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US President Donald Trump called Monday for a “major investigation” into Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and other celebrities, alleging they were paid millions of dollars to endorse his Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris.In a rant-filled diatribe that provided no evidence for his allegations, Trump charged for instance that Beyonce was paid $11 million to appear at a Harris rally — reports the Democrat’s team has denied.Trump, six months after he beat Harris to launch a second term in the White House, said such payments could amount to illegal campaign contributions.The US president alleged that for a Harris rally in late October in which the “Freedom” singer made an appearance, “Beyonce was paid $11,000,000 to walk onto a stage, quickly ENDORSE KAMALA, and walk off to loud booing for never having performed, NOT EVEN ONE SONG!” Trump said this was “according to news reports.” At the time, Beyonce told the rally crowd that “I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother.”The US president said he intended “to call for a major investigation into this matter.””Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment,” he said, while also alleging the Democrat was trying to “artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT’S NOT LEGAL!”In her bid for the presidency Harris sought to harness star power from celebrities such as Beyonce, Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey.Winfrey has defended a $1 million payment to her production company from the Harris campaign to cover costs associated with the talk show legend’s production company hosting the presidential candidate at a rally in September.The campaign listed one endorsement-related expenditure for $75 in its financial reports to an environmental advocacy group.Trump, who won the 2024 election comfortably, received scant support from the entertainment industry at large but tapped into a targeted subset of well-known, hypermasculine influencers including podcast host Joe Rogan.The president on Monday accused Harris of paying rock star Springsteen to perform at a rally in Georgia weeks before the election.”How much did Kamala Harris pay Bruce Springsteen for his poor performance during her campaign for president?” he wrote.”Why did he accept that money if he is such a fan of hers?”Trump last week took to Truth Social to feud with Springsteen after the star told a British concert audience that his homeland was now ruled by a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”In return, the 78-year-old Republican said the star, nicknamed “the Boss,” is “Highly Overrated.”Springsteen is an outspoken liberal critic of Trump and turned out for Harris after she replaced Democratic president Joe Biden in his abandoned reelection bid.

Prosecutors trying the case of Sean “Diddy” Combs on Monday began questioning witnesses to his alleged pattern of violence including the music mogul’s ex-girlfriend’s one-time best friend.Following nearly a week of grueling testimony from Casandra Ventura, who was with Combs for more than a decade, government attorneys are vying to build their broader racketeering charge that accuses Combs of heading a criminal enterprise that was involved in arson, kidnapping and bribery.In addition to that federal count Combs, 55, also faces sex trafficking charges. If convicted, the one-time powerful figure in the music industry could land in prison for life.Ventura, the 38-year-old singer known as “Cassie,” testified over four days that she was subjected to years of harrowing abuse and coercive, drug-fueled sex marathons known as “freak-offs.”Her one-time best friend Kerry Morgan, a 39-year-old personal assistant who met Ventura when they were teenagers in the modeling industry, described the singer’s relationship with Combs as physically and psychologically abusive.”She lost her confidence big time,” Morgan told jurors Monday. “She lost her spark. She was not the same Cassie.”During one violent outburst in Los Angeles, Morgan said she urged one of Combs’s security guards to “do something” as the rapper and producer struck Ventura — he didn’t.Morgan said aside from herself, most people in Ventura’s circle were Combs’s employees or associates, and that Ventura seemed to feel better about her relationship with Combs the more time she was with them.”You could tell they were convincing her it was okay,” Morgan said.Persuading jurors that a web of employees propped up Combs’s alleged crimes is key to the prosecution’s case.- ‘Combs controlled everything’ – Morgan was with Ventura in the hours following the now infamous 2016 incident at the Los Angeles-area InterContinental Hotel.Security footage that jurors have now seen multiple times shows Combs on that day beating and dragging Ventura, who testified she was trying to flee a freak-off.In the aftermath Morgan, who was staying at Ventura’s home, said Combs arrived there and began banging at the front door with a hammer.Ventura seemed “numb,” Morgan said: “I don’t think she cared if he came in and killed her.”Morgan said at times she encouraged Ventura to leave Combs, or call the police.Ventura would respond that “she couldn’t,” Morgan testified, “because of her job, her car, her apartment. Combs controlled everything.””She would have lost all of her livelihood.”Morgan said Combs struck her as well, an incident that prompted her to end her contact with both him and Ventura. Morgan told the court Combs was looking for Ventura one day and “boomeranged” a wooden hanger that struck her in the head and caused a concussion.She said it was a line-crossing moment and that she only saw Ventura one more time. Morgan said she signed a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for $30,000.Following Morgan’s testimony, the government called to the stand David James, who was a personal assistant to Combs during the time he dated Ventura.- Fits of rage -Monday began with an intense cross-examination of Dawn Richard, a singer who found fame in the girl group Danity Kane that came out of MTV’s reality show “Making the Band,” which Combs produced. Richard has a pending civil suit against Combs alleging sexual assault and battery.While Richard was a performer in the group Diddy — Dirty Money from 2009-2011 she said she witnessed Combs attempt to hit Ventura in the head with a skillet.When Ventura curled up on the kitchen floor in fear, he punched and kicked her, Richard said.Richard described two other similar fits of rage, including one time when Combs punched Ventura in the stomach at a Los Angeles restaurant.Nicole Westmoreland, a lawyer for Combs, painstakingly scrutinized Richard’s version of events in a bid to cast her as unreliable, also painting her money-hungry in light of her civil suit.The defense attorney pointed out inconsistencies between the singer’s statements on the stand, in her own suit, and in records of meetings with government lawyers.”You would agree with me that as time progresses your story changes,” Westmoreland asked.Richard replied “yes” — but later explained under more questioning from prosecutors that she has long aimed to forget those years she described as “a hard time.””Every day it gets easier to remember,” she said.

US President Donald Trump said that Russia and Ukraine would immediately start ceasefire talks after he spoke with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin Monday, but the Kremlin leader fell short of agreeing to the unconditional truce proposed by Washington.Trump painted a more upbeat picture of the situation after the two-hour call, as he desperately seeks a deal to end a grinding conflict that he had promised on the election trail to solve within 24 hours.Putin said he was ready to work with Kyiv on a memorandum towards a possible peace deal after the “useful” call — but insisted that more compromises were necessary to end the war Moscow launched in February 2022.”Just completed my two-hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well,” Trump said on his Truth Social network. “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War.”Trump added that the “tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent,” after the US president had shown signs of increasing frustration with the Kremlin leader. Trump recently called for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. Kyiv agreed, but Putin has so far held off on any such truce.The Vatican — where Pope Leo XIV was recently elected as the first American pontiff — would be “very interested” in hosting the Russia-Ukraine talks, Trump added.- ‘Very useful’ -Putin was more circumspect, even as he appeared to give one of the most concrete signs yet of being ready to discuss an end to Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor. “It was very informative and very open and overall, in my opinion, very useful,” Putin told Russian media after the call.He said that Russia would “propose and will be ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement defining a range of positions.”His comments left many details unclear, however, including on the timing and contents of the document.The Russian president added that while talks with Kyiv last week in Istanbul had put the world “on the right path” to resolving the conflict, more “compromises” were still needed.Trump, a former property tycoon who prides himself as a master of the “art of the deal,” has repeatedly signaled that he is losing patience with efforts to seal an agreement on Ukraine.After initially directing much of his frustration towards Zelensky, including during a blazing Oval Office row, he has recently said that the Russian president may be stringing him along.The US president briefly spoke to Zelensky before Putin, with the Ukrainian leader urging him to toughen sanctions against Russia if it did not agree to a ceasefire, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.Trump added that he had “informed” Zelensky, European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Finland of the resumption of peace talks in a call immediately after his conversation with Putin.- Sanctions pressure -Germany said after the Trump-Putin call that key European allies of Ukraine had agreed to “increase pressure” on Russia with sanctions.But there were signs from Trump that he is more interested in resetting relations with Moscow than imposing sanctions.He held out the carrot that Russia could do “largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over.”The Kremlin said that both Putin and Trump wanted the “normalization” of US-Russia ties.Still, Trump’s frustrations could yet boil over with either side if they fail to reach a deal.US Vice President JD Vance earlier said that if Russia proved unwilling to reach peace “then we’re eventually just going to have to say, this is not our war.” The White House had earlier said that Trump still hoped to meet Putin in person, after the Russian leader rebuffed his suggestion to meet at last week’s Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul.On the ground, the Russian army continued its attacks.Moscow claimed its forces had captured two villages in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy and Donetsk regions. Russia also fired 112 drones on Ukraine overnight, 76 of which were repelled, the Ukrainian air force said.burs-dk/aha

Joe Biden’s diagnosis with an aggressive form of prostate cancer has spurred some prominent conservatives to accuse the former president of a cover-up, but oncologists told AFP that screening limitations could very well have left his condition undetected until now.The 82-year-old received the diagnosis last week after he experienced urinary issues and a prostate nodule was found, his office said Sunday. While President Donald Trump said he was “saddened” to learn of his rival’s condition, a chorus of Republicans led by Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr said or shared conspiratorial posts to the effect that Biden and his White House medical team had long concealed his illness for political purposes.Questions over Biden’s health dogged him throughout the waning months of his presidency and his short-lived reelection campaign. And they have been renewed in recent weeks ahead of the expected release of a book detailing what it calls his declining physical condition.Prostate cancer, the most common among men, is typically diagnosed much sooner than other kinds of cancer. It can be caught in its early stages using blood tests that measure for a protein called PSA.Medical experts interviewed by AFP said the late identification of an advanced cancer would not be unheard of, even for a former president receiving top-of-the-line medical care.”We can’t rule out the possibility that it was an aggressive form that developed quickly,” said Natacha Naoun, an oncologist with France’s Gustave-Roussy Institute.Annual PSA screening after the age of 70 is not universally recommended.The US Preventive Services Task Force advises against it, reasoning that the risk of false positives and the harms from biopsies and treatment outweigh the benefits.”It could be they decided to stop checking PSA annually, and then he had urinary symptoms,” said Russell Pachynski, an oncologist with Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who told AFP that prostate cancer patients do not always experience telltale pains or signs.It is also possible that Biden was undergoing routine screenings, but that those checks failed to turn up indications of cancer, Pachynski said.”Maybe it was just unlucky that his particular cancer didn’t express a lot of PSA and he still had a normal PSA. In that setting, you would not go checking the prostate or do a biopsy, etcetera, unless it was driven by symptoms.”Otis Brawley, an oncologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, said studies have shown both PSA testing and rectal exams are imperfect.”It is not unusual for a man to be diagnosed with metastatic prostate disease despite normal annual screening,” he told AFP. “This is part of the limitations of prostate screening.”

The Trump administration has agreed to pay nearly $5 million to the family of a woman shot dead by a police officer during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, The Washington Post reported on Monday.Ashli Babbitt, 35, was shot as she tried to climb through a window leading to the House Speaker’s lobby during the assault on Congress by a mob of Donald Trump supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Babbitt’s estate filed a wrongful death suit last year seeking $30 million.The case had been scheduled to go on trial but the US Justice Department reversed course after Trump won the November 2024 election and entered into settlement talks.The Post, citing two people familiar with the matter, said a settlement had been reached under which the government would pay nearly $5 million to Babbitt’s family.The Capitol police officer who shot Babbitt was cleared of any wrongdoing but Trump has repeatedly claimed the shooting was unwarranted and she was an “innocent” woman.Babbitt has been cast as a “martyr” by Trump supporters and her estate was represented in the wrongful death suit by the conservative group Judicial Watch.Trump signed pardons on his first day in office for more than 1,500 participants in the attack on the Capitol by supporters seeking to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.The Capitol assault, which left more than 140 police officers injured, followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race.He then encouraged the crowd to march on Congress.

Former US president Joe Biden expressed gratitude Monday for an outpouring of “love and support” following his cancer diagnosis, even as some in President Donald Trump’s orbit leveled fresh accusations of a health cover up.The 82-year-old ex-president’s shock announcement on Sunday that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer sparked an outpouring of good wishes, including from Trump himself, Biden’s vice president Kamala Harris and ordinary Americans.”Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” Biden said on social media, including a photo of him and former first lady Jill Biden.”Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”Biden’s office said in a statement that he had been diagnosed Friday following the discovery of a prostate nodule, and that the cancer had spread to the bone.”While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” it added.Trump, who has long derided Biden over his cognitive abilities and his record in office, said Sunday he was “saddened” by the news and wished him a “fast and successful recovery.”But Trump’s son Don Jr. meanwhile questioned whether the cancer should have been detected earlier — and also boosted unfounded claims Biden had covered up a previous diagnosis.He posted a clip of Biden — whose son Beau died of cancer — saying in an apparent gaffe in 2022 that “I, and so damn many other people I grew up with, have cancer.”White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt swerved around questions Monday about whether presidential doctors may have missed Biden’s early cancer stages.Trump was not concerned about his standard of care, she said, adding that the current White House physician is “phenomenal.”The cancer diagnosis comes amid swirling new questions in recent weeks over Biden’s health while in office, with a new book by two journalists alleging his staff worked to conceal his decline.Biden’s team has consistently denied there was any effort to hide fears about his health.- ‘Personal’ -Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men, with the American Cancer Society (ACS) reporting that one in eight men in the United States are diagnosed with it over their lifetime.While it is highly treatable if discovered early, it is the second leading cause of cancer death in men.Hormone therapy is a common treatment that can shrink tumors and slow cancer growth, but it is not a cure.Britain’s King Charles, 76, who himself is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer, wrote to Biden over the weekend to express his well wishes, Buckingham Palace said.Biden’s cancer was found to have “a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5),” on a 1-10 scale, his office’s statement said. Prostate cancer that looks “very abnormal” is assigned the highest rating, Grade 5, according to the ACS.The mental and physical health of Biden, the oldest person ever to hold the US presidency, was a dominant issue in the 2024 election.Trump and his conservative backers repeatedly attacked the incumbent over his cognitive abilities, and after a disastrous debate performance against Trump, Biden ended his campaign for a second term.Biden’s life has been marked by personal tragedy. In 1972, his first wife and baby daughter were killed in a car crash.  His son Beau died aged 46 of an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2015.In the wake of Beau’s death, then-president Barack Obama launched a “cancer moonshot” bid to corral the disease in the United States, tasking Biden, then his vice president, with leading the effort.”It’s personal for me,” Biden said at the time.

No corner of Earth is untouched. From Tibet to Antarctica, so-called “forever chemicals” have seeped into the blood of nearly every living creature.Tainting food, water and wildlife, these toxic substances have been linked to ailments ranging from birth defects to rare cancers.Yet if it weren’t for the efforts of residents in two heavily impacted American towns, the world might still be in the dark.In the new book “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals,” investigative journalist Mariah Blake recounts how people in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Hoosick Falls, New  York, blew the whistle on the industrial giants that poisoned them — and, in the process, forced the world to reckon with per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.”We’re talking about a class of chemicals that doesn’t break down in the environment,” Blake tells AFP, calling it the “worst contamination crisis in human history.”First developed in the 1930s, PFAS are prized for their strength, heat resistance, and water- and grease-repelling powers. Built on the carbon-fluoride bond — the strongest in chemistry — they persist like radioactive waste and accumulate in our bodies, hence the “forever” nickname.Blake’s research traces their history, from accidental discovery by a DuPont chemist to modern usage in cookware, clothing, and cosmetics. They might have remained a curiosity if Manhattan Project scientists hadn’t needed a coating that could withstand atomic-bomb chemistry, helping companies produce them at scale.- Corporate malfeasance -Industry knew the risks early. Internal tests showed plant workers suffered chemical burns and respiratory distress. Crops withered and livestock died near manufacturing sites.So how did they get away with it? Blake tracks the roots to the 1920s, when reports emerged that leaded gasoline caused psychosis and death among factory workers. In response, an industry-backed scientist advanced a now-infamous doctrine: chemicals should be presumed safe until proven harmful.This “Kehoe principle” incentivized corporations to manufacture doubt around health risks — a big reason it took until last year for the US to finalize a ban on asbestos.DuPont’s own studies warned that Teflon had no place on cookware. But after a French engineer coated his wife’s muffin tins with it, a Parisian craze took off — and an American entrepreneur sold the idea back to DuPont.Soon nonstick pans were flying off shelves, thanks in part to a regulatory gap: PFAS, along with thousands of other chemicals, were “grandfathered” into the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and required no further testing.- Massive litigation -The cover-up began to unravel in the 1990s in Parkersburg, where DuPont had for decades been dumping Teflon waste into pits and the Ohio River.The town reaped economic benefits, but female plant workers were having babies with birth defects, a cattle farmer downstream was losing his herd, and residents developed rare cancers.Blake tells the story through “accidental activists.” One is Michael  Hickey, a preppy insurance underwriter with no interest in politics or the environment. After cancer took his father and friends, he started testing Hoosick Falls’s water.Another is Emily  Marpe, “a teen mom with a high school education” who saved to buy her family’s dream house in upstate New York, only to learn the water flowing from the taps was fouled with PFAS that now coursed through their blood in massive levels. “She knew the science inside out,” says Blake, “and became an incredibly articulate advocate.”Years of litigation yielded hundreds of millions in settlements and forced DuPont and 3M to phase out two notorious PFAS. But the companies pivoted to substitutes like GenX — later shown to be just as toxic.Still, Blake argues the tide is turning. France has banned PFAS in many consumer goods, the EU is considering a ban, and in the US, states are moving to restrict PFAS in sludge fertilizer and food packaging.Liabilities linked to the chemicals are driving major retailers from McDonald’s to REI to pledge PFAS-free products.Her optimism is tempered by the political climate. Just this week, the Trump administration announced the rollback of federal drinking water standards for four next-generation PFAS chemicals.But she believes the momentum is real.”Ordinary citizens who set out to protect their families and communities have really created this dramatic change,” she says. “It’s like climate change — it feels intractable, but here’s a case where people have made major headway.”

US President Donald Trump said Monday in a rant-filled diatribe about celebrities who backed Kamala Harris that pop diva Beyonce got $11 million for endorsing his campaign rival.Trump provided no evidence to back up his free-wheeling allegations over Beyonce or other entertainers he attacked as he announced “a major investigation” into what he said were payments by the failed Democratic candidate to stars like Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey and Bono for them to support her against Trump.Trump, six months after he beat Harris to launch a second term in the White House, said these payments he alleges took place amounted to illegal campaign contributions.He alleged that for a Harris rally in late October in which the “Freedom” singer made an appearance, “Beyonce was paid $11,000,000 to walk onto a stage, quickly ENDORSE KAMALA, and walk off to loud booing for never having performed, NOT EVEN ONE SONG!” Trump said this was “according to news reports.”Harris had told the rally crowd at the time that “I’m not here as a celebrity. I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother.”Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would “call for a major investigation into this matter.””Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment,” he said.Harris had sought to harness star power from celebrities such as Beyonce, Winfrey and Springsteen in the election race.Winfrey has defended a $1 million payment to her production company from the Harris campaign to cover costs associated with the talk show legend’s production company hosting the presidential candidate at a rally in September.Harris’s team, meanwhile, has denied rumors that she paid Beyonce to appear at a rally.The campaign listed one endorsement-related expenditure for $75 in its financial reports to an environmental advocacy group.Trump, who won the 2024 election comfortably, received scant support from the entertainment industry at large but tapped into a targeted subset of well-known, hypermasculine influencers including podcast host Joe Rogan.The president on Monday accused Harris of paying rock star Springsteen to perform at a rally in Georgia weeks before the election.”How much did Kamala Harris pay Bruce Springsteen for his poor performance during her campaign for president?” he wrote.”Why did he accept that money if he is such a fan of hers?”Trump last week took to Truth Social to feud with Springsteen after the star told a British concert audience that his homeland is now ruled by a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”In return, the 78-year-old Republican said the star, nicknamed “the Boss,” is “Highly Overrated.”Springsteen is an outspoken liberal critic of Trump and turned out for Harris after she replaced Democratic president Joe Biden in his abandoned reelection bid.

Donald Trump spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday as the US president seeks a breakthrough to end the grinding conflict triggered by Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.Trump is pinning his hopes on a fresh personal appeal to Putin to get the Kremlin leader to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire with Kyiv.A White House official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the call had started.But the White House warned that Trump was “weary and frustrated” with the slow progress in resolving the conflict. The Kremlin said the call between the Russian and US leaders was “important.” Trump is also set to speak to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO officials during the day as he scrambles to find a solution to the three-year-old war.The 78-year-old Republican vowed during his US election campaign to halt the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, but his diplomatic efforts have so far yielded little progress.Vice President JD Vance reiterated that Trump was losing patience.”There’s a bit of an impasse here, and I think the president’s going to say to President Putin, look, are you serious?” Vance told reporters as he left Rome, where he met both Pope Leo XIV and Zelensky.”If Russia is not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just going have to say, this is not our war.” – ‘Weary and frustrated’ -Trump has directed much of his frustration towards Ukraine — including during a blazing Oval Office row with Zelensky in February — while abstaining from extensively criticizing Putin.The White House declined to take sides Monday, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying the president has “grown weary and frustrated with both sides.”Trump still hoped to meet Putin, she added, after the US president said that face-to-face talks were the only way to end the conflict.Trump had held out the possibility of joining Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul last week if there was a chance of meeting Putin, but the Russian leader was a no-show.Moscow insisted Monday it would prefer to end the conflict through diplomacy.”It is preferable to achieve our goals through political and diplomatic means, of course,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state media, adding that Russia “highly valued” Washington’s attempts to end the fighting. Zelensky refreshed his push for a full ceasefire ahead of the call.”Ukraine insists on the need for a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save human lives and to establish the necessary foundation for diplomacy,” he said on social media.- ‘Bloodbath’ -The Istanbul talks were the first direct negotiations between the sides for three years, with US officials also attending. But the meetings ended without a commitment to a ceasefire.Both sides traded insults, with Ukraine accusing Moscow of sending a “dummy” delegation of low-ranking officials.  After the negotiations, Trump announced that he would speak by phone with Putin in a bid to end the “BLOODBATH” in Ukraine, which has destroyed large swathes of the country and displaced millions of people.Ukraine’s Western allies have since accused Putin of ignoring calls for a truce and pushed for fresh sanctions against Russia.The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy also spoke with Trump on Sunday.”The leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.On the ground, the Russian army continued its attacks.Moscow claimed its forces had captured two villages in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy and Donetsk regions. Russia also fired 112 drones on Ukraine overnight, 76 of which were repelled, the Ukrainian air force said.In an interview with Russian state TV broadcast on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow’s aim was to “eliminate the causes that triggered this crisis.”Russia’s references to the “root causes” of the conflict typically refer to grievances it used to justify the invasion, including to “de-Nazify” and demilitarise Ukraine, protect Russian speakers in the country’s east and push back against NATO expansion.burs-dk/bgs