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Ten suspects went on trial in Paris on Monday over the 2016 robbery of the US celebrity Kim Kardashian, which saw some $10 million worth of jewellery stolen from the reality TV star and influencer.Kardashian, 44, was traumatised and left Paris hours after the robbery on the night of October 2-3, 2016. She was not in court for the start of the trial but is due to testify on May 13 in a highly anticipated appearance.Those on trial are mainly men in their 60s and 70s with previous criminal records and underworld nicknames like “Old Omar” and “Blue Eyes” that recall the old-school French gangsters of 1960s and 1970s films noirs.The lawyer for one of the victims is eager to dispel the image of “kind old men” on trial.”We need to end this myth of friendly, Robin Hood-style pensioners,” said Henri de Beauregard, who represents the night receptionist forced to accompany the robbers.The nine men and one woman on trial, while charged in connection with the robbery, are not currently in custody.Kardashian, then 35, was threatened with a gun to the head and tied up with her mouth taped up. The theft was the biggest against a private individual in France in the past 20 years.The trial will also go into how the perpetrators received the information as to where Kardashian was staying during Paris Fashion Week, and picked the very moment when her bodyguard was absent, accompanying her sister Kourtney to a night club.It is thought Kardashian’s frequent posts about her wealth, personal life and whereabouts may have facilitated the perpetrators’ actions. – Haul never recovered -The star was staying at an exclusive hotel in central Paris favoured by celebrities when two armed and masked men stormed into her room at around 3:00 am after arriving at the establishment by bicycle.They shouted that they wanted the diamond engagement ring from her now ex-husband, the US rapper Kayne West.Kardashian had been showing it off on her social media channels — it alone was valued at $4 million (3.5 million euros).They made off with the ring among $10 million worth of jewels.The only item recovered was a diamond necklace dropped in the street while the thieves escaped.It all lasted just 10 minutes, with Kardashian’s bodyguard arriving to rescue his client after he was alerted.The suspects were arrested three months after the robbery, through DNA evidence.But the gold seized was apparently melted down and investigators, who took hundreds of thousands of euros from the suspects when they were arrested, believe that much of the stolen haul was sold in Belgium.- ‘Easy’ heist -Twelve suspects were charged, with 10 going on trial on Monday. One died in March this year and another is to be tried separately for health reasons.”It wasn’t a major armed robbery” but an “easy” heist, said the main suspect, Aomar Ait Khedache, 68, known as “Old Omar”. His DNA from the scene helped investigators find him and the co-defendants.He admitted tying up Kardashian, but disputes investigators’ claims that he was the mastermind behind the robbery.He says he was approached by an unnamed “sponsor” who suggested the scheme on behalf of an “informant” very close to the star, who then gave them the green light.According to his lawyer, Khedache now has severe hearing and speaking problems and can only express himself in writing.Presiding judge David De Pas began the hearing by swearing in the stenographers who will transcribe the trial for his benefit.Another key suspect is Didier Dubreucq, 69, known as “Blue Eyes”, accused of being the second person who stormed into Kardashian’s room. He denies the charges.Yunice Abbas, 71, meanwhile stayed in the lobby while the two other men went up to her room, it is alleged.He controversially sought to capitalise on the crime by writing a book titled: “I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian”.Others on trial are accused of being facilitators and informants, including Gary Madar, the brother of Kardashian’s long-serving Paris driver.He is accused of supplying information about her movements, which he denies.As the first day of the trial came to a close, most defendants denied the charges, with Aomar Ait Khedadche writing “NO” on a piece of paper.Yunice Abbas, however, admitted he “took part”.”But kidnapping and false imprisonment are not in my vocabulary. I don’t do that,” he said.The trial is due to last until May 23.

After delaying an earlier attempt due to bad weather, Amazon is preparing to launch its first batch of Project Kuiper internet satellites on Monday, stepping into direct competition with Elon Musk’s Starlink.The mission, called Kuiper Atlas 1, is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 7:00 pm local time (2300 GMT), aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that will carry 27 satellites into orbit. Weather conditions appeared 75 percent favorable.Project Kuiper, a subsidiary of the online retail giant founded by Jeff Bezos, is playing catch-up with Starlink — SpaceX’s sprawling network of internet satellites that has reshaped the sector and handed Musk significant geopolitical clout.The $10 billion initiative plans to deploy 3,200 satellites into low Earth orbit — the region of space up to 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) above the planet — with hopes of going live later this year.Pricing has not yet been revealed, but Amazon has pledged it will align with its reputation as a low-cost retailer.With Monday’s launch, Amazon will formally enter a crowded and fast-growing field that includes not just Starlink but other emerging players in the satellite internet race.SpaceX launched the first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019 and now boasts more than 6,750 operational units, serving over five million customers worldwide — by far the sector’s dominant force.Starlink has also provided crucial internet access in disaster and war zones, including Morocco after its devastating 2023 earthquake and on the frontlines in Ukraine’s war against Russia.Amazon plans to accelerate launches in the coming months and years, with more than 80 flights booked through United Launch Alliance (a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture), France’s Arianespace, Bezos’s own Blue Origin, and even Musk’s SpaceX.Its satellites will gradually join the swelling ranks of low Earth orbit, alongside Starlink, Europe’s OneWeb, and China’s Guowang constellation.The increasing crowding of this orbital neighborhood has sparked concerns about congestion, potential collisions, and disruptions to astronomical observations.The expanding role of private companies in space has also raised thorny political questions, especially as Musk’s influence stretches beyond business into politics and diplomacy.Musk has sent mixed signals on Starlink’s future role in Ukraine, where it remains vital to Kyiv’s war effort — a conflict that Musk ally US President Donald Trump has vowed to bring to an end.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday he was not concerned “at present” about American stores potentially running out of items due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.The US president has introduced a 10 percent baseline tariff against most nations, and a far higher levy totaling 145 percent on goods coming from China.The White House also introduced several sector-specific tariffs of 25 percent, and has threatened to reimpose higher measures on dozens of trading partners if they do not reach a deal to lower trade barriers with the United States.Asked during an interview with “Fox and Friends” if he was concerned about reports of empty shelves due to the tariffs, Bessent replied: “Not at present.””We have some great retailers,” he said during the Fox News interview. “I assume they pre-ordered.””I think we’ll see some elasticities. I think we’ll see replacements, and then we will see how quickly the Chinese want to de-escalate.”Most countries chose not to respond to the Trump administration’s new tariffs, with the exception of China, which hit back with its own targeted measures against US goods.Beijing has announced reciprocal tariffs of up to 15 percent against US agriculture goods like soybeans, corn and beef, and an additional minimum 125 percent sweeping tariff on all US imports.”I think it’s unsustainable from the Chinese side, so maybe they’ll call me one day,” Bessent said.”In the history of trade negotiations or trade slowdowns, it is the surplus country that always loses the most,” he added. 

Senior diplomats from the BRICS grouping of nations gathered Monday in Brazil to present a united front in the face of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies.The meeting comes at a critical moment for the world economy after the International Monetary Fund this week slashed growth forecasts over the impact of the American leader’s sweeping new tariffs.Foreign ministers from the ten-member trading bloc — which includes current-chair Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — will hold two days of talks in Rio de Janeiro, as a precursor to a July leaders summit.Ahead of the gathering, Brazil’s BRICS representative Mauricio Lyrio said diplomats were negotiating a joint declaration on “the centrality and importance of the multilateral trading system.”The BRICS grouping has expanded significantly since its 2009 inception, and now includes Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. It makes up nearly half of the global population and 39 percent of global GDP.Trump, since returning to the White House in January, has hit dozens of countries with a blanket 10 percent tariff, but China faces levies of up to 145 percent on many products.Beijing has responded with duties of 125 percent on US goods.At a summit last year, BRICS members discussed boosting non-dollar transactions, eliciting a swift rebuke from Trump, who threatened them with 100 percent tariffs if they undercut the US currency.Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira will host this week’s meeting that will be attended by Russia’s Sergei Lavrov and China’s Wang Yi among others.Speaking to Brazil’s O Globo newspaper, Lavrov said that BRICS nations planned to “increase the share of national currencies in transactions” between member states but said the talk of transitioning towards a unified BRICS currency was “premature.”- Russian ceasefire -The group is also likely to discuss the war in Ukraine, as Trump seeks to push Moscow and Kyiv toward a peace agreement.Russian President Vladimir Putin caused surprise on Monday by announcing a three-day ceasefire from May 8-10.The White House suggested however that the pause was not satisfactory, saying that Trump had “made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first.”Trump appeared to turn against Putin at the weekend after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Pope Francis’s funeral, saying he felt the Russian leader was “just tapping me along.”At the same time he has been pressuring Kyiv to give up hopes of reclaiming Russian-annexed Crimea.Climate change is also expected to feature high on Brazil’s agenda for the talks, which take place months before the major UN COP30 climate summit being hosted in the Amazon city of Belem.The BRICS will be joined for discussions on Tuesday by nine other “partner” countries, including several former Soviet states, as well as Cuba, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda and Nigeria.

Hip-hop pioneers Outkast and rock duo The White Stripes are among 2025’s class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, the organization announced late Sunday.Cyndi Lauper, Chubby Checker, Soundgarden, Bad Company and Joe Cocker round out the performer slate of artists nominated into the prestigious music pantheon.Hip hop icons Salt-N-Pepa along with rocker Warren Zevon will receive awards for musical influence, while the late record producer Thom Bell, pianist Nicky Hopkins and bassist Carol Kaye will receive the prizes for musical excellence.The Ahmet Ertegun Award, which goes to a non-performing industry notable, is this year bestowed on Lenny Waronker, whose resume includes heading Warner Bros. Records and signing Prince and R.E.M. The induction ceremony — which doubles as a star-studded concert gala rife with tributes to the honorees — will be held November 8 in Los Angeles.It will stream live on Disney+, and will air later on the network ABC.The inductees were announced live on ABC late Sunday on “American Idol,” during a special rock edition of the long-running music talent show.Eligible nominees into the Rock Hall must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to being nominated.Outkast, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker and Bad Company were all first-time nominees.The 2024 class of inductees included Cher, Mary J. Blige and Ozzy Osbourne.

Catholic cardinals agreed on Monday to begin a conclave on May 7 to elect a new pope, and highlighted clerical sexual abuse as one of the key challenges facing Pope Francis’s successor.So-called “Princes of the Church” under the age of 80 will meet in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new religious leader for the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.The date was decided at a meeting of cardinals of all ages early on Monday, two days after the funeral of Francis, who died on April 21 aged 88.The cardinals outlined the most pressing Church challenges including “evangelisation, the relationship with other faiths (and) the issue of abuse”, the Vatican said.”There was talk of the qualities that the new pontiff must possess to respond effectively to these challenges,” it added.The Church’s 252 cardinals were recalled to Rome after the Argentine’s death, although only 135 are eligible to vote in the conclave.They hail from all corners of the globe and many of them do not know each other.But they already had four meetings last week, so-called “general congregations”, where they began to become better acquainted.Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, 83, a former head of the Italian bishops’ conference, said there was a “beautiful fraternal atmosphere”.”Of course, there may be some difficulties because the voters have never been so numerous and not everyone knows each other,” he told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. On Monday, the Vatican closed the Sistine Chapel, where voting will take place under Michelangelo’s 16th-century ceiling frescoes, to begin preparations.So far there are few clues as to who the cardinals might choose.”I believe that if Francis has been the pope of surprises, this conclave will be too, as it is not at all predictable,” Spanish Cardinal Jose Cobo told El Pais in an interview published on Sunday.Francis was laid to rest on Saturday with a funeral and burial ceremony that drew 400,000 people to St Peter’s Square and beyond, including royalty, world leaders and ordinary pilgrims.On Sunday, about 70,000 mourners filed past his marble tomb in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome, after the “pope of the poor” opted to be buried outside the Vatican’s walls.- Abuse -With conflicts and diplomatic crises raging around the world, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin is for many the favourite to succeed him.Parolin was secretary of state under Francis — the pope’s number two.British bookmakers William Hill put him slightly ahead of Filipino Luis Antonio Tagle, the Metropolitan Archbishop emeritus of Manila, followed by Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson.Next in their odds come Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna; Guinea’s Cardinal Robert Sarah; and Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The cardinals have put the Catholic Church’s global sex abuse crisis on their list of pressing issues the new pope will have to tackle.Francis introduced a series of measures to combat clerical sexual abuse.But victims associations say he did not do enough and the issue remains a major challenge for the Church, with the scandals showing no sign of abating.The challenge is significant. In many African and Asian countries, the subject remains taboo. Even in Europe, Italy has yet to launch an independent investigation into abuse allegations.While Francis’s efforts to create a more compassionate Church earned him widespread affection and respect, some of his reforms angered the Church’s conservative wing, particularly in the United States and Africa.Roberto Regoli, a professor of Church history and culture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, told AFP that the cardinals would be looking “to find someone who knows how to forge greater unity”.”We are in a period in which Catholicism is experiencing various polarisations, so I don’t imagine it will be a very, very quick conclave,” he said.Bassetti, who is too old to participate, said that he thought it “will not be long”.Some 80 percent of the cardinal electors were appointed by Francis — although that is no guarantee they will pick a successor in his mould.Most are relatively young, and for many it is their first conclave.- ‘We need a courageous leader’ -The vote is highly secretive and follows strict rules and ceremonial procedures. The process could take several days or potentially longer.There are four votes per day — two each in the morning and afternoon — until one candidate secures a two-thirds majority.Fewer than half of those eligible to vote are European.”The future pope must have a universal heart (and) love all the continents. We must not look at colour, at origin, but at what is proposed,” Cardinal Dieudonne Nzapalainga from the Central African Republic told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.”We need a courageous leader, a bold one, capable of speaking forcefully, of holding the helm of the Church steady even in storms… offering stability in an era of great uncertainty.”Patrizia Spotti, a 68-year-old Italian visiting Rome for the 2025 Jubilee holy year, told AFP on Monday that she hoped the new pontiff “will be a pope like Francis”.It was a difficult time for Catholicism, she said.”Churches are empty and the Church itself has made mistakes — all the scandals with the children,” she said, referring to the widespread revelations of clerical sex abuse.

US President Donald Trump hit out Monday at “fake polls” showing dismal approval ratings for the Republican less than 100 days after returning to the White House.A Washington Post-ABC News survey last week revealed just 39 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance, while a New York Times poll put that figure at 42 percent.More than 40 percent of Americans “disapprove strongly” of Trump, The Post found.”Great Pollster John McLaughlin, one of the most highly respected in the industry, has just stated that The Failing New York Times Poll, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll…are FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.McLaughlin is a close supporter of the president and a Republican researcher who has consistently published survey results favorable to Trump.The president, who has long seen the mainstream press as an enemy, accused pollsters and news organizations of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.””These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it,” he said.With the exception of Bill Clinton and now Trump, US presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan have had an approval rating topping 50 percent after their first 100 days in office, according to the Pew Research Center.Trump has come racing out of the gates in his second term in office, slashing government agencies, launching trade wars with friends and foes alike and even taking on the judiciary over his immigration crackdown.While the opinion polls reflect a growing mistrust of White House economic policy, the pessimism appears yet to reach Trump’s core base of supporters, whose adulation of the president largely has remained strong through thick and thin.Polls have pointed out that the low ratings for Trump, ever the divider who plays to his strengths, are essentially on par with those in 2017, at the same time in his first term.In today’s hyper-divided political America, 70 percent of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents still support Trump’s tariff hikes, while 90 percent of Democrats oppose them, according to Pew.

Kim Kardashian is due to testify in the Paris trial that begins Monday of the “grandpa robbers” accused of stealing $10 million worth of jewellery from the billionaire high priestess of social media.The ageing French underworld figures accused of tying her up and threatening her with a gun in the heist during Paris Fashion Week in 2016 reportedly did not know who she really was.Yet few under 50 on the planet with a smartphone could have escaped the rise of one of the world’s most famous influencers over the last two decades.Kardashian has been a constant presence in popular culture, an uber-celebrity whose every move commands attention, yet who never seems to be anything other than in complete control.While lesser stars have been consumed by fame, Kardashian remains at the height of her powers, defying criticism that she is really only famous for being famous.It is thought Kardashian’s frequent posts about her wealth, personal life and whereabouts may have helped put the robbers on her trail.When they burst into her exclusive Paris suite they shouted that they wanted the $4-million (3.5-million euro) diamond engagement her now ex-husband, US rapper Kayne West, gave her, and that she had shown off on social media.- Fame -Los Angeles-born Kardashian, 44, spent her childhood on the periphery of fame.Her mother Kris married the 1976 Olympic decathlon winner then known as Bruce Jenner, who has since transitioned to life as Caitlyn, after divorcing her late father Robert Kardashian.He was one of the high-flying lawyers who defended American football legend OJ Simpson in his 1995 murder trial. As a teenage friend of Los Angeles socialites Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton, Kardashian garnered the first inklings of her own fame, being photographed with them at popular nightspots and appearing in their reality show “The Simple Life.”But it was in 2007 that she was catapulted into popular consciousness when an explicit four-year-old home movie she had made with her then-boyfriend singer Ray J was posted online.Cynics noted the tape appeared as Kardashian and her family were readying to promote “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” a fly-on-the-wall reality TV look at the family’s life of wealth, luxury, unbelievable cattiness — and startling mundanity.Planted or not, the footage burned Kardashian onto the public’s collective retina.”Keeping up with the Kardashians,” which followed the personal and professional trials of sisters Kim, Kourtney and Khloe and their half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, was one of television’s longest-running reality shows.For some, it was must-see entertainment offering an insight into celebrity through the prism of a unique family.For others, as The Washington Times once wrote, it was vapid chaff that “illustrates our nation’s moral, spiritual and cultural decay.”Either way, the show was very, very good for business.A series of enterprises including KKW Beauty and KKW Fragrance established Kardashian as a serious player in the fashion and lifestyle sector, propelled by the rise of social media, where she regularly posted titillating thirst traps to build her brand.But it was the apparel label Skims that really brought in the big bucks.The firm unapologetically celebrates the female form, boasting “technically constructed shapewear that enhances your curves.”A 2023 investment round valued the company at $4 billion, and Forbes estimates Kardashian’s personal net worth is now $1.7 billion.- Marriage to Kanye… and divorce -Her forays into the fashion and beauty worlds were supercharged by her relationship with West, her third husband.Their marriage in 2014 — the year of that “Break the Internet” photoshoot involving her shapely bare buttocks and lots of champagne — was a “historic blizzard of celebrity,” according to The New York Times.They flew to France for a pre-wedding rehearsal at the Palace of Versailles, where they arrived in a gold-plated carriage before flying on to Italy to tie the knot.Four children later, the couple’s relationship ran into difficulties, as West’s behavior became increasingly erratic. His bizarre but truncated 2020 bid for the US presidency degenerated into rambling self-confession.Kardashian appealed for empathy for her husband, who at one time spoke of living with bipolar disorder, but by 2021 was filing for divorce.Kardashian said she has tried to protect the couple’s children from the inevitable hurt of their parents’ split.”You want to be sensitive because they’re just kids, and it’s hard to go through no matter what age,” she told GQ in 2023.”Ultimately what matters is that kids feel loved and heard.”They are certainly seen: Kardashian’s 357 million Instagram followers are given regular updates on the children.Since her split with West, Kardashian had a high-profile romance with comedian Pete Davidson, and was linked to NFL player Odell Beckham Jr.Amid the parenting, the television shows, the endless red carpets and the multi-billion-dollar business, Kardashian has also found time to launch a legal career.After embarking on an apprenticeship with a prison reform group, she successfully petitioned US President Donald Trump to pardon a grandmother serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense — and then visited him at the White House.In 2021 and on her fourth attempt, she passed California’s “baby bar” exam, a seven-hour slog for first-year law students with a pass rate of only around 20 percent.Her late father, she mused, “would be so proud.””He would actually be so shocked to know that this is my path now.”

Flag football, a non-contact version of American football, is spreading like wildfire among US girls drawn by the prospect of its inclusion in the 2028 Olympics, its popularity even sparking plans for a professional league.”It’s the youth version of pickleball, the fastest growing adult sport,” says Michael Colt, comparing flag football to the racquet sport that’s all the rage among the over-30s. “It’s crazy.” Colt, 44, coaches the Staten Island Giants, last year’s under-18 US champions.Since he co-founded the club in 2019, its youth teams have earned a host of national titles and sent several players to the national team.Colt said it had been “a struggle” early on to gain recognition and find backing.”We fought for everything,” he said. “We were kind of always pushed to the side, like this wasn’t serious.”And I see that about the sport to this day, when you’re asking the difference in the sport. In the beginning, nobody really wanted to coach girls.”The Giants’ trajectory mirrors that of the sport as a whole. Developed as an alternative to collision prone tackle football, girls’ and women’s flag was relatively unknown six years ago.Yet particpation reached close to 270,000 girls aged six to 17 in 2024, according to the USA Football, which oversees US teams in tackle and flag football — and Colt’s Giants club has the financial backing of the NFL’s New York Giants.Even as the NFL throws its impressive weight behind the game, the scope of flag football can still come as a surprise to the uninitiated, especially the opportunity it provides for gridiron-loving girls.When 14-year-old Brielle Caetano talks about flag, which she has been playing since kindergarten, people “are very in shock”.”And (then) I tell them you can get a (university) scholarship from that,” Caetano added. “They’re definitely in shock.””Football has always been considered a boy’s sport,” noted 16-year-old Annie Falcone of the familiar high-contact game whose pinnacle is the NFL. “But flag football has grown so much for women of all ages.”In flag football, most often played in a five-on-five format, an offensive player is “tackled” by pulling one of two “flags” worn on a belt around the hips.No blocking is allowed, further reducing the risk of injury in a game that focuses on running and throwing skills.”It’s just incredible to me how fast flag overall is growing, but really led by girls and women,” said Scott Hallenbeck, USA Football’s chief executive officer.”In my probably 30-plus years of being involved in sports, I’ve never seen a discipline of a sport scale (up) as fast as we’re seeing flag.”Hallenbeck said a lot of credit for that growth goes to the NFL, which is pushing to develop the game.That includes at the youth level, with the NFL organizing its own national flag tournament for boys and girls in July this year, with sponsors and a TV broadcasting contract.- Fandom, opportunities -While the NFL is the most-watched pro league in the United States, it has struggled to expand the game outside US borders.The NBA has become a global phenomenon, and elite basketball leagues prosper outside the USA. But tackle football has found a foothold in just a few other countries such as Germany and Mexico.Hallenbeck said flag football could be an international game-changer.”(They are) really pushing flag to help grow fandom and opportunities around the world and then obviously putting a lot of emphasis around it here in this country,” he said.Gaining inclusion at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is a key part of that campaign, and is already having an effect.”It’s a source of motivation for me and for the girls right now,” Falcone said.The NFL is already looking beyond the Games, and is “exploring very aggressively now an opportunity to create a professional flag league for both men and women, obviously two different leagues,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in February.”They’re trying to gather sponsors,” said Colt. “I definitely think it’s going to be a professional sport by 2032.”

US President Donald Trump said he believed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was ready to concede Crimea to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal, as talks on a truce entered what Washington called a critical week on Monday.Trump also stepped up pressure on Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian president should “stop shooting” and sign an agreement to end the grinding war that started with Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.Trump’s comments came a day after he met Zelensky during the funeral of Pope Francis, breaking the ice after a major row between the US and Ukrainian leaders at the White House in February.”Oh, I think so,” Trump told reporters in Bedminster, New Jersey, when asked whether he thought Zelensky was ready to “give up” Crimea — despite the Ukrainian president repeatedly saying he never would.Trump added that during their talks in the Vatican they had “briefly” discussed the fate of the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.The 78-year-old US president, who boasted before his inauguration that he could halt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine within one day, launched a diplomatic offensive to stop the fighting after taking office in January.Kyiv and western allies have feared that Trump was pivoting towards Moscow’s position.But the US leader has appeared increasingly impatient with Putin in recent days.Russia launched drone and missile attacks the night after the Vatican talks, killing four people in regions across eastern Ukraine and wounding more than a dozen.- ‘Stop shooting’ -“I want him to stop shooting, sit down, and sign a deal,” Trump said Sunday when asked what he wanted from Putin. “We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it.”The White House has said that without rapid progress, it could walk away from its role as a broker. Trump indicated that he would give the process “two weeks.”US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier Sunday stressed the importance of the week ahead.”We’re close, but we’re not close enough” to a deal to halt the fighting, Rubio told broadcaster NBC. “I think this is going to be a very critical week.”But there is still US frustration with both sides, as the war, which has devastated swaths of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people, drags on.Ukraine launched a “massive” drone attack on Russia’s Bryansk region on Sunday, killing one civilian and injuring another, the regional governor said.Washington has not revealed details of its peace plan, but has suggested freezing the front line and accepting Russian control of Crimea in exchange for an end to hostilities.Russia claims to have annexed four eastern and southern territories of war-battered Ukraine since its full-scale invasion three years ago, despite not having full military control over them.Russia holds about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea. – ‘Territorial concessions’ -But Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday that Ukraine should not agree to all the steps reportedly set out in the deal proposed by Trump.Kyiv knew a ceasefire “may involve territorial concessions,” Pistorius told broadcaster ARD. “But these will certainly not go… as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president.”Europe has pushed for a bigger role in the Ukraine talks, with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joining Trump and Zelensky briefly for the meeting in Saint Peter’s Basilica.Rubio meanwhile had a phone call Sunday with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the foreign ministry in Moscow said.The pair said there were “emerging prerequisites” for starting negotiations towards a long term peace, a statement said.Russia insists on keeping the territory it has taken and demands the demilitarization of Kyiv, plus an end to western support.In a sign of the war’s global dimensions, North Korea on Monday confirmed for the first time that it had deployed troops to Russia’s Kursk region and said its soldiers had helped Moscow reclaim territory there.Moscow over the weekend claimed the “liberation” of Kursk, where Kyiv launched a shock cross-border offensive in August 2024, hoping to use land there as a bargaining chip in any peace talks.But Zelensky said Sunday that Ukraine’s army was “maintaining our presence on Russian territory.” burs-dk/jgc