AFP USA

America’s ice-climbing epicenter was facing a bleak future, with climate change endangering its water supply, until an unlikely savior came to its rescue: a nearby silver mine.Nestled in the heart of the Rockies, at an altitude of 2,400 meters (7,800 feet), Ouray is famous among mountaineers around the world for its artificial ice park.For 30 years, the village has piped in water that washes down the walls of a nearby gorge in winter, freezing in place and creating dozens of climbing routes.”It’s definitely an ice climbing Mecca,” said mountain guide Clint Cook.”I can’t think of anywhere else that attracts this many people specifically to one place, just for ice climbing.”But a damaging decades-long drought threatened the area’s water source, even as the number of winter visitors exploded.”I can remember some people going around town and be like ‘Don’t shower tonight! We need that water in the tank to build ice,'” said Cook, 47.But starting next season, all that is set to change, after Ouray Silver Mines stepped in and offered to lease the rights to millions of liters (gallons) of water every year — for a $1 fee.”The water from the mine will give us anywhere from three- to five-times more water than we have access to right now,” said Peter O’Neil, executive director of the nonprofit Ouray Ice Park.”And we’re not dependent on the city water tanks.”- ‘Ghost town’ -That should secure the park’s future not only for the “next generation of ice climbers,” but also for all the local businesses that depend on tourists.”If there was no ice park in the winter, the town would be a ghost town,” said O’Neil. “Most of the hotels and motels would be closed.”Ouray, a village of around 900 people, was founded in the 19th century during the Colorado Silver Rush — a past that is commemorated by the statue of a miner that greets visitors.Silver mining dwindled over the 20th century, but renewed demand from new technologies like solar panels has reinvigorated the industry.Brian Briggs, the former CEO of Ouray Silver Mines, who sealed the partnership transferring water rights to the ice park, said the alliance was a win for everyone.Under Colorado’s water use rights, the mine was entitled to millions of gallons for “recreational use,” simply by dint of being a significant land owner.It wasn’t using them, and Briggs recognized the need to improve the image of his industry.”Most people don’t like things in their backyard that are mining or industrial,” he said.Donating the water, he figured, was a nice way to give back to the community in an effort to build good will.”People need to know that the mine’s not just this bad group of people,” Briggs said.- ‘What if there’s no ice?’ -Earth’s warming climate, caused chiefly by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels, has not only hit water supplies, but also causes problems with rising temperatures.Ideally, the park needs several consecutive days where the temperatures stays below -7C (19 Fahrenheit) for the ice to form properly, hence the importance of being able to turn the taps on when the weather is right.For the thousands of people who travel to the self-proclaimed “Switzerland of America” spending around $18 million a year, the deal is a real boost.Jen Brinkley, from California, has been visiting Ouray almost every season for 30 years.When she was younger, she said, she would ask: “How many times can we get up there this year? It was more about like, how many trips could we take?””There was never a thought of, ‘oh, wait, what if there’s no ice?'” Brinkley hopes the water from the mine — which is pumped from a river and returns there when it melts in the Spring — will secure the park’s future and make the climbing there even better.”With more routes open you definitely have people that can spread out and so everybody can have a chance to climb,” she said.

US President Donald Trump is expected to sign an order Thursday aiming to dismantle the Department of Education, fulfilling a long-held goal of American conservatives.The order, which several media outlets on Wednesday reported would be signed during a White House ceremony, comes as efforts are already underway in the department to drastically downsize its staffing and slash funding.Trump’s education secretary, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, issued a memo shortly after her swearing in on March 3 saying the agency would be beginning its “final mission.”The next week, she moved to halve the department’s staff.Trump, 78, promised to decentralize education as he campaigned for a return to the White House, saying he would devolve the department’s powers to state governments, as desired for decades by many Republicans.Traditionally, the federal government has had a limited role in education in the United States, with only about 13 percent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, the rest being funded by states and local communities.But federal funding is invaluable for low-income schools and students with special needs. And the federal government has been essential in enforcing key civil rights protections for students.The order directs McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate” the department’s closure, according to a copy seen by Politico, which reported several Republican governors would be attending the ceremony.Several key programs are to be spared, such as those providing grants to university students and funding for low-income schools across the country, multiple outlets reported.Such an order has been widely expected after a circulating draft was obtained by media outlets shortly after McMahon took over.By law, the Education Department, created in 1979, cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress and Republicans do not have the votes to push that through.However, as with other federal agencies under Trump’s second administration, the department is likely to see further cuts to programs and employees, which could significantly cripple its work.The moves are being spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose rapid actions have met pushback in courts for possibly exceeding executive authority.A similar move to dismantle the US Agency for International Development was halted on Monday by a federal judge, who said the push likely violated the Constitution.McMahon, after she ordered the halving of her staff, told Fox News it was a step toward fulfilling Trump’s demand that she “put herself out of a job.””His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished,” she said.

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang expressed confidence Wednesday that the artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant can handle US President Donald Trump’s trade war.”We have a really agile network of suppliers; they are not just in Taiwan or Mexico or Vietnam,” Huang said while meeting with journalists at Nvidia’s annual developers conference in San Jose, California.”If we add onshore manufacturing by the end of this year, we should be quite good.”Nvidia is not expecting tariffs to significantly affect its financial performance in the short term, according to Huang.He noted that the tariff situation is evolving, and that what it does to Nvidia costs will depend on which countries are targeted by Trump.Trump has threatened to slap extra tariffs on imports of computer chips to the United States, which will heap pressure on Nvidia’s business, which depends on imported components mainly from Taiwan.Since returning to power in January, Trump has imposed tariffs on Washington’s three main trading partners, Mexico, Canada, and China.Trump has talked of imposing “reciprocal tariffs” against other countries in early April, creating uncertainty for businesses and financial markets.The White House recently put out a release saying Trump is intent on making the US a “manufacturing superpower,” ramping up pressure to shift production back to this country.However, chip fabrication facilities can take years to build.Since its founding in 1993, Nvidia has specialized in graphics processing units (GPUs) coveted by video game enthusiasts.GPUs are also ideally suited for AI and the rise of that technology has catapulted the Silicon Valley-based chip maker into the spotlight.”We’re not making chips anymore; those were the good old days,” Huang quipped. “What we do now is build AI infrastructure.”High-end versions of Nvidia’s chips face US export restrictions to the major market of China, part of Washington’s efforts to slow its Asian adversary’s advancement in the strategic technology.Asked about this, Huang replied that his company is not alone in needing to respect each country’s laws.

The White House accused judges on Wednesday of “usurping” executive power in its latest broadside against federal courts whose rulings have gone against President Donald Trump’s administration.Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged there had been a “concerted effort by the far left” to pick judges who were “clearly acting as partisan activists” to deal with cases involving the Republican’s actions.”Not only are they usurping the will of the president and the chief executive of our country, but they are undermining the will of the American public,” Leavitt said at a daily briefing.Leavitt in particular lashed out at District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension over the weekend of deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants carried out under an obscure wartime law, calling him a “Democrat activist.”Trump’s administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport the alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador as part of its mass deportation program of undocumented migrants. Their names or alleged offenses have not been made public. Trump personally called for the judge’s impeachment on Tuesday, saying Boasberg was “a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”The Yale-educated Boasberg, 62, was first appointed to the bench by president George W. Bush, a Republican, and later named a district court judge by Obama, a Democrat.Trump’s comments drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.”For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said.Boasberg, in an order in the deportation case on Wednesday, also issued a pointed reminder to Justice Department lawyers that court rulings are to be obeyed.”As the Supreme Court has made crystal clear, the proper recourse for a party subject to an injunction it believes is legally flawed… is appellate review, not disobedience,” he said.- ‘Assault on democracy’ -Federal judges are nominated by the president for life and can only be removed by being impeached by the House of Representatives for “high crimes or misdemeanors” and convicted by the Senate.Impeachment of federal judges is exceedingly rare and the last time a judge was removed by Congress was in 2010.Trump, in an interview aired on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday, said the chief justice “didn’t mention my name in the statement.””But many people have called for (Boasberg’s) impeachment,” he said. “He actually said we shouldn’t be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders… out of our country.”Well, that’s a presidential job,” Trump said. “That’s not for a local judge to be making that determination.”Judges have dealt Trump a number of setbacks in recent weeks as his administration pursues its wholesale overhaul of the federal government.Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship has been blocked by the courts and a judge on Tuesday ordered an immediate halt to the shutdown of the main US aid agency by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).On the same day, another judge suspended the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.The South African-born billionaire Musk railed against what he called a “judicial coup” in posts on his social network X.”We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” Musk said, misstating the process and the actual number of senators required — 67.White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller also lashed out at the judiciary, accusing it of waging an “assault on democracy.””District court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief,” Miller said on X.Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has a history of attacking the judges who presided over his civil and criminal cases.But Trump’s administration now appears bent on a showdown with the judiciary as he asserts extraordinary levels of executive power.

A New York businessman was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Wednesday for his role in a plot to force a US resident to return to China.Quanzhong An, 58, was one of seven people charged in October 2022 for involvement in a Chinese government repatriation scheme known as “Operation Fox Hunt.”An, who pleaded guilty in May of last year to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, was the leader of the multi-year campaign, according to the Justice Department.Judge Kiyo Matsumoto sentenced him to 20 months in prison and a financial penalty of $5 million, including $1.3 million in restitution to the US resident targeted in the repatriation plot.The US resident who was the victim of threats, harassment and intimidation by An and others has not been identified.According to the Justice Department, Operation Fox Hunt involves extra-judicial repatriation squads that clandestinely attempt to force expatriates to return to China.Beijing has defended the operation as part of an anti-corruption campaign and said its law enforcement agencies follow international laws when abroad.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at the time of the October 2022 indictment that Beijing was “fighting crimes, repatriating fugitives and recovering illegal proceeds.”

From erasing the stories of Navajo “code talkers” on the Pentagon website to demolishing a “Black Lives Matter” mural in Washington, President Donald Trump’s assault on diversity across the United States government is dismantling decades of racial justice programs.Delivering on a campaign promise, the Republican billionaire made it one of his first acts in office to terminate all federal government diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, which he said led to “illegal and immoral discrimination.”The crackdown on DEI initiatives at the Pentagon has been broad, ranging from a ban on recruiting transgender troops — a move stayed by a court this week — to removing vast troves of documents and images from its website.Earlier this month, Civil War historian Kevin M. Levin reported that Arlington National Cemetery had begun to wipe its website of the histories of Black, Hispanic and women war veterans. “It’s a sad day when our own military is forced to turn its back on sharing the stories of the brave men and women, who have served this country with honor,” Levin wrote on his Substack.”This insanity must stop.”- ‘Woke cultural Marxism’ -References to war heroes, military firsts, and even notable African Americans were among the swathe of images and articles marked for deletion, according to a database obtained by the Associated Press.Among the more than 26,000 items marked to be removed were references to the Enola Gay, the US aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 — apparently because the plane’s name triggered a digital search for word associated with LGBT inclusion.   Other content removed by the Pentagon included stories on the Tuskegee Airmen, who were the first African American military aviators, and baseball legend and veteran Jackie Robinson. Responding to a question on those and other removals, the Pentagon on Wednesday said it saluted the individuals, but refused to see “them through the prism of immutable characteristics.””(DEI) is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission,” said Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot.He added that in “rare cases” that content was removed that should not have been, it would be restored — as was the case with the articles on Robinson and on Navajo “code talkers” — but defiantly stood by the purge as a whole. – ‘Erase history’ -Not everyone has been convinced by the Pentagon’s explanations around the purge.Descendants of the Native Americans who played a vital role for US forces in World War II said they had been shocked to discover their ancestors’ heroic contributions had been effectively deleted from the public record.”I definitely see it as an attempt to erase the history of people of color in general,” said Zonnie Gorman, daughter of military veteran Carl Gorman. Carl Gorman was one of the young Navajo “code talkers” recruited by the US Navy in 1942 to test the use of their Indigenous language, whose complex structure made it an almost impossible-to-crack wartime code.Several web pages detailing the role of the group, whose contribution was key to the United States’ victories in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945 in battles such as Iwo Jima, recently disappeared from the Pentagon’s site.For Gorman, a historian, the action was an insult.”From the very beginning, we are very invisible in this country, and so to have a story that was so well recognized for us as Indigenous people, that felt good,” she told AFP.”And then this is like a slap in the face.”- Chilling effect -The US president’s move to end DEI programs has also affected more than just the federal government.Since he won last year’s election, several major US corporations — including Google, Meta, Amazon and McDonalds — have either entirely scrapped or dramatically scaled back their DEI programs. According to the New York Times, the number of companies on the S&P 500 that used the words “diversity, equity and inclusion” in company filings had fallen nearly 60 percent compared to 2024.The American Civil Liberties Union says Trump’s policies have taken a “‘shock and awe’ approach that upends longstanding, bipartisan federal policy meant to open doors that had been unfairly closed.”US federal anti-discrimination programs were born of the 1960s civil rights struggle, mainly led by Black Americans, for equality and justice after hundreds of years of slavery, whose abolition in 1865 saw other institutional forms of racism enforced.Today, Black Americans and other minorities continue to disproportionately face police violence, incarceration, poverty, homelessness and hate crimes, according to official data.

President Donald Trump’s administration advanced another major US natural gas export project on Wednesday, handing oil companies a win the same day as a White House meeting with industry executives.The Energy Department approved an export authorization for the Venture Global CP2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, drawing praise from business groups and withering criticism from environmentalists.The project is the fifth major LNG export venture progressed since Trump returned to the White House, the Department of Energy said in a news release.Energy Secretary Chris Wright touted the project following the late-afternoon White House meeting, which included the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil giants, according to US media.”We want to bring low cost, affordable, reliable, secure energy to Americans and our allies around the world,” said Wright, who slammed former president Joe Biden’s administration for suspending LNG expansions over environmental concerns.The White House meeting comes as uncertainty around Trump’s trade tariffs and threats stokes concerns about the economy slowing.The oil industry has kept a muted public stance on Trump’s myriad tariff actions, while privately expressing misgivings about the policy.Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told reporters that dialogue on tariffs was “ongoing,” while downplaying the chances that there will be a significant economic impact.Burgum and Wright said they were committed to streamlining permitting of new petroleum projects, addressing the industry’s criticism about lengthy delays due to protests from environmental groups.Environmentalists have attacked projects like the CP2 LNG venture because of the increased pollution affecting communities near such industrial sites, while slamming LNG as exacerbating climate change.”The Trump administration’s conditional approval of CP2 illustrates everything that’s wrong with Trump’s fossil fuel agenda,” said Allie Rosenbluth, US campaign manager for Oil Change International.”It comes on the same day as Trump welcomes oil and gas industry donors to the White House to brag about the favors he’s done them -– clear evidence of who this administration actually serves.”Mahyar Sorour of the Sierra Club called the latest LNG project approval “a disaster for local communities devastated by pollution, American consumers who will face higher costs, and the global climate crisis that will be supercharged by the project’s emissions.”

The US Federal Reserve paused interest rate cuts again on Wednesday and warned of increased economic uncertainty as it seeks to navigate an economy unnerved by President Donald Trump’s stop-start tariff rollout.Policymakers voted to hold the US central bank’s key lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, the Fed announced in a statement. They also cut their growth forecast for 2025 and hiked their inflation outlook, while still penciling in two rate cuts this year — in line with their previous forecast in December.”Uncertainty today is unusually elevated,” Fed chair Jerome Powell told reporters after the US central bank’s decision was published, adding that at least part of a recent rise in inflation was down to tariffs.All three major Wall Street indices closed higher on the news, while government bond yields fell after the Fed announced it would slow down the rate at which it is reducing its balance sheet, which swelled during the pandemic. In an unusual move, Fed governor Christopher Waller opposed the Fed’s rate decision because of his colleagues’ support for slowing down the pace at which it is shrinking the balance sheet. – ‘Unclear’ tariff policy -Since returning to office in January, Trump has ramped up levies on top trading partners including China, Canada and Mexico — only to roll some of them back — and threatened to impose reciprocal measures on other countries.Many analysts fear Trump’s economic policies could push up inflation and hamper economic growth, and complicate the Fed’s plans to bring inflation down to its long-term target of two percent while maintaining a healthy labor market.”Everybody knew there was not going to be a rate cut,” Moody’s Analytics economist Matt Colyar told AFP after the Fed’s decision was published. “What has changed is the kind of broader economic environment, mostly coming out of chaotic policy coming from DC.”Until fairly recently, the hard economic data pointed to a robust American economy, with the Fed’s favored inflation measure showing a 2.5 percent rise in the year to January — above target but down sharply from a four-decade high in 2022.Economic growth was relatively robust through the end of 2024, while the labor market has remained quite strong, with healthy levels of job creation and the unemployment rate hovering close to historic lows. But the mood has shifted in the weeks since Trump returned to the White House, with inflation expectations rising and financial markets tumbling amid his on-again, off-again rollout of tariffs. – Recession risk up -In updated economic forecasts published Wednesday, Fed policymakers sharply cut their growth forecast for this year to 1.7 percent, down from 2.1 percent in the last economic outlook in December. They also downgraded their outlook for growth next year, while raising their forecast for headline inflation in both 2025 and 2026.  But they kept their rate cut predictions largely unchanged, penciling in two rate cuts this year and next, in line with their previous forecast.Powell told reporters that the risk of recession in the United States had risen slightly in recent weeks, but was not yet a cause for concern.”If you go back two months, people were saying that the likelihood of a recession was extremely low,” he said. “It has moved up but it’s not high.”At the White House, which sits a short walk from the Fed’s Washington headquarters, Trump’s National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett took questions about the Fed chair’s press conference.”I try not to cherry pick things that chairman Powell said,” he told reporters. “And I think that chairman Powell is clear that if there were a tariff effect, it’s a transitory one.” “What gets tariffed and not is something that you’ll have complete clarity on on April 2,” he added, referring to the date at which Trump has said he intends to impose retaliatory levies on US trading partners.

Donald Trump began his second term vowing to be a peacemaker. Two months in, Israel has launched a major new offensive in Gaza, US forces are pounding Yemen, and Ukraine and Russia are exchanging fire despite his mediation.Speaking as he was sworn in on January 20, Trump said: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” He pointed to a just-concluded deal, conceived by outgoing president Joe Biden but pushed through by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, that halted Israel’s military operations in Gaza in return for the release of some hostages by Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.In recent days, Israel has relaunched air strikes, killing hundreds of people according to the Gaza health ministry, and renewed its ground operations. The State Department said Hamas bore “total responsibility” after rejecting a proposal by Witkoff, a Trump friend also mediating with Russia, to move toward a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire.Trump has also ordered military strikes on Yemen’s Huthi insurgents after the Iranian-backed forces reopened attacks on Red Sea shipping in professed solidarity with the Palestinians.Brian Finucane, a former State Department official now at the International Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution, said that the narrative of Trump as peacemaker was always overstated and that his approach was erratic.Trump likes to claim wins and would relish earning the Nobel Peace Prize, seeing it as a “one of life’s great achievements,” Finucane said.”He was happy to claim credit for the Gaza ceasefire in January, but then unwilling to put pressure on the Israelis to move to phase two,” Finucane said.Another Trump envoy held the first-ever direct US talks with Hamas, unthinkable for previous administrations, but Trump also has called for the mass removal of Gaza’s two million people.”None of this is terribly coherent, but neither is it terribly surprising,” Finucane said.He pointed to Trump’s first term in which he threatened to annihilate North Korea before holding unprecedented summits with leader Kim Jong Un and saying that they “fell in love.”- Preference for peace, but if not -Trump’s aides have described his bellicose posture as part of a strategy as he seeks an ultimate goal of peace.”He’s been abundantly clear. He’s a president that wants to promote peace,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a radio interview Wednesday. Trump, who had boasted that he would end the Ukraine war within a day, held successive calls this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and voiced optimism about reaching a truce.But Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, launched a barrage of missile and drone attacks hours after the Trump call.Jennifer Kavanaugh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, which supports restraint, said there was reason for optimism from Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, but that Putin has the upper hand on the ground and is not going to compromise easily.She said that Trump also did not appear to offer any concessions to Putin, despite outside criticism of his ties with the Russian leader and Trump’s earlier berating of Zelensky that alarmed European allies.”To me, this was a positive step forward that set the ground for some confidence building, both between Ukraine and Russia and between Trump and European allies who are very concerned about his negotiating style,” she said.- ‘Hard realities’ -She said it was not yet “time to give up hope for peace” from Trump.”I think what we’ve seen is that promises run into the hard realities of how difficult it is to get to peace in these very difficult and intractable conflicts,” she said.Sina Toossi, a fellow at the progressive Center for International Policy, was less hopeful. Compared with his first term, Trump’s aides such as Rubio are “more loyalists than independent power players,” giving the president freer rein including for brinksmanship, Toossi said.”For Trump, foreign policy isn’t about carefully negotiated peace deals. It’s about performance, leverage and crafting a narrative that sells,” he said.Referring to Trump’s book as a hotel developer, Toossi said: “He approaches diplomacy the way he approached real estate in ‘The Art of the Deal:’ — escalate tensions, maximize threats, push the situation to the brink of disaster and then, at the last minute, strike a deal.”

Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday that the United States could own and run Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of his latest bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.The Ukrainian president said following their call that Kyiv was ready to pause attacks on Russia’s energy network and infrastructure, a day after Vladimir Putin agreed to halt similar strikes on Ukraine.But a wider ceasefire remains elusive with the Kremlin leader insisting in his own call with Trump on Tuesday that the West first stop all military aid for Ukraine.Republican Trump’s tone was markedly more positive after the Zelensky call, with the White House describing it as “fantastic” — despite the fact that the two men had a blazing televised row in the Oval Office recently.Trump “discussed Ukraine’s electrical supply and nuclear power plants” and said Washington could be “very helpful” in running them,” said a statement from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” it said.Trump also pledged to help Kyiv get more air defense equipment from Europe, and to find Ukrainian children “abducted” by Russia, the statement said.The US president earlier said on his Truth Social network that efforts to reach a full truce were “very much on track.”- ‘Ending the war’ -For his part, Zelensky said he was ready to reciprocate with Russia on a pause on energy network strikes following the “frank” conversation with the US president.”One of the first steps towards fully ending the war could be ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure. I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it,” he added.Zelensky said Ukrainian and US officials could meet in coming days for fresh talks in Saudi Arabia, where Russian and American teams are also due to meet early next week.Russia and Ukraine exchanged 372 prisoners, Moscow said Wednesday, which was planned as a goodwill gesture following the Trump-Putin call.Kyiv and Moscow however accused each other of continuing attacks.Ukraine’s defense ministry said an overnight barrage of Russian missiles and drones struck the war-battered nation, killing one person and damaging two hospitals.”Today Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” Zelensky said of the strikes.Ukraine’s national railway service said the barrage had hit railway energy infrastructure in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.Russia’s defense ministry reported a “deliberate” Ukrainian attack overnight on an oil depot in the south of the country, which they said was aimed at “derailing” Trump’s attempts to broker an end to the fighting.”These attacks are countering our common efforts,” added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, referring to the US-Russian talks.- ‘Don’t believe Putin’ -The major sticking point remains Putin’s resistance to a full ceasefire — something that Kyiv and some Western allies say underscores how the Russian leader cannot be trusted.Putin insisted during his call with Trump on Tuesday that a full ceasefire was only possible if the West agrees to Moscow’s long-standing demand to halt its billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine.The Kremlin chief also demanded Ukraine must not be allowed to rearm and must halt mandatory mobilization.Moscow and Washington were even at odds on the results of the call. The Kremlin said they only discussed halting power plant attacks, but the White House insisted the talks covered both energy and other civilian infrastructure.Trump’s overtures to Putin, and indications Washington will no longer guarantee European security, have spooked Kyiv and the United States’s NATO allies.”I don’t believe Putin at all, not a single word. He only understands force,” said Kyiv resident Lev Sholoudko, 32.In Moscow, locals were more optimistic the talks could bring an end to the fighting — to Russia’s advantage.”Definitely this is in our favor,” said Moscow resident Larisa, 46. “There is no other way. What happened in 1945 will happen now,” she added, referring to the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.