#European nations say Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with dart frog toxin.

The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said analysis in European labs of samples taken from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” The neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America is not found naturally in Russia, they said.

A joint statement said: “Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison.”

The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organization.

Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.

“Russia saw Navalny as a threat,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “By using this form of poison the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X that the poisoning of Navalny shows “that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.”

The European nations’ assessment came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, and just before the second anniversary of Navalny’s death.

She said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.

Navalnaya said Saturday that she had been “certain from the first day” that her husband had been poisoned, “but now there is proof.”

“Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon,” she wrote on She said Putin was “a murderer” who “must be held accountable.”

Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.

Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild, and can also be manufactured in a lab, which European scientists suspect was the case with the substance used on Navalny. It works on the body in a similar way to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, a slowed heart rate and ultimately death.

#European officials said they had a high degree of confidence in the assessment that Navalny died from epibatidine poisoning. Asked why the results had taken so long, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that it had been “a complicated process.”

#Hollywood talent agent Casey Wasserman to sell company over Epstein files revelations.

Casey Wasserman, a prominent entertainment and sports agent and the chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, is putting his eponymous talent agency up for sale after facing backlash over his appearance in files the U.S. Justice Department released last month related to its investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In an internal memo sent to agency staff on Friday, which was obtained by CNN, Wasserman said he has “become a distraction” to the company’s “efforts.”

“That is why I have begun the process of selling the company, an effort that is already underway,” Wasserman wrote.

Wasserman faced pressure from his talent to step aside in recent weeks, as well as calls to step down from the Olympics coordinating committee, after the files showed he held a deeper and more intimate relationship with Esptein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, than had been previously known.

Wasserman has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. CNN has reached out to a crisis communications firm representing him.

Wasserman rode on Epstein’s plane and exchanged suggestive messages with Maxwell, the files the DOJ released show.

Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, was convicted of sex trafficking and other crimes in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

In Friday’s memo, Wasserman said he only had “limited interactions with those two individuals,” referring to Epstein and Maxwell.

“It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending,” Wasserman said. “And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks.”

Sources close to the business told CNN that Wasserman’s investors were upset over the situation and pushed him to make this move.

In an earlier statement reported by the Associated Press last month, Wasserman clarified that his exchange with Maxwell “took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”

“I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. As is well documented, I went on a humanitarian trip as part of a delegation with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 on the Epstein plane. I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them,” his statement read.

Details of Epstein’s alleged secret life first emerged in 2005 when several underage girls accused him of offering to pay for massages or sex acts at his Palm Beach mansion. Epstein pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges in 2008 and served 13 months in prison.

Since the release of the latest files, singer Chappell Roan announced she was leaving Wasserman’s agency. Singer Orville Peck quickly followed, and then singer-songwriter Weyes Blood, among others.

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

U.S. strikes alleged drug boat, killing 3, The statement did not specify where the strike took place but said “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

At least 124 people have now been killed in strikes on suspected drug boats as part of Operation Southern Spear, a campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at curtailing narcotics trafficking.

The administration has labelled those killed as “unlawful combatants” and claimed the ability to engage in lethal strikes without judicial review due to a classified Justice Department finding.

Friday’s boat strike is the fourth publicly known attack of the year. A strike earlier this week killed two people and left one survivor, with the U.S. Coast Guard providing technical support for search and rescue operations co-ordinated by Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre Ecuador.

The administration has publicly presented little evidence that those killed in Operation Southern Spear are affiliated with drug cartels, or that each of the vessels had drugs on them.

The legality of the strikes has also come under intense scrutiny in Congress since the operations began in September. There is particular interest in the first attack on Sept. 2, which included a follow-up strike that killed two crew members who had initially survived. Multiple current and former military lawyers previously told CNN the strikes do not appear lawful.

#WHO prequalifies new polio vaccine to boost #global outbreak response, Prequalification certifies that the vaccine meets international standards for quality and safety, allowing #UN agencies such as #UNICEF to buy and distribute it for immunization campaigns.

The nOPV2 shot is designed to be more genetically stable than older oral polio vaccines, lowering the risk of triggering new outbreaks while helping to stop transmission, the WHO said.

The move follows a pledge by global leaders in December to provide US$1.9 billion to support eradication efforts, aiming to protect 370 million children each year despite recent budget cuts.

Polio, a disabling and potentially life-threatening disease, has been wiped out in many regions but continues to circulate.

Reporting by Ruchika Khanna in Bengaluru. Editing by Mark Potter, Reuters

#German leader calls on the U.S. and Europe to ‘repair and revive trans-Atlantic trust together’.

Merz called for a “new trans-Atlantic partnership,” acknowledging that “a divide, a deep rift” has opened up across the Atlantic as he opened the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top global security figures including many European leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

At last year’s conference, held a few weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy and freedom of speech on the continent -- a moment that set the tone for the last year.

A series of statements and moves from the Trump administration targeting allies followed, including Trump’s threat last month to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a bid to secure U.S. control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. The president later dropped that threat.
‘Stronger together’

“The culture war of the MAGA movement in the U.S. is not ours,” Merz said. “The freedom of the word ends here when this word is turned against human dignity and the constitution. And we don’t believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade.”

He added that Europe would stand by climate agreements and the World Health Organization “because we are convinced that we will only solve global tasks together.”

But Merz said Europe and the U.S. should conclude that “we are stronger together” in today’s world. He argued that the post-World War II world order “as imperfect as it was at its best times, no longer exists” today.

“In the era of great-power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said. “Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It’s also the United States’ competitive advantage, so let’s repair and revive trans-Atlantic trust together.”

The Europeans, Merz said, are doing their part.
A ‘shift in mindset’ in Europe

Since last year’s Munich conference, NATO allies have agreed under pressure from Trump to a large increase in their defense spending target.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said there has been a “shift in mindset,” with “Europe really stepping up, Europe taking more of a leadership role within #NATO, #Europe also taking more care of its own defense.”

With Rubio heading the U.S. delegation this year, European leaders can hope for a less contentious approach more focused on traditional global security concerns.

Speaking as he introduced Merz, conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger asked: “does the Trump administration truly believe that it needs allies and partners and if so ... is Washington actually prepared to treat allies as partners?”

Before departing for Germany on Thursday, Rubio had some reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans.

“We’re very tightly linked together with Europe,” he told reporters. “Most people in this country can trace both, either their cultural or their personal heritage, back to Europe. So, we just have to talk about that.”

But Rubio made clear it wouldn’t be business as it used to be, saying: “We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like.”

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the conference that the U.S. had been sustaining the financial burden of multilateralism for too long and Europeans need to do more.

“There is a cost to the status quo and the status quo was not sustainable any more,” Waltz said.

Merz said that Europe’s “excessive dependency” on the U.S. was its own fault, but it is leaving that behind. “We won’t do this by writing off NATO -- we will do it by building a strong, self-supporting European pillar in the alliance, in our own interest,” he said.

He acknowledged that Europe and the U.S. will likely have to bridge more disagreements in the future than in the past, but “if we do this with new strength, respect and self-respect, that is to the advantage of both sides.”

Rubio arrived in Munich on Friday. He met Merz and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi separately on the sidelines of the conference, and also had a meeting scheduled with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen. He is due to address the conference on Saturday morning.

___

Emma Burrows, Matthew Lee and Geir Moulson, The Associated Press

Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press reporter Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

#Ukraine may agree to withdraw from Donbass — The Atlantic
Vladimir Zelensky says basic questions in the security guarantee deal with the US "remain unsolved"

Rio Carnival parade will spotlight sex workers in effort to dismantle stigma.

When Lourdes Barreto fled her home in Brazil’s northeastern state of Paraiba as a teenager — a move that launched her into sex work and a lifetime of activism — she never imagined that a samba school in Rio de Janeiro would pay tribute to her life’s journey six decades later.

That’s exactly what Porto da Pedra will do this weekend at Rio’s famed Sambodrome as annual Carnival celebrations kick off. The samba school based in the low-income city of Sao Goncalo — across the bay from Rio — will celebrate Barreto and sex workers of all genders in an effort to dismantle the stigma surrounding the profession.

“Who would have thought that a prostitute would be honoured?” the 83-year-old Barreto asked during a video call from her home in Belem, before a trip to Rio for the parade.

Samba is an energetic Brazilian music and dance genre that developed in Afro-Brazilian communities. Schools spend months preparing a parade with a song, elaborate floats and costumes, which they then present to judges at the joyful, but fierce, competition during Carnival.

Porto da Pedra creative director Mauro Quintaes, who designed this year’s theme for the school, previously curated two parades centred on populations living on the margins: thieves and people with severe mental health issues.

This year’s parade, titled “From life’s oldest times, the sweet and bitter kiss of the night,” serves as the final chapter in a trilogy Quintaes envisioned at the beginning of his career.

“The school is trying to make these women more seen, less invisible,” Quintaes said. “It’s not an apology nor a glamorization.”
‘Not doing anything wrong’

Sex work isn’t a crime in Brazil when performed voluntarily by adults. Since 2002, prostitution has been recognized as an official occupation by Brazil’s labour ministry, allowing sex workers to access social security and other work benefits.

However, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects says that police still target sex workers and carry out evictions.

This is largely because neither prostitution nor sexual exploitation — the latter of which is a crime — is explicitly defined in the law. According to a 2017 report by the non-profit group Davida, these legal gaps grant police discretionary power to regulate sex work arbitrarily.

Barreto co-founded the #Brazilian Network of #Prostitutes in the 1980s to fight for better rights for sex workers in #Brazil. She stood up to the military police, campaigned to establish #HIV prevention policies and even ran for a seat as a councilwoman.

In 2024, the BBC listed her as one of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world, alongside fellow countrywoman Olympic athlete Rebeca Andrade, French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot and Nigerian climate campaigner Adenike Oladosu.

“I’ve always seen myself as a working woman. Not sinning, not doing anything wrong,” she said.
Sex work as taboo

While sex work has already been evoked in previous parades, Porto da Pedra’s approach is groundbreaking for its central focus and emphasis on class struggle, said Juliana Barbosa, a communications professor at the Federal University of Parana and a Carnival expert.

Barbosa said that samba schools, which emerged from Black communities, have a history of seizing on social issues to force a conversation.

“The theme stays for months within those communities, being sung about and discussed, and then it spreads to a very large number of people,” Barbosa said. “It can contribute to social change. Not as a rule, not on all subjects, but it has that tendency.”

Andrea de Andrade, 39, will lead Porta da Pedra’s percussion section in the prestigious role of drum queen. Now a prominent social media figure, she recalls how Carnival themes from 20 years ago introduced her to issues and stories she had never heard about before.

“Many people don’t have access to much, not just due to a lack of funds, but also a lack of time. Many don’t read, don’t study — but Brazilians love Carnival,” she said.

More than 50 sex workers of all genders from all corners of Brazil are expected to march Saturday evening alongside hundreds of others.

Thauany Laressa, a 27-year-old sex worker from Brazil’s northern state of Rondonia, reached out to the school after finding out about this year’s theme. For too long, sex work has been taboo, she said.

“I hope that people who see the parade will have more compassion when interacting with sex workers and help them accept it as a profession,” Laressa said. “I hope that people will start respecting our lives, our way of life and our job.”

___

Eléonore Hughes And Diarlei Rodrigues, The Associated Press

#MOSCOW, February 12. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova has sent a letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights over the continued illegal detention of ten residents of Russia’s Kursk Region in Ukraine.

"I have sent a letter to the UN high commissioner for human rights, informing him that ten people [from the Kursk Region] are still being held in Ukraine for no reason, in breach of the Geneva Conventions. I’m not giving up hope that both the international community and the reasonable decision-makers in Ukraine will react in some way," Moskalkova told reporters.

The official added that she was in dialogue with Ukraine on the return of Kursk residents.

According to Moskalkova, another two residents of the Kursk Region returned from Ukraine last Thursday, but ten people still remain in the neighboring country. The commissioner said earlier that some of the people that Kiev’s forces had taken to Ukraine during their incursion of Russia’s borderline Kursk Region were still being held there as hostages.

#Colombian president claims to have escaped assassination attempt. Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Tuesday he had escaped an assassination attempt hours earlier, after months of warnings about an alleged plot by drug traffickers to target him.

On Monday night, Petro’s helicopter was unable to land at his destination on the Caribbean coast because of fears that unspecified people “were going to shoot” at it, he said.

“We headed out to open sea for four hours and I arrived somewhere we weren’t supposed to go, escaping from being killed,” Petro said in a cabinet meeting that was broadcast live.

Petro’s claim came amid a surge in violence months ahead of presidential elections, in a country marred by decades of conflict between guerrilla and other armed groups.

Petro, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term, has claimed that a drug-trafficking cabal has had its sights set on ending his life ever since assuming office in August 2022.

The alleged plot involves narco bosses and war lords such as Ivan Mordisco, who commands the largest group of dissidents who broke with the FARC guerrilla army after it agreed to disarm under a 2016 peace agreement.

Colombia has a long list of leftist leaders, including presidential candidates, assassinated over the years.

Petro, the South American country’s first-ever leftist president, had reported another alleged attempt on his life in 2024.

Ex-teacher in France charged with sexual abuse of 89 minors,

Warning: The following story contains details that may be disturbing to some readers.

GRENOBLE, France -- A French prosecutor on Tuesday appealed for further testimony in a mass abuse case across nine countries, after charging a 79-year-old former educator with rape and sexual assault of 89 minors since the 1960s.

Prosecutor Etienne Manteaux spoke to reporters in the southeastern city of Grenoble to publicize the case of the former teacher, who had also confessed to killing his terminally ill mother and his elderly aunt.

In an unusual move, French authorities named the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, who was born in 1946 in Annecy, an Alpine town an hour’s drive away from Grenoble.

“This name must be known because the aim is to enable potential victims to come forward,” the prosecutor said.

When asked why prosecutors did not reveal the information when Leveugle was placed under investigation, Manteaux said that it was a “somewhat unusual case, and we wanted to first ensure the veracity of the facts.”

Then “it became essential to allow victims who could not be identified and who were not going to be heard to come forward”, he added.

Leveugle, who is accused of committing sexual crimes against minors between 1967 and 2022, has been in custody since his indictment in 2024, the prosecutor said.

In May last year, a French court sentenced retired doctor Joel Le Scouarnec to 20 years in prison after he confessed to sexually abusing or raping 298 patients between 1989 and 2014.

Of those, more than 250 victims were under 15 years old.

Victims and child rights advocates say that case highlighted systemic flaws that allowed Le Scouarnec to repeatedly commit sexual crimes.
‘Travelled to different countries’

Leveugle allegedly committed the crimes against minors in Germany, Switzerland, Morocco, Niger, Algeria, the Philippines, India, Colombia, and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, where he worked as a freelance teacher and instructor, said the prosecutor.

His varied roles included instructor of speleology, or the study of caves, and French teacher.

“He travelled to these different countries and in each of these places where he settled to provide tutoring and teach, he would meet young people and have sexual relations with them,” according to the prosecutor.

The number of victims was established from writings compiled on a USB drive by the man, which refer to “sexual relations” with minors aged 13 to 17.

The USB stick on which the documents were stored by the man was discovered by his nephew, who was “questioning his uncle’s emotional and sexual life,” Manteaux added.

It “contains 15 tomes of very dense material, and investigators will review and read all of these writings and identify 89 minors”, he said.

During the investigation, the man also confessed to suffocating his mother -- a terminally ill cancer patient -- with a pillow in the 1970s, according to the prosecutor.

He also suffocated his 92-year-old aunt, also with a pillow, in the 1990s, the prosecutor said.

Leveugle had to travel and the aunt “begged him not to go.”

“He decided to kill her too, so while she was asleep, he took a pillow and suffocated her,” the prosecutor said.

In his “memoirs,” the man had written that he had “killed two people,” Manteaux said.

A separate murder investigation has been launched.

The suspect “justifies his actions by saying that he would like someone to do the same for him if he found himself in this end-of-life situation”, the prosecutor said.

By Amelie Herenstein and Manon Billing in Lyon

If you or someone you know is struggling with sexual assault or trauma, the following resources are available to support people in crisis:

Call 911 if you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety.
The Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres' website has a comprehensive list of sexual assault centres in Canada that offer information, advocacy and counselling.
The Ending Violence Association of Canada‘s website has links to helplines, support services and locations across Canada that offer sexual assault kits.
Indian Residential School Survivors Society crisis lines: +1 866 925 4419 or +1 800 721 0066 (24/7)
Toronto Rape Crisis Centre crisis line: +1 416 597 8808 (24/7)
Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline: +1 833 900 1010 (24/7)
Trans Lifeline: +1 877 330 6366
Suicide Crisis Helpline: call or text 988 (24/7)
Sexual Misconduct Support and Resource Centre for current and former Canadian Armed Forces members: +1 844 750 1648