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"The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law." Erdoğan said in his video address that Turkey has always been opposed to Russia's annexation of Crimea. He decried the persecution of Crimea's ethnic Tatars since 2014. Erdoğan added: "Our sincere wish is for the war to end with a fair and lasting peace based on Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence." In October 2020, the Turkish leader said during a joint press briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that his country would never recognize the annexation of Crimea. "We have and always will support Ukraine's sovereignty and...

"Our support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine is constant,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this in a video address to the Crimean Platform Leaders' Summit, APA reports citing TRT HABER. "Returning of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law," said the Turkish leader.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach faced more questions about the gender eligibility controversy involving two boxers competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics in what was his final press conference before the Games conclude this weekend. Bach, who was first elected in 2013, did not sway from the IOC's stance on the eligibility concerns surrounding boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan when speaking to the media Friday.

A New York appeals court rejected on Thursday former President Donald Trump’s effort to lift the remainder of his gag order. Trump sought to have the order lifted after he was convicted in May on 34 counts for falsifying business records. Judge Juan Merchan partially lifted the order in June but left in place key restrictions, including one that prevents Trump from criticizing prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. The court agreed that the end of the trial did not constitute “a change in circumstances” that warranted terminating the order, noting that the “fair administration of justice necessarily...

-snip- Having talked to Donald Trump this week, I am more convinced than ever that he has the strength and the bravery to fix it, to save Ukraine, to bring peace — and to stop the disastrous contagion of conflict. -snip- The Ukrainians have shown they can and will win. Even today, they are pushing Putin back again in the Kharkiv region, and they are exacting a huge toll on the Russians in Donetsk. Their heroism is incredible. But the war has been going on too long, and the cost is immense, in lives, in economic misery and instability. I...

Donald Trump risks being a “loser president” if he wins November’s election and imposes a bad peace deal on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, saying it would mean the end of the US as a global “player”. – In an interview with the Guardian in Kyiv, Mr Zelenskiy said he had “no strategy yet” for what to do if Trump returned to the White House, and that the former British prime minister Boris Johnson had approached him on his behalf. If Trump beats Joe Biden, he is widely expected to cut off US military support to Ukraine. Last year Trump...

A person in Canada wants taxpayers to fund surgery to make them a vagina while also keeping a functional penis, in a first-of-its-kind case. The Ontario resident, 33, was born male but identifies as non-binary, meaning they are not exclusively male or female 'but literally a mix', court documents show. Ontario's Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) initially denied the request on the grounds that the procedure is experimental and is not performed in Canada... Now the case is with Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, which is due to issue its ruling in the coming months. It is unclear how much the...

A Florida man accused of facilitating an illegal health care scheme has been spared additional prison time, ending the Justice Department's attempt to reprosecute him after his sentence was commuted by former President Donald Trump. Philip Esformes on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to time served, with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss the remaining five counts. It's a quiet conclusion to a controversial prosecution that saw the federal government resuscitate the criminal case against him not long after he'd spent four and a half years behind bars and was released...

A New Jersey teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female student evaded prison time last week after her former students sent letters of support to the court ahead of her sentencing. Ex-Fair Lawn High School graphics arts teacher Christine Knudsen was placed under lifetime parole supervision and forced to register as a sex offender, but won’t see a day behind bars if she doesn’t violate the terms of the sentencing, according to the Bergen Record.

The Jan. 25 episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” went viral after creating a divide among fans for a racially-charged rape episode. The episode features a white female rape victim that resisted testifying against her black attacker out of fear that he wouldn’t get a fair trial due to his race. The episode, called “Truth Embargo,” stars actress Romina D’Ugo in the role of the rape victim, Natalie, and the role of the rapist named Jay is played by actor Mykey Cooper, according to Fox News. Social media exploded after Natalie’s lesbian partner, played by actress Keeley...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education. Claudine Gay’s resignation Tuesday followed weeks of mounting accusations that she lifted language from other scholars in her doctoral dissertation and journal articles. The allegations surfaced amid backlash over her congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus. The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a...

Western officials should be wary of public comments that suggest Russia has already been defeated in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its Dec. 22 report.In recent days, high-ranking Western officials have made public comments emphasizing Russia's strategic failures in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Dec. 22 that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin "has lost Ukraine altogether." U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made similar comments on Dec. 20, saying Russia has already failed to meet its key aim of conquering Ukraine.As military aid to Ukraine stalls and the country girds itself for...

Colorado utilities regulators will consider the new plan, which was revised in hopes of capturing lucrative renewable energy credits while slashing greenhouse gas emissions... Xcel Energy has a vision for Colorado’s clean energy future — one independent power producers, consumer advocates and regulators didn’t see coming — a vision that is both expensive, with a $15 billion price tag, and unparalleled in its sweep. Xcel Energy’s preferred electric resource plan submitted to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission in September includes 7,100 megawatts of new generation and storage, mainly wind and solar and nearly $3 billion in new transmission lines. “We...

.....This former accountant told me about one friend's death and seeing a man's fingers sheared off by shrapnel as he delivered water to families sheltering in basements. 'War is pure hell,' she said through tears, but insisted they had to win. These are words I heard repeatedly, this shift to an acceptance that the war might last a long time and scornful dismissal Ukraine might contemplate anything but recovery of all its lands after suffering such pain. 'A peace deal is never discussed. We've sacrificed too much. Would all the young people have died for a peace deal?' said Maria...

Donald Trump appeared on the Clay & Buck show, and the host (I don’t know whether Clay or Buck) asked Trump if he’d consider Tucker as a running mate. After waffling along for a while about the number of viewers he got when he talked to Tucker (very high), compared to viewership for the Republican debates (very low), Trump finally said he would consider Tucker because the latter has “great common sense.” That’s true but Tucker has something even more important: He’s a remarkably gifted communicator in ways that Trump is not. In his own way, Trump is a very...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has announced a jobs program for tens of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens who are arriving in the sanctuary state every week, even as about 380,000 New Yorkers are unemployed. As more than 100,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in New York, mostly in New York City, since the spring of last year, Hochul has pleaded with President Joe Biden not to stem the flow of illegal immigration but to more easily provide new arrivals with work permits.

A homeowner stopped by to check on his suburban Atlanta property — only to be arrested for trespassing. Days after the departure of a previous tenant, Tim Arko pulled into the driveway of his house in desirable Decatur, where he suddenly encountered a stranger waving a gun in his face. “I just jumped the fence and ran. I didn’t know what else to do,” Arko told local channel WSB-TV. “I didn’t walk in on a family eating dinner. I walked in on weapons, a prostitute, a bunch of dogs in the back, my fence broken down,” he told a reporter....

On its website, California wine company Ocean Fathoms praises the waters of the Santa Barbara channel as “the perfect environment” for aging its wines. “[T]he set of special characteristics of the Channel Islands’ environment gives Ocean Fathoms a superior product,” the company claims, before praising the abundant underwater flora and fauna that attach itself to each bottle. In 2017, Ocean Fathoms started to submerge specially designed crates of its wine in the channel, and when the bottles were retrieved 12 months later, they were sold for up to $500 each. The problem — and this is a significant one —...

The utility’s 1.6 million Colorado customers will see their bills rise 4.4% — about $4 on the average residential bill — on Sept. 1 ... lectricity bills for 1.6 million Colorado customers of Xcel Energy will rise 4.4% — about $3.99 on the average residential bill — on Sept. 1, under a settlement approved Wednesday by the state Public Utilities Commission. In 2022, Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electricity supplier, filed for a $312 million rate hike, but under the settlement it will get an increase of $96 million. The reduced revenue figure was reached in a settlement between Xcel Energy...

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-connected businessman who controls the notorious Wagner mercenary group, has accused “decision-makers” in Russia of treason for not providing his troops and military units of Russia's regular armed forces with ammunition needed to fight in Ukraine. "A criminal group did not give us ammunition,” Prigozhin said in a five-minute audio statement posted on Telegram on April 26 in which he reiterated his claim that ammunition is being stockpiled in depots but not delivered to the battlefield. Prigozhin claimed his troops have no ammunition to fight against Ukrainian artillery because of "treason" by unspecified top Russian officials, pledging...