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French police on Friday peacefully removed dozens of students from a building at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, who had gathered in support of Palestinians, echoing similar encampments and solidarity demonstrations across the United States.

Students waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans in support of residents of Gaza, as Israel continues its offensive following the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that triggered the Israeli-Hamas war.

The Sciences Po building had been occupied since Thursday evening. The university administration had closed the main buildings and moved classes online.

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Anti-Israel students were planning to hold a protest later Friday in front of the Pantheon monument, near the elite Sorbonne University, to call for an end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

On Thursday, similar protests took place in some other universities across the country, including in Lille and Lyon.

The Prime Minister's Office said police had been requested to remove students from 23 sites on French campuses on Thursday and "all were evacuated within a few hours."

A police presence will be maintained near Sciences Po to prevent any further blockades, it said in a statement.

Last week, tensions broke out near the elite university, which counts President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal among its many famous alumni. Pro-Palestine and pro-Israel demonstrators faced each other in a standoff in the street outside Sciences Po. Riot police stepped in to separate the groups.

The protest ended peacefully as pro-Palestinian students agreed to leave.

Recent statements by France’s president and Britain’s foreign secretary about the war in Ukraine are "dangerous" and will deepen international tension around the conflict, the Kremlin’s spokesman said Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in an interview published Thursday, repeated an earlier comment that he doesn’t exclude sending troops to Ukraine. U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, meanwhile, said during a visit to Kyiv the same day that Ukraine will be able to use British long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia — a possibility that some other NATO countries providing weapons have balked at.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded Macron’s comment "a very important and very dangerous statement." Remarks by Macron about possible direct French engagement in the conflict represent a "very dangerous trend," he said.

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Cameron’s statement about Ukraine’s right to use British weapons provided to strike facilities inside Russia is "another very dangerous statement," Peskov told reporters.

"This is a direct escalation of tensions around the Ukrainian conflict, which potentially may threaten European security, the entire European security architecture," Peskov said.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 significantly heightened tension between the Kremlin and NATO countries. The alliance countries have provided much of the military hardware that Kyiv is using to fight Russia, ensuring that the tension has continued to simmer. Russia, in turn, has sought help from China, Iran and North Korea, according to the U.S.

As Russia heaps battlefield pressure on depleted Ukrainian forces and appears poised to launch a major offensive, that antagonism has become sharper.

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Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed Friday that Russian troops had captured more than 200 square miles of territory from Ukrainian forces since the start of the year.

"The Russian groups of forces continue to break through the enemy’s strongholds along the entire line of contact," Shoigu said at a meeting with top military brass.

It was not possible to independently verify claims about the battlefield.

Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that Russian forces have an overwhelming advantage in troops, weapons and ammunition.

Ukraine’s president and foreign minister pressed Cameron during his visit to accelerate the delivery of his country's promised military aid.

"It is important that the weapons included in the U.K. support package announced last week arrive as soon as possible," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the social platform X.

He said armored vehicles, ammunition and missiles of various types were top of the list.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who also met with Cameron, said on X that the focus was on "speeding up military aid."

That message was rammed home by the deputy chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, who said Russia is trying to exploit its current advantage in weapons and manpower and is planning a major offensive this summer.

"Our problem is very simple: We have no weapons," Skibitsky was quoted as saying in an interview with The Economist published Friday.

Vital support pledged by Western allies to help Ukraine fend off the Kremlin’s forces has been delayed by political disagreements in the United States and a lack of manufacturing capacity in Europe. That has opened a door to advances for the bigger and better-equipped Russian army, especially along the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine and its Western partners are in a race against the clock to deploy the new military aid, especially a fresh batch of U.S. support, in coming weeks and prevent Russia taking more ground.

The pressing concern at the moment is keeping the strategic eastern hilltop city of Chasiv Yar out of Russian hands. Capturing the city would offer Russia the opportunity of attacking other key cities deeper inside the Donetsk region and hitting important Ukrainian supply lines.

Chasiv Yar is being battered by Russian artillery, drones and missiles. Glide bombs have also been deployed. They are half-ton bombs fitted with wings and launched from aircraft from behind Russian lines. They demolish buildings and leave huge craters, unnerving local defenders.

Russia used a similar strategy of relentless bombardment to force Ukrainian troops out of Avdiivka in February.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld the two-year prison sentence of a labor union leader who led a long-running strike against the country’s biggest casino.

Chhim Sithar, president of the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees of NagaWorld, had originally been convicted in May 2023 of incitement to commit a felony.

She had been leading a strike that began in December 2021 to protest mass layoffs and alleged union-busting at the NagaWorld casino in the capital, Phnom Penh, and was arrested and charged after a January 2022 demonstration of dismissed employees who were demanding to be rehired.

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NagaWorld in late 2021 had fired 373 employees amid financial struggles related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Some dismissed workers continue to hold regular protests, appealing for Chhim Sithar to be released and for them to get their jobs back, Am Sam Ath of the rights groups Licadho said Friday. More than 200 others had accepted compensation under the labor law and dropped their demands, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training announced in December 2022.

Supporters of Chhim Sithar gathered outside the Supreme Court on Friday with banners calling for her release on appeal. The court also upheld the convictions and sentences of eight of her fellow union members. Five received sentences of 1 1/2 years each. Three others had been given suspended sentences of one year each.

Chhim Sithar could be released later this year when her prison term ends due to time already served before her conviction.

NagaWorld is owned by a company controlled by the family of Malaysian billionaire Chen Lip Keong. The company received its casino license in 1994 and the property is now a huge integrated hotel-casino entertainment complex.

Labor union actions had not been rare in Cambodia but usually had taken place at factories in outlying areas or in industrial estates in other provinces. The protest by the NagaWorld workers in the capital was unusually high-profile and drew police action that was sometimes violent.

In February last year, the U.S. Department of State named Chhim Sithar among 10 recipients around the globe of its annual Human Rights Defender Award. She was described by U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy as "a courageous and tenacious labor union leader who peacefully advocates for the rights of Cambodian workers."

Two Nigerian military personnel will face a court martial over the killing of 85 villagers in a military drone attack in December in the West African nation’s conflict-battered north, authorities said, prompting calls from a rights group Friday for more transparency and justice for victims.

The two personnel will be subjected to military justice proceedings "for acts of omission or commission" after investigations found that the civilians killed by the strike "were mistaken for terrorists," Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters spokesperson Maj. Gen. Edward Buba said in a statement Thursday without providing further details.

Nigeria’s military often conducts air raids as it fights the extremist violence and rebel attacks that have destabilized Nigeria’s northern region for more than a decade, often leaving civilian casualties in its wake.

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Since 2017, some 400 civilians have been killed by such accidental strikes by the military, according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.

The December misfire occurred while villagers observed the Muslim holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad in Kaduna state’s Tudun Biri village.

Nigerian military authorities must provide more information on the investigation, compensate victims, and put in place systems and processes to avoid future misfires, said Anietie Ewang, Nigerian researcher with Human Rights Watch.

"There really needs to be a well-thought-out process to ensure accountability and justice for victims of these airstrikes," said Ewang.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu had said such "avoidable errors are unacceptable and cannot be repeated." Rights groups and activists also condemned the attack and called for increased scrutiny of the military’s operations in conflict zones.

One major concern has been the proliferation of drones within Nigerian security agencies such that "there is no guiding principle on when these can be used," Kabir Adamu, an Abuja-based security analyst, told The Associated Press.

"The military will take extra precautions in the future to ensure that non-combatants are safe," Buba said.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi militia, which has disrupted global shipping to display its support for Palestinians in the Gaza conflict, is now offering a place for students suspended from U.S. universities after staging anti-Israeli protests.

Students have rallied or set up tents at dozens of campuses in the United States in recent days to protest against Israel's war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

Demonstrators have called on President Joe Biden, who has supported Israel's right to defend itself, to do more to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and demanded schools divest from companies that support Israel's government.

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Many of the schools, including Ivy League Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell the protests.

"We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from U.S. universities for supporting Palestinians," an official at Sanaa University, which is run by the Houthis, told Reuters. "We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can."

Sanaa University had issued a statement applauding the "humanitarian" position of the students in the United States and said they could continue their studies in Yemen.

"The board of the university condemns what academics and students of U.S. and European universities are being subjected to, suppression of freedom of expression," the board of the university said in a statement, which included an email address for any students wanting to take up their offer.

The U.S. and Britain returned the Houthi militia to a list of terrorist groups this year as their attacks on vessels in and around the Red Sea hurt global economies.

The Houthi's offer of an education for U.S. students sparked a wave of sarcasm by ordinary Yemenis on social media. One social media user posted a photograph of two Westerners chewing Yemen's widely-used narcotic leaf Qat. He described the scene as American students during their fifth year at Sanaa University.

The military defector was killed in a hail of gunfire and then run over by a car in Spain. The opposition figure was struck repeatedly with a hammer in Lithuania. The journalist fell ill from a suspected poisoning in Germany.

Since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, attacks and harassment of Russians — prominent or not — have been blamed on Moscow's intelligence operatives across Europe and elsewhere.

Despite attempts by Western governments to dismantle Russian spy networks, experts say the Kremlin apparently is still able to pursue those it perceives as traitors abroad in an attempt to silence dissent. Opponents of Putin increasingly fear the long arm of Moscow’s security services, including in countries they once thought were safe.

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"We just escaped Russia and had this illusion that we’ve escaped prison," said journalist Irina Dolinina, who works for the independent outlet Important Stories, based in the Czech capital of Prague.

Dolinina and colleague Alesya Marokhovskaya were harassed in 2023, leading to fears they were under surveillance. They were sent threatening messages via comments on the media outlet's website and told not to travel to a conference in Sweden. To underscore the point, the threat included their airline ticket numbers, seat locations and hotel booking.

"It was a mistake for us to think that here, we are safe," Dolinina told The Associated Press.

The Kremlin, which routinely denies going after its opponents abroad, has been blamed for decades for such attacks.

The most famous cases include Soviet revolutionary-turned-exiled dissident Leon Trotsky, who was killed in 1940 in Mexico after being attacked with an ice ax by a Soviet agent, and Georgi Markov, a dissident working for the BBC's Bulgarian language service, who died in 1978 in London after being jabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella.

Britain was the site of other poisonings blamed on Russian security services under Putin. Defector and former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko died after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006, and former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter fell gravely ill but recovered following an attack with a Soviet-era nerve agent in 2018. The Kremlin repeatedly denied involvement in the British cases.

Now, with a full-scale domestic crackdown underway inside Russia, most of the Kremlin's political opponents, independent journalists and activists have moved abroad. There are strong suspicions, as well as accusations from officials, that Moscow is increasingly targeting them.

The breadth of those individuals pursued by Russia, "even if they look and sound completely insignificant," is because Russian authorities believe they "might come back to the country and destroy it completely," said security expert Andrei Soldatov.

There are multiple reports of exiles being persecuted not only in former Soviet countries with a large Russian diaspora but also in Europe and beyond.

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Activists and independent journalists have reported symptoms that they suspect to be poisoning.

Investigative journalist Elena Kostyuchenko fell ill on a train from Munich to Berlin in 2022, and German prosecutors later said they were investigating it as an attempted killing.

Natalia Arno, the head of the U.S.-based Free Russia Foundation, told AP she still suffers from nerve damage after a suspected poisoning in Prague in May. She believes Russian security services tried to "silence" her because of her pro-democracy work.

In an especially brutal incident, the bullet-riddled body of pilot Maksim Kuzminov was found in La Cala, Spain, near the eastern port of Alicante, after being shot and run over with a car. Threats against him surfaced soon after he stole a Russian Mi-8 helicopter in August, flew it to Ukraine and defected.

Kuzminov, 33, became a "moral corpse" the moment he planned his "dirty and terrible crime," said Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

In March, Leonid Volkov, chief of staff to the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny, had his arm broken in a hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Lithuania's security service said the assault was probably "Russian-organized and implemented." On April 19, Polish police detained two people on suspicion of attacking Volkov on the orders of a foreign intelligence service.

In the decades Putin has held power, the Kremlin has denied multiple times that it is targeting its enemies at home and abroad. It has not commented on the suspected poisonings and Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined comment on Volkov's case, saying it was a matter for Lithuania's Interior Ministry.

Even fledgling anti-war groups find themselves in Moscow's sights.

Russians in Stockholm, Sweden, who in May 2022 formed one of the first organizations to support Ukraine and political prisoners, burned an effigy of Putin labeled "war criminal" outside the Russian Embassy.

Six months later, Russian authorities designated the group an undesirable organization, threatening members with fines and prison. Their relatives were visited at home in Russia by police, and their personal data was leaked, members told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears for their security.

The Russian Orthodox Tsargrad media outlet suggested the group’s members could be recruited by foreign intelligence services and dubbed them "terrorists." The pro-Kremlin outlet warned them of a nasty surprise if they continued opposing the war.

Days later, while visiting relatives in St. Petersburg, a group member named Marina said a police car stopped right in front of her as she exited a shop. Three men got out, asked for her documents, forced her into the car and drove to a police station, siren blaring.

"It was really scary. How the hell did they know my exact location?" Marina told AP, declining to give her surname because she fears for her safety.

She was confronted with the leaked data and video of the embassy protest, and investigators demanded she identify other members of the group, reveal its funding source and asked her views on the war. One even questioned why she was leaving Russia before her father’s birthday -– making clear they knew the identity of her family.

She was charged with an administrative violation, usually punishable by a fine. As police prepared to drive her to her parents’ apartment, it was suggested she "cooperate" and become an informant if she wanted to see her family again without fear of detention, Marina said.

"It’s a known modus operandi for Russian intelligence and the Russian regime to follow opponents in the Russian diaspora in other countries and subject them to different types of harassment or intelligence work," Fredrik Hultgren-Friberg, spokesperson for the Swedish Security Service, told AP.

Soldatov said the Kremlin is going after a wide range of opponents because it fears pro-Western uprisings like those in Georgia and Ukraine and wants to prevent the seeds of dissent from growing into "something new."

Even though Western countries expelled hundreds of Russian spies in coordinated actions after the 2018 poisoning of the Skripals and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russians abroad say they are concerned Moscow still can reach them.

Marokhovskaya, the investigative journalist in Prague, received anonymous threats, including one indicating close surveillance that said, "We’ll find her wherever she walks her wheezing dog."

She and Dolinina told AP they experienced such observation inside Russia, including after publishing award-winning investigations of corruption in Putin’s family.

After moving to Europe, Dolinina said she initially thought she was experiencing "constant paranoia." When she got the anonymous threats and was followed on Prague's streets, however, she realized the fears were well-founded.

Neither journalist has concrete proof that Russian security services targeted them, but they said they believe the personal data -– flight information, passport numbers and home addresses -– and physical surveillance were likely orchestrated by a state actor.

"I was really shocked that it’s happening in Europe," Dolinina said.

Although the many incidents the West blames on the Kremlin fuel speculation that Moscow still can intimidate Russians abroad, not everyone has been silenced.

"This is not the reason to quit," Marokhovskaya said. "It’s the reason to keep working."

Defense chiefs from the U.S., Australia, Japan and the Philippines vowed to deepen their cooperation as they gathered Thursday in Hawaii for their second-ever joint meeting amid concerns about China's operations in the South China Sea.

The meeting came after the four countries last month held their first joint naval exercises in the South China Sea, a major shipping route where Beijing has long-simmering territorial disputes with a number of Southeast Asian nations and has caused alarm with its recent assertiveness in the waters.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at a news conference after their discussion that the drills strengthened the ability of the nations to work together, build bonds among their forces and underscore their shared commitment to international law in the waterway.

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Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said the defense chiefs talked about increasing the tempo of their defense exercises.

"Today, the meetings that we have held represent a very significant message to the region and to the world about four democracies which are committed to the global rules-based order," Marles said at the joint news conference with his counterparts.

Austin hosted the defense chiefs at the U.S. military’s regional headquarters, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, at Camp H.M. Smith in the hills above Pearl Harbor. Earlier in the day, Austin had separate bilateral meetings with Australia and Japan, followed by a trilateral meeting with Australia and Japan.

Defense chiefs from the four nations held their first meeting in Singapore last year.

The U.S. has decades-old defense treaties with all three nations.

The U.S. lays no claims to the South China Sea, but has deployed Navy ships and fighter jets in what it calls freedom of navigation operations that have challenged China’s claims to virtually the entire waterway. The U.S. says freedom of navigation and overflight in the waters is in America’s national interest.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims in the resource-rich sea. Beijing has refused to recognize a 2016 international arbitration ruling that invalidated its expansive claims on historical grounds.

Skirmishes between Beijing and Manila in particular have flared since last year. Earlier this week, Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons at two Philippine patrol vessels off off Scarborough Shoal, damaging both.

The repeated high-seas confrontations have sparked fears of a larger conflict that could put China and the United States on a collision course.. The U.S. has warned repeatedly that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines — its oldest treaty ally in Asia — if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

President Joe Biden's administration has said it aims to build what it calls a "latticework" of alliances in the Indo-Pacific even as the U.S. grapples with the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Beijing says the strengthening of U.S. alliances in Asia is aimed at containing China and threatens regional stability.

In 2018, the censors who oversee Chinese media issued a directive to the nation's entertainment industry: Don't feature artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or any other subculture.

Right after that well-known rapper GAI missed a gig on a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance. Speculation went wild: Fans worried that this was the end for hip-hop in China. Some media labeled it a ban.

The genre had just experienced a banner year, with a hit competition-format TV show minting new stars and introducing them to a country of 1.4 billion people. Rappers accustomed to operating on little money and performing in small bars became household names. The announcement from censors came at the peak of that frenzy. A silence descended, and for months no rappers appeared on the dozens of variety shows and singing competitions on Chinese TV.

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But by the end of that year, everything was back in full swing. "Hip-hop was too popular," says Nathanel Amar, a researcher of Chinese pop culture at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China. "They couldn’t censor the whole genre."

What had looked like the end for Chinese hip-hop was just the beginning.

Since then, hip-hop’s explosive growth in China has only continued. It has done so by carving out a space for itself while staying clear of the government’s red lines, balancing genuine creative expression with something palatable in a country with powerful censors.

Today, musicians say they’re looking forward to an arriving golden age.

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Much of the energy can be found in Chengdu, a city in China's southwestern Sichuan region. Some of the biggest acts in China today hail from Sichuan; Wang Yitai, Higher Brothers and Vava are just a few of the names that have made Chinese rap mainstream, performing in a mix of Mandarin and Sichuan dialects. While hip-hop in Chengdu started out with the very heavy sounds of trap, its mainstreaming has meant artists have broadened out to lighter sounds, from R&B to the trending afrobeat rhythms popularized by Beyonce.

Although Chinese rap has been operating underground for decades in cities like Beijing, it is the Sichuan region — known internationally for its spicy cuisine, its panda reserve and its status as the birthplace of the late leader Deng Xiaoping — that has come to dominate.

"There’s a lot of rhymes in rap. And from a young age, we were exposed to language with a lot of rhymes. And I feel like we’re its origin," says Mumu Xiang, who is from Sichuan and attended a rap concert recently held in the city.

The dialect lends itself to rap because it’s softer than Mandarin Chinese and there are a lot more rhymes, says 25-year-old rapper Kidway, from a town just outside Chengdu. "Take the word ‘gang’ in English. In Sichuanese, there’s a lot of rhymes for that word ‘fang, sang, zhuang,’ the rhymes are already there," he says.

Chengdu is also welcoming to outsiders, says Haysen Cheng, a 24-year-old rapper who moved to the city from Hong Kong in 2021 to work on his music at the invitation of Harikiri, a British producer who has helped shape the scene and worked with Chengdu’s biggest acts.

Part of the city’s hip-hop lore centers around a collective called Chengdu Rap House or CDC, founded by a rapper called Boss X, whose fans affectionately call him "Xie laober" in the Sichuan dialect. The city has embraced rap, as its originators like Boss X went from making music in a run-down apartment in an old residential community to performing in a stadium for thousands. At Boss X’s performance in March, fans sang along and cheered in Sichuanese. Even with a ban on the audience standing up, standard at all stadium performances in China, the energy was infectious.

"When I came to mainland China, they showed me more love in like three or four months than I ever received in Hong Kong," Cheng says. He got to collaborate with the Higher Brothers, one of the few Chinese rap groups who also have global recognition. "The people here actually want each other to succeed."

The price of going mainstream, though, means the underground scene has evaporated. Chengdu was once known for its underground rap battles. Those no longer happen, as freestyling usually involves profanity and other content the authorities deem unacceptable. The last time there was a rap battle in the city, rappers say, authorities quickly showed up and shut it down. These days it’s all digital, with people uploading short clips of their music to Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, to get noticed.

Kidway says he learned to rap from going to these battles and competing against other rappers his age. He once worked at a renovation company but ditched it to pursue rap full time.

But even though the rap battles are gone, the field has more rappers than ever. That's a good thing. "The more players there are," he says, "the more interesting it is."

Rarely can a single cultural product be said to have originated a whole genre of music. But the talent competition/reality TV show "The Rap of China" has played an outsized role in building China's rap industry.

The first season, broadcast on IQiyi, a web streaming platform, brought rap and hip-hop culture to households across the country. The first season’s 12 episodes drew 2.5 billion views online, according to Chinese media reports.

In the first season, the show relied on its judges’ star power to draw in an audience — namely Kris Wu, a Chinese Canadian singer and former member of the hit K-pop group EXO. At that point in time, Wu was at the height of his fame, and his comments as a judge that season even became internet memes. "Do you have freestyle?" he asked a contestant, dead serious, on Episode One — a moment that went on to live in internet infamy because people doubted Wu's rap credentials.

Two winners emerged from the first season: GAI and PG One. Shortly after their win, the internet was awash with rumors about the less-than-perfect doings of PG One’s personal life. The Communist Youth League also criticized one of his old songs for content that appeared to be about using cocaine, very much violating one of the censor’s red lines.

Then came the 2018 meeting where censors reminded TV channels of who could not appear on their programs, namely anyone who represented hip-hop. PG One was finding that any attempts to release new music were quickly taken down by platforms. The platform, IQiyi, even took down the entire first season for a while.

But by late summer 2018, fans were excited to hear that they could expect a second season of "The Rap of China," though there was a rebrand. The name in English stayed the same, but in Chinese it signaled a new direction. The show’s name changed from "China Has Hip-Hop" to "China Has ‘Shuochang,’" a term that also refers to traditional forms of storytelling.

Regulators had given the go-ahead for hip-hop to continue its growth, but they had to follow the lines set by the government censors. Hip-hop was now shuochang and a symbol of youth culture; it had to stay away from mentions of drugs and sex. Otherwise, though, it could proceed.

"It was a success for the Chinese regulators. … They really succeeded in coopting the hip-hop artists," Amar says. "It’s like a contract: If you want to be popular, if you want to be on TV shows, you have to respect the red line."

With tight censorship on the entertainment industry and a ban on mentions of drugs and sex in lyrics, artists have reacted in two ways. Either they wholeheartedly embrace the displays of patriotism and nationalism, or they avoid the topics.

Some, like GAI, have fully taken on the government’s mantle in the mainstreaming of hip-hop. He won "The Rap of China" with a song called "Not Friendly" in which, in classic hip-hop fashion, he dissed other rappers that he didn't name. "I’m not friendly. I can break your pen at any moment. Tear down your flashy words. … My enemies you better pray for you to have a good end."

Just a few years later, Gai is singing about China’s glorious history on the CCTV’s Spring Festival New Year’s Gala broadcast, a tightly scripted entertainment show with comedy sketches, songs and dance performances that is watched by families while celebrating Chinese New Year.

"Five thousand years of history flows past like quicksand. I’m proud to be born in Cathay," he sings, wearing a Qing Dynasty-inspired Tang jacket.

The red lines have also pushed artists to be more creative. For Chinese rap to thrive, artists have to find original voices, they say. 32-year-old rapper Fulai describes his own music as chill rap or "bedroom music" — not in the euphemistic sense, but the type of music you listen to as you lay in bed. His upcoming album, he says, is about ordinary things like fights with his wife and washing dishes.

Still, Fulai says he talks about sex a lot in his lyrics. Chinese is a language with countless sayings and a strong poetic tradition: "There’s nothing you can’t touch," he says. "You just have to be clever about it."

Developing a genuine Chinese brand of rap remains a work in progress. Hip-hop got its start from New York’s boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where rappers made music out of their tough circumstances, from shootouts to crime to illegal drug dealing. In China, the challenge is about finding what fits its context. Shootouts are rare in a country where guns are banned, and the penalties for drug use are high.

The rap crews in Chongqing, another mega-city in the Sichuan region, had a taste of gang culture reflected in their music as artists wrote about fights and vows of brotherhood. But most of today's biggest acts don’t rap about topics like knifing someone or drug use anymore.

Wang Yitai, who was a member of Chengdu’s rap collective CDC, is now one of the most popular rappers in China. His style has infused mainstream pop sounds.

"We’re all trying hard to create songs that not only sound good, but also topics that fit for China," Wang says. "I think hip-hop’s spirit will always be about original creation and will always be about your own story."

This Orthodox Easter season, an extraordinary new church is bringing spiritual comfort to war-weary residents of the Ukrainian village of Lypivka. Two years ago, it also provided physical refuge from the horrors outside.

Almost 100 residents sheltered in a basement chapel at the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary while Russian troops occupied the village in March 2022 as they closed in on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, 40 miles to the east.

"The fighting was right here," the Rev. Hennadii Kharkivskyi said. He pointed to the churchyard, where a memorial stone commemorates six Ukrainian soldiers killed in the battle for Lypivka.

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"They were injured and then the Russians came and shot each one, finished them off," he said.

The two-week Russian occupation left the village shattered and the church itself — a modern replacement for an older structure — damaged while still under construction. It’s one of 129 war-damaged Ukrainian religious sites recorded by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization.

"It’s solid concrete," the priest said. "But it was pierced easily" by Russian shells, which blasted holes in the church and left a wall inside pockmarked with shrapnel scars. At the bottom of the basement staircase, a black scorch mark shows where a grenade was lobbed down.

But within weeks, workers were starting to repair the damage and work to finish the solid building topped by red domes that towers over the village, with its scarred and damaged buildings, blooming fruit trees and fields that the Russians left littered with land mines.

UKRAINE'S ZELENSKYY URGES FASTER US WEAPON DELIVERIES

For many of those involved — including a tenacious priest, a wealthy philanthropist, a famous artist and a team of craftspeople — rebuilding this church plays a part in Ukraine's struggle for culture, identity and its very existence. The building, a striking fusion of the ancient and the modern, reflects a country determined to express its soul even in wartime.

The building's austere exterior masks a blaze of color inside. The vibrant red, blue, orange and gold panels decorating walls and ceiling are the work of Anatoliy Kryvolap, an artist whose bold, modernist images of saints and angels make this church unique in Ukraine.

The 77-year-old Kryvolap, whose abstract paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction, said that he wanted to eschew the severe-looking icons he’d seen in many Orthodox churches.

"It seems to me that going to church to meet God should be a celebration," he said.

There has been a church on this site for more than 300 years. An earlier building was destroyed by shelling during World War II. The small wooden church that replaced it was put to more workaday uses in Soviet times, when religion was suppressed.

Kharkivskyi reopened the parish in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and set about rebuilding the church, spiritually and physically, with funding from Bohdan Batrukh, a Ukrainian film producer and distributor.

Work stopped when Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Moscow's forces reached the fringes of Kyiv before being driven back. Lypivka was liberated by the start of April.

Since then, fighting has been concentrated in the east and south of Ukraine, though aerial attacks with rockets, missiles and drones are a constant threat across the country.

By May 2022, workers had resumed work on the church. It has been slow going. Millions of Ukrainians fled the country when war erupted, including builders and craftspeople. Hundreds of thousands of others have joined the military.

Inside the church, a tower of wooden scaffolding climbs up to the dome, where a red and gold image of Christ raises a hand in blessing

For now, services take place in the smaller basement, where the priest, in white and gold robes, recently conducted a service for a couple of dozen parishioners as the smell of incense wafted through the candlelit room.

He is expecting a large crowd for Easter, which falls on Sunday. Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate Easter later than Catholic and Protestant churches, because they use a different method of calculating the date for the holy day that marks Christ’s resurrection.

A majority of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians, though the church is divided. Many belong to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with which the Lypivka church is affiliated. The rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church was loyal to the patriarch in Moscow until splitting from Russia after the 2022 invasion and is viewed with suspicion by many Ukrainians.

Kharkivskyi says the size of his congregation has remained stable even though the population of the village has shrunk dramatically since the war began. In tough times, he says, people turn to religion.

"Like people say: ‘Air raid alert — go see God,’" the priest said wryly.

Liudmyla Havryliuk, who has a summer home in Lypivka, found herself drawn back to the village and its church even before the fighting stopped. When Russia invaded, she drove to Poland with her daughters, then 16 and 18 years old. But within weeks she came back to the village she loves, still besieged by the Russians.

The family hunkered down in their home, cooking on firewood, drawing water from a well, sometimes under Russian fire. Havryliuk said that when they saw Russian helicopters, they held hands and prayed.

"Not prayer in strict order, like in the book," she said. "It was from my heart, from my soul, about what should we do? How can I save myself and especially my daughters?"

She goes to Lypivka’s church regularly, saying it’s a "place you can shelter mentally, within yourself."

As Ukraine marks its third Easter at war, the church is nearing completion. Only a few of Kryvolap’s interior panels remain to be installed. He said that the shell holes will be left unrepaired as a reminder to future generations.

"(It’s) so that they will know what kind of ‘brothers’ we have, that these are just fascists," he said, referring to the Russians.

"We are Orthodox, just like them, but destroying churches is something inhumane."

The death toll from heavy rains in Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul rose to 13, local authorities said on Thursday, May 2, 2024, as the state government declared a state of public calamity to handle the dramatic situation.

The storms, which have caused the greatest devastation in the state in recent years, also left 21 people missing and 5,257 displaced in 134 cities, according to Rio Grande do Sul's civil defense.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is set to fly over the affected areas and meet with Governor Eduardo Leite later on Thursday in Santa Maria, which has seen three deaths, the most so far in one place.

10 CONFIRMED DEAD AFTER FIRE AT BRAZILIAN HOTEL, AUTHORITIES SAY

Leite declared a state of public calamity, citing the risk faced by the state as a result of climate events.

The Rio Grande do Sul floods are just the latest recent natural disasters in Brazil. The state had already been battered by a tropical cyclone last September, when more than 30 people were killed.

French officials inaugurated on Thursday a huge water storage basin meant to help clean up the River Seine, set to be the venue for marathon swimming at the Paris Games and the swimming leg of the Olympic and Paralympic triathlons.

Sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra praised Paris' ability "to provide athletes from all over the world with an exceptional setting on the Seine for their events."

Last year, swimming test events had to be canceled due to poor water quality. One reason was heavy rains that overwhelmed the city's old sewers, causing a mix of rainwater and untreated sewage to flow into the Seine and leaving safety standards unmet.

AS OLYMPICS NEAR, PARIS POLICE CLEAR 100 MIGRANTS FROM CAMP NEAR CITY HALL

The giant reservoir dug next to Paris’ Austerlitz train station aims to collect excess rainwater and prevent bacteria-laden wastewater from entering the Seine.

It can hold the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools of dirty water that will now be treated rather than being spat raw through storm drains into the river.

"We are on time," the prefect of the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, said. "The beginning of the Games will coincide with water quality allowing competition. That’s a tremendous collective success."

Paris mayor Anne Hildago promised she would herself swim in the Seine before the Olympics — possibly alongside President Emmanuel Macron.

BON APPÉTIT: A LOOK AT THE FOODS OLYMPIC ATHLETES WILL BE SERVED IN PARIS THIS SUMMER

The new storage basin "guarantees" that water can be stored even during severe storms, and will help water levels to "return to normal as quickly as possible," she said.

The opening of the basin is the latest step toward a cleaner river and comes as part of a series of newly-built facilities, including a water treatment plant in Champigny-sur-Marne, east of Paris, that was inaugurated last month.

During the Olympics, water will be tested at 3 a.m. each day to determine whether events can go ahead as planned. If results were not up to the standards, events could be delayed by a few days, organizers said.

The estimated cost of the cleanup efforts amount to $1.5 billion, paid by the state and local authorities.

"For more than ten years already, we’ve seen a very significant improvement of the Seine water quality and our river’s fishes and wildlife are back," Hidalgo said.

About 35 fish species are now living in the Paris section of the river, up from only three in the 1970s, when waters were extremely polluted due to nearby industrial activities.

For decades, the Seine was used mainly as a waterway to transport goods and people or as a watery grave for discarded bicycles and other trash. Swimming there has, with some exceptions, been illegal since 1923.

Paris officials are planning to open several bathing sites to the general public in the summer, starting from next year.

The River Seine also is to be at the heart of the grandiose opening ceremony for the Olympics that will see over 200 athletes' delegations parade on more that 80 boats in central Paris.

No ID, no vote — no matter who you are. 

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station on Thursday after forgetting to bring proper identification to vote, British media are reporting. 

Johnson, who in 2022 introduced a contentious requirement for voters to show photo ID while voting, ran afoul of his own rules while attempting to cast a vote in local elections taking place across England, Sky News reports. 

Staff were forced to turn Johnson away, although the BBC reports that Johnson returned later with the proper paperwork and cast his vote.

RFK JR RAILING AGAINST 'RACIALLY RANCID' VOTER ID LAWS IN UNEARTHED WRITINGS

The former Conservative Party leader was attempting to cast his ballot in South Oxfordshire, where a police and crime commissioner for the Thames Valley was being selected.

"The polls are now open. Vote Conservative today!" Johnson posted on X earlier in the day. 

A spokesman for Johnson did not deny he had failed to bring ID, saying only: "Mr. Johnson voted Conservative," Sky News reports. 

As prime minister, Johnson's government introduced the ID requirement to crack down on possible voter fraud. 

LIBERAL GROUPS SUE TO BLOCK NEW ALABAMA VOTING LAW BANNING BALLOT HARVESTING

Critics said it would potentially disenfranchise parts of the electorate and the while an Electoral Commission warned the new law could exclude those with disabilities and from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Passports, driving licenses, disability blue badges and certain local travel cards are accepted forms of voter ID. Previously, voters only needed to give their name and address to be able to vote.

Last year, in the first vote where the new rules were implemented, around 14,000 people in England were denied a vote in local elections after being unable to provide ID.

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A poll by YouGov showed 14% of Britons were still unaware, in the days prior to Thursday's elections, of the voter ID requirement.

Former President Trump has long called for voter ID requirements in U.S. elections in order to bolster election integrity and to combat what he claims are non-citizens voting in elections. He blames it as one of the reasons he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.

Speaker Mike Johnson rolled out an election integrity package at a press conference with Trump last month when the Speaker said that "potentially hundreds of thousands of votes" are cast by undocumented immigrants in U.S. elections.

Reuters contributed to this report. 

The anti-Israel protests that are sweeping college campuses across America are going global with pro-Palestinian encampments now popping up at numerous universities in Australia. 

Images have captured hundreds of activists on Friday rallying around tents set up on the campus of the University of Sydney, calling for the institution to divest from companies with links to Israel. 

"Once you understand what is going on you have a responsibility to try and get involved and raise awareness and show solidarity," one attendee told Reuters. He was identified as a 39-year-old father who brought his 2-year-old child to the scene to demonstrate that it is not just students protesting the war in Gaza. 

At a counter-protest several hundred yards away, a crowd gathered around Australian and Israeli flags and listened to speakers who said the pro-Palestinian demonstrations are making Jewish students and staff feel unsafe on campus, according to Reuters. 

MORE THAN 2,000 HAVE BEEN ARRESTED DURING ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS AT US COLLEGE CAMPUSES 

"There's no space for anybody else, walking through campus chanting 'Intifada' and 'from the river to the sea' it does something, it's scary," one speaker reportedly said. 

Other encampments have popped up at universities in the cities of Melbourne and Canberra, Reuters reports. 

University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Mark Scott said Friday that there was space for both groups of protesters. 

POLICE ARREST 30 AT PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY AFTER ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS OCCUPY LIBRARY TWICE IN ONE DAY 

"They may strongly disagree with the matters that have been discussed. ... We can host that conversation and we should be able to do that in a non-threatening way," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

Scott said not all of the protesters were students, and that some might not be committed to peaceful and productive engagement.  

"We are working with security and police," he added. 

At one point there was a scuffle between the two groups at the University of Sydney, the Associated Press reported, citing ABC, but added that both sides later backed off due to security. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

German's top diplomat on Friday said Russia will face consequences after accusing its military intelligence service of masterminding an "absolutely intolerable" cyberattack.

Relations between the two European countries were already tense, with Germany providing military support to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russian state hackers were behind a cyberattack last year that targeted the Social Democrats, the leading party in the governing coalition.

BIPARTISAN LAWMAKERS SEEK ANSWERS FROM MAYORKAS AFTER RUSSIAN CYBERATTACKS ON WATER SYSTEMS IN US

"Russian state hackers attacked Germany in cyberspace," she said at a news conference in the Australian city of Adelaide. "We can attribute this attack to the group called APT28, which is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia."

"This is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences," she said.

Baerbock is visiting Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, with the trip focusing on security policy as China pushes for influence in the Pacific region.

"The defense cooperation between Germany and Australia is close and we would like to deepen it further and together expand it, because we are in a situation where we face similar threats," said Baerbock, who is the first German foreign minister to visit Australia in 13 years.

Discussions between Baerbock and Australia counterpart Penny Wong centered on the conflict in Gaza. "I think we all understand that the only path out of this cycle of violence that we see in the Middle East at such great cost is one that ultimately ensures a two-state solution," Wong said.

A bus plunged into a rocky ravine in northern Pakistan on Friday after its driver lost control, killing at least 15 people and seriously injuring more than 20 others, police said.

The bus was traveling to Hunza on the Karakoram Highway in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Diamer district when the accident occurred, senior police officer Fayaz Ahmed said.

The mountainous highway connects Pakistan with China. Hunza is a popular tourist destination, especially in the warmer months.

LANDMINE BLASTS KILL 1, INJURE 18 IN SOUTHWESTERN PAKISTAN

Pictures from local media showed the twisted wreckage of an orange bus at the bottom of a rocky ravine near a riverbank.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi expressed sorrow over the accident and prayed for the swift recovery of the injured.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan, where motorists often ignore traffic rules and safety standards on battered roads, particularly in rugged areas.

The United Kingdom on Wednesday commenced its controversial operation to relocate migrants to Rwanda in Africa, promising more "operations" in the coming weeks. 

The British government has spent two years battling legal and political roadblocks in pursuit of its Rwanda policy plan, which would allow the U.K. to send any asylum seekers entering the U.K. from a "safe" country after Jan. 1, 2022, to the African country. Last year, the U.K. Supreme Court unanimously ruled the policy unlawful, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially said he would accept. But in January he reversed course and announced his intent to ignore the court orders. 

"Are there circumstances in which I'm prepared to move ahead in the face of Rule 39? The answer is clearly yes," Sunak said. He ultimately pushed through the legislation in the final week of April. 

"The U.K. government have held out as long as they can, letting millions of illegal immigrants flood the U.K., most of them arriving after the people voted for Brexit," Thomas Corbett-Dillon, a commentator and political consultant and former adviser to Boris Johnson, told Fox News Digital.

TOP UK POLITICIAN SAYS VOTERS, INCLUDING IN US, ARE DEMANDING ‘ROBUST ACTION’ ON MIGRATION CRISIS

"But, finally, the people have started standing up and rejecting these insane asylum policies, so the government are panicking," Corbett-Dillon said. "They think these flights to Rwanda will appease us, but it’s too little, too late."

He continued, "Some people are angry that they are being sent to Africa, but illegal immigrants should be sent wherever, just not here. We incentivize and encourage these people to make dangerous journeys, and the human traffickers are making huge profits."

Pointing to the U.S. he noted that "There is an example here for a future Trump administration to begin mass deportations of illegal immigrants, which is exactly what the majority of people want. Unless, of course, Biden grants an amnesty before he loses the election, which is looking more and more likely," he claimed.

The BBC determined 52,000 asylum seekers could potentially qualify for the program, with 5,700 included in the first group identified for removal. 

UK HOME SECRETARY SAYS MULTICULTURALISM HAS ‘FAILED’ AS EUROPE FACES MIGRANT CRISIS

Both the U.N. refugee agency and the Council of Europe last month urged Downing Street to rethink its plans over concerns about violations of human rights protections and fears that it would damage international cooperation on tackling the global migrant crisis. 

"Our Rwanda Partnership is a pioneering response to the global challenge of illegal migration, and we have worked tirelessly to introduce new, robust legislation to deliver it," British Home Secretary James Cleverly said in a press release. 

"Our dedicated enforcement teams are working at pace to swiftly detain those who have no right to be here, so we can get flights off the ground," Cleverly continued. "This is a complex piece of work, but we remain absolutely committed to operationalizing the policy, to stop the boats and break the business model of people smuggling gangs."

Sunak said he expected the first flights to take off in 10 to 12 weeks, taking them to Rwanda, where they would then await the processing of their asylum claim. The prime minister expected that "multiple flights a month through the summer and beyond" will keep the asylum seekers moving out of the country throughout the year. 

CHINESE ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSINGS SPIKE BY 7,000%. ONLY CHINA KNOWS WHY

The famous Hope Hostel, which housed college students who had lost their parents during the 1994 genocide, said it would now take the deported asylum seekers from the U.K. 

"Even if they arrive now or tomorrow, all arrangements are in place," the Rwanda government's deputy spokesperson, Alain Mukuralinda, told The Associated Press, revealing that authorities have prepared for two years to receive the migrants. 

The initiation of the operation to deport the illegal migrants prompted complaints from some quarters, with several British outlets criticizing the Home Office video as a bizarre "celebratory" video, citing online reaction that called the video "performatively cruel" and "shameful," according to Scottish newspaper The National. 

However, the government also announced the first voluntary deportation occurred as well, with one asylum seeker accepting a payment of around $3,750 to relocate to Rwanda. The British newspaper The Sun reported that the man, who remained unidentified, departed the U.K. Monday and now lives in Kigali. 

Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council demanded that the British government focus on creating a "fair and controlled asylum system" instead of "headline-grabbing schemes that will waste time and resources." 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Mexican authorities said Thursday they have found tents and questioned three people in the case of two Australians and an American who went missing over the weekend in the Pacific coast state of Baja California.

María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the state’s chief prosecutor, would not say whether the three people questioned were considered possible suspects or witnesses in the case. She said only that some were tied directly to the case, and others indirectly.

2 AMERICANS FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM IN MEXICO'S BAJA CALIFORNIA

But Andrade Ramírez said evidence found along with the abandoned tents was somehow linked to the three. The three foreigners were believed to have been surfing and camping along the Baja coast near the coastal city of Ensenada, but did not show up at their planned accommodations over the weekend.

"A working team (of investigators) is at the site where they were last seen, where tents and other evidence was found that could be linked to these three people we have under investigation," Andrade Ramírez said. "There is a lot of important information that we can't make public."

"We do not know what condition they are in," she added. While drug cartels are active in the area, she said "all lines of investigation are open at this time. We cannot rule anything out until we find them."

On Wednesday, the missing Australians' mother, Debra Robinson, posted on a local community Facebook page an appeal for help in finding her sons, Jake and Callum. Robinson said her son had not been heard from since Saturday April 27. They had booked accommodations in the nearby city of Rosarito, Baja California.

Robinson said one of her sons, Callum, is diabetic. She also mentioned that the American who was with them was named Jack Carter Rhoad, but the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City did not immediately confirm that. The U.S. State Department said it was aware of reports of a U.S. citizen missing in Baja, but gave no further details.

Andrade Ramírez said her office was in contact with Australian and U.S. officials. But she suggested that the time that had passed might make it harder to find them.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't until the last few days that they were reported missing. So, that meant that important hours or time was lost," she said.

In 2015, two Australian surfers, Adam Coleman and Dean Lucas, were killed in western Sinaloa state, across the Gulf of California — also known as the Sea of Cortez— from the Baja peninsula. Authorities say they were victims of highway bandits. Three suspects were arrested in that case.

A rebel group with alleged links to Rwanda this week seized Rubaya, a mining town in eastern Congo known for producing a key mineral used in smartphones, the group said Thursday in a statement.

In a statement shared with The Associated Press, a spokesperson for the M23 rebel group said the town was "liberated."

EASTERN CONGO AID GROUPS WARN OF NEW HUMANITARIAN CRISIS LINKED TO REBEL GROUP

The Congolese army declined to comment on the situation.

The decadeslong conflict in eastern Congo has produced one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with over 100 armed groups fighting for control of the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Many groups are accused of carrying out mass killings, rapes and other human rights violations. The violence has displaced about 7 million people, many beyond the reach of aid.

The town of Rubaya holds deposits of tantalum, which is extracted from coltan, a key component in the production of smartphones. It is among the minerals that was named earlier this month in a letter from Congo’s government questioning Apple about the tech company’s knowledge of "blood minerals" being smuggled in its supply chain.

"The fall of Rubaya is in a way the embodiment of this systemic plundering," Ernest Singoma, a civil society activist in Goma, told the AP on Thursday.

There’s been an upsurge in fighting in recent months between M23 rebels and Congo army forces, and it comes as the United Nations plans to withdraw peacekeepers from the region by the end of the year.

John Banyene, a civil society activist, told the AP that the rebels were advancing towards the town of Goma, which is eastern Congo’s largest city and the capital of North Kivu province.

"All the supply routes to the city are blocked," said Banyene."We are just getting by."

Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi alleges Rwanda is destabilizing Congo by backing the M23 rebels. U.N. experts, along with the U.S. State Department, have also accused Rwanda of backing the rebels. Rwanda denies the claims.

Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron called on neighboring Rwanda to halt its support for the M23 rebel group during a joint press conference with Tshisekedi in Paris.

Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the capture of Rubaya was a significant development in the conflict.

"Rubaya has mining deposits and without doubt this will allow M23 to exploit them," he told the AP.

The March 23 Movement, or M23, is a rebel military group mainly made up of ethnic Tutsis that broke away from the Congolese army just over a decade ago. They staged a large offensive in 2012 and took over the provincial capital of Goma near the border with Rwanda, the same city they are threatening again.

The European Union announced Thursday an aid package for Lebanon of 1 billion euros — about $1.06 billion — much of which will go to boost border control to halt the flow of asylum seekers and migrants from the small, crisis-wracked country across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus and Italy.

The deal follows other EU aid packages for countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania to fortify their borders. It comes against a backdrop of increasing hostility toward Syrian refugees in Lebanon and a major surge in irregular migration of Syrian refugees from Lebanon to Cyprus.

UN MIGRATION AGENCY CHIEF WARNS NUMBER OF SYRIAN REFUGEES LEAVING LEBANON WILL KEEP RISING

European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during a Beirut visit with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides that the aid distribution will start this year and last till 2027.

The bulk of the aid — 736 million euros — would go to support Syrian refugees "and other vulnerable groups" in Lebanon, while 200 million euros are meant to bolster Lebanese security services in enforcing border and migration control, according to figures provided by the Cypriot government.

An unspecified amount would go to Lebanese fishermen, to discourage them from selling their boats to smugglers.

Von der Leyen said the EU will also work on a "more structured approach to voluntary return" of Syrian refugees "in close cooperation with" the U.N. refugee agency. The bloc will continue to maintain "legal pathways" for resettlement of refugees in Europe, she said.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati praised the package, saying that "Lebanon’s security is security for European countries and vice versa," and that an escalation of the crisis "will not be limited to Lebanon but will extend to Europe."

Lebanon, which has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands more who are unregistered, the world's highest refugee population per capita.

Lebanese political officials have for years urged the international community to resettle the refugees in other countries or assist their return to Syria — voluntarily or not. Lebanese security forces have stepped up deportations of Syrians over the past year.

Tensions further flared after an official with the Christian nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed last month in what military officials said was a botched carjacking by a Syrian gang. The incident prompted outbreaks of anti-Syrian violence by vigilante groups.

Meanwhile, Cypriot authorities complain the island nation has been overwhelmed by irregular migration of Syrian asylum seekers, many of them coming on boats from Lebanon.

The UNHCR in Lebanon said it had verified 59 "actual or attempted" departures by boats carrying a total of 3,191 passengers from Lebanon between January and mid-April, compared to three documented boat movements carrying 54 passengers in the same period last year. Usually, few boats attempt the much more dangerous crossing in the winter. In all of 2023, UNHCR recorded 65 boat departures carrying 3,927 passengers.

Cyprus has taken a new approach to halting the flow of migrants. Last month, it suspended processing of Syrian asylum applications, and human rights groups accused the Cypriot coast guard of forcibly turning back five boats carrying about 500 asylum seekers coming from Lebanon. Cypriot officials have denied this.

Bassel al-Shayoukh, a Syrian refugee from Idlib living in Lebanon since 2014, said his brother and several cousins and nephews were on one of the boats turned back. Now he wants to make the journey himself.

"In the beginning I thought that in a year or two the war would be over in Syria," he said, but it dragged on, while in Lebanon "every year ... the situation began to get worse."

Shayoukh said he fears being beaten by vigilantes or deported to Syria after Lebanese authorities declined to renew his residency permit.

His 17-year-old nephew, who declined to give his name fearing for his safety, said the Cypriot coast guard started making waves to push the boat he was on away. "I was terrified... I don’t know how to swim," he said. "I thought we were going to die."

The people on the boats "stayed three days without food or water" before turning back to Lebanon, the teen added.

Back in Lebanon, they were detained by the army; those registered with UNHCR were released and the others deported.

Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese human rights lawyer who works on refugee and migrant cases, says Lebanese authorities are deliberately "turning a blind eye" to the surge in migration to "pressure the international community."

The Lebanese army did not respond to a request for comment on their measures to combat smuggling.

Thursday's aid announcement comes ahead of the annual fundraising conference for the Syrian crisis in Brussels later this month. After 13 years of civil war, donor fatigue has set in while the world’s attention is occupied by the humanitarian fallout of more recent conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

The Cypriot president said Thursday was a "historic day" and called for European officials to go farther and declare some areas of Syria safe for return.

"The current situation is not sustainable for Lebanon. It is not sustainable for Cyprus, it is not sustainable for the European Union," Christodoulides said.

But not all Lebanese officials are convinced the European aid would solve the problem.

Lebanese Forces party head Samir Geagea told The Associated Press earlier this week that European authorities are mainly concerned "that the refugees don’t go to Europe."

"For us the problem is that we cannot have our country drowning in illegal Syrian refugees," Geagea said, urging for Syrians to be sent back to either government or opposition-held areas of the neighboring country.

But Shayoukh says he has nowhere to go.

The Damascus government wants him for opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said, while the Islamist group that now controls his hometown behaves "the same way as the regime’s intelligence services" in crushing dissidents.

Belarus’ exiled opposition leader said Thursday that she hasn’t heard from her imprisoned husband for 421 days.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said holding her husband incommunicado is part of the government’s repressive policies.

BELARUS' AUTHORITARIAN LEADER TIGHTENS CONTROL OVER THE COUNTRY'S RELIGIOUS GROUPS

Siarhei Tsikhanouski has been behind bars since being arrested in 2020 after announcing plans to challenge Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in a vote that year. After Tsikhanouski was arrested, his wife ran in his stead as the main opposition candidate but was forced by authorities to leave the country after the election.

Tsikhanouski has been sentenced to 19 ½ years, and his wife said that by holding him incommunicado authorities are trying to "persuade Siarhei that everyone has forgotten him."

"For more than a year I don’t know about Siarhei’s condition, I don’t know if he was allowed to receive any cash and whether he has any toothpaste or toilet paper," she said.

Along with Tsikhanouski, several top opposition figures also have been held incommunicado for more than a year.

They include Maria Kolesnikova, a leading opposition figure serving an 11-year prison sentence who hasn’t been heard from for 443 days, Mikola Statkevich, an opposition activist whose relatives haven’t heard from him for 448 days and lawyer Maxim Znak who has been held incommunicado for 449 days.

"It’s our duty to speak loudly about them and support them in every possible way," Tsikhanouskaya said.

The August 2020 election that handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office was denounced by the West and the opposition as fraudulent and triggered a massive wave of protests. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown that saw 35,000 people arrested and thousands brutally beaten by police. Many top opposition figures were arrested and given long prison terms, while others fled abroad.

The Belarusian authorities have ignored U.N. requests to provide information about the opposition activists who have been held incommunicado.

Belarus’ leading human rights group Viasna counts about 1,400 political prisoners in the country, including the group’s founder, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.

Viasna’s representative Pavel Sapelka said that holding opposition activists incommunicado was a "form of torture not only for the political prisoners but their families." He described it as part of "strategy of punishing political opponents and concealing evidence of cruel treatment and torture."