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Beijing – Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday hailed Moscow’s “positive efforts to defuse” the Ukraine crisis in a call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, state media said. Xinhua news agency reported Xi as saying “China is happy to see Russia and relevant parties make positive efforts to defuse” the crisis in Ukraine. Moscow and Beijing have strengthened military and trade ties since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, though China has sought to depict itself as a neutral party amid the nearly three-year conflict. Beijing remains a close political and economic partner of Moscow and has never condemned Russia’s actions, leading some NATO members to brand Beijing an “enabler” of the conflict. Speaking of China’s ties with Russia, Xi said “history and reality” show the two countries “are good neighbors that cannot be moved away, and true friends who share weal and woe, support each other and achieve common development,” Xinhua reported. The state news agency earlier said Xi held a phone call with the Russian leader “upon invitation.” Both sides have made much of Xi and Putin’s supposedly strong personal bond, with Xi calling the Russian leader his “best friend” and Putin lauding his “reliable partner.” Monday marks three years since Putin’s decision to launch what he called a “special military operation,” setting off the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. Source link

Los Angeles – Vatican thriller “Conclave” won top prize at an unpredictable Screen Actors Guild Awards gala Sunday, throwing a potential late curveball into the Oscars race just a week before the Academy Awards. The movie about the mysterious, behind-closed-doors selection process for choosing a new pope won the prize for best cast — the SAG equivalent to best picture — for a stellar ensemble including Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini. Collecting the award, Fiennes said the win was a celebration of “community,” and “the supreme importance of it in our work and in the world.” Rossellini earlier wished “a quick recovery” to Pope Francis, who has been in hospital for 10 days with respiratory issues and remains in critical condition. Having also won big at Britain’s recent BAFTA awards, “Conclave” now appears a strong, late-breaking contender for the best picture Oscar, alongside critical darlings such as “Anora.” Timothee Chalamet receives the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role award for ” A Complete Unknown,” in which he played a young Bob Dylan. | REUTERS In another upset, Timothee Chalamet won the SAG Award for best actor for his portrayal of a youthful Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” “I know we’re in a subjective business but the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” said Chalamet, never short on confidence. “I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats,” he added, citing inspirations including multiple Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis and Marlon Brando, and sporting titans Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps. “I want to be up there,” said the 29-year-old. Adrien Brody has long been seen as the runaway favorite for this year’s awards season with his performance as a brilliant architect, haunted by the Holocaust, in “The Brutalist.” But Chalamet’s win suggests that the Oscars race could be closer than expected. The SAG Awards are voted on by Hollywood actors, who represent the biggest branch of the membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which votes for the Oscars. The prizes are therefore closely watched as indicators of who is likely to win Academy Awards. Demi Moore poses with the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for “The Substance.” | REUTERS More closely following pundit predictions Sunday, Demi Moore won the best actress SAG Award for her role in gory body horror “The Substance.” Moore’s role as an aging celebrity who injects a serum to temporarily reclaim her younger body — with disastrous consequences — has marked a stunning career renaissance for the 1990s megastar. Acting “changed my life because it gave me meaning, it gave me purpose and it gave me direction, because I was a kid on my own, who had no blueprint for life,” she said. Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldana won the best supporting actor and best supporting actress awards for “A Real Pain” and “Emilia Perez,” respectively, at the gala aired on Netflix. Culkin plays an emotional and charismatic tourist retracing his ancestral roots in Poland with his mismatched, neurotic cousin (Jesse Eisenberg). Saldana portrays a lawyer hired to help a Mexican cartel boss undergo gender reassignment surgery in the scandal-hit Netflix film “Emilia Perez.” Both have won nearly every prize in their categories at multiple shows this year, and appear to be shoo-ins for the Oscars next Sunday. Jane Fonda delivers a speech after accepting the Life Achievement Award. | REUTERS Jane Fonda received the union’s Life Achievement Award, using much of her speech to urge Hollywood to “fight back” against the current state of U.S. politics. “A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way,” warned Fonda. While not directly mentioning President Donald Trump, Fonda notably name-checked Sebastian Stan’s performance as Trump in the movie “The Apprentice.” Comparing the present situation to the intolerance of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, Fonda said “today, it’s helpful to remember… that Hollywood resisted.” Her comments, greeted with a standing ovation from the audience, came at a time when Hollywood studios has been criticized for falling in line with White House policies such as the shuttering of diversity hiring programs. The cast of “Shogun” accepts the Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series award. | REUTERS In the television awards, Japanese period drama “Shogun” won best ensemble and best stunt ensemble, while its stars Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada won individual awards. In comedy, Martin Short won for best actor for “Only Murders in the Building,” which also won the best ensemble prize, while Jean Smart won for “Hacks.” Source link

As the lights go on to start the MotoGP season in Thailand on Saturday, the road seems clear for one of the sport’s two deposed kings to reclaim the crown — if they do not get in each other’s way. Marc Marquez, a six-time champion, has joined two-time champion Francesco “Pecco” Bagnaia in the Ducati factory team this season. The question is whether that high-octane mix will prove to be too combustible. Source link

WASHINGTON – By late last week, President Donald Trump had decided to fire Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and replace him with one of two very different candidates, according to two administration officials. One was Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, a hard-charging Army four-star general who oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, one of the Pentagon’s highest-profile assignments. The other was a little-known retired three-star Air Force officer, Dan Caine, with an unorthodox career path that included time as a fighter pilot, the top military liaison to the CIA and an Air National Guard officer who founded a regional airline in Texas. Source link

Japan is grappling with the challenge of ensuring stable energy supplies in the wake of Russia’s full-fledged aggression against Ukraine, which started three years ago. In particular, the fierce global competition for liquefied natural gas has led to spikes in electricity and gas bills, which heavily weigh on the finances of Japanese households. Japanese power and gas companies are struggling to diversify sources of LNG amid the risk of disruptions in imports from Russia, which account for nearly 10% of Japan’s overall LNG supply. Source link

North Korea’s participation in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which gives its troops the opportunity to gain practical combat experience, signals that the war is starting to affect the security situation in East Asia and making the Japanese government wary of the possibility of Pyongyang beefing up its military capabilities. “The military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, including the dispatch of North Korean troops in the war, is expected to cause the situation in Ukraine to deteriorate even further, and we should be seriously concerned over the matter in light of the impact on the security environment surrounding our country,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference Friday. At a meeting in Pyongyang in June last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement calling for mutual support in the event of an emergency. Source link

BENGALURU/BEIJING/BRASILIA – Space is about to get more crowded for Elon Musk. The billionaire’s Starlink communications network is facing increasingly stiff challenges to its dominance of high-speed satellite internet, including from a Chinese state-backed rival and another service financed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Shanghai-based SpaceSail in November signed an agreement to enter Brazil and announced it was in talks with over 30 countries. Two months later, it began work in Kazakhstan, according to the Kazakh embassy in Beijing. Source link

Climate diplomats beginning work on the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the crucial assessment on global warming that helps shape policy for governments to companies — will meet in China this week without U.S. officials. U.S. government scientists participating in the IPCC’s global assessments were issued a stop-work order from the Trump administration, according to media reports late last week, and NASA’s chief scientist Kate Calvin, who holds a leadership role in new report cycle, is no longer attending as a result, CNN said, citing a spokesperson from the space agency. NASA, Calvin and the IPCC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The U.S. absence comes amid broader cuts to research funding and a retreat from climate diplomacy under the Trump administration, raising new questions on what the IPCC’s future might look like without U.S. leadership. The group’s assessments are widely viewed as the world’s most trusted source of information on climate change. “Without the U.S., the IPCC fails,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, who has contributed to past assessment reports. “The U.S. puts more money, more personnel, collects more data and runs more models for climate science than the rest of the world combined.” About 18% of IPCC authors have been from the U.S., more than twice the next biggest national contributor, the U.K., according to a 2023 analysis by Carbon Brief. The Feb. 24-28 meeting in Hangzhou will revolve around outlines and budgets for components of the IPCC’s seventh assessment report, which is expected to be released in 2029, and carbon removal and capture technologies. The reports summarize scientific consensus on the state of climate change, guiding policy decisions and negotiations. It would be difficult to overstate the confidence the IPCC has in the vast basics of climate science and the influence of its findings in shaping global policy, business and investment. The world began a global charge toward net zero in 2018 after the panel published a special report on global temperatures. The authoritative climate science body has now produced six assessments since its founding in 1988, each thousands of pages long. Over time, the IPCC’s reports have become more confident and detailed on humankind’s contribution to the warming planet. In 1995, the IPCC agreed there was evidence of “a discernible human influence on global climate,” while in 2007, it found “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” In 2021, they wrote: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Not every scientist thinks the IPCC’s existence depends on the U.S. Detlef van Vuuren, a Utrecht University professor, climate researcher at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and a past IPCC contributor, said the group would survive if the U.S. decides to leave the organization for good, despite the country’s monumental role over the decades. “It’s obviously highly problematic that a country that has contributed so much to IPCC, but also to global emissions, would decide that facts are not a good basis to inform climate policy,” he said. Source link

Berlin – As an openly gay politician who lives with her Sri Lanka-born partner in Switzerland, Alice Weidel was an unusual choice to many to lead Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) into Sunday’s elections, where it scored its best-ever result. To her legions of political foes, Weidel serves as a “fig leaf” for a party that has railed against asylum seekers, Islam and multiculturalism and some of whose top figures have voiced revisionist views on Germany’s Nazi past. On Sunday, the 46-year-old, who says Margaret Thatcher is her political idol, led the Moscow-friendly AfD to a record result of around 20%. Source link

Sydney – Australia’s online safety regulator on Monday fined messaging platform Telegram about 1 million Australian dollars ($640,000) for its delay in answering questions about measures the app took to prevent the spread of child abuse and violent extremist material. The eSafety Commission in March 2024 sought responses from social media platforms YouTube, X and Facebook to Telegram and Reddit, and blamed them for not doing enough to stop extremists from using livestreaming features, algorithms and recommendation systems to recruit users. Telegram and Reddit were asked about the steps they were taking to combat child sexual abuse material on their services. They had to respond by May but Telegram submitted its response in October. Source link