EU countries on Wednesday agreed to a new round of sanctions on Russia, diplomats said, as the bloc looks to keep up pressure in the face of US talks with Russia.

The wide-ranging package — which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum — will be formally adopted by EU foreign ministers on Monday, the third anniversary of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The EU’s 16th round of sanctions on Russia comes as US President Donald Trump has undercut Kyiv and its European backers by launching efforts with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war.

“The EU is clamping down even harder on circumvention by targeting more vessels in Putin’s shadow fleet and imposing new import and export bans,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

“We are committed to keeping up the pressure on the Kremlin.”

Beyond targeting Russia’s lucrative aluminium sector, the new measures target the so-called “shadow fleet” used to skirt restrictions on Russian oil exports by blacklisting 73 more ageing vessels.

The EU will also disconnect a further 13 Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system and ban a further eight Russian media outlets from broadcasting in Europe.

Europe is scrambling to react after Trump upended three years of staunch US support for Kyiv by starting talks with Moscow.

Top US officials and Russian negotiators held a first meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to pave the way towards reaching a deal on Ukraine.

European countries are urgently trying to make their voices heard as they fear a bad deal could leave an emboldened Moscow claiming victory.

The US has said that the EU will eventually have to play a role in the talks due to the sanctions it has imposed on Russia.

AFP

President Donald Trump has suggested that large-scale fraud was perpetrated in multiple donations made by the previous United States government to countries worldwide.

Trump expressed vexation about how hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money were spent on questionable programs and contracts across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

The beneficiary nations identified include Cambodia, Czechia, India, Kosovo, Liberia, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, Nepal, Serbia, South Africa, and Uganda, among others.

The U.S. leader addressed a news conference on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago after signing three presidential memoranda, in addition to dozens of executive orders already in effect.

The new orders relate to “radical transparency about wasteful spending,” “ensuring accountability for all agencies,” and “expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF)” to improve the availability and affordability of treatments.

Trump decried the “waste” uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, saying, “They are finding levels of fraud and waste and abuse I think nobody ever thought possible.”

“Incredible things are happening in our country,” the president stressed. “We’ve made more progress in three weeks than they made in four years, especially with respect to the reputation of our country. People are respecting us again.”

Asked to clarify Musk’s role in his administration after the White House, in a court filing, stated that the senior advisor has no authority to make decisions, Trump called the Tesla CEO “a patriot” for his efforts.

The president, while reading from a paper, said the information DOGE submitted to him revealed that millions of people between the ages of 100 and 249—even some as old as 360—were receiving Social Security payments.

Providing specific figures on expenditures outside America, Trump said:

“$520 million for a consultant on the environment. It’s called environmental, social, and governance investments in Africa. Somebody got $520 million for environmental studies.

“$25 million to promote biodiversity conservation and licit livelihoods by developing socially responsible behavior in Colombia. Wow, that’s nice—$25 million for something that nobody ever heard of.

“$40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants; $42 million for Johns Hopkins to research and drive social and behavioral change in Uganda. What about us?

“$70 million for a center at Purdue to research university-sourced, evidence-based solutions to develop mental challenges. These are massive numbers for things that nobody ever heard about.

“$10 million for voluntary medical male circumcisions in Mozambique… $10 million for circumcision in another country; $9.7 million for UC Berkeley to develop a cohort of Cambodian youths with enterprise-driven skills.

“$2.3 million for strengthening independent voices in Cambodia; $32 million to the Prague Civil Society Centre… wonder how much of that money came back to the people who approved it.

“$14 million for public procurement in Serbia; $486 million to the consortium for elections and political process strengthening, including $22 million for an inclusive and participatory political process in Moldova.

“$21 million for voter turnout in India; $20 million for fiscal federalism in Nepal. Listen to these numbers—this is all fraud. $19 million for biodiversity conservation in Nepal.

“$1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia; $14 million for social cohesion in Mali; $2.5 million for inclusive democracy in South Africa; $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia.

“$2 million to develop sustainable recycling models to increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities in Kosovo, Ashkali, and Egypt.

“We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. I could read this all day long. We have a very corrupt country. And it’s a sad thing to say, but we’re figuring it out,” said Trump.

A Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday amid windy weather following a snowstorm, injuring 18 of the 80 people on board, officials said.

Three people on the flight that originated at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport suffered critical injuries, among them a child, authorities added.

U.S. carrier Delta said a CRJ900 aircraft operated by its Endeavor Air subsidiary was involved in a single-aircraft accident with 76 passengers and four crew members on board. The 16-year-old CRJ900, made by Canada’s Bombardier (BBDb.TO)

Canadian authorities said they would investigate the cause of the crash, which was not yet known.

Passenger John Nelson posted a video of the aftermath on Facebook, showing a fire engine spraying water on the plane that was lying belly-up on the snow-covered tarmac.

He later told CNN there was no indication of anything unusual before landing.

“We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down,” Nelson told the television network.
“I was able to just unbuckle and sort of fall and push myself to the ground. And then some people were kind of hanging and needed some help being helped down, and others were able to get down on their own,” he said.

Pearson Airport said earlier on Monday it was dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to catch up with missed flights after a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 22 cm (8.6 inches) of snow at the airport.

The Delta plane touched down in Toronto at 2:13 p.m. (1913 GMT) after an 86-minute flight and came to rest near the intersection of runway 23 and runway 15, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

“The aircraft is upside down and burning,” an emergency worker told the air traffic control tower after a controller noted that some passengers were walking near the crashed plane, according to a recording of the incident posted on liveatc.net.

Deborah Flint, president of the Toronto airport, attributed to the absence of fatalities in part to the work of first responders at the airport.

“We are very grateful that there is no loss of life and relatively minor injuries,” she said at a press conference.

Michael J. McCormick, associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the upside-down position made the crash fairly unique.

“But the fact that 80 people survived an event like this is a testament to the engineering and the technology, the regulatory background that would go into creating a system where somebody can actually survive something that not too long ago would have been fatal,” he said.

All 18 of the people injured were passengers and were taken to area hospitals, Delta said in a statement.

Of those injured, two were airlifted to trauma centers, and a child was transported to a children’s hospital, said Supervisor Lawrence Saindon of Peel Regional Paramedic Services.

The Toronto airport was shut down for more than two hours before departures and arrivals resumed. This led to ground delays and diversions to other airports including Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, which said it was preparing to receive several diverted flights that might cause further delays.

Flint said on Monday evening there would be some operational impact and delays at Toronto airport over the next few days while two runways remained closed for the investigation.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said it was deploying a team of investigators, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a team of investigators would assist Canada’s TSB.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T), which closed a deal to buy the CRJ aircraft program from Bombardier in 2020, said it was aware of the incident and would fully cooperate with the investigation.

The crash in Canada followed other recent crashes in North America. An Army helicopter collided with a CRJ-700 passenger jet in Washington, killing 67 people, while at least seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed in Philadelphia and 10 were killed in a passenger plane crash in Alaska.