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BBC News with Sue Montgomery.
President Trump has suggested that the United States might take ownership of Ukraine's nuclear power plants to ensure their security. White House officials say the proposal came in Mr. Trump's hour-long phone conversation with President Zelenskyy. Speaking to reporters later, Mr. Zelenskyy admitted the subject was discussed but said they'd mentioned only one power plant, the Zaporizhzhia facility, currently occupied by the Russian invaders. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen says it's difficult to know where these talks will lead. In the call today, Zelenskyy, his tone is way more measured than it was when they had that bust-up in the Oval Office. So he's saying all the right things and praising Trump, of course, and thanking him. But what does Trump do now? Does he try and put a bit of pressure on Ukraine to give a bit more? Or does he put some pressure on Putin? And that is something that up to now he has been extremely reluctant to do. Thousands of people in Istanbul have taken part in demonstrations against the arrest of the city's mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who's seen as the main political rival to Turkey's president. The opposition has described the move as a politically motivated coup. All protests have been banned. Some were violently broken up by police. Mr. İmamoğlu and dozens of other people associated with the opposition are faced with charges including corruption. İlhan Özgül is the deputy chairman of Turkey's Republican People's Party, to which Mr. İmamoğlu. "That's a major attack on Turkey's democracy. And we have been witnessing this for the last couple of months, that the government escalated crackdown on opposition. And many opposition figures, be it journalists or even ordinary citizens on the street, those people who posted critical comments on the X, so they're detained, they're arrested." Mexico's Attorney General Alejandro Gertz has criticized state investigators for their handling of a site in Jalisco suspected to have been used by a cartel for mass killings. Activists describe it as an extermination site for a notorious gang. Here's Will Grant. He opened his news conference by saying the state-level investigators who raided the ranch last September had not taken the proper fingerprints and forensic tests, nor registered the hundreds of items of clothing which were found at the location. The case was very important for the public life of this country, he added, referring to the national outcry over the discovery of some 200 pairs of shoes and human remains at the ranch. The initial findings of the federal authorities come as a video circulating on social media, purportedly from the New Generation Jalisco cartel, refuting the activists' claim that the ranch was a torture and extermination site run by the gang. BBC News. The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has issued a statement on X, telling the residents of Gaza that they will be subject to what he called total devastation if they do not, in his words, "Return the hostages and remove Hamas." In an accompanying video, he called it "the last warning." His words, appearing to blame the territory's Palestinian people for the militant group's actions, came a day after Israel renewed its intense bombardment of the strip, killing hundreds of people. A court in the United States has ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to a major pipeline operator. Energy Transfer had accused the environmental group of conducting a campaign of violence and defamation during protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago. Greenpeace U.S.A.'s Executive Director Sushma Raman said the organization would not be deterred from campaigning. "The people who power organizations like Greenpeace, you can't bankrupt them. They are there, they are fully in support and the work will continue. This is not over. The struggle continues, the struggle for justice, for ensuring the freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, peaceful protest. Our quest will continue through appeals and beyond." Two far-right parties in Romania have announced George Simion, a supporter of the country's NATO and EU membership, as their candidate for May's rescheduled presidential election. He replaces Calin Georgescu, whose first-round victory in last year's vote was annulled by the Constitutional Court on grounds of Russian interference. A 15-year-old from New Zealand has become the youngest person ever to run a mile in less than four minutes. Sam Ruth beat the mark by nearly two seconds in wet conditions. The teenager was racing alongside an Olympic athlete. BBC News. |