride in the water,” said Hamza Muhammad Usman, the Executive Director of Environmental Care Foundation in Adamawa State. 

Hamza explained that mining disrupts large volumes of rock and wells, exposing the minerals buried beneath them. “It can increase the release of fluoride and other heavy metals, including other contaminants into the water,” he added. 

The environmental expert also noted that contaminants move faster through fractured drainage, a geological feature caused by blasting, which forms gully erosion. “This lets contaminants move quickly because mining creates new channels where none existed before. Pollutants can then reach streams and rivers that recharge groundwater,” he said.

Hamza emphasised that the geology and duration of mining activity, rainfall, and even groundwater flow, determine contamination levels. He added that contamination can occur within months in some cases, or take years in others, depending on the intensity of human activity.

He also recommended some cost-effective options for removing contaminants from water, including the Nalgonda technique, which uses lime and alum.

“There is also the bone char,” he said. This involves burning animal bones until they are nearly charcoal. “It is good for absorbing things like this. If they are burnt completely, it becomes like charcoal, you can use them, which is very effective to absorb fluoride and is viable in rural communities,” Hamza said. 

The Yola-based scientist, who analysed the lab results, advised the immediate cessation of the water’s use, the provision of alternative safe water supplies, confirmatory lab testing, and medical screening for affected residents, highlighting the particular risks to children, pregnant women, and vulnerable adults.

“It is a public health hazard requiring immediate intervention,” the scientist added.

And yet, on the lips of the residents is the same urgent question: “If we can no longer use the Bole-3 stream, what should we drink?”

*Names with asterisks have been changed to protect the sources. 

Keys had previously insisted she would refuse to eat the delicacy, but she admitted defeat and said she would accept the terms of the wager.

“A bet is a bet, so I’ll do it. I hope it’s less gross than I think it’s going to be but we’ll find out I guess,” Keys said in her post-match news conference.

Had the ninth seed won the fourth-round match and continued her title defence, Keys’ side of the bet involved Pegula – whose billionaire parents own NFL side Buffalo Bills – wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey.

“She wanted me to wear a [Travis] Kelce slash Taylor Swift Chiefs jersey,” Pegula said. “Honestly I had a lot of motivation today not to wear that.”

The 2024 US Open finalist wrote “no Chiefs jersey today” on a courtside camera lens after her victory and the pair were seen chatting and laughing in the locker room straight after the match.

Keys, who beat Sabalenka in last year’s final at Melbourne Park, said she was “still really proud of herself” despite her exit.

“Coming back and being defending champion, and dealing with all of the extra pressure and nerves – I am really proud of myself for the way I handled it,” she said.

Al Jazeera’s Sanad unit analysed satellite images, finding that Israel razed homes in the weeks since the ceasefire began.

The Israeli army is working to flatten the remains of homes in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoon, despite the ongoing ceasefire that began in October.

Al Jazeera’s digital investigations team Sanad analysed satellite images taken between October 8 – two days before the ceasefire began – and January 8, and found evidence of the operation, which some Palestinians fear may be a step towards the establishment of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza.

Sanad found that the Israeli army has used bulldozers to clear around 408,000 square metres (4.39 million square feet) of land, including the remains of at least 329 homes, and agricultural sites, that Israel destroyed during its two-year war on Gaza.

Images from before the clearing operation show a Beit Hanoon with damaged buildings from the war, but some remained intact.

But by mid-December, many of the buildings had been totally razed, as well as former agricultural land, replaced by a flattened brown landscape.

The rubble-removal operations began directly at the edge of Beit Hanoon, facing the fence that separates the city from nearby Israeli settlements along the northern border, including Sderot, which is roughly 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) away from Beit Hanoon.

Israel has damaged or destroyed the majority of structures in Gaza – 81 percent by last October, according to the United Nations. Northern Gaza has borne the brunt of the damage, with many areas, such as Beit Hanoon, systematically razed to the ground.

Settlement plans

The Israeli far right has consistently openly declared its desire for Israeli Jews to settle Gaza. In December 2024, Israeli ministers and parliament members visited a location in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, overlooking the Gaza Strip. They pointed at Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya, stating that more than 800 Jewish families were willing to move there “as soon as possible”, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Additionally, at an Israeli conference held on December 23, Defence Minister Israel Katz outlined plans to establish agricultural-military bases called “Nava Nahal” – Israeli military outposts that combine farming with an armed presence in an effort to consolidate control over a territory – in the north of Gaza.

Katz stressed that Israel “will never withdraw and will never leave Gaza”, calling these bases “replacements” for the Israeli settlements cleared in 2005. That was the year Israel withdrew its settlers from the Gaza Strip under a unilateral disengagement plan following the second Intifada.

The withdrawal continues to be a sore topic for the powerful Israeli far right, which considers it a mistake that must be corrected.

And even if settlements are not eventually built, Israeli leaders have made it clear that they want to control a buffer zone deep into Gaza, territory that would eventually include areas like Beit Hanoon.

One Israeli officer, quoted in the Long War Journal, said that the campaign to raze Beit Hanoon was part of an operation “to create a significant security perimeter and make it very difficult for the enemy to return to its infrastructure”.

Israel’s critics say the goal is clear. Speaking to Al Jazeera, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said that “under the fog of war, Israel is going to destroy Gaza, displace the Palestinians, and attempt to reoccupy and conquer the land”.

Israel has violated the ceasefire at least 1,300 times since it began on October 10, which includes shooting at civilians 430 times and bombing or shelling Gaza more than 600 times.

Convoy carrying food and fuel reaches Kurdish-majority town, also known as Kobane, in Aleppo province.

A United Nations convoy carrying “life-saving” aid has arrived in the Kurdish-majority town of Ain al-Arab in northern Syria as a ceasefire agreement between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continues to hold.

The convoy’s arrival in Ain al-Arab, also known as Kobane, on Sunday came amid growing concerns about humanitarian conditions in the town, which has been surrounded by Syrian government forces.

Electricity and water in the town have also been cut off for days.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the convoy consisted of 24 trucks carrying “life-saving aid, including fuel, bread, and ready-to-eat rations, to support people affected by the recent developments”.

It said the convoy was coordinated with the Syrian government.

The Syrian army said in a statement that it was opening two corridors, one to Ain al-Arab, located in Aleppo province, and another to the nearby Hasakah province, to allow “the entry of aid”.

Ain al-Arab, which has a population of 400,000 people, is hemmed in by the Turkish border to the north and government forces on all sides. It is approximately 200km (125 miles) from the SDF’s stronghold in Syria’s far northeast.

The SDF has accused the Syrian army of imposing a siege on the town.

Clashes between the two sides erupted earlier this month amid a dispute over the integration of the SDF into the Syrian army. Under pressure from the United States, the two sides agreed to a four day ceasefire last week, with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa giving the SDF until Saturday night ‍to lay down arms and come up with a plan to integrate with the army, or to resume fighting.

The two sides extended the ceasefire by another 15 days on Saturday.

Damascus said the renewed truce was intended to support a US operation to transfer some 7,000 detainees from the ISIL (ISIS) group held in prisons previously under SDF control to facilities in Iraq.

By Sunday night, however, the two sides were trading accusations of violations.

The Syrian army told state media that the SDF had targeted its positions with drones.

The SDF accused “Damascus-affiliated factions” of attacks around Ain al-Arab, including one that killed a child.

The SD, which has lost large areas of the country to the army, have now been restricted to Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast and Ain al-Arab.

Residents of the town say it was full of people who had fled the Syrian army’s advances in the northeast in recent weeks.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Qere Qozaq in Aleppo province, said the arrival of the UN aid convoy came amid reports of worsening humanitarian conditions in Ain al-Arab.

“But these negotiated solutions, getting humanitarian aid in, remain very fragile, with both sides still primed to return to fighting as and when they feel it is needed,” he said.

“Whether the ceasefire holds or not, whether the fighting continues, these are all question marks. But there is one certainty: as long as the fighting carries on, rebuilding cannot happen,” he added.

Ain al-Arab, which the SDF liberated from a lengthy siege by ISIL in 2015, took on symbolic value as their first major victory against the armed group. It took another four years for the SDF, supported by a US-led international coalition, to defeat ISIL territorially in Syria.

Syria’s new government, which took power in 2024 after the fall of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, has demanded that the SDF disband.

The US, meanwhile, has said the purpose of its alliance with the SDF has largely ended.

Ukrainian leader says Kyiv and Moscow continue to have ‘fundamentally different’ positions on territorial concessions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that an agreement on US security guarantees for his country is “100 percent ready” to be signed after talks with Russia in Abu Dhabi.

Speaking at a news conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that Kyiv was ready to send the agreement to the US Congress and Ukrainian parliament for ratification.

“For us, security guarantees are first and foremost guarantees of security from the United States. The document is 100 percent ready, and we are waiting for our partners to confirm the date and place when we will sign it,” Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian leader also emphasised Ukraine’s push for European Union membership by 2027, calling it an “economic security guarantee”.

Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the capital of the United Arab Emirates on Friday and Saturday to discuss Washington’s framework for ending Moscow’s almost four-year-old war.

While no deal emerged from the talks, Moscow and Kyiv both said they were open to further dialogue, and more discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, a US official told reporters immediately after the discussions.

Zelenskyy described the talks as likely the first trilateral format in “quite a long while” that included not only diplomats but military representatives from all three sides.

The Ukrainian leader acknowledged fundamental differences between the Ukrainian and Russian positions, reaffirming territorial issues as a major sticking point.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a Ukraine settlement with US President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, during marathon talks late on Thursday.

The Kremlin insisted that to reach a peace deal, Kyiv must withdraw its troops from the areas in the east that Russia illegally annexed but has not fully captured.

Zelenskyy said that while Moscow wants Ukraine to abandon eastern regions of the country, Kyiv has not budged from its position that territorial integrity must be upheld.

“These are two fundamentally different positions – Ukraine’s and Russia’s. The Americans are trying to find a compromise,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “all sides must be ready for compromise”.

Here is where things stand on Monday, January 25:

Fighting

• More than 1,300 apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, were still without heating following Russia’s missile and drone attacks on Saturday, according to Mayor Vitalii Klitschko.
• Over the past week alone, Russia launched more than 1,700 attack drones, at least 1,380 guided aerial bombs, and 69 missiles on Ukraine, mainly targeting the energy sector, critical infrastructure, and residential buildings, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• The Ukrainian leader told reporters during a visit to Lithuania that the continuing Russian attacks make it necessary for Ukraine to acquire more air defences, even while the country negotiates a ceasefire deal with Moscow.
• In Russia, the governor of the border region of Belgorod said Ukrainian forces launched a “massive” attack on its main town, damaging energy infrastructure, but causing no casualties.

Diplomacy

• Zelenskyy told reporters in Lithuania that a US document on security guarantees for Ukraine is “100 percent ready”, and that Kyiv is waiting for a time and place for it to be signed.
• He also indicated that trilateral talks with Russia and the US in Abu Dhabi over the weekend made some progress, saying: “[In Abu Dhabi] the 20-point [US] plan and ‌problematic issues are being discussed. There were many problematic issues, but now, there are fewer.”
• Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, after meeting Zelenskyy, said that Russia is avoiding committing to a lasting and just peace in Ukraine and is not accepting a ceasefire in the war.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia will never discuss anything with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, and so Moscow will simply wait for her to leave her post.
• Pope Leo said in his weekly Angelus prayer at the Vatican that ongoing Russian attacks against Ukraine were leaving civilians in the country exposed to the cold of winter, and called for an end to the conflict.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited an art studio to guide the creation of sculptures to be displayed at a memorial for the estimated 6,000 North Korean troops who died fighting overseas, according to state media KCNA. Pyongyang deployed some 14,000 soldiers to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, according to Western sources.
• France has detained the Indian captain of an oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet”, prosecutors said. Authorities said the vessel, named the Grinch, failed to fly a flag. It is now moored, under guard, near Marseille.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Coastguard says at least 215 people have been rescued, while a search for 144 missing people is ongoing.

A ferry carrying more than 350 people has capsized off the southern Philippine province of Basilan, killing at least seven people, according to officials.

The ⁠accident occurred after midnight on Monday ​as the passenger vessel, MV Trisha Kerstin ‍3, was en route to Jolo Island in southern Sulu province, having departed the port city of Zamboanga.

The Philippine coastguard said the vessel ‍had 332 ⁠passengers on record and 27 crew.

Coastguard Commander Romel Dua of Southern Mindanao District told DZBB radio that 215 people had been rescued and seven bodies recovered, while search and ​rescue operations continued for 144 ‌others who remained missing.

Dua said an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the accident.

Arsina Laja Kahing-Nanoh, the town mayor in Basilan province, said in a post on Facebook that there were at least “eight confirmed casualties” from the sinking of the ferry. She posted a video of coastguard personnel rescuing several people and hauling bodies from the water into a boat.

In a separate video statement, Kahing-Nanoh added that rough seas and the darkness were hampering the search and rescue operation.

Basilan emergency responder Ronalyn Perez told the AFP news agency that “at least 138 people” had so far been rescued.

“The challenge here really is the number of patients that are coming in. We are short-staffed at the moment,” Perez said, adding that 18 people had been brought to one local hospital.

The PCG said rescue efforts were still ongoing.

Dua, the coastguard commander in Mindanao, said the cause of the ferry sinking was not immediately clear and that there would be an investigation. He added that the coastguard cleared the ferry before it left the Zamboanga port, and there was no sign of overloading.

Sea accidents are common in the Philippine archipelago because of frequent storms, badly maintained vessels, overcrowding and spotty enforcement of safety regulations, especially in remote provinces.

On Friday, at least two Filipino sailors were reported killed, and 15 others were rescued after a Singapore-flagged general cargo vessel en route to China from the southern island of Mindanao sank. Four other sailors remain missing.

In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in the central Philippines, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.

As protests erupt in Minnesota following the killing of US citizens by federal agents, President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. Former US Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein argues that would be a terrible idea.

A United States aircraft carrier strike group is heading towards the Gulf as tensions build with Iran.

The US military last staged a major build-up in the Middle East in June – days before striking three Iranian nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war with Tehran.

This month, US President Donald Trump backed antigovernment protesters in Iran. “Help is on its way,” he told them as the government cracked down. But last week, he dialled down the military rhetoric. The protests have since been quashed.

So what are the US military assets moving to the Gulf? And is the US preparing to strike Iran again?

Why is the US moving warships?

Trump said on Thursday that a US “armada” is heading towards the Gulf region with Iran being its focus.

US officials said an aircraft carrier strike group and other assets are to arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.

“We’re watching Iran. We have a big force going towards Iran,” Trump said.

“And maybe we won’t have to use it. … We have a lot of ships going that direction. Just in case, we have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens,” he added.

The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln changed its path from the South China Sea more than a week ago towards the Middle East. Its carrier strike group includes Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Iran.

The US military vessels en route to the Middle East are also equipped with the Aegis combat system, which provides air and missile defence against ballistic and cruise missiles and other aerial threats.

When Washington hit Iran’s nuclear sites, US forces reportedly launched 30 Tomahawk missiles from submarines and carried out strikes with B-2 bombers.

When asked on Thursday if he wanted Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to step down, Trump replied: “I don’t want to get into that, but they know what we want. There is a lot of killing.”

He also reiterated claims that his threats to use force stopped authorities in Iran from executing more than 800 people who had taken part in the protests, a claim denied by Iranian officials.

An unnamed US official told the Reuters news agency that additional air defence systems were being considered for the Middle East, which could be critical to guard against an Iranian strike on US bases in the region.

Iranian state media said the protests killed 3,117 people, including 2,427 civilians and members of the security forces.

How widespread is the US military presence in the Middle East?

The US has operated military bases in the Middle East for decades and has 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers stationed there.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the US operates a broad network of military sites, both permanent and temporary, at at least 19 locations in the region.

Of these, eight are permanent bases, located in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The first US deployment of soldiers in the Middle East was in July 1958 when combat troops were sent to Beirut. At its height, almost 15,000 Marines and Army soldiers were in Lebanon.

The US naval movement towards Iran was ordered despite a new National Defense Strategy being released on Friday. The document is drawn up every four years by the Department of Defense, and the latest security blueprint outlines a pullback of US forces in other parts of the world to prioritise security in the Western Hemisphere.

How has Iran responded?

Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, who heads coordination between Iran’s army and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned on Thursday that any military strike on Iran would turn all US bases in the region into “legitimate targets”.

General Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said two days later that Iran is “more ready than ever, finger on the trigger”.

He warned Washington and Israel “to avoid any miscalculation”.

This month, Washington had withdrawn some personnel from its bases in the Middle East after Tehran threatened to hit them if Washington launched strikes on its territory.

In a piece in The Wall Street Journal newspaper on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also said Tehran would be “firing back with everything we have” if attacked.

“An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House,” he said.

Has air traffic stopped?

Not completely, but the build-up of tensions between the US and Iran has led to the suspension of some flights.

Over the weekend, Air France cancelled two flights from Paris to Dubai. It said it “continuously monitors the geopolitical situation in the territories served and overflown by its aircraft in order to ensure the highest level of flight safety and security”. It has since resumed its flights.

Luxair postponed its flight on Saturday from Luxembourg to Dubai by 24 hours “in light of ongoing tensions and insecurity affecting the region’s airspace, and in line with measures taken by several other airlines”, the carrier said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency.

Arrivals at Dubai International Airport showed the cancellation of Saturday’s flights from Amsterdam by the Dutch carriers KLM and Transavia. Some KLM flights to Tel Aviv, Israel, were also cancelled on Friday and Saturday.

Did the US impose new sanctions on Iran?

In line with its continuing effort to ramp up pressure on Tehran, the US imposed sanctions on Friday on a fleet of nine ships and their owners whom Washington accused of transporting hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian oil to foreign markets in violation of sanctions.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the sanctions were imposed because of Iran’s “shutdown of internet access to conceal its abuses” against its citizens during its crackdown on the nationwide protests.

The sanctions “target a critical component of how Iran generates the funds used to repress its own people”, Bessent said.

US officials said the nine targeted vessels – sailing under the flags of Palau, Panama and other jurisdictions – are part of a shadow fleet that smuggles sanctioned goods, notably from Russia and Iran.

Protests began in Iran on December 28, triggered by the collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial, and intensified over the next two weeks

On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution that condemned Iran for the deadly protest crackdown.

Ali Bahreini, Iran’s envoy at the meeting in Geneva, reiterated his government’s claim that 3,117 people died during the unrest, 2,427 of whom were killed by “terrorists” armed and funded by the US, Israel and their allies.

“It was ironic that states whose history was stained with genocide and war crimes now attempted to lecture Iran on social governance and human rights,” he said.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it has confirmed at least 5,137 deaths during the protests and is investigating 12,904 others.

Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, has demanded that US President Donald Trump pull “untrained” federal immigration agents out of the state after Border Patrol agents shot and killed a demonstrator in Minneapolis, the second such death in the city amid the ongoing crackdown.

As calls for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, grow, Walz posed a question directly to Trump during a news briefing on Sunday.

“What’s the plan, Donald Trump?” he asked, adding, “What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?”

The questions came after senior Trump administration officials defended Pretti’s killing, despite graphic video evidence appearing to contradict their accounts.

Federal agents shot and killed Pretti on Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in Minneapolis, less than three weeks after an immigration officer fired on Renee Good, also 37, killing her in her car.

Trump’s administration claimed that Pretti had intended to harm the agents, as it did after Good’s death, pointing to a pistol it said was discovered on him.

However, videos shared widely on social media and verified by US media showed Pretti never drawing a weapon, with agents firing about 10 shots at him seconds after he was sprayed in the face with a chemical irritant and thrown to the ground.

The videos further inflamed the ongoing protests in Minneapolis against the presence of federal immigration agents, with about 1,000 people participating in a demonstration on Sunday.

“The victims are border patrol agents,” Gregory Bovino, Border Patrol commander-at-large, told CNN’s State of the Union programme.

This official line, echoed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other members of the Trump administration on Sunday, ⁠led to outrage among local law enforcement, many Minneapolis residents and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Democratic strategist Arshad Hasan said Pretti’s killing and its aftermath were “deeply unsettling” and accused federal agents of turning a low‑crime city into an “occupation”.

“I don’t know why a government agency should get particular exemptions from due process when somebody is murdered… Homicide is a crime for which the state and local law enforcement have jurisdiction,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the community was “grieving” and feeling “under siege”.

Holding a phone, not a gun

Videos from the scene show ​Pretti holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, as he tries to help other protesters who had been pushed to the ground by agents.

As one video begins, Pretti ‍can be seen filming while a federal agent pushes away one woman and shoves another woman to the ground. Pretti moves between the agent and the women, then raises his left arm to shield himself as the agent pepper-sprays him.

Several agents then take hold of Pretti – who struggles with them – and force him onto his hands and knees. As the agents pin Pretti down, someone shouts what sounds like a warning about the presence of a gun.

Video footage then appears to show one of the agents removing a gun from Pretti and stepping ‍away from the group with it.

Moments ⁠later, an officer with a handgun points at Pretti’s back and fires four shots in quick succession. Several more shots can then be heard as another agent appears to fire at Pretti.

Darius Reeves, the former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) field office in Baltimore, told the Reuters news agency that federal agents’ apparent lack of communication was troubling. “It’s clear no one is communicating… based on my observation of how that team responded,” Reeves said.

He drew attention to signs that an officer appeared to have taken possession of Pretti’s weapon before he was killed. “The proof to me is how everyone scatters,” he said. “They are looking around, trying to figure out where the shots came from.”

After top federal officials described Pretti as an “assassin” who had assaulted the agents, Pretti’s parents issued a statement on Saturday, condemning the Trump administration’s “sickening lies” about their son.

US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press programme, said that an investigation was necessary to get a full understanding of the killing.

Asked if agents had already removed the pistol from Pretti when they fired on him, Blanche said, “I do not know. And nobody else knows, either. That’s why we’re doing an investigation.”

Multiple senators from Trump’s Republican Party called for a thorough probe into the killing and for cooperation with local authorities. “There must be a full joint federal and state investigation,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said.

Thousands of federal immigration agents have been deployed to heavily Democratic Minneapolis for weeks, after conservative media reported on alleged fraud by Somali immigrants.

Trump has repeatedly amplified the racially tinged accusations, including on Sunday, when he posted on his Truth Social platform: “Minnesota is a Criminal COVER UP of the massive Financial Fraud that has gone on!”

The city, known for its bitterly cold winters, has one of the country’s highest concentrations of Somali immigrants.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pushed back against Trump’s claim. “It’s not about fraud, because if he sent people who understand forensic accounting, we’d be having a different conversation. But he’s sending armed masked men,” he said.

Israeli forces are searching a Gaza cemetery for the remains of Ran Gvili, the last captive in the Palestinian territory.

Hamas says it has handed over the location of the remains of the last captive in Gaza, Israeli soldier Ran Gvili, as the second stage of the ceasefire begins in the war-ravaged enclave.

In a statement on Sunday, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said the group handed over the location of Gvili’s remains with “absolute transparency”, and that it “fulfilled all our obligations in accordance with the ceasefire agreement”.

“We are fully committed to closing this file permanently and have no interest in procrastination. This stance is rooted in our concern for the interests of our people. Working under complex and nearly impossible conditions, we have successfully recovered and handed over the remains of the enemy’s prisoners with the full knowledge of the mediators,” Abu Obeida said.

“We call upon these mediators to uphold their responsibilities and compel the [Israeli] occupation to implement what has been agreed upon.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a largescale operation was under way at a cemetery in northern Gaza to find the remains. “This effort will continue for as long as necessary,” his office added.

The Israeli military also said that search operations were under way to retrieve Gvili’s body from the so-called “yellow line” area in Gaza, which splits the area between the location of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters.

Gvili, a noncommissioned officer in the Israeli police’s elite Yassam unit, was killed in action on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attack in Israel, and his body was taken to Gaza.

But as part of United States President Donald Trump’s peace proposal for Gaza, Hamas was required to return all the captives, living and dead, from the besieged enclave to Israel.

Amid widespread devastation and an Israeli refusal to allow for heavy machinery, the discovery of the last captive has been delayed.

Despite not finding the captive, US special envoy Steve Witkoff announced last week that the ceasefire was now moving to its second stage, which is likely to see the opening of the Rafah border crossing, the reconstruction of the Strip, and the disarmament of Hamas.

Witkoff on Sunday said he and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had met Netanyahu in Israel on the previous day, mainly to discuss Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have continued across Gaza, with at least three Palestinians killed in two separate incidents, and an Israeli drone wounding four others in Gaza City, the enclave’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday.

Medics said Israeli forces killed at least two people east of the Tuffah neighbourhood in northern Gaza and a 41-year-old man in Khan Younis in the south.

Earlier, medical workers ​said an Israeli drone exploded on the rooftop of a multi-floor building in Gaza City, wounding four ‍civilians in the street nearby.

Since May 2024, an Israeli law has banned the news network, citing a threat to national security, an allegation Al Jazeera denies.

Israel has extended its ban on Al Jazeera Media Network’s operations and the closure of its offices in the country by another 90 days.

The order, signed by Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karahi and announced on Sunday, also prohibits broadcasting and internet companies, and YouTube from providing services to the network inside Israel.

In May 2024, at the height of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet had voted to shut Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, weeks after the Israeli parliament passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered to be a “threat to national security”.

In September that year, Israeli forces also stormed Al Jazeera’s offices in the occupied West Bank’s Ramallah city, confiscating equipment and documents and closing the network’s office.

In December last year, the Israeli parliament approved an extension of the 2024 law, also called the “Al Jazeera law”, for two more years.

Al Jazeera Arabic’s bureau chief for Jerusalem and Ramallah, Walif al-Omari, said the latest Israeli decision came nine days after Israel’s Ministry of Communications said Israeli security services and military continued to believe the network’s broadcasts were “detrimental to the security” of Israel.

In May 2024, Al Jazeera had accused Netanyahu of making “slanderous accusations” against the network and had said Israel’s suppression of a free press stood “in contravention of international and humanitarian law”.

“Al Jazeera reiterates that such slanderous accusations will not deter us from continuing our bold and professional coverage, and reserves the right to pursue every legal step,” the Qatar-based network had said in a statement.

Israeli PM Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Gaza.

Al Jazeera has been targeted by Israel for years. In 2017, Netanyahu threatened to shut down its Jerusalem office, and an Israeli missile destroyed the building housing its office in Gaza in 2021.

Many Al Jazeera journalists – and in several cases, their families – were among more than 200 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza.

In May 2022, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. Israel initially denied but later admitted there was a “high possibility” that one of its soldiers had killed the journalist, known for her ground reporting from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Iran’s internet shutdown since the outbreak of anti-government protests has caused daily economic losses exceeding $20 million per day, according to the country’s leading technology industry body, Anadolu reports.

Ali Hakim-Javadi, head of Iran’s Computer Engineers Organization, told the news website Entekhab on Sunday that the most heavily affected sectors since the shutdown on Jan. 8 are digital companies and IT service providers.

Businesses that rely on continuous access to the global internet have seen a sharp decline in transactions, he said, adding that some companies have been forced to halt operations entirely.

He stressed that the economic damages, estimated at approximately $20.6 million per day, only include “direct” losses, warning that broader indirect damages, including erosion of investor confidence, declining international rankings, capital flight and brain drain, are not included in the estimate.

Last Sunday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said that he had submitted recommendations to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council calling for the lifting of internet restrictions as soon as possible.

Protests erupted in Iran late last month over the sharp depreciation of the national currency and worsening economic conditions, beginning in Tehran before spreading to several other cities.

Pressure on Iran from the US and Israel has intensified since then, while Tehran accused Washington of using sanctions, political pressure and unrest to create a pretext for military intervention and regime change.