Meeting on Sunday will follow flurry of US, Russian and Ukrainian talks, but Putin has shown little sign of softening

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to travel to the US for a planned meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday, as Washington continues to push for a possible peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

The Ukrainian president said the visit would take place at a location in Florida – widely expected to be Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – in what would be the latest development in a diplomatic push that began in November with the circulation of a 28-point US plan shaped with input from Russian officials.

Yusuf Tuggar says strikes against group accused by Donald Trump of attacking Christian communities will be an ‘ongoing process’

• Explained: Why has Trump ordered strikes in Nigeria?

Nigerians across Sokoto state told of their shock at Christmas Day strikes by the United States.

Agence France-Presse spoke to people around Jabo town, who said that their area was sometimes a target of armed “bandit” gangs and jihadists, but was not a stronghold for the groups.

The president’s professed satisfaction with his cabinet may reflect how hard it would be to get a replacement confirmed

For more than a decade he built his brand on two words: “You’re fired!” And in his first term in the White House, Donald Trump did not hesitate to show his staff the door, often via an abrasive tweet.

But since resuming the US presidency in January, Trump, the former host of the reality TV show The Apprentice, appears to have become an uncharacteristically bashful boss, more disposed to hiring than firing.

Texas governor among those to call for expanded access to ibogaine, said to help with treating veterans with PTSD

For half a century, psychedelics largely belonged to the cultural left: anti-war, anti-capitalist, suspicious of the church and state. Now, one of the most politically consequential psychedelic drugs in the US – ibogaine – is being championed by evangelical Christians, Republican governors, military veterans, and big tech billionaires.

Many of them see ibogaine, an intense psychedelic derived from a central African rootbark, as a divine technology. In fact, some pointedly do not refer to it as a psychedelic, given the apparent baggage of the term in some circles.

This story was amended on 26 December 2025 to clarify that Americans for Ibogaine was not formed with, and has never received, funding from Rex Elsass.

New polling shows 65% of registered US voters believe global heating is affecting cost of living

Most Americans now connect the worsening climate crisis with their cost of living pressures, with clear majorities also disagreeing with moves by the Trump administration to gut climate research and halt windfarms, new polling has found.

About 65% of registered voters in the US think that global heating is affecting the cost of living, according to the polling by Yale University.

After the writers’ and actors’ strikes, the pandemic, and structural shifts in technology, LA’s trying to find its footing in a changed industry

The veteran Hollywood cinematographer Bruce McCleery knows all about Los Angeles’s struggles to maintain its dominance in the entertainment industry, because for most of the past 16 years he has lived on the road, never short of work but unable to land a major job within striking distance of his home and family in southern California.

It’s an increasingly common experience for many successful professionals in Hollywood who are hired by studios and production houses still largely based in Los Angeles, but do the actual work in Atlanta, or Toronto, or London, or Budapest.

When Trump began deploying troops to US cities, Janessa Goldbeck’s Vet Voice Foundation was ready – now they’re preparing for what may be next

Whatever the worst-case scenario, Janessa Goldbeck has probably imagined it. In 2023 the US marine veteran consulted on a documentary that war-gamed a presidential candidate staging a military coup. Last year she advised local leaders on the hypothetical of troops being deployed to their streets for immigration enforcement.

Then Donald Trump won and Goldbeck’s nightmare came true.

Surgeon leading xenotransplantation trial aimed at solving shortage of human organs says edits can lessen risk of rejection

A leading surgeon behind a clinical trial of transplanting pig kidneys into living humans has said they could one day be superior to those from human donors.

Dr Robert Montgomery, the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, said the first transplant of the trial had already been carried out, with another expected to take place in January. Six patients are initially expected to receive the pig organs, which have been gene-edited in 10 places to reduce rejection by the human body.

Temperatures plunge below -50C in the Yukon, while swaths of US experience springlike weather

Northern Canada has been gripped by an intense and prolonged cold spell, with temperatures hovering between -20C and -40C for weeks. On Tuesday, Braeburn in the Yukon recorded -55.7C, its coldest December temperature since 1975.

Meanwhile, Mayo and Dawson endured 16 consecutive nights below -40C, with Mayo plunging to -50.4C on Monday. Whitehorse also recorded 10 nights when temperatures dropped below -30C.

Imran Ahmed of Center for Countering Digital Hate files complaint against senior Trump allies

A US judge has blocked US authorities from detaining or deporting a British anti-disinformation campaigner who is among five European nationals targeted by the Trump administration because of moves to push back against hate speech and misinformation.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), filed a complaint on Thursday against senior Trump allies including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, in an attempt to prevent what he says would be an unconstitutional arrest and removal.

Cláudio Valente and one of victims, Nuno FG Loureiro, both studied at notoriously challenging Técnico in Lisbon

As investigators in Massachusetts work to piece together a motive for the murders of two Brown University students and an MIT physics professor, former classmates of the suspected gunman and one of the victims have been asking if the roots of the tragedy lie in their shared experience at a top university in Portugal.

The suspected gunman, Cláudio Valente, and one of those killed, Nuno FG Loureiro, studied at the prestigious and notoriously challenging University of Lisbon engineering and technology school, known locally as Técnico, both graduating in 2000.

President claims strikes targeted militants in country’s north-west, accusing group of attacking Christian communities

Donald Trump has said the US carried out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria on Thursday, after spending weeks decrying the group for targeting Christians.

The president said in a post on his Truth Social platform: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!