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BBC News with Fiona MacDonald.
President Trump has said the Russian and Ukrainian leaders have both said they would like to make a deal to end the nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine. Earlier President Zelenskyy said Kyiv and the U.S. had reached an agreement on post-war security guarantees. U.S. envoys are in Moscow holding late-night talks with President Putin. Here's our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg. We know that taking part from the American side, Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump's special envoy, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, and also Josh Gruenbaum, who is a senior advisor to Donald Trump's new Board of Peace. What these talks in the Kremlin are going to produce, we have no idea. Before the talks began, the Kremlin was saying very little. Russian officials often say we just don't go in for megaphone diplomacy. So it's not clear whether tonight's talks will push things over the line or not. Earlier on Thursday, President Trump signed the founding charter of his Board of Peace initiative. At the ceremony in Davos, he said it would work with the United Nations. The BBC's Tom Bateman has this assessment. This is about President Trump implementing a body that he says will be before settling global conflicts. It's basically a global security body that puts him in charge, in perpetuity, able to, sort of, invite members to come in, charging them a billion dollars for permanent membership, he says. No accountability clearly yet about what would happen to that money. And already key European countries saying they're not going to take part in this. People see it as a rival to the United Nations. So that's a big development. The prime minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has insisted sovereignty is a red line in any negotiations about the future of the Danish autonomous territory. President Trump announced on Wednesday that a framework for a deal had been agreed. Greenland's government says no Greenlandic or Danish representatives were involved. Arriving for an emergency summit of EU leaders, the bloc's foreign policy chief said transatlantic relations had taken a big blow. The U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has denied that a five-year-old boy was arrested by federal immigration officers in Minnesota. Mr. Vance described the boy's father as an "illegal alien" who'd run away as ICE officers tried to arrest him. And he said that they couldn't let the child freeze to death. Helena Humphrey is in Washington. The vice president said he was in Minneapolis to try and bring down the temperature as demonstrations continue over ICE enforcement operations and the fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen, Rene Nicole Good, over two weeks ago. Mr. Vance said he did not think President Trump would see the need right now to follow through on his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act that would allow troops to be deployed to put down unrest. You're listening to the latest world news from the BBC. A public prosecutor in Germany says a nurse who murdered ten patients may be linked to another 100 deaths. The former palliative care nurse was sentenced to life in November for ten counts of murder and 27 counts of attempted murder. Around 60 exhumations have been ordered as part of the expanded inquiry. The United States has officially left the World Health Organization. President Trump ordered the withdrawal from the U.N. agency a year ago, accusing it of failing to adopt reforms and of mishandling the COVID pandemic, saying its approach was biased towards China. Wendy Urquhart reports. Mr. Trump made it clear he wanted to leave the World Health Organization on his first day back in the White House in January, 2025. The U.S. is walking away from the WHO, owing around $260 million in fees for 2024 and 2025, but Washington says it's already terminated funding and it has no intention of paying the arrears. The WHO boss, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described the withdrawal as a "loss for the United States" and "the rest of the world." The African Union has said it's ending its suspension of Guinea imposed since a military coup in 2021. The organization's Peace and Security Council said it was inviting the West African country to immediately resume its participation in AU activities. The bloc commended Guinea's adoption of a new constitution and December's presidential election, won by the coup leader General Mamady Doumbouya. A man has been arrested in Chile in connection to wildfires that have ravaged large areas of forests and towns in the south of the country for the past week. Police said the man was lighting a fire in a forested area. About 50,000 people have been displaced and at least 20 have been killed, with dozens of blazes still active. This all took place in the southern town of Punta de Parra. BBC News. |