Author: Human

An immigration officer was back in custody in Texas on Thursday night after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements about the shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minnesota during a deportation surge there last winter, officials said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro was indicted on six counts of lying to investigators, according to a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

The Minneapolis-based prosecutor who brought state charges against Castro, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, confirmed he had been arrested in Texas after being released from jail a week earlier.

"We expect he will appear in federal court in Texas, and a date will be set for him to appear in federal court in Minnesota," Moriarty said.

The indictment marks an extraordinary step by a Justice Department that has generally refrained from prosecuting federal law enforcement officers. It was the first known criminal case the Justice Department has pursued against a US immigration agent over alleged wrongdoing in the Minneapolis ICE operation, part of US President Donald Trump’s wider immigration crackdown.

Castro faces state assault charges in Minnesota for shooting and wounding Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg on January 14, at the height of Trump's deportation campaign in Minnesota, which drew weeks of protest.

A Minnesota state arrest warrant remained in effect for Castro, who spent 90 days in a Texas county jail before he was released. Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he was refusing to sign extradition papers sent by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, and a federal judge in Texas denied a request from Minnesota to compel Castro’s extradition.

The state charges also include falsely reporting a crime after Castro allegedly wrongly told superiors at the Department of Homeland Security that Sosa-Celis and others attacked him with a snow shovel and broom, which was disproved by video evidence.

DHS has suspended Castro, and the person familiar with the case said a civil rights investigation is ongoing and no decision has been reached yet in that matter.

Matt Evans, a federal prosecutor who had been working on the case, was fired this week after ProPublica reported he sent an email to Sosa-Celis’ lawyers saying DOJ attorneys had stopped his efforts to bring federal charges, according to the person familiar with the case. Evans is now being investigated for obstruction of a grand jury investigation, the person said.

Castro has not publicly addressed the state charges against him since his release from the Cameron County jail last week, and he could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

The Trump administration has largely defended the conduct of ICE agents, saying incorrectly that they have absolute immunity from state prosecutions.

Robin Wolpert, a lawyer for Sosa-Celis, said in a statement her client wants Castro to be held "fully accountable" with stronger civil rights charges. "Mr. Castro has been indicted for making false statements," she said. "But he made them to cover up the fact that he shot my client through the door of an occupied house without a self-defense justification."

The ACLU of Minnesota announced on Thursday that it will represent Sosa-Celis as he sues the Trump administration.

An Argentine court on Friday approved the return of the painting Portrait of a Lady, looted during the Holocaust from Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, to his sole heir, Marei von Saher, more than 80 years after it disappeared.

The decision was made as part of an agreement with Patricia Kadgien, daughter of fugitive senior Nazi official Friedrich Kadgien, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso. The two were charged last year with aggravated concealment after authorities alleged that they had hidden the painting despite knowing that investigators in Argentina and abroad were searching for it.

According to a statement issued by Argentina's Justice Ministry on Friday, the couple will relinquish any claim of ownership over the work and agree to hand it over to von Saher. In return, they will not face a criminal trial, but will remain under court supervision for two years, must keep authorities informed of their whereabouts, and make payments to a children's hospital in Mar del Plata, the city where they live.

If they violate the terms of the agreement during the next two years, authorities may reopen proceedings against them. According to reports in Argentina, however, each spouse agreed to pay 2.4 million pesos to the hospital, only about $1,600 each, or roughly NIS 9,600 combined.

A statement from the Argentine government stressed that von Saher's legal representatives had conveyed her wish for the work to remain temporarily in Argentina and be displayed to the public.

"The goal is to contribute to the dissemination and raising of awareness of the looting of cultural property during the Nazi regime," the Justice Ministry said.

The case came to light almost by chance in August 2025. Journalists from the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, who were investigating the past of the elder Kadgien, noticed the painting hanging above a green velvet sofa in photographs accompanying a real estate advertisement for the sale of his daughter’s home in the Parque Luro neighborhood of the resort city of Mar del Plata.

Within hours of the investigation's publication, the advertisement disappeared from the internet. Police raided the home several times, but the painting was no longer hanging there and could not be found. More than a week later, Kadgien's lawyer handed the work over to the authorities.

The elder Kadgien served as financial adviser to Hermann Göring and handled foreign currency, precious metals, and the sale of confiscated property for the Nazi regime. Following Germany's defeat, he initially fled to Switzerland and later to Argentina, where he died in 1978 without ever being arrested or put on trial for war crimes.

The painting had been part of Goudstikker's renowned collection. Goudstikker was one of Europe's leading art dealers before World War II. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Goudstikker fled with his family but was killed in an accident aboard the ship.

About 1,100 works from his collection were subsequently sold unlawfully and under duress to senior Nazi officials, a large portion of them to Göring.

For decades, “Portrait of a Lady” was attributed to the Italian Baroque painter Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, and it was initially reported as such when the painting was discovered. However, an examination ordered by the court and carried out by Argentina’s National Academy of Fine Arts determined that the Italian artist Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti had actually painted the work.

Experts confirmed that it was the painting that had belonged to Goudstikker's collection and estimated its value at approximately €250,000, or about $290,000.

Von Saher, who lives in Connecticut and has spent decades working to recover artworks looted from her family, agreed that the painting would first be exhibited in Argentina and only afterward transferred to her possession.

Meanwhile, authorities are continuing to examine two 19th-century works, as well as engravings and prints seized from homes belonging to the Kadgien family, in an effort to determine whether they too were looted during the Holocaust.

The White House has reviewed candidates to replace US Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, three people familiar with the discussions told Reuters, signaling that more leadership change could come for a Pentagon already facing unusually high staff turnover.

The effort, which was under way in June, has included conversations with senior lawmakers in the Senate about whether the administration’s picks would have enough support to be confirmed, said two of the people, one of whom added that the review was still going on as of late August. Reuters could not determine when the White House began considering candidates.

The three sources said no decision had been made to remove Feinberg from his post. They did not say why the White House was reviewing potential replacements and did not specify which candidates the White House was considering.

"These so-called anonymous 'sources' have no idea what they are talking about," said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.

"[US] President [Donald] Trump appreciates the work of [US Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, Deputy Secretary Feinberg, and the entire Department of War, whose record of success in Operation Epic Fury, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Midnight Hammer speaks for itself," she said, referring to US military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

The Pentagon denied that it was pursuing a process to replace Feinberg. Asked for comment by Reuters, Hegseth said in a statement that Feinberg has his full support and “isn’t going anywhere.”

The Pentagon did not provide a comment from Feinberg and declined to make him available for an interview.

Feinberg's departure, the billionaire co-founder of private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, would be the most senior staff change in a department that has already seen a string of high-profile departures under Hegseth.

US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned this week following months of tension with Hegseth, according to a source familiar with the matter. The US Army has declined to comment on the reasons for his departure. US Navy Secretary John Phelan and several senior army leaders have also departed in recent months.

Feinberg, who vowed to accelerate US munitions production, has not yet met that goal, according to analysts who say that the US industrial base cannot ramp up quickly. Some defense industry executives say his task has been complicated by the slow pace of Congress appropriating funds despite immense pressure from the administration.

Feinberg “has worked tirelessly to rebuild our Defense Industrial Base and ensure our military has everything it needs to win, and I look forward to continuing to work with him,” Hegseth said in his statement to Reuters, adding, “He’s doing a tremendous job for President Trump, for the Department, and for our warfighters.”

Trump has increasingly expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the conflict with Iran, which has settled into a costly standoff between the US and Iran.

One of the costs has been a drawdown of US weapons stockpiles. Reuters has reported that the US military faces significant shortages of certain munitions, alarming Congress and military leaders.

Trump has dismissed the concerns, saying the US has “far more munitions than anyone in the world.”

But in an exchange with Trump at Camp David earlier this month, Hegseth blamed Feinberg for letting stockpiles of long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors shrink, according to the Washington Post.

The White House has called the report “fake news.” In a statement to Reuters, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said: “Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg.”

Appointed by Trump last year, Feinberg has attempted to reshape the Pentagon by ramping up the US military's direct investments in companies and delivering loans to military contractors through multiple offices inside the department, including the Office of Strategic Capital and the newly created Economic Defense Unit.

In an August 18 memo he sent to defense firms, which Reuters saw, Feinberg called on contractors to speed up production and provide more transparency around pricing. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the memo.

Feinberg has also come under scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren has raised concerns about whether his former firm Cerberus could benefit from the Pentagon's spending on its Golden Dome missile defense program.

“There are no conflicts of interest between Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg and Cerberus," said Parnell. "He has completely divested from Cerberus and has recused himself from any conversations or business relationships between the Executive Branch and Cerberus."

Cerberus did not respond to a request for comment.

US President Donald Trump plans to continue flying in his new Qatari-gifted Boeing 747, which is set to serve as the president’s new Air Force One, for upcoming domestic and international travel despite concerns regarding the security of the jet, The Washington Post reported Friday.

The move comes after a July security incident in Turkey, where Trump was attending a NATO summit in Ankara and an Iranian assassination threat against the president prompted a covert operation to transfer him from his previous, aging Air Force One aircraft to an alternative military aircraft.

The refurbished Qatari-gifted Boeing aircraft reportedly still requires additional upgrades before entering service.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said the new aircraft still needs to be “maxed out,” which he described as meaning “you can go into any territory.” The upgrades are expected to take 60 days to complete and are scheduled to begin in October.

A senior administration official previously said the White House would not comment on the specifics of the Air Force One upgrades.

“We maintain a consistent posture that ensures a safe, secure, and reliable capability for the President of the United States and routinely evolve the capability as required to maintain that posture,” the official said.

With delays affecting the older Air Force One aircraft, Trump is expected to continue using the Qatari-gifted plane for upcoming trips, including a visit to Texas next week to headline a Republican Party mini-convention in Dallas. He is also scheduled to travel to Alaska for a campaign stop in a closely contested race and to Ireland for the Irish Open at his golf course in Doonbeg.

The Qatari aircraft has already undergone a $400 million retrofit but will require additional work in the coming months.

The use of the Qatari aircraft has drawn controversy over concerns surrounding the acceptance of such a significant gift from a foreign government, as well as questions over delays in replacing the current Air Force One fleet. Boeing was awarded a contract in 2017 to deliver two new 747 aircraft, but the planes have yet to enter service, and it remains unclear whether they will be delivered before the end of Trump’s term in 2029.

According to The Washington Post, the Government Accountability Office has estimated that the cost of upgrading Boeing’s aircraft has risen to more than $5.6 billion. Lawmakers have questioned why the price has increased so significantly, particularly compared with the cost of retrofitting the Qatari aircraft.

The issue has also raised additional security concerns. Despite those concerns, the administration has insisted that the Qatari aircraft meets the necessary security standards.

Following the July operation, White House communications director Steven Cheung told The Washington Post that “The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff.”

The US and China are gearing up to discuss AI safety risks during a dialogue planned for mid-September, two sources briefed on the discussions told Reuters, as rapidly advancing frontier AI capabilities reach a global tipping point.

The talks, the first official bilateral discussions devoted exclusively to AI between the US and China since US President Donald Trump took office for a second time, will be led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the US side, the sources, who were briefed on the planning, said on condition of anonymity.

Reuters is reporting the tentative mid-September period for the first time. A White House official said, “There is currently no planned AI-related meeting in mid-September.” Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are due to meet on September 24 during a summit in Washington.

The US wants to discuss cooperation on monitoring AI-directed cyberattacks, and has floated a proposal to ask US and Chinese AI labs to "police themselves" and share information to prevent AI-linked cyberattacks, one of the sources said on condition of anonymity.

Nearly 700 rogue AI agents built on OpenAI models hacked AI startup Hugging Face in July and attempted to cover their tracks by forging logs, OpenAI and cybersecurity researchers said last week, underscoring the risks of coordinated agent swarms acting autonomously for months undetected by humans.

A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents, Reuters exclusively reported on Friday.

"The talks between the two AI superpowers are coming at the most critical juncture," said Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. "It is now or never."

Washington is also worried about the potential for a future Chinese Mythos-level model with capabilities to conduct cyberattacks, and wants to bring up alleged Chinese distillation of proprietary US AI models, the source said.

US tech firm Anthropic is the developer of Mythos.

In June, top White House science and tech advisor Michael Kratsios accused China's Moonshot AI of stealing from Anthropic's AI model Fable to help create its K3 release, saying the Chinese company distilled Anthropic's model.

Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones as part of an effort to lower the costs of training a powerful new AI tool.

Reuters is reporting details of the upcoming talks' proposed agenda for the first time.

On the Chinese side, the talks could be led by Vice Premier He Lifeng, Bessent's protocol counterpart, but alternatives such as China's No. 7 official Ding Xuexiang may be considered, according to the second source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ding, a confidant of Xi and a member of the ruling Communist Party's powerful seven-person Politburo Standing Committee, coordinates China's technology, AI and semiconductor policies.

Reuters could not determine the location or identity of other participants, though Kratsios and China's science and technology minister, Yin Hejun, could attend the talks, the second source added.

The final agenda and participants remain in flux, the sources cautioned.

The White House declined to comment on the AI talks. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. China's foreign, science and industry ministries, as well as the National Development and Reform Commission and cyberspace regulator, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Tuesday, Kratsios told reporters in North Carolina that he had a "great" meeting with Yin on the sidelines of a G20 innovation summit in the US this week. Bessent said he had "limited" exchanges on AI with Chinese officials at this week's G20 finance meeting.

The US urged G20 members to take a hands-off approach to AI regulation and avoid creating rules for the technology at the same innovation summit. China signed the Carolina Principles, an agreement aimed at discouraging the development of AI-specific regulations, in a rare show of tech alignment with the US

Kratsios' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of the AI talks in preparatory meetings with US counterparts, and view them as a major deliverable of the US-China leaders’ summit, according to the two sources and another one familiar with the matter. Reuters is reporting this development for the first time.

In the past week, China's cyberspace regulator publicly warned about "extreme AI loss of control risks" and a state media-affiliated blog criticized Anthropic, emphasizing that any limits on frontier AI should apply equally to Chinese and US models. Chinese firms have in recent months unveiled what they describe as Mythos-like products.

Former Microsoft executive Craig Mundie has emerged as an important go-between behind the scenes, sounding out Chinese counterparts on US proposals for the AI dialog, the source said. Mundie is co-chair of the unofficial US-China Track II AI dialog channel.

Reuters reported last month that Microsoft had cultivated a relationship with Beijing that was among the deepest of any foreign technology company operating in China.

Both sides also discussed AI guardrails at a Track 1.5 dialog in Beijing last week, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a participant, wrote on social media.

In June, Trump signed an AI executive order setting up a voluntary framework for pre-release cybersecurity reviews of frontier AI models, but the US has not released the criteria for these reviews.

Meanwhile, employees at top US AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI have called for "pacing the frontier" to manage the global risks of advanced AI.

"The Chinese side has expressed concern around whether the US has sufficient regulation around the most advanced AI models. Both sides are motivated to make sure they can manage a cross-border crisis effectively," said Scott Singer, co-director of the China AI Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

While outcomes are likely to be limited, opening a channel where both sides could share observations and jointly monitor AI safety incidents would be an important starting point, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at New America, a US policy think tank.

"We are at a tipping point where frontier agents can cause massive damage when unmonitored. Both the US and China are vulnerable. This is beyond geopolitical rivalry," Sacks added.

"The US and China have to come together in some form, or we're both going to lose."

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are heading abroad to attempt to forge a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, the US president told reporters on Friday.

During comments in the Oval Office, Trump suggested the US had a fresh concrete proposal aimed at ending the war, which is now in its fifth year. He did not, however, elaborate on what that proposal would be, nor did he say if Witkoff and Kushner would be traveling to Ukraine, Russia or both nations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the two men would fly to Ukraine on Sunday after visiting Moscow.  

"We have an idea for peace," Trump said.

"I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators. They've done a great job, and we sent them over to see whether or not we can get something done. And there may be a good chance that we'll do it."

The duo had been planning to travel to Moscow over the weekend followed by a visit to Kyiv, two sources previously told Reuters. However, the itinerary has been in flux in recent days, and the Kyiv section of the journey was still not completely certain, one of the sources said on Friday.

The Trump administration's attempts to settle the war in Ukraine have largely come to nothing, and negotiations stalled out in recent months.

In late August, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow in part to press counterparts there to consider a settlement, Reuters and several other media outlets reported.

Most Western intelligence officials doubt Russian President Vladimir Putin is interested in a short-term deal, while Ukrainian intelligence believes he is in fact likely to escalate, rather than de-escalate the war in the near term.

A Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine's SBU security service ​in Kyiv on Friday in one of the most high-profile targets struck during the war.

Witkoff, who is effectively the lead US negotiator with respect to the war in Ukraine, has traveled to Moscow numerous times but has not yet visited Ukraine.

A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in the US murder trial of Lindsay Clancy for killing her three young children, a tragedy her attorney said occurred while she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

The nearly six-week-long televised trial revived longstanding debate about how postpartum mental health in women is treated in the US, and how the country's legal system addresses cases when mothers kill their children.

Judge William Sullivan’s mistrial declaration came after jurors sent three notes this week indicating they had reached an impasse.

No one disputed that Clancy, 36, strangled her three children with exercise bands in January 2023 in the basement of their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. She then cut herself with a knife and jumped from a second-story window in an attempt to take ​her own life that left her paralyzed.

Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought throughout the trial to convince jurors she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing she was a loving mother who had been in the midst of a psychotic episode when she killed Cora, 5; ​Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.

The mistrial paves the way for a potential second trial. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz, whose office brought the case, told reporters he had not decided whether to retry the case.

"Children were murdered, and it's our job to seek justice," Cruz said.

Clancy is due in court for a follow-up hearing on September 29.

The 12 jurors in Plymouth, Massachusetts, deliberated for seven days. Prosecutors supported the mistrial declaration.

Earlier on Friday, Sullivan rejected a defense request to remove a juror who Reddington said was preventing the jury from returning a not-guilty verdict.

Reddington cited a note the jury foreperson sent on behalf of 11 jurors indicating that one juror had acknowledged doubt but refused to apply it to the verdict. Jurors could only find Clancy guilty of first-degree murder if the prosecution proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Jurors later sent a note indicating they could not reach a verdict, prompting Sullivan to say he felt he had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

Clancy's defense lawyers then filed an emergency appeal asking Massachusetts' highest court to order Sullivan to inquire further into whether the holdout juror could heed the judge's instructions to follow the law.

The Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts' Suffolk County denied the defense request, paving the way for the mistrial declaration.

Prosecutors did not dispute that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been dealing with mental health issues. But they argued she was able to appreciate the wrongfulness of killing her children and intentionally chose to do so anyway.

They presented testimony from a psychologist who, after examining Clancy, concluded that she had planned to take her own life and chose to kill her children because "she was convinced that they would suffer without her."

Prosecutors focused on evidence showing that shortly before the killings, she sent ⁠her husband to pick up a food order and go to a pharmacy after mapping on her phone the time it would take for him to return home.

The trial drew comparisons to the case of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. After an appeals court overturned her initial murder conviction, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006. Her lawyers had said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis.

Testimony from family members, including Clancy's now ex-husband, Patrick, detailed how she had struggled with her mental health in the months following the birth of her third child, repeatedly seeking treatment from healthcare providers ​who prescribed a myriad of drugs.

Patrick Clancy testified that his wife had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital weeks before the killings but showed no signs she planned to hurt ​herself or her kids in the ​days that followed. She had a "normal" ⁠demeanor when he left to pick up dinner, he said.

He spoke on the phone briefly with his wife while at the pharmacy. Upon his return, he discovered her lying on the ground in the backyard with cuts on her wrists and neck. She told him she had tried to kill herself.

He said he asked where the children were, and she said they were in ⁠the basement. After he called 911 and first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy said he ran to the basement and discovered them with exercise bands tied around their necks.

Several witnesses, including Patrick Clancy, testified that later, while Lindsay Clancy was at a hospital, she spoke about having heard a man's voice tell her that if she did not act, she would lose her chance.

At least three Americans were evacuated after suspected insurgents attacked a camp co-owned by soccer coach Carlos Queiroz in a wildlife reserve in northern Mozambique, a source familiar with the incident said on Friday.

Queiroz, who coaches Ghana's national team, said he was awaiting information from military and security authorities to ascertain what had happened.

“From the images I have access to, it appears that the entire establishment has been burned down,” he told Reuters in a telephone call from Lisbon.

Queiroz said the area was currently off-limits due to the insecurity, and that he had no direct information from the site.

The Mozambican independent English-language digital publication Zitamar News first reported the incident late on Thursday, suggesting there had been some fatalities. Regional analyst Tertius Jacobs said he believed insurgents had abducted a number of civilians. None of the reports could be verified.

Mozambique has been battling an Islamic State-linked insurgency in the gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado since 2017, a conflict that has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

A US State Department spokesperson said the US Embassy in Mozambique was aware of an attack on a hunting lodge close to the Niassa Special Reserve, near Cabo Delgado and one of Africa’s largest protected wilderness areas, but did not confirm whether any Americans were affected.

The source, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the camp had been burned but there were no confirmed fatalities. The source said the three Americans had been out hunting when the attack occurred, and that staff had fled and Mozambique's military had responded.

The Mozambican government did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Department had warned its citizens not to travel to the Niassa Special Reserve for any reason, adding that terrorists had targeted upscale hunting lodges in and near the area and taken hostages.

Last year, in a similar attack in the Niassa Reserve, a tourist camp was destroyed and six people including four rangers were killed during skirmishes.

Big-game hunting in the reserve, which runs from May to November, often draws groups from the US.

Jacobs, an analyst at Focus Group, which monitors the insurgency, said the attack took place near Marangira village in Niassa province, and that insurgents had abducted several civilians and looted supplies before withdrawing towards Cabo Delgado.

He said available information corroborated reports that three Americans had been affected, but that casualty figures and the number of those abducted remained unverified.

Russian state news agency TASS said the two US envoys seeking to end the war between Russia and Ukraine would visit both countries on Saturday and Sunday, but the Kremlin declined to comment.

TASS did not identify its source.

US President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, last visited Moscow in January, when they held four hours of late-night talks with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

"I wouldn't make any announcements right now, but we will inform you when these contacts take place," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the TASS report.

Witkoff and Kushner have yet to visit Ukraine, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Trump's representatives were expected in Moscow and Kyiv in the coming days.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that discussions on the Ukraine part of the trip were still taking place, and the teams had spoken about Sunday as a possible date.

"The Russians don't want them to visit Kyiv and are trying to make them change the plan," the source added.

A vast gulf remains between Russia and Ukraine on how to end the 4-1/2-year-old war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.

Peskov said the position that Putin set out in a speech two years ago – that Ukraine should cede the entire territory of four regions claimed by Russia and abandon its plan to join NATO – was "unshakeable."

Ukraine refuses to surrender land that it has successfully defended at huge cost, and rejects such terms as tantamount to surrender.

Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. But he added that Kyiv's warning to foreign airlines this week to avoid Russian airspace amounted to a threat that would make talks more difficult.

The last US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in February, shortly before the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran.

Peskov said the possibility of eventually reaching a peace settlement could not be ruled out, but the necessary basis for this did not exist right now.

"The work continues, and the contacts continue," he said.

The Kremlin said on Friday that the possibility of a Ukraine peace settlement remained, but that there was no concrete basis for it right now, declining to confirm if US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were due to visit Moscow in the coming days.

Asked to comment on reports that the envoys were expected to visit Russia and Ukraine over the weekend for peace negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said any contacts would be announced when they take place.

Two people were pulled out alive on Friday from a tunnel linked to a hydropower station on the Trishuli River, nine days after an ice, rock and mud slide swept through a valley in Nepal, killing more than 1,200 people and displacing tens of thousands.

The two workers pulled from the tunnel at the Upper Trishuli 3A Hydropower Station are Sanjay Sah, a mechanical foreman, and Kabir Maharjan, a mechanical supervisor, Energy Minister Biraj Bhakta Shrestha’s office said in a statement.

Officials and rescue workers believe the August 26 collapse of a glacier in the upper reaches of the Trishuli River trapped at least 900 people in tunnels associated with six hydropower projects along the river.

Maharjan cannot move his hands and legs, but Sah's injuries are not critical, an aide to the energy minister told Reuters.

The two are being taken to a hospital in Kathmandu, he said.

Amir Maharjan, Kabir's brother, said he has not received any news officially but has been told to go to the hospital.

"I have been hearing from the news that my brother has been found. The entire family is very happy," Amir said.