BURGENSTOCK, Switzerland: World leaders will gather in Switzerland this weekend to try to lay out a roadmap for an eventual peace process for Ukraine — albeit without Russia.
The gathering at the luxury Burgenstock resort, on a mountain ridge overlooking Lake Lucerne, comes immediately after the G7 summit in southern Italy, during which the wealthy democracies will also discuss Ukraine in the presence of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
The G7, running from Thursday to Saturday, will look at ways to use frozen Russian assets to provide fresh aid to Ukraine, invaded by Russia in February 2022.
Zelensky will then head to Switzerland, to be joined by G7 and other leaders on Saturday and Sunday for what is being billed as the first “Summit on Peace in Ukraine.”
“We would like to have a very broad process with a view to lasting, just peace in Ukraine,” Swiss President Viola Amherd told a press conference in Bern on Monday.
She said the event would lay the groundwork “for a future peace summit that would involve Russia.”
“The conference will focus on topics of global interest — nuclear security, food security and humanitarian aspects,” she added.
Switzerland invited more than 160 delegations, representing countries and international organizations.
Amherd said more than 90 confirmations had been received so far — around half from European nations — with about 50 percent of countries represented by their heads of state or government.
Attendees include French President Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Kamala Harris, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Organized at Ukraine’s request, the outcome of the summit remains uncertain, though Switzerland is hoping to secure a joint final declaration.
“We need to do everything we can to bring an end to this violence,” Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the press conference.
“At the end of this road there is not just world stability and safety but also the end of suffering for millions of victims,” he said.
The program, sculpted by Bern, draws on a 10-point peace plan presented by Zelensky in late 2022. Ukraine hopes to gain broad international support for its conditions to end the war.
Amherd said the summit aimed to find paths toward a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine, based on international law and the United Nations charter; a possible framework to achieve this goal; and a roadmap as to how both warring parties could come together in a future peace process.
It will also touch on freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and on prisoners of war.
Up to 4,000 Swiss troops will be on duty, while 6.5 kilometers (four miles) of steel fencing is going up.
Military vehicles buzzed around the Burgenstock mountain on Monday, with troops laying a temporary helipad in the valley behind the hotel complex.
“My division is familiar with the area, with the people, and we are trained to deal with circumstances such as these,” said Major General Daniel Keller, adding that his troops “are ready to take action if required.”
Switzerland said there had already been cyberattacks and extreme misinformation surrounding the conference, without giving details.
The summit comes as Russia on Monday claimed the capture of another village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
After almost a year of stalemate, Ukraine has been forced to abandon dozens of front-line settlements this spring, with Russian troops holding a significant advantage in manpower and resources.
The Kremlin has repeatedly indicated it will not participate in any negotiations if Kyiv does not accept Moscow’s annexation of the approximately 20 percent of Ukrainian territory Russia currently occupies.
As Moscow said it was not interested in participating in the summit, Bern did not issue an invitation.
Further summits hosted by other nations are tentatively envisaged.
Cassis said it was more a question of “when Russia will be on board” in the process rather than if.
As for China, he said it would not attend a summit without Russia at the table.
“It’s difficult for China to participate at the moment,” he said, adding that Beijing had hitherto “really helped give us a hand on this journey.”
Cassis welcomed the possibility of parallel peace proceedings involving China and other states not coming to the Burgenstock summit.
“Anything that can be done to walk through that mindset would be beneficial, because the mindset might be different,” he said.
Swiss summit on Ukraine set to thrash out path to peace
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Swiss summit on Ukraine set to thrash out path to peace
- Amherd said more than 90 confirmations had been received so far — around half from European nations — with about 50 percent of countries represented by their heads of state or government
Scramble to shelter animals from Los Angeles wildfires
BURBANK, USA: When wildfires roared to life around Los Angeles, Janell Gruss had to leave immediately. But as the manager of a stable with 25 horses and other animals, she knew it was going to be complicated.
While some people just got in their cars and drove out of the danger zone, Gruss had to wrangle more than two dozen frightened horses, as embers swirled in 100-mile (160-kilometer) -an-hour winds.
“The last horse we had to get out of the barn... it was pretty bad,” Gruss told AFP at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, where hundreds of animals have been brought this week.
“It was very smoky. It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was,” she recalled. “Both the horse and I were tripping over things, branches, whatever was on the ground.”
Gruss said coralling the animals was so challenging, she feared at one point she might not make it out alive.
“I thought I might have been one of those casualties,” she said, as tears rolled down her face.
“You hear about the person that goes in to get the last horse and doesn’t come out.”
More than 150,000 people have been forced from their homes by the huge blazes tearing through the city in a tragedy that has killed at least 16 people and changed the face of Los Angeles forever.
With so many people ordered to get out of the way of the advancing wildfires and needing to take their animals with them, capacity is strained.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jennie Nevin, director of communications for the Los Angeles Equestrian Center.
“The first night was very busy and chaotic. Lots of people coming from all over.”
Care for Animals
Dozens of people milled around the barns Saturday at the equestrian center, where donkeys, pigs and ponies have also found shelter.
Tarah Paige, a professional stuntwoman, had brought her three-year-old daughter to visit their pony Truffles and her miniature cow Cuddles — a TV star in her own right who has appeared on several programs.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” said Paige, for whom the equestrian center has been an oasis in the midst of an unimaginable catastrophe.
Nevin says there has been an outpouring of support and people offering their services to help care for the menagerie.
“It really takes a village,” she said. “It takes the community.”
Across the Los Angeles sprawl there are activists, veterinarians and volunteers working to rescue and care for animals made homeless in the tragedy, including some that were injured.
The Pasadena Humane Society received about 400 animals from Altadena, where the flames have already consumed more than 14,000 acres (5,600 hectares).
One of their patients is a five-day-old puppy that was found in the ruins of a building, its ears burned.
Annie Harvilicz, founder of the Animal Wellness Center, says she has hardly slept a wink all week.
As the fire spread through the upmarket Pacific Palisades, Harvilicz posted on Facebook that she was happy to take in animals.
The post “exploded,” she said, and dogs, cats and even a rabbit began arriving.
With flames still raging out of control, the calls for help have not stopped.
But, she thinks, even when the firefighters have quelled the blaze, the slow-motion tragedy will roll on.
“There’s gonna be more pets found, more pets injured, with smoke inhalation and burns that we’re gonna start to discover as some of the fire recedes,” she said.
“This is just the beginning.”
South Korea confirms Ukraine captured 2 North Korean soldiers
- One of the captured soldiers revealed during interrogation that North Korean forces had experienced “significant losses during battle,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service says
SEOUL: South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said Sunday it confirmed Ukraine captured two wounded North Korean soldiers this week in Russia, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said they were being questioned.
“The NIS, through real-time cooperation with Ukraine’s intelligence agency (SBU) has identified battlefield situations, including the capture of North Korean soldiers, and confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 in the Kursk battlefield in Russia,” the NIS said in a statement.
Kyiv, the United States and South Korea have accused nuclear-armed North Korea of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.
Kyiv on Saturday did not present direct evidence that the captured men were North Korean and AFP was unable to independently verify their nationality.
But the South Korean confirmation adds weight to Kyiv’s account, while neither Russia nor North Korea has reacted.
The NIS said one of the captured soldiers revealed during his interrogation that he received military training from Russian forces after arriving there in November.
“He initially believed he was being sent for training, realizing upon arrival in Russia that he had been deployed,” the NIS said.
The soldier said North Korean forces had experienced “significant losses during battle.”
The SBU also said the men had told interrogators they were experienced army soldiers, and one said he was sent to Russia for training, not to fight.
The NIS said it would continue to work with the SBU to share information on North Korean fighters in Ukraine.
Judge who blocked release of Trump report was ‘plainly’ wrong, special counsel tells appeals court
- The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to move swiftly in reversing a judge’s order that had blocked the agency from releasing any part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump.
The emergency motion late Friday is the latest back and forth in a court dispute over whether any portion of Smith’s report can be made public before Trump takes office Jan. 20. The push to release it before Trump’s inauguration reflects concerns that the Justice Department under the Trump administration, which will include members of his personal legal team in key leadership roles, would be in position to prevent the report from coming to light.
The Justice Department revealed in a separate filing on Saturday that Smith resigned from the department on Friday after having submitted his Trump report to the attorney general. The move had been expected.
The department is hoping to release in the coming days one part of its two-volume report focused on Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The department has said it will not publicly disclose a separate volume — about Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021 — as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending.
Both investigations resulted in indictments of Trump, though Smith’s team abandoned both cases in November after Trump’s election win. Smith cited Justice Department policy that bars the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency defense bid Thursday to block the release of the election interference report, which covers Trump’s efforts before Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to undo the results of the 2020 election. The appeals court left in place an injunction from a Trump-appointed lower court judge, Aileen Cannon, that said none of the findings could be released until three days after the matter was resolved by the appeals court.
Lawyers for Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, then asked Cannon to extend her injunction and to hold a hearing on the merits of their request to halt the release of the report.
The Justice Department responded late Friday by asking the appeals court to immediately lift Cannon’s injunction altogether. The filing noted that in addition to temporarily blocking the release of the election interference report, Cannon’s action also prevents officials from sharing the classified documents report privately with the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees.
Cannon’s order is “plainly erroneous,” according to the department’s motion.
“The Attorney General is the Senate-confirmed head of the Department of Justice and is vested with the authority to supervise all officers and employees of the Department,” the Justice Department said. “The Attorney General thus has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates.”
Justice Department regulations call for special counsels to produce reports at the conclusion of their work, and it’s customary for such documents to be made public no matter the subject.
William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, released a special counsel report examining Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also released special counsel reports, including about Biden’s handling of classified information before Biden became president.
French far-right firebrand Le Pen buried in private ceremony
- The funeral was attended by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over her father’s political mantle, and other family members, political allies and close friends
LA TRINITÉ-SUR-MER, France: Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of France’s main postwar far-right movement, was buried Saturday in a private ceremony in his native Brittany amid tight security.
His funeral followed a mass in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the western region.
The funeral was attended by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over her father’s political mantle, and other family members, political allies and close friends.
Authorities beefed up security ahead of the ceremony, with barriers erected around the cemetery and dozens of police mobilized.
Security was tightened and protests banned after hundreds took to the streets in Paris and other cities to pop champagne corks and celebrate 96-year-old Le Pen’s death on Tuesday.
Marine Le Pen and one of her two sisters, Marie-Caroline, walked the few hundred meters between the family home and the small church of Saint-Joseph under blue skies in front of a small crowd of onlookers and several dozen journalists.
Among others attending the ceremony was Jordan Bardella, the leader of the party Le Pen co-founded, now called the National Rally, according to several sources.
Around 200 people were expected at the church service, after which Le Pen was buried in the vault where his parents rest.
“It’s moving for me to pay my last respects to him here and to pray for the salvation of his soul,” said one of the guests, Bruno Gollnisch, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s one-time right-hand man.
“He was a joyful comrade!“
Some locals praised Le Pen’s devotion to France.
“I came to pay tribute to a man who served France and loved France,” one mourner said.
“We’ve come to pay tribute to a great man who had the courage to say things,” said another. “He was a visionary. He loved France and its people and they had values that are being lost, like love of the nation.”
On Friday, regional authorities issued an order banning demonstrations to avoid “the risk of disruption and counter-demonstrations likely to provoke clashes.”
Separately, a ceremony will take place on January 16 at the Notre Dame du Val-de-Grace church in Paris that will be open to the public.
Opponents on the left said they could not mourn the death of a “fascist.”
But the government condemned rallies celebrating Le Pen’s passing. Prime Minister Francois Bayrou described him as a “fighter” and “figure of French political life,” comments that caused consternation on the left.
Le Pen’s staunchly anti-immigration National Front (FN), founded in 1972, won its first seats in the National Assembly in 1984.
Then, in 2002, Le Pen burst onto the frontline of French politics by edging Socialist Lionel Jospin in presidential elections to make the run-off against right-winger Jacques Chirac.
Nicknamed “the devil of the Republic” by opponents, he was often openly racist, made no secret of anti-Semitic views — for which he received criminal convictions — and boasted of torturing prisoners during France’s war against Algeria.
His politician daughter Marine Le Pen rapidly took steps toward making the far right an electable force, renaming it the National Rally (RN) and embarking on a policy known as “dediabolization” (de-demonization).
She threw her father out of the party for his anti-Semitism but the pair had reconciled in recent years.
President Emmanuel Macron did not make any personal comment on Le Pen’s death. His office issued a terse written statement saying history would judge Le Pen and adding that the president sent his condolences to the family.
But Le Pen’s death marked a sign of his political rehabilitation among senior RN figures who rushed to hail his contribution.
“He always served France and defended its identity and sovereignty,” RN party chief Bardella, 29, said in a tribute mentioning none of the controversies that surrounded his life.
Australia state premier calls synagogue attack an escalation in anti-Semitic crime
- Australia has seen a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the last year, including graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney
SYDNEY: The premier of Australia’s New South Wales state Chris Minns said on Sunday that an attack on a Sydney synagogue on Saturday marked an escalation in anti-Semitic crime in the state, after police said the attack was attempted arson.
Australia has seen a series of anti-Semitic incidents in the last year, including graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney, as well as an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne that police ruled as terrorism.
In the latest incident, police were notified of anti-Semitic graffiti on a synagogue in the inner suburb of Newtown early on Saturday. An arson attempt was also made on the synagogue, police later said.
“This is an escalation in anti-Semitic crime in New South Wales. Police and the government remain very concerned that an accelerant may have been used,” Minns, the leader of Australia’s most populous state, said on Sunday in a televised media conference alongside state police commissioner Karen Webb.
“In the last 24 hours, these matters have now been taken over by counter-terrorism command,” Webb said.
A house in Sydney’s east, a hub of the city’s Jewish community, was also daubed with anti-Semitic graffiti, police said on Saturday, adding they were also probing offensive comments on a street poster in the suburb of Marrickville.
On Friday, a special police task force was set up to investigate an attack on the Southern Sydney Synagogue in the suburb of Allawah in the early hours of Friday morning.
David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, said on Sunday he welcomed extra resources promised by the government to probe the recent incidents.
“The New South Wales government has also provided us with additional funding to enhance Jewish communal security,” Ossip added in a statement.
On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, referring to the Southern Sydney Synagogue incident, said that there was “no place in Australia, our tolerant multicultural community, for this sort of criminal activity.”
The number of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents have increased in Australia since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel launched its war on Gaza. Some Jewish organizations have said the government has not taken sufficient action in response.
