Hong Kong’s government on Monday defended its immigration procedures after a British member of parliament was denied entry to the Chinese city last week, an incident that has prompted concerns among U.K. officials.

Wera Hobhouse, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party representing Bath, on Sunday wrote on the social media platform Bluesky that authorities gave her no explanation for what she described as a “cruel and upsetting blow.” She noted that she was the first British MP to face such a situation upon arrival in the former British colony since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hobhouse had told British media that she flew to Hong Kong to visit her newborn grandchild. She is also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China that has scrutinized Beijing’s human rights record.

The Hong Kong government, in a statement released late Monday, maintained that its immigration officers are duty-bound to question individuals to ascertain the purpose of any visit.

“The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose,” the statement read. The government added that it would not comment on individual cases.

The statement also said that Chief Secretary Eric Chan discussed the matter with the U.K. Minister for Trade Policy and Economic Security Douglas Alexander earlier on Monday during the British official’s visit to Hong Kong.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian emphasized that immigration affairs fall within the scope of national sovereignty and the city’s government has the right to handle individual immigration cases according to the law.

The British government also issued a statement on Monday about Hobhouse’s entry denial last Thursday. It stated that Alexander had raised its concerns with senior Chinese and Hong Kong counterparts and demanded an explanation during his visit to the city and mainland China.

“Unjustified restrictions on the freedom of movement for U.K. citizens into Hong Kong only serves to further undermine Hong Kong’s international reputation and the important people-to-people connections between the U.K. and Hong Kong,” it said.

It added that the U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy made clear that it would be unacceptable for any member of parliament to be denied entry for simply expressing their views.

A former Conservative lawmaker and 14 others have been charged with cheating when placing bets on the timing of Britain’s general election last year, the Gambling Commission said Monday.

Craig Williams was one of several people who had been investigated for cashing in on insider knowledge on the date then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would call the election. Other members of the Conservative Party that controlled government at the time and a police officer were among those facing charges that carry a potential two-year prison term, if convicted.

It’s legal for politicians to wager on elections, but the investigation was about whether they used inside information to gain an unfair advantage. One of the popular bets at the time was to wager on the date the prime minister would call an election.

At the time, the conventional wisdom was that Sunak would call an election in the fall, but he surprised people in May when he set the election date for July 4th. The announcement was a disaster as Sunak was drenched in pouring rain outside his residence and word quickly spread that a handful of people with connections to the party had placed suspiciously timed bets.

The vote six weeks later ended up being a bloodbath for Conservatives, as the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, swept them out of office for the first time in 14 years.

Williams, who was Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary and running for reelection, had disclosed he placed a 100-pound ($131) bet on a July election days before the date had been announced.

“I committed an error of judgment, not an offense, and I want to reiterate my apology directly to you,” he said in a video posted on social media in June.

In the election, Williams lost his seat representing an area of Wales, finishing third.

Others facing charges included Russell George, a Conservative in the Welsh parliament, Nick Mason, a former chief data officer for the Tories and Thomas James, the director of the Welsh Conservatives.

Anthony Lee, a former Conservative campaign director, was also charged alongside his wife, Laura Saunders, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Parliament representing an area of southwest England.

George was suspended by the Conservative Party after news of the criminal case.

A U.S. citizen awaiting trial in Moscow has been forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital, Russian state media reported Sunday.

Joseph Tater, 46, was arrested in August 2024 after being accused of assaulting a police officer during a confrontation with staff at an upmarket hotel in the Russian capital.

A Moscow court agreed to admit Tater to a psychiatric hospital non-voluntarily after a medical evaluation on March 15, Russian state news agency Tass reported.

It said that doctors had described Tater as displaying signs of “tension, impulsivity, persecutory delusions, and lack of self-awareness regarding his condition.”

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow declined to comment on the case, citing privacy concerns.

Tater had been due to stand trial on April 14 on charges of assaulting a police officer, which is punishable with a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. It is unclear when the court made its decision to detain him on medical grounds, but Tass previously reported that he had been released from pre-trial detention at the end of March.

At a September court hearing, Tater claimed he came to Russia to seek political asylum and that he was being persecuted by the CIA. Tater’s defense lawyer has appealed his forced hospitalization, accusing officials of trying to “isolate the defendant from society,” Tass reported.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused Russia of forcing citizens into psychiatric institutions due to their political views — a Soviet-era practice they say has been increasingly used by President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Tater has already served 15 days in jail for the same incident after being found guilty on administrative charges of “petty hooliganism.”

He was detained in August 2024 when he became abusive to hotel staff who requested to see his documents, Russian state news agencies reported. They reported that Tater swore and “behaved aggressively” when the hotel refused to accommodate him, and later grabbed the arm of a police officer called to the scene.

Tater is just one of several Americans detained in Russia on drug or assault convictions, with many serving sentences of several years. They include Robert Gilman, 72, who was handed 3 1/2-year sentence at the age of 72 after being found guilty of assaulting a police officer following a drunken disturbance on a train, and Travis Leake, a musician who was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison in July 2024.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court will rule Friday on whether to formally dismiss or reinstate impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol — a decision that either way will likely deepen domestic divisions.

The court has been deliberating on Yoon’s political fate after the conservative leader was impeached in December by the National Assembly, which is controlled by the liberal opposition, over his brief imposition of martial law that triggered a massive political crisis.

Millions of people have rallied around the country to support or denounce Yoon. Police said they’ll mobilize all available personnel to preserve order and respond to possible acts of vandalism, arson and assault before and after the court’s ruling.

The Constitutional Court said in a brief statement Tuesday that it would issue its ruling at 11 a.m. Friday and allow TV stations to broadcast it live. Removing Yoon from office requires support from at least six of the court’s eight justices. If the court rules against Yoon, South Korea must hold an election within two months for a new president. If the court overturns his impeachment, Yoon would immediately return to his presidential duties.

Jo Seung-lae, a spokesperson for the main liberal opposition Democratic Party which led Yoon’s impeachment, called for the court to “demonstrate its firm resolve” to uphold the constitutional order by dismissing Yoon. Kwon Youngse, leader of Yoon’s People Power Party, urged the court’s justices to “consider the national interest” and produce a decision that is “strictly neutral and fair.”

Many observers earlier predicted the court’s verdict would come in mid-March based on the timing of its rulings in past presidential impeachments. The court hasn’t explained why it takes longer time for Yoon’s case, sparking rampant speculation on his political fate.

At the heart of the matter is Yoon’s deployment of hundreds of troops and police officers to the National Assembly after imposing martial law on Dec. 3. Yoon has insisted that he aimed to maintain order, but some military and military officials testified Yoon ordered them to drag out lawmakers to frustrate a floor vote on his decree and detain his political opponents.

Yoon argues that he didn’t intend to maintain martial law for long, and he only wanted to highlight what he called the “wickedness” of the Democratic Party, which obstructed his agenda, impeached senior officials and slashed his budget bill. During his martial law announcement, he called the assembly “a den of criminals” and “anti-state forces.”

By law, a president has the right to declare martial law in wartime or other emergency situations, but the Democratic Party and its supporters say South Korea wasn’t in such a situation.

The impeachment motion accused Yoon of suppressing National Assembly activities, attempting to detain politicians and others and undermining peace in violation of the constitution and other laws. Yoon has said he had no intention of disrupting National Assembly operations and detaining anyone.

Martial law lasted only six hours because lawmakers managed to enter the assembly building and voted to strike down his decree unanimously. No violence erupted, but live TV footage showing armed soldiers arriving at the assembly invoked painful memories of past military-backed dictatorships in South Korea. It was the first time for South Korea to be placed under martial law since 1980.

Earlier public surveys showed a majority of South Koreans supported Yoon’s impeachment. But after his impeachment, pro-Yoon rallies have grown sharply, with many conservatives fed up with what they call the Democratic Party’s excessive offensive on the already embattled Yoon administration.

In addition to the Constitutional Court’s ruling on his impeachment, Yoon was arrested and indicted in January on criminal rebellion charges.Yoon was released from prison March 8, after a Seoul district court cancelled his arrest and allowed him to stand his criminal trial without being detained.

Ten senior military and police officials have also been arrested and indicted over their roles in the martial law enactment.

South Korea’s truth commission concluded the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins.

The landmark report released Wednesday followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States, and Australia, representing the most comprehensive examination yet of South Korea’s foreign adoptions, which peaked under a succession of military governments in the 1970s and ’80s.

The government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it confirmed human rights violations in 56 of the complaints and aims to review the remaining cases before its mandate expires in late May.

However, some adoptees and even a commission investigator criticized the cautiously written report, acknowledging that investigative limitations prevented the commission from more strongly establishing the government’s complicity.

That investigator, Sang Hoon Lee, also lamented that the panel on Tuesday deferred assessments of 42 other adoptees’ cases, citing a lack of documentation to sufficiently prove their adoptions were problematic. Lee and the commission chairperson, Sun Young Park, did not specify which types of documents were central to the discussions.

However, Lee implied that some members of the commission’s decision-making committee were reluctant to recognize cases in which adoptees had yet to prove beyond doubt that the biological details in their adoption papers had been falsified — either by meeting their birth parents or confirming information about them.

Most Korean adoptees were registered by agencies as abandoned orphans, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified or found, a practice that often makes their roots difficult or impossible to trace. Government data obtained by The Associated Press shows less than a fifth of 15,000 adoptees who have asked South Korea for help with family searches since 2012 have managed to reunite with relatives.

Lee said the committee’s stance reflects a lack of understanding of the systemic problems in adoptions and risks excluding many remaining cases.

“Personally, I find yesterday’s decision very regrettable and consider it a half-baked decision,” Lee said.

After reviewing government and adoption records and interviewing adoptees, birth families, public officials and adoption workers, the commission assessed that South Korean officials saw foreign adoptions as a cheaper alternative to building a social welfare system for needy children.

Through policies and laws that promoted adoption, South Korea’s military governments permitted private adoption agencies to exercise extensive guardianship rights over children in their custody and swiftly transfer custody to foreign adopters, resulting in “large-scale overseas placements of children in need of protection,” the commission said.

Authorities provided no meaningful oversight as adoption agencies engaged in dubious or illicit practices while competing to send more children abroad. These practices included bypassing proper consent from biological parents, falsely documenting children with known parents as abandoned orphans, and switching children’s identities, according to the commission’s report. It cited that the government failed to ensure that agencies properly screened adoptive parents or prevent them from excessively charging foreign adopters, who were often asked to make additional donations beyond the standard fees.

The commission’s findings broadly aligned with previous reporting by The AP. The AP investigations, which were also documented by Frontline (PBS), detailed how South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence that many were being procured through questionable or outright unscrupulous means.

The Unification Church in Japan was ordered dissolved by a court Tuesday after a government request spurred by the investigation into the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The church said it was considering an immediate appeal of the Tokyo District Court’s revocation of its legal status, which would take away its tax-exempt privilege and require liquidation of its assets.

The order followed a request by Japan’s Education Ministry in 2023 to dissolve the influential South Korea-based sect, citing manipulative fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fear among followers and harmed their families.

In the ruling, the court said the church’s problems were extensive and continuous, and a dissolution order is necessary because it is not likely it could voluntarily reform, according to NHK television.

"We believe our claims were accepted,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshiasa Hayashi told reporters. He added that government will continue efforts to support victims of the church.

The Japanese branch of the church had criticized the request as a serious threat to religious freedom and the human rights of its followers.

The church called the court order regrettable and unjust and said in a statement the court’s decision was based on “a wrong legal interpretation and absolutely unacceptable.”

The investigation into Abe’s assassination revealed decades of cozy ties between the South Korea-based church and Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party. The church obtained legal status as a religious organization in Japan in the 1960s during an anti-communist movement supported by Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

The man accused of killing Abe resented the church and blamed it for his family’s financial troubles.

The church, which officially calls itself the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, is the first religious group subject to a revocation order based on violations of Japan’s civil code. Two earlier case involved criminal charges — the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, and Myokakuji group, whose executives were convicted of fraud.

To seek the church’s dissolution, the Education Ministry had submitted 5,000 documents and pieces of evidence to the court, based on interviews with more than 170 people.

The church tried to steer its followers’ decision-making, using manipulative tactics, making them buy expensive goods and donate beyond their financial ability and causing fear and harm to them and their families, seriously deviating from the law on religious groups, officials and experts say.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs said the settlements reached in or outside court exceeded 20 billion yen ($132 million) and involved more than 1,500 people.

A group of lawyers who have represented people suing the church welcomed the court decision as a major first step toward redress. They demanded an apology and compensation from the church as soon as possible.

The church, founded in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and conservative, family-oriented value systems.

It developed relations with conservative world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as his predecessors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The church faced accusations in the 1970s and 1980s of using devious recruitment tactics and brainwashing adherents into turning over huge portions of their salaries to Moon. In Japan, the group has faced lawsuits for offering “spiritual merchandise” that allegedly caused members to buy expensive art and jewelry or sell their real estate to raise donations for the church.

A court formally arrested the mayor of Istanbul, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.

Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained following a raid on his residence earlier this week, sparking the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey.

His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.

The prosecutor’s office said the court decided to jail Imamoglu on suspicion of running a criminal organization, accepting bribes, extortion, illegally recording personal data and bid-rigging. A request for him to be imprisoned on terror-related charges was rejected although he still faces prosecution. Following the court’s ruling, Imamoglu was transferred to Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.

The Interior Ministry later announced that Imamoglu had been suspended from duty as a “temporary measure.” The municipality had previously appointed an acting mayor from its governing council.

Alongside Imamoglu, 47 other people were also jailed pending trial, including a key aide and two district mayors from Istanbul, one of whom was replaced with a government appointee. A further 44 suspects were released under judicial control.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Sunday that 323 people were detained the previous evening over disturbances at protests.

Largely peaceful protests across Turkey have seen hundreds of thousands come out in support of Imamoglu. However, there has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, some of whom hurled stones, fireworks and other missiles at riot police.

The formal arrest came as more than 1.5 million members of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, began holding a primary presidential election to endorse Imamoglu, the sole candidate.

The party has also set up symbolic ballot boxes nationwide to allow people who are not party members to express their support for the mayor. Large crowds gathered early Sunday to cast a “solidarity ballot.”

“This is no longer just a problem of the Republican People’s Party, but a problem of Turkish democracy,” Fusun Erben, 69, said at a polling station in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. “We do not accept our rights being so easily usurped. We will fight until the end.”

Speaking at a polling station in Bodrum, western Turkey, engineer Mehmet Dayanc, 38, said he feared that “in the end we’ll be like Russia, a country without an opposition, where only a single man participates in elections.”

In a message posted on social media, Imamoglu called on people to show “their struggle for democracy and justice to the entire world” at the ballot box. He warned Erdogan that he would be defeated by “our righteousness, our courage, our humility, our smiling face.”

“Honestly, we are embarrassed in the name of our legal system,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas, a fellow member of Imamoglu’s CHP, told reporters after casting his vote, criticizing the lack of confidentiality in the proceedings.

CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said Imamoglu’s imprisonment was reminiscent of “Italian mafia methods.” Speaking at Istanbul City Hall, he added: “Imamoglu is on the one hand in prison and on the other hand on the way to the presidency.”

The Council of Europe, which focuses on promoting human rights and democracy, slammed the decision and demanded Imamoglu’s immediate release.

U.S. President Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a possible pivot point in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and an opportunity for Trump to continue reorienting American foreign policy.

Trump disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening, while the Kremlin confirmed Putin’s participation on Monday morning.

“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday morning confirmed the plans for the two leaders to speak on Tuesday, but declined to give details, saying that “we never get ahead of events” and “the content of conversations between two presidents are not subject to any prior discussion.”

European allies are wary of Trump’s affinity for Putin and his hardline stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who faced sharp criticism when he visited the Oval Office a little more than two weeks ago.

Although Russia failed in its initial goal to topple Ukraine with its invasion three years ago, it still controls large swaths of the country.

Trump said land and power plants are part of the conversation around bringing the war to a close.

“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said, a process he described as “dividing up certain assets.”

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff recently visited Moscow last week to advance negotiations.

Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the southeast of the country — but doesn’t fully control any of the four. Last year, Putin listed Kyiv’s withdrawal of troops from all four regions as one of the demands for peace.

In 2014, the Kremlin also annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow controls the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest in Europe. The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since the invasion. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body, has frequently expressed alarm about the plant amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

During his conversation with reporters on Air Force One, Trump said he was pushing forward with his plans for tariffs on April 2 despite recent disruption in the stock market and nervousness about the economic impact.

“April 2 is a liberating day for our country,” he said. “We’re getting back some of the wealth that very, very foolish presidents gave away because they had no clue what they were doing.”

Trump has occasionally changed course on some tariff plans, such as with Mexico, but he said he had no intention of doing so when it comes to reciprocal tariffs.

The new Austrian government said Wednesday that family reunion procedures for migrants will be immediately halted because the country is no longer able to absorb newcomers adequately.

The measure is temporary and intended to ensure that those migrants who are already in the country can be better integrated, Chancellor Christian Stocker from the conservative Austrian People’s Party said.

“Austria’s capacities are limited, and that is why we have decided to prevent further overloading,” Stocker said.

The new measure means that migrants with so-called protected status — meaning they cannot be deported — are no longer allowed to bring family members still living in their home countries to Austria.

The new three-party coalition made up of the People’s Party, the center-left Social Democrats and the liberal Neos, has said that curbing migration is one of its top issues and vowed to implement strict new asylum rules.

Official figures show that 7,762 people arrived in Austria last year as part of family reunion procedures for migrants. In 2023 the figure was 9,254. Most new arrivals were minors.

Migrants who are still in the asylum process or have received a deportation order are not allowed in the first place to bring family members from their countries of origin.

Most recent asylum seekers came from Syria and Afghanistan, the Austrian chancellery said in a statement.

The European Union country has 9 million inhabitants.

Stocker said the measure was necessary because “the quality of the school system, integration and ultimately the security of our entire systems need to be protected — so that we do not impair their ability to function.”

The government said it had already informed the EU of its new measures. It denied to say for how long it would put family reunions on hold.

“Since last summer, we have succeeded in significantly reducing family reunification,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said. “Now we are creating the legal basis to ensure this stop is sustainable.”

All over the continent, governments have been trying to cut the number of migrants. The clamp-down on migrants is a harsh turnaround from ten years ago, when countries like Germany and Sweden openly welcomed more than 1 million migrants from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many communities and towns in other countries, such as Germany, also say they no longer have capacities to find shelter or homes for migrants.

The EU is trying to keep more migrants from entering its 27-country bloc and move faster to deport those whose asylum procedures are rejected.

On Tuesday, the EU unveiled a new migration proposal that envisions the opening of so-called “return hubs” to be set up in third countries to speed up the deportation for rejected asylum-seekers.

So far, only 20% of people with a deportation order are effectively removed from EU territory, according to the European Commission.

Japan’s trade minister said this week that he has failed to win assurances from U.S. officials that the key U.S. ally will be exempt from tariffs, some of which take effect on Wednesday.

Yoji Muto was in Washington for last ditch negotiations over the tariffs on a range of Japanese exports including cars, steel and aluminum.

Muto said Monday in Washington that Japan, which contributes to the U.S. economy by heavily investing and creating jobs in the United States, “should not be subject to” 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and auto exports to America.

His meetings with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett came just two days before the steel and aluminum tariffs are due to take effect. President Donald Trump has also said a possible 25% tariff on imported foreign autos could take effect in early April.

Muto said the U.S. officials acknowledged Japanese contributions and agreed to continue talks, but did not approve his request for Japan’s exemption from the steep import duties.

“We did not receive a response that Japan will be exempt,” Muto told reporters. “We must continue to assert our position.”

As Trump’s tariff threats have triggered tensions and vows of retaliation from Canada, Mexico and China, Japan has been working to firm up ties with other countries.

Last week, the foreign and trade ministers from Japan and Britain gathered in Tokyo for their first “two-plus-two” economic dialogue. They agreed to stand up for “fair, rules-based international trade,” though nobody directly mentioned Trump.

Japan depends heavily on exports and the auto tariffs would hurt, because vehicles are its biggest export and the United States is their top destination.

“Clearly companies in Japan are very concerned,” said Rintaro Nishimura, political analyst and associate at Japan Practice of The Asia Group. “Obviously the auto is the crown jewel for Japan, especially in the context of these tariffs.” He says they are concerned also because the Trump administration is carrying it out in just two months after taking office.

Trump also has criticized Japan’s contributions to the two countries’ mutual defense arrangements, adding to tensions with Tokyo.

Muto said the two sides agreed to keep discussing to find ways to establish a “win-win” relationship that would serve national interests of both countries.

The two sides also discussed energy cooperation, including joint development of liquefied natural gas reserves in Alaska, which Trump and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba agreed on during Ishiba’s visit to the White House in February.

A British court on Friday rejected appeals by most of a group of environmental activists who were jailed for actions including stopping traffic, blocking an oil facility and splashing a Vincent van Gogh painting with soup.

The Just Stop Oil protesters had challenged what they alleged were “manifestly excessive” prison terms of between 15 months and five years for disruptive but peaceful actions. The group argued that the jailed protesters are political prisoners who were “acting in self-defense and to protect our families and communities.”

Three Court of Appeal justices rejected claims by 10 of the activists but reduced the sentences of six others who were jailed over 2022 demonstrations that saw protesters climb gantries above a busy highway. They include Roger Hallam, the co-founder of eco-activist organization Extinction Rebellion and spinoff group Just Stop Oil, who had his five-year sentence reduced to four years.

“It is not disputed that each of the appellants was motivated to act as they did by a conscientious desire to communicate their views about the appropriate response to climate change issues,” the judges said in their ruling. But, they added, “conscientious motivation did not preclude a finding that any appellant’s culpability was still high.”

Raj Chada, the claimants’ lawyer, said “the small reduction in the case of Roger Hallam recognizes the extraordinarily excessive sentences that continue to be given out to protesters in England. It is, however, extremely disappointing that many of the other sentences were upheld.”

“No country in Europe gives such draconian sentences for peaceful protests, proving we are out of kilter with the rest of the civilized world,” he said, adding the group was considering taking the case to the U.K. Supreme Court.

The 10 whose appeals failed included protesters sentenced for digging tunnels under the road leading to an oil terminal in southeast England and throwing soup onto the protective glass over Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery.

Activists staged a protest inside the same gallery after the judgement. Video footage showed a protester sitting on the floor in front of “Sunflowers” speaking loudly about the impact of climate change. She wore a shirt bearing a picture of the painting splattered with orange.

As Chief Justice Sue Carr read out the ruling, several campaigners in the courtroom stood and turned their backs, wearing T-shirts that read “Corruption in Court.”

The U.K’s previous Conservative government toughened anti-protest laws in response to eco-activists who blocked roads and bridges, glued themselves to trains, splattered artworks with paint, sprayed buildings with fake blood and doused athletes in orange powder to draw attention to climate change. It said the laws prevented extremist activists from hurting the economy and disrupting daily life.

Civil liberties groups, who argued that the move weakened the right to peaceful protest, have urged the new Labour Party government to ease the restrictions on protest imposed by its predecessor.

“Despite some modest reductions, these sentences are still unprecedented and they still have no place in a democracy that upholds the right to protest,” said Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, which supported the appeals.

A deal to end the war between Ukraine and Russia “is still very, very far away,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that he believed Ukraine’s long-term partnership with the U.S. was strong enough that American support would continue despite recent fraught relations with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I think our relationship (with the U.S.) will continue, because it’s more than an occasional relationship,” Zelenskyy said late Sunday, referring to Washington’s support for the past three years of war.

“I believe that Ukraine has a strong enough partnership with the United States of America” to keep aid flowing, he said at a briefing in Ukrainian before leaving London.

Zelenskyy publicly was upbeat despite the recent heated Oval Office blow up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance during which they accused him of being “disrespectful” and said he should show more gratitude for America’s help. The turn of events is unwelcome for Ukraine, whose understrength army is having a hard time keep bigger Russian forces at bay.

The Ukrainian leader was in London to attend U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s effort to rally his European counterparts around continuing — and likely much increased — support for Ukraine from the continent amid political uncertainty in the U.S., and Trump’s overtures toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Asked by a reporter to comment about the outlines of a new European initiative to end Russia’s war, Zelenskyy said: “We are talking about the first steps today, and therefore, until they are on paper, I would not like to talk about them in great detail.”

“An agreement to end the war is still very, very far away, and no one has started all these steps yet. The peace that we foresee in the future must be just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable,” he added.

Trump slammed Zelenskyy later Monday for suggesting that the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine is still far off.  “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S. — Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia,” Trump added in his post. “What are they thinking?”

The White House wants Zelenskyy to show more openness to potential concessions in order to bring the fighting to an end, but Zelenskyy resisted that idea while pressing for security guarantees from Washington during last Friday’s meeting.

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely next leader after the recent election, said Monday that he didn’t think last Friday’s Oval Office blow-up was spontaneous.

He said that he had watched the scene repeatedly. “My assessment is that it wasn’t a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelenskyy, but apparently an induced escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” Merz said.

He said that he was “somewhat astonished by the mutual tone,” but there has been “a certain continuity to what we are seeing from Washington at the moment” in recent weeks.