World News

VATICAN CITY, April 3 (Reuters) – Pope Leo spoke on the phone with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday and urged him to “reopen all paths of dialogue” to end the Iran war, the Vatican said.

The pope, who has emerged as a sharp critic of the regional conflict, also urged Herzog to protect civilians and promote respect for international and humanitarian law, the Vatican added.

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Crispian Balmer)

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BEIJING, April 3 (Reuters) – China’s cyberspace regulator issued draft regulations on Friday to oversee the development online of digital humans, requiring clear labelling and banning services that could mislead children or fuel addiction. 

The Cyberspace Administration of China’s proposed rules would require prominent “digital human” labels on all virtual human content and prohibit digital humans from providing “virtual intimate relationships” to those under 18, according to rules published for public comment until May 6.

The draft regulations would also ban the use of other people’s personal information to create digital humans without consent, or using virtual humans to bypass identity verification systems, reflecting Beijing’s efforts to maintain control in the face of advances in artificial intelligence.

Digital humans are also prohibited from disseminating content that endangers national security, inciting subversion of state power, promoting secession or undermining national unity, the draft rules said.

Service providers are advised to prevent and resist content that is sexually suggestive, depicts horror, cruelty or incites discrimination based on ethnicity or region, according to the document. Providers are also encouraged to take necessary measures to intervene and provide professional assistance when users exhibit suicidal or self-harming tendencies.

China made clear its ambitions to aggressively adopt AI throughout its economy in the new five-year policy blueprint issued last month. The push comes alongside tightening governance in the booming industry to ensure safety and alignment with the country’s socialist values. 

The new rules aim to fill a gap in governance in the digital human sector, setting clear red lines for the healthy development of the industry, according to an analysis published on the cyberspace regulator’s website.

“The governance of digital virtual humans is no longer merely an issue of industry norms; rather, it has become a strategic scientific problem that concerns the security of the cyberspace, public interests, and the high-quality development of the digital economy,” it added.

(Reporting by Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Kate Mayberry)

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April 2 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday offered to provide Ukraine’s expertise in dealing with freedom of navigation in the Black Sea to countries considering how to keep the Strait of Hormuz open amid conflict in the Middle East.

Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha had taken part in a virtual meeting devoted to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, attended by about 40 countries.

“Ukraine has relevant expertise concerning sea waterways, concerning the defence and reopening of maritime traffic,” he said.

“If (our) partners are ready to act we will consider how we can strengthen them, how we can apply our expertise, knowledge and technological potential.”

Zelenskiy offered no further details.

Ukrainian forces have developed technology, including sea drones, that has enabled them during four years of war to score notable successes over Russian ships in the Black Sea and kept Moscow from controlling the waterway.

The president embarked last week on a tour of Middle Eastern countries as part of a drive to provide them with defence technology it has developed in four years of countering drones, many of them designed in Iran.

He said he was expecting a report on progress in the issue on Friday from Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s top negotiator in talks on reaching a settlement to the war.

On Wednesday, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine was already cooperating with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan, and was also in contact with Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq. The government team was also in talks on potential agreements with Turkey and other countries.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Bogdan Kochubey; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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BEIRUT (AP) — Leading Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was detained by Iranian intelligence agents at her house in Tehran overnight, her daughter said Thursday.

Prize-winning Nasrin Sotoudeh, 64, is renowned for defending activists, opposition politicians and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves. She has been imprisoned multiple times and is currently out on bail for health reasons.

Her husband, Reza Khandan, also a well-known activist, is currently imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison.

Mehraveh Khandan, speaking to The Associated Press from Amsterdam, said she received messages from her family in Iran through an intermediary, confirming her mother’s arrest. Restrictions on communications and the internet imposed since January make contact with the outside world almost impossible.

News of Sotoudeh’s detention comes as Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent and political activists even as the war with the U.S and Israel rages. Since the war began in Feb. 28, authorities have reportedly arrested hundreds, often for communicating with foreign media. Authorities have also stepped up executions of detained protesters, who were facing the death sentence. Rights groups have said the crackdown is meant to instill fear and deter new protests.

Days before her arrest, Sotoudeh gave an interview published on Monday to a Persian media outlet abroad in which she commented on the war, saying the Islamic Republic’s policies “have exposed us to death.” She also spoke out against the government crackdown on protests in January— the largest against the Islamic Republic in decades— which were met with a brutal crackdown.

Khandan said she is worried about her mother, who has a heart condition, because of possible U.S.-Israeli attacks on detention facilities and because “our regime became even more brutal after this war started.”

Sotoudeh’s arrest also comes after news that Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi may have suffered a heart attack.

Mohammadi’s French lawyer Chirinne Ardakani told AP Thursday that her legal team learned of Mohammadi’s condition during a brief prison visit last week.

“She appeared extremely emaciated, pale, weak, and had difficulty moving. In fact, she was even accompanied to the waiting room by a nurse. We learned from Narges Mohammadi that she had a heart attack on March 24th, that she was found unconscious in her cell, and that it was actually her fellow inmates who took her to the infirmary,” Ardakani said.

Besides the concern over her health, there were also airstrikes not too far from the Zanjan Prison in northwestern Iran where she is being held, raising concerns for her safety, the lawyer said.

Mohammadi, 53, a rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison, was arrested in December during a visit to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad and sentenced to seven more years in prison. Mohammadi’s health has been worsening.

In a brief call Thursday, Sotoudeh told her family she was detained by the Intelligence Ministry, the same agency that arrested her before, said Khandan.

Sotoudeh told her family to follow up on her arrest with prosecutors. There was no immediate word on the reason for her arrest. All communication devices in the house, including her father’s, were also confiscated, Khandan said.

Sotoudeh received the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Union in 2012. Her previous clients include Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and several activists arrested during the government repeated crackdown on protests.

Khandan said she is concerned that the news of the crackdown on dissent would be drowned out as the war rages.

“It is hard for our voice to be heard in this time,” Khandan said. “The regime had (some) limits before. They don’t have (them) anymore.”

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Associated Press journalist Oleg Cetinic in Paris contributed reporting.

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By Christian Martinez

LOS ANGELES, April 2 (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit Hungary and hold bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orban from April 7-8, the White House announced Thursday.

Reuters was the first to report the planned trip last month.

Vance will visit Budapest and deliver remarks, the White House said in a statement.

The visit comes days ahead of Hungary’s April 12 election, which is set to be Orban’s toughest since he seized power in 2010.

(Reporting by Christian Martinez; Editing by Sergio Non and Mark Porter)

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By Ayose Naranjo

HAVANA, April 2 (Reuters) – Cuban activists paraded on Thursday on bikes and electric tricycles along Havana’s waterfront Malecon boulevard, accompanied by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, in a show of defiance amid U.S. efforts to starve the island of fuel.

Participants in the government-organized caravan rode past the U.S. Embassy in the Cuban capital, their electric and pedal-powered vehicles displaying flags and banners attacking the sanctions imposed on the country by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The rally came a day after Cuba’s top diplomat in Washington publicly invited the U.S. government to help overhaul Cuba’s crippled economy as part of ongoing negotiations that have yet to yield results.

Participants in the rally said they favored talks with the United States but demanded respect for Cuba. 

“I believe that genuine dialogue between both governments is possible, but international law and our country’s autonomy must be respected,” said Sheila Ibatao, a Havana law student and participant.

Diaz-Canel did not speak during the event.

The Cuban government often organizes large rallies at the U.S. Embassy. This caravan was smaller and more discreet, hampered by fuel shortages that have crippled mobility and hobbled public transportation. 

A Russian-flagged tankership arrived in Cuba this week and off-loaded 700,000 barrels of crude oil, promising some relief in the coming weeks.

The Trump administration, which has threatened to slap tariffs on countries that export oil to Cuba and explicitly prohibited imports of Russian oil, said it allowed the Russian-flagged tanker to dock in Cuba’s Matanzas port for humanitarian reasons.

(Reporting by Ayose Naranjo; Editing by Dave Sherwood and Will Dunham)

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By Brad Brooks

April 2 (Reuters) – A Colorado appeals court on Thursday overturned the nine-year prison sentence, but not the conviction, given to Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines in her pursuit of claims the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, as Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed.

Trump has taken up the case of Peters, a fellow Republican, in recent months and put pressure on state courts and Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, to free her, saying she is a political prisoner. Polis last month signaled he may be willing to consider clemency for Peters.

A three-judge appeals court panel ordered a lower court to resentence Peters, who remains jailed. The panel upheld her conviction on all seven counts, which include attempts to influence a public servant and violation of duty, among others. 

In its ruling, the panel said the lower court judge Matthew Barrett improperly punished Peters based on her protected speech – her claims of election fraud, which she maintained throughout her 2024 trial. The panel cited several things Barrett said at trial, including calling Peters a “charlatan” who continued to peddle “snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

“The trial court’s comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing. Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud,” the panel wrote.

The panel gave no suggestion of what Peters’ sentence should be.

Peters was indicted in 2022 following an election security breach at her office that led to voting equipment passwords being posted on a right-wing blog. She denied wrongdoing.

Two attorneys for Peters, Peter Ticktin and John Case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump pardoned Peters in December in a move that was considered symbolic since Peters is not in federal custody. The Colorado appeals court panel, in its ruling, wrote that a president’s federal pardon powers do not reach state offenses. 

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; editing by Donna Bryson and Chris Reese)

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KAJIADO, Kenya (AP) — Valerie Wairimu has no time to rest during break time at Kenya’s Greenland Girls School. The teenager grabs a snack and goes straight to what makes this school unique: its nursery.

The 19-year-old is met by a team of nannies who have been watching her baby, Kayden, before she feeds him between classes.

The school is the only educational institute in Kenya dedicated to teenage mothers and cares for many of their children. For its 310 students and more than 80 children from infants to toddlers, Greenland represents a second chance at school that is free from stigma and, experts say, a model for how young mothers can be reintegrated into education.

“When I found that I was pregnant, I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” said Wairimu, who has placed near the top of her class in exams at Greenland and hopes to become a doctor.

The boarding school was founded in 2015 and has put hundreds of girls and young women through secondary education while supporting their children. Some have gone on to successful professional careers, including in government and medicine.

The school is run by the nonprofit group Shining Hope for Communities and many students attend through grants.

The majority of students come from surrounding Kajiado County, south of Nairobi, where the school has a network of outreach officers who can refer expecting mothers.

The school also is connected to social services and known to teachers across Kenya, including in the far west where Wairimu is from. She was living in a family with a single father and younger brother and unable to afford to care for a newborn. Her grandmother was aware of the school and had Wairimu referred.

Many of the students are from difficult backgrounds and some became pregnant as a result of sexual assault, as well as forced marriages.

Paul Mukilya, the school’s manager, said parents often are not supportive and the school’s outreach officers are left to seek agreement with community elders for students to attend.

“Some of the challenges which the students encounter are the family and the community. Most of them have failed to accept them the way they are,” Mukilya said. “When they come here, we take them through psychological counseling and mentorship.”

Sex involving minors — those under 18 — is illegal in Kenya, but the law is structured so only males are charged with a crime. Underage pregnancies often end up in court and Greenland supports its students and liaises with local authorities, especially in cases of underage marriages.

While students are in class, the school’s staff take over child care and provide mentorship for the young women.

“Some of the mothers view their children as a burden,” said Caroline Mumbai, a caregiver at Greenland who has two children of her own. “So we also teach them how to mother.”

Making education accessible for teenage mothers is a challenge in Kenya and a mounting task for a country with a fast-growing young population. More than 125,000 live births in 2024 were by adolescent mothers under 19, according to Kenyan national statistics.

The Population Council, a health and development think tank, found in 2015 that two-thirds of teenage mothers cited their pregnancy as their reason for dropping out of school. As recently as 2022, research group IDinsight found unintended pregnancy was, after a lack of money for school fees, the leading cause of girls not returning to education.

Responding to demand from Kenya’s coastal regions, Greenland Girls School is opening a second campus in Kilifi County.

“Every girl who gets pregnant and drops out during their school time must be allowed reentry,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, chief executive of development agency Amref Health Africa. “Special schools are important in supplementing the general scalable policy framework. We should focus on these schools that are helping to close the equity gap.”

Greenland students say they also appreciate an environment free from stigma, which encourages learning.

“People used to judge me because I got pregnant,” said Mary Wanjiku, 20, whose son is almost 18 months old. She now hopes to become a lawyer.

“The moment I came here, I was received with love,” she said.

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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By Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou

ATHENS, April 2 (Reuters) – Greek mother Georgia Efstathiou has tried everything to loosen the grip that social media has on her 14-year-old son: heart-to-heart talks; internet-free time; confiscating his phone. Arguments flare as she fights the allure of his screen and its videos and messages.

Now, Efstathiou may be getting the help she desperately wants. In the coming days, the Greek government is expected to announce a social media ban for children under 15, joining the growing ranks of nations seeking to shield young children from addiction and online abuse.

“Ban them, shut them down. We’ve reached our limits… We parents need help,” said Efstathiou, 43, holding her son’s mobile phone in her living room in Athens. 

Efstathiou isn’t alone. An opinion poll by ALCO published in February showed about 80% of those surveyed approved of a ban. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government has already outlawed mobile phones in schools and set up parental control platforms to limit teenagers’ screen time.

The government has declined comment on the ban or when and how it will be implemented.

Reuters reported on the plan in February and sources said a formal announcement is pending. Last month, Mitsotakis told a Greek-Australian newspaper that Greece will move “in a similar direction to that of Australia”, where social media companies were ordered in December to keep out users under 16 or face fines.

WORRIES OF ADDICTION AND BULLYING ABOUND 

As in countries across the world, Greece faces a reckoning with social media sites such as Meta’s Instagram, TikTok and online gaming platforms. 

At the EU-funded Greek Safer Internet Centre in Athens, calls to a helpline which offers support to child victims of cyberbullying more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, said George Kormas, who runs the helpline. Other complaints include blackmail of minors, misinformation and hate speech. 

According to the helpline’s data, 75% of children using social media in Greece are of primary‑school age.

“This undoubtedly worries us, because they cannot handle social media or protect themselves,” he said. 

The head of the National Organization for the Prevention and Treatment of Addictions, Athanasios Theocharis, said roughly 48% of teenagers have felt the negative impact of social media. 

“Clearly (the ban) has the potential to provide a significant degree of protection,” he said.

KIDS CAN’T IMAGINE A LIFE WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

Meanwhile, parents who spoke to Reuters fear they have lost control of what their children do online or expressed concern that kids will find a way around the ban. Some prefer no government intervention at all.

“I’d prefer a different approach, limiting mobile phone use within the family,” said Dimitris, 44. “But where that’s not possible, perhaps a ban would work as the extreme remedy.”

His 14-year-old daughter Catherine says most teenagers her age have never known a world without social media. 

“It is the way we learned since we were born,” she told Reuters, before playing basketball with her father near the Acropolis.

“I can control it — but then again I usually get carried away.”

(Additional reporting by Deborah Kyvrikosaios and Louisa Gouliamaki in Athens; Editing by Edward McAllister and Lincoln Feast.)

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By Portia Crowe

DAKAR, April 2 (Reuters) – Government and allied forces in Burkina Faso have killed more than twice as many civilians as Islamist militants have since 2023, according to a tally of incidents documented in a report published on Thursday by Human Rights Watch.

The pattern is broadly consistent with data shared with Reuters by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a conflict monitoring group, and also applies to neighbouring Mali.

In that country, which like Burkina Faso is ruled by a military-led government that seized power in a coup, government forces and their partners have been responsible for three to four times as many civilian killings as jihadists over the last two years, according to ACLED’s data. 

Violence involving jihadist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has surged since 2021, making the Sahel region a global terrorism hotspot. 

Widespread deaths of civilians at the hands of government forces could bolster the political legitimacy of militant groups and fuel recruitment, analysts said. 

They could also complicate steps by the United States to improve relations with Sahel governments, which expelled French and other Western forces after their respective coups. 

Burkina Faso’s security forces and allied militias “appear to be more brutal and violent” than militant groups like the local al Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. 

The Burkinabe forces’ behaviour is part of a regional pattern, raising concerns about military indiscipline and its consequences for counterinsurgency efforts, she said.

Spokespeople for the Mali and Burkina Faso governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters. The Burkina Faso government and JNIM’s Sharia Committee in Burkina Faso did not respond to requests for comment from HRW.

Mali and Burkina Faso have previously denied allegations of extrajudicial killings, saying instead that their forces had killed “terrorists”. 

‘THEY EXTERMINATED EVERYTHING’ 

Covering the period between January 2023 and August 2025, the HRW report documents 57 incidents in which at least 1,837 civilians were killed. Of those, 33 were committed by government forces and their allies, resulting in 1,255 civilian deaths, according to the report, which details widespread abuses by all parties to the conflict. 

The ACLED data shows that in 2025 alone, the Burkinabe military and forces from the pro-government Homeland Defence Volunteers militia killed 523 civilians while JNIM and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), another militant group, killed 339.

In Mali, the military, together with Russian paramilitary groups Wagner and Africa Corps, killed 918 civilians in 2025, while JNIM and ISSP killed 232, according to ACLED. 

JNIM could not be reached for comment. Russia’s defence ministry, which runs Wagner and Africa Corps, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACLED sources its data from social media, press reports and statements from governments, armed groups and non-governmental organisations. It says it provides conservative estimates of fatalities. HRW based its report on 450 interviews and verified social media and satellite imagery. It also says the incidents it has documented are not exhaustive. 

Because JNIM controls large swathes of territory, security forces are sometimes called on to escort humanitarian or supply convoys in rural areas – but in many cases they kill civilians they encounter along the way, Allegrozzi said.  

One resident of eastern Burkina Faso, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told Reuters he was travelling in a civilian convoy under military escort in July 2024, and many of the villages they passed had been abandoned. Then they reached the village of Sakoani, 30 kilometres (19 miles) west of the town of Kantchari. 

“When the army arrived in this village and saw that it was populated, they surrounded the entire village and they exterminated everything – every living being,” he told Reuters. “People tried to flee, but if you run, they shoot at you.”  

He estimated that he saw at least 100 dead bodies. 

EXPANDING USE OF DRONES IN MALI 

In Mali, meanwhile, many civilian killings have been carried out by drone strikes, according to ACLED. Drone warfare there has surged since the government began purchasing Turkish-made drones in 2022. Drone or airstrikes on civilians by Mali’s armed forces jumped from four incidents that year to 66 incidents in 2025, resulting in 155 deaths, the ACLED data shows. 

In July 2024, government drone strikes killed at least 50 civilians at the Inatiyara artisanal gold mining site in northern Mali, according to ACLED. Three eyewitnesses described the attacks to Reuters.  

“We were surprised by the strikes, we were so scared,” said a 30-year-old gold panner from Niger who worked at Inatiyara and asked not to be identified. 

“It was pure panic… I’m still reeling from the shock.” 

HRW and ACLED also documented grave abuses by JNIM, including the killing of at least 133 civilians in Barsalogho, Burkina Faso, in August 2024 and 19 civilians in Diallassagou, Mali, in May 2024. 

The group has nonetheless been able to position itself as a defender of marginalised communities like the Fulani, a widely dispersed pastoralist group whose members are often accused of being affiliated with JNIM, analysts have told Reuters.

“As state responses increasingly rely on retaliation and collective punishment, more civilians find themselves trapped in areas under jihadist control, where JNIM is consolidating its influence through coercion and strategic engagement with local populations,” said Heni Nsaibia, ACLED’s senior analyst for West Africa. 

(Reporting by Portia Crowe; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Daniel Wallis)

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