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Ukrainian drones smashed into high-rise apartment blocks on the outskirts of Moscow in the early hours of Tuesday, with both sides saying it was the largest attack on the Russian capital of the three-year conflict. The Kremlin condemned the attack, which comes just hours before top US and Ukrainian officials sat down for talks in Saudi Arabia and after three years of Russian aerial barrages on Ukrainian cities. Kyiv said the attack should push Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept its call for a halt to long-range aerial strikes, a proposal Moscow has previously ruled out.Ukrainian and US diplomats were set to meet for talks on ending the conflict, with Kyiv saying it would try to get Washington — which has resumed talks with Moscow under President Donald Trump — on board with the idea.The attack killed at least two people and wounded several more, Russian officials said.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Kyiv targeting “residential houses”, claiming its forces only hit military infrastructure, despite near daily attacks on Ukraine’s civilian areas and thousands of Ukrainian civilians killed by its offensive.Moscow’s army said it intercepted 337 Ukrainian drones across the country in what Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the “most massive enemy drone attack on Moscow.”At the site of one attack, AFP journalists saw holes on the upper floors of an apartment block and broken glass and debris strewn across the asphalt.- ‘All the neighbours jumped’ -“We were sleeping, there was an explosion, the children screamed,” Yevgenia Bakatuyeva, a 38-year-old who lives in one of the apartment blocks that was hit, told AFP.”I opened my door, and all the neighbours jumped out. Somebody was in blood,” she added. Artyom, a 34-year-old car sales manager also living in the building, said he had “only seen such things on TV” and that it was “scary when in real life.” Ukraine has previously targeted Moscow, but deadly strikes so far away from the front lines are rare.No air raid alert or siren was announced in the capital amid the attack.More than 90 drones were intercepted over the Moscow Region, which surrounds the heavily defended capital, and another 126 were downed over the western Kursk region, where Russia’s ground forces are pushing back a Ukrainian cross-border incursion.- Truce in the sky -Russian aviation officials temporarily closed the four main airports serving Moscow amid the attack.Two people were killed in the attacks — a 50-year-old man and a 38-year-old security guard — Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said in a post on Telegram.The health ministry said six people were in hospital, including a child and one person in an extremely serious condition, Russian state news agencies reported.Russia’s investigative committee called it a “terrorist attack” and opened a criminal investigation.In the Vladimir region, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of Moscow, a village of around 800 people was evacuated after two drones there were shot down, local authorities said.Ukraine also called it the “largest drone attack in history” saying it “lasted all night and through the morning.”- ‘Signal to Putin’ -“This is an additional signal to Putin that he should also be interested in a ceasefire in the air,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of the National Security Council’s Center for Countering Disinformation.Ukraine is set to present the United States with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia, hoping to restore support from its key benefactor, which under Trump has demanded concessions to end the three-year conflict.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will take part in the Saudi talks, indicated the idea had promise.Russia has previously ruled out partial ceasefires.The talks will be the most senior since a disastrous White House meeting last month, when Trump berated Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for purported ingratitude.Since Trump’s dressing down of Zelensky, Washington has suspended military aid to Ukraine as well as intelligence sharing and access to satellite imagery in a bid to force it to the negotiating table.Russia’s foreign ministry said it had taken OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu — in Moscow on Tuesday — to the site of one of the attacks.Russia’s military also launched a ballistic missile and 126 drones at Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said. AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions overnight as air defence downed a wave of drones.A bomb attack on the eastern town of Kostiantynivka wounded four people, Ukrainian officials said.

The UK coastguard ended the search for a missing crew member after a cargo ship ran into a US-military chartered tanker carrying jet fuel in the North Sea on Monday.HM Coastguard rescued 36 crew members from the Stena Immaculate tanker and Solong container vessel, with one taken to hospital.”One crew member of the Solong remains unaccounted for, after an extensive search for the missing crew member sadly they have not been found and the search has ended,” said Matthew Atkinson, Divisional Commander for HM Coastguard.Images showed a huge plume of thick, black smoke and flames rising from the scene about 10 miles (16 kilometres) off the east England coast, sparking concerns of “multiple toxic hazards”.The Stena Immaculate tanker was “anchored off the North Sea coast near Hull… (and) was struck by the container ship Solong”, the Stena’s US-based operators Crowley said in a statement.The Stena was on a short-term US military charter with Military Sealift Command, according to Jillian Morris, the spokesperson for the command that operates civilian-crewed ships providing ocean transport for the US Defense Department.Crowley said the impact of the collision “ruptured” the tanker “containing A1-jet fuel” and triggered a fire, with fuel “reported released”.It was carrying around 220,000 barrels of jet fuel while the Solong was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide, according to the Lloyd’s List information service, but it is not known if any of the flammable compound had leaked.The two vessels were still on fire 12 hours after the collision, said the coastguard.A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the situation “extremely concerning”. All crew members aboard the Stena Immaculate were confirmed to be alive, a spokeswoman for the tanker’s Swedish owner, Stena Bulk, told AFP.- ‘Toxic hazards’ -A spokesman for the government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch spokesperson said “Our team of inspectors and support staff are gathering evidence and undertaking a preliminary assessment of the accident to determine our next steps”.Ivor Vince, founder of ASK Consultants, an environmental risk advisory group, told AFP that “the good news is it’s not persistent, it’s not like a crude oil spill”. “Most of it will evaporate quite quickly and what doesn’t evaporate will be degraded by microorganisms quite quickly”, he added, though warning that “it will kill fish and other creatures”.Paul Johnston, a senior scientist at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at Exeter University, said “we are extremely concerned about the multiple toxic hazards these chemicals could pose to marine life.”The jet fuel entered the water close to a breeding ground for harbour porpoises, sodium cyanide is “a highly toxic chemical that could cause serious harm”, he added.- Humber traffic suspended -All vessel movements were “suspended” in the Humber estuary that flows into the North Sea, according to Associated British Ports (ABP), which operates in the Ports of Hull and Immingham in the region.  The German Central Command for Maritime Emergencies said it was also dispatching a vessel capable of fire fighting and oil recovery.The alarm about the crash near the port city of Hull in East Yorkshire was raised at 0948 GMT.A coastguard helicopter, a plane, lifeboats from four towns and other nearby vessels were part of the large rescue operation, UK Coastguard said.Grimsby native Paul Lancaster, a former seaman, told AFP that “I don’t understand how two ships that big could collide”. “There must have been a massive engineering problem,” he said outside a pub in Grimsby.- Collisions rare -Collisions remain rare in the busy North Sea.In October 2023, two cargo ships, the Verity and the Polesie, collided near Germany’s Heligoland islands in the North Sea.Three people were killed and two others are still missing and considered dead.In October 2015, the Flinterstar freighter, carrying 125 tonnes of diesel and 427 tonnes of fuel oil, sank after colliding with the Al Oraiq tanker eight kilometres (five miles) off the Belgian coast.

Protesters in New York and rights groups expressed outrage Monday over the arrest of a leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, as President Donald Trump vowed further crackdowns.Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate and one of the most prominent faces of the university’s high-profile protests, was arrested by US immigration officials over the weekend despite holding a permanent residency green card.The Department of Homeland Security, confirming Khalil’s arrest on Sunday, claimed he had “led activities aligned to Hamas” and that the DHS action was taken “in coordination with the Department of State.””We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” the president wrote Monday on his Truth Social platform.”This is the first arrest of many to come,” he pledged.The protests at Columbia, launched last year in opposition to Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, brought widespread media attention as tensions mounted on campus and spread to other universities around the country.Some protests turned violent and saw campus buildings occupied, while students protesting Israel’s conduct were frequently pitted against pro-Israel campaigners, many of whom were Jewish.Trump and other Republicans have broadly accused the protesters of supporting Hamas, the Palestinian militant group and US-designated terrorist group whose deadly attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel sparked the war.While the Trump administration moves to quickly deport Khalil, who has reportedly been moved to the southern state of Louisiana, a federal judge on Monday ordered authorities to halt proceedings.The order, seen by AFP, by Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York also called for a preliminary hearing on Wednesday.- ‘A kidnapping’ -The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned Khalil’s arrest, calling it “unprecedented, illegal, and un-American.””The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, in a statement.On Monday afternoon, over 1,000 protesters gathered in New York to express their outrage at Khalil’s arrest.”This was essentially a kidnapping,” said 42-year-old Tobi, who declined to give her last name for fear of retaliation.”It seems like a clear targeting of activists, which is a really, really dangerous precedent,” she said.According to his supporters, Khalil was arrested late Saturday night while returning with his pregnant wife to their residence in Columbia student housing.”This is a dismal moment in American history. We must not go down this authoritarian path one step further,” said Michael Thaddeu, one of around 50 professors who expressed their concern Monday at a press conference.The Trump administration has particularly targeted Columbia over its handling of the protests, threatening to revoke billions in federal funding if more action is not taken.On Friday, four government agencies announced initial cuts of $400 million.The arrest also prompted an outcry from the United Nations, with the spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying Monday “it is crucial to underscore the importance of respecting the right of freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly everywhere.”

Insurance market Lloyd’s of London on Monday said it had taken a financial hit totalling about $2.3 billion from the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year.”We are still assessing the full impact” of the January fires that will affect 2025 results, chief financial officer Burkhard Keese said in a statement.The fires around the United States’ second city burned for three weeks, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.They destroyed thousands of structures, devastating the affluent Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, Malibu and the community of Altadena in the wider county.Private meteorological firm AccuWeather has estimated the total damage and economic loss at between $250 billion and $275 billion.Lloyd’s of London published financial results on Monday showing pre-tax profits of $11.4 billion for 2024, slightly less than the previous year.The loss from the fires compares with an estimated hit of some 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) announced by German reinsurance giant Munich Re last month.At the time it called them the “the most substantial wildfire losses in the history of the insurance industry”.Munich Re said it was well-prepared to absorb the costs from such natural catastrophes and it would continue to cover wildfires as long as the compensation was appropriate.

Workers in Washington on Monday began removing a “Black Lives Matter” street mural installed during the height of 2020 racial justice protests, bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump.Large, yellow lettering reading “Black Live Matter” has been painted on a roadway near the White House since June 2020, when protests broke out across the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.City officials in the US capital have credited the art installation with calming tensions near the White House, where violent clashes between protesters and security personnel had occurred in the days prior.Trump, who was president at the time of the unrest, returned to office in January seeking to overturn so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices which spread widely throughout the public and private sectors following the George Floyd protests.Congressional Republicans and Trump aides had eyed the mural as part of their move to force changes in the administration of Washington, an overwhelmingly Democratic city.Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has sought to establish a good working relationship with Trump, seeking to head off Republican calls for fully overturning the city’s right to govern itself.She has also been worried that mass layoffs of federal workers by Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk could wreak havoc on the city’s finances.”We have bigger fish to fry than fights over what has been very important to us and to the history, and especially in our ability to keep our city safe during that time — that mural played a very important part,” Bowser told reporters last week.”But now our focus is on making sure our residents and our economy survives.”When asked if it was in response to White House pressure, she said: “I’m not going to talk about specifics… but I think it’s safe to say that people don’t like it, didn’t like it.”As jackhammers plowed away Monday at the pavement, numerous onlookers snapped photos of the work.Two African American women told AFP they had come to get a final look at the mural, expressing dismay at the decision to remove it.Both said they were lifelong Democrats.”It’s history… and now they’re basically saying it didn’t happen,” said one of the two, a 54-year-old caregiver from nearby Virginia who requested anonymity because of her political work.”The money you’re spending to remove it could’ve been spent on so many other things,” she said.”What’s next?” asked her friend, 57-year-old Tajuana McCallister, a healthcare worker in Maryland.”Black history clearly doesn’t matter to him,” she said, nodding toward the White House.The site, erected during the protests, showed leaders “have compassion, (were saying) ‘we hear you,'” according to the caregiver.Its removal, she said, shows “what you (leaders) said didn’t matter.”

Elon Musk said X was hit Monday by a major cyberattack, raising questions as to whether the politically divisive billionaire is being targeted or his decision to gut staff at what was once Twitter is haunting the social network.Reports of problems with X started early Monday, with users in Asia, Europe, and North America saying they could not access the platform, according to the Downdetector tracking site.”There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk said in a post on the platform, which was working sporadically as the day wore on.The SpaceX and Tesla boss also blamed a cyberattack, although he provided no evidence, for crashing the site last year when an interview with Donald Trump was about to be streamed on it.Musk shared a post from an account called DogeDesigner suggesting that the latest cyberattack was another burst of animosity towards him, in line with recent protests against the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he leads and vandalization of Tesla facilities.Musk speculated that such an attack would take tremendous resources, and that it was the work of a country or large coordinated group.During an interview on Fox Business, he alleged that computers used in the attack appeared to have digital addresses in the Ukraine area and that X was still trying to figure out exactly what happened.Cybersecurity experts say that it is difficult to assess the situation without being able to see into X operations, but the duration of the trouble is a sign of an attack.”It’s cyberwar hitting at full force,” said Chad Cragle of cyber defense platform Deepwatch.”With Musk in the spotlight and political tensions at a peak, these attacks bear all the indicators of nation-state aggression.”- Ax wielding -Trump responded last week to growing criticism over unprecedented cuts to the US government overseen by his billionaire advisor Musk, saying they should be carefully targeted.”We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet,'” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.The president’s message represents the first significant move to rein in the power accorded to Musk, as DOGE works toward gutting federal staffing and spending.DOGE’s cost-cutting campaign has faced increasing resistance on multiple fronts, including court rulings and some pressure from lawmakers.Trump confirmed that he had convened his cabinet to deliver the message that they, not Musk, were in charge of their departments.Outages on the X social media platform left tens of thousands of users unable to access the site intermittently over the course of hours, according to monitors.At the peak, more than 40,000 people reported outages, the site said.After Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022, the majority of employees left or were fired, raising concerns about whether staffing was in place to keep the platform safe and stable.Under his ownership, the platform has experienced technical issues and reinstated accounts of right-wing conspiracy theorists and Trump.Advocacy groups say misinformation has flourished on X under Musk, who has come under fire for spreading it to his huge online audience.

A luxurious superyacht that belonged to Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov may be headed to the auction block after a US judge on Monday dismissed a competing claim to ownership of the $300 million vessel.The 348-foot (106-metre) Amadea has been docked in the California port of San Diego after it was seized by US authorities from the sanctioned Russian oligarch.Another wealthy Russian, Eduard Khudainatov, the former head of Russian state oil and gas company Rosneft, claimed in a New York court to be the rightful owner of the vessel but his claim was dismissed by District Judge Dale Ho.According to prosecutors, Khudainatov was a “straw owner” of the Amadea and the true owner was Kerimov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned by the United States in 2018 and again in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Following the invasion, the US Justice Department under then-president Joe Biden began seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs close to Putin, an operation known as Task Force KleptoCapture.President Donald Trump disbanded the task force after taking office.The US Congress passed legislation last year that allows for the sale of seized Russian assets, with the proceeds going to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.The Amadea, which has a helipad, pool, jacuzzi and “winter garden” on deck, according to the website superyachtfan.com, was seized in Fiji in April 2022 at the request of US authorities and later transferred to San Diego.

The US energy secretary vowed Monday to reset federal energy policy to favor fossil fuels and deprioritize climate change as industry leaders gathered at their biggest event since President Donald Trump returned to office.In the conference’s opening session, Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited the Trump administration’s moves to cut red tape that is delaying oil projects and promote liquefied natural gas exports as examples of a pivot away from policies pursued under former president Joe Biden.”The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens,” Wright told a packed auditorium for the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) conference.Since returning to Washington seven weeks ago, Trump and his team have overhauled the existing economic order at a dizzying pace, launching trade wars against allies and hollowing government agencies the president and his allies dislike.Trump made energy policy a central part of his agenda with his day-one “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, promising during his inaugural address to “end the Green New Deal” in favor of “that liquid gold under our feet.”But Mark Brownstein, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said Wright’s tone was “long on rhetoric,” adding, “at some point the administration needs to get off the campaign stump speech and get on with the business of governing.”Brownstein described many CERA attendees as uncertain about investments, not only because of Trump’s shifting position on energy and climate change, but also the nearly daily pivots on tariffs.”The energy industry is a capital-intensive business and what they need to deploy capital at scale is certainty and consistency,” Brownstein told AFP. CERA’s opening day coincided with deep stock market losses after Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a US recession.Protesters held boisterous demonstrations outside the event in Houston. Advocacy group Oil Change International blasted the oil industry for pollution near industrial facilities and for fossil fuel investments that are worsening climate change.- Change ahead? -Energy played a key supporting role in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, in which he pointed to higher gasoline prices as a reason more production was needed, embodied by his slogan: “Drill, baby, drill.”Trump’s January 20 executive order represents a potentially wide-ranging attack on tax incentives which had been embraced by energy companies to advance billions of dollars of energy transition projects.These projects were connected to laws enacted under Biden to mitigate climate change.Some pundits think Trump will stop short of actions canceling existing projects where workers have been hired, including many in conservative districts.Appearing just after Wright, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth warned that “swinging from one extreme to the other” on policy is “not the right policy approach in a long cycle industry like this.”Wirth welcomed Trump’s executive orders on permitting reform, but said “we need to see some of this stuff put into legislation so that it’s more durable and it’s not at risk of being swung back in another direction by a future administration” with different priorities.- Conciliatory tone on tariffs -Wright downplayed the upheaval on trade policy after his remarks, noting Trump dropped many of his most impactful tariffs in his first term.It’s “too early to say on tariffs, but I feel quite confident having a smart businessman every day working for America writ large, not an interest group or a particular industry,” Wright said. “I’m pretty optimistic about the outcome.”Wright said there were “vigorous” closed-door debates about tariffs within the administration, rejecting the idea that there was ideological uniformity on the issue.He also suggested the Trump administration wouldn’t challenge all Biden administration renewable energy projects, saying that while he wouldn’t have picked some of the same projects for loans, “we inherit a loan book… and we follow the rule of law.”

US lawmakers raced Monday to avert a weekend government shutdown with a funding deal loudly backed by President Donald Trump as he pushes a polarizing plan to drastically downsize the federal bureaucracy.Republicans have released a stopgap bill to keep the government funded through September 30 that would give Trump time to advance his agenda of tax cuts, mass deportations and boosted energy production through Congress over the summer.Lawmakers hope to advance the bill through the House on Tuesday, with Senate approval envisioned before Friday night’s midnight shutdown deadline. A handful of fiscal conservatives reliably vote against stopgaps — known as continuing resolutions (CRs) — because they mostly freeze spending levels, squandering opportunities for budget cuts.At least one House Republican so far has opposed the 99-page CR, while several others have been noncommittal.A lapse in funding going into next week could result in thousands of public workers being sent home without pay and an array of government operations being hit — plunging the country into chaos early in Trump’s second term.House Speaker Mike Johnson is betting on the president pressuring any potential party rebels after the Republican leader endorsed the measure in a social media post urging Republicans to “remain UNITED — NO DISSENT.”Congress needs a CR because it is so evenly split that it has been unable to approve the 12 separate bills that allocate full 2025 budgets for various federal agencies.But with Johnson leading a tiny majority, he can likely afford to lose only one or two votes from his own side.  – ‘Slush fund’ -Almost all House Democrats are expected to vote against the bill, which would drop domestic spending by about $13 billion from 2024 levels, while increasing defense spending by about $6 billion.But the negotiations are something of a minefield for the left, which is under pressure to offer strong opposition to Trump’s agenda, but wary of being blamed for a shutdown. The latest funding fight comes with Trump pushing unprecedented federal firings as he begins unilaterally shrinking or shuttering agencies from USAID to the Department of Education.   The drive is being spearheaded by Trump aide Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has enraged much of the country and Congress — including Republican lawmakers — with his seemingly haphazard approach. While Musk enjoys Trump’s confidence, polling shows he is deeply unpopular among ordinary Americans, and his cuts have sparked angry confrontations between Republicans and their constituents at town halls.Courts have been hearing a flood of challenges to Musk’s authority, and Republican senators have urged the SpaceX and Tesla boss to seek congressional approval for his program — the sole lawful means for the White House to block spending approved by lawmakers.Although there is no appetite on either side for a shutdown, the prospect of the stopgap making it to Trump’s desk before the deadline was hanging by a thread as party leaders prepared to muscle it through the House Rules Committee on Monday.Senate Republicans have to clear anything the House passes by a 60-vote threshold, and one conservative has indicated he will be a no, meaning Majority Leader John Thune needs the support of at least eight Democrats. “This is a shutdown bill that’s bad for the economy — let Trump shutdown whatever he wants, hurting everyday folks to use money for tax breaks for the uber-rich. Hell no!” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine posted on X.Patty Murray, the top Senate Democrat on government funding negotiations, called the stopgap a “slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending.”But Johnson voiced hope that the measure would still get enough support from the minority party.”It’s going to be up to… the Senate Democrats to do the right thing and I don’t think they’re going to shut the government down,” Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill.

The chief prosecutor in Los Angeles said Monday he was asking for the withdrawal of a resentencing motion for Erik and Lyle Menendez because the brothers continue to lie about the 1989 murder of their wealthy parents.The pair were jailed for life after a blockbuster legal drama three decades ago detailing the shotgun slayings of Jose and Kitty Menendez at the family’s luxury Beverly Hills mansion, which the brothers staged to look like a mafia hit.But a growing campaign to free them — given new life by a hit Netflix series — has pursued a three-pronged strategy: clemency, a new trial or resentencing.Prosecutors in Los Angeles had previously been supportive, but newly installed District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who has already opposed a new trial, on Monday said there should be no resentencing either.”In looking at whether or not the Menendezes have exhibited the full insight and complete responsibility for their crimes, they have not,” Hochman told reporters during a press conference.”They have told 20 different lies, they’ve actually admitted to four of them, but 16 realized lies remain unacknowledged.”Hochman said he was asking the court, which is expected to sit on March 20 and 21, to withdraw a supportive motion submitted by his predecessor in “the interests of justice.”Erik, now 54, and Lyle, 57, have spent more than three decades behind bars.During two trials in the 1990s that gripped America, prosecutors painted their parents’ shotgun murders as a cold-hearted bid by the then-young men — Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 — to get their hands on their parents’ $14 million fortune.But their attorneys described the 1989 killings as an act of desperate self-defense by young men subjected to years of sexual abuse and psychological violence at the hands of a tyrannical father and a complicit mother.The case saw a huge surge of renewed interest last year with the release of the Netflix hit “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”Last month Hochman set out his opposition to the brothers’ attempt to get a new trial.In a forensic presentation on Monday, he used much of the same reasoning to lay out his position on resentencing, which he said hinged on the brothers’ continued unwillingness to come clean about their crimes.Hochman said the men had offered five disparate explanations for the deaths of their parents, ranging from an initial claim that it was a mafia hit to the self-defense that they ultimately relied on at trial.In reality, he said, the murders were meticulously planned and cold-blooded.He said the slayings were followed up with attempts to destroy a will they thought would cut them out of the parents’ fortune, and months of deceit, including attempts to get people to lie in court for them.But, he said, his office would be prepared to revisit the idea of resentencing in the future if the brothers “accept complete responsibility for all their criminal actions.”The third route to freedom for the brothers rests with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has the power to grant clemency at any time.