Prominent human rights attorney quits international court over failure to prosecute Venezuela

LONDON: London will unveil a significant package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, which marks three years since the start of its war with Ukraine, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Sunday.
“This is also the time to turn the screws on (Vladimir) Putin’s Russia,” Lammy said in a statement.
“Tomorrow, I plan to announce the largest package of sanctions against Russia since the early days of the war — eroding their military machine and reducing revenues fueling the fires of destruction in Ukraine,” he added.

UK’s decision to ramp up sanctions comes as US President Donald Trump has in recent weeks sought to sideline Kyiv and its European backers from talks with Russia on the future of the conflict.
“This is a critical moment in the history of Ukraine, Britain and all of Europe... Now is the time for Europe to double down on our support for Ukraine,” said Lammy.
London has already imposed sanctions on 1,900 people and organizations with link’s to Putin’s government since the start of the war, as of January 2025.
Its sanctions target the Russian financial, aviation, military and energy sectors, including through bank asset freezes, travel bans, and trade restrictions.

EU countries last week agreed a new round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum set to be formally adopted on Monday.

In his statement, Lammy reiterated UK’s military backing, which includes a pledge to provide £3 billion ($3.78 billion) annually to Kyiv and “being ready and willing to provide UK troops as part of peacekeeping forces if necessary.”
“Off the battlefield, we will work with the US and European partners to achieve a sustainable, just peace, and in doing so, remaining clear that there can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Lammy added.

On Saturday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held separate phone calls with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, repeating a similar message to Lammy’s.
Starmer is headed to Washington to meet Trump on Thursday, hoping to act as a “bridge” between the US and Europe to ensure territorial and security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a deal to end the war.
The task looks increasingly challenging following a public spat in the last week between Zelensky and Trump, who called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” and hailed “good talks” with Russia.
Trump also accused Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron of doing nothing to end the war in a Fox News interview on Friday.
European countries fear that if Ukraine is forced into a bad deal by Washington then that will leave Putin claiming victory and the continent at the mercy of an emboldened Moscow.
 

OXON HILL, Maryland: President Donald Trump said Saturday that “nobody’s ever seen anything” like his administration’s sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees and shrink the size of government, congratulating himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing.”
Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, Trump promised, “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come.”
The president argues that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the US-Mexico border and extending tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during his hour-plus speech, predicting that the GOP will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president’s party typically struggles during midterm elections. He insisted of Republicans, “I don’t think we’ve been at this level, maybe ever.”
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump said, likening his new administration’s opening month to being on a roll through the first four holes of a round of golf — which he said gives him confidence for the fifth hole.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, and the billionaire suggested Saturday that more might be coming.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
A short time later, an “HR” email was sent to federal workers across numerous agencies titled “What did you do last week” and asking that recipients “reply with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” It cautioned against sending classified information, and gave a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Trump also said during the speech that he’d carry out harsher immigration policies. But those efforts have so far largely been overshadowed by his administration’s mass federal firings. He announced that one federal entity with a worforce that had been significantly reduced, the US Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
“The agency’s name has been removed from its former building,” he said.
The president also repeated his previous promises to scrutinize the country’s gold depository at Fort Knox.
“Would anybody like to join us,” he said to cheers from the crowd at the suggestion that administration forces might converge on the complex. “We want to see if the gold is still there.”
But Trump also devoted large chunks of his address reliving last year’s presidential race, jeering at former President Joe Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former Vice President Kamala Harris — his Election Day opponent — gleefully proclaiming, “I haven’t said that name in a while.”
He went on to use an expletive to describe Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives have urged him not to use foul language.
Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him, while noting, “we’ve been treated very unfairly by China and many other countries.”
On the sidelines of the conference, Trump met with conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda amid rising tensions in Europe over Russia’s war in Ukraine. After he took the stage, Trump saluted Duda and Argentine President Javier Milei, who himself separately addressed the conference.
Trump called Duda “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine” and said “you must be doing something right, hanging out with Trump.” He noted that Milei was “a MAGA guy, too, Make Argentina Great Again.”
Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent US policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending fighting in Ukraine.
Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, which has alarmed US allies. Trump is meeting on Monday at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron and Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump also has begun a public back and forth with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the US president called a “dictator” while falsely suggesting that Ukraine started the war — though on Friday he acknowledged that Russia attacked its neighbor.
Trump told the CPAC crowd, “I’m dealing with President Zelensky. I’m dealing with President Putin” and added of fighting in Ukraine, “It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”
Zelensky has said Trump is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.”
For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under Biden, pledged that Ukraine would play in any major effort to end the fighting, vowing “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Trump’s administration has dispensed with that notion, as the Republican president has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.
“I think we’re pretty close to a deal, and we better be close to a deal,” Trump said Saturday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later told reporters that Trump and his team were focused on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and “the President is very confident we can get it done this week,” though such a tight timeline seems difficult.
Later, the president and first lady Melania Trump were hosting dinner at the White House for governors from both parties who were in Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association.
Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-Amendment grounds.
The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.