By STEFANIE DAZIO and AAMER MADHANI

BERLIN (AP) — Russia has indicated it’s open to Ukraine joining the European Union as part of a potential peace deal aimed at ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, and there’s now consensus on about 90% of the U.S.-authored peace plan, U.S. officials said Monday.

The officials said that robust negotiations between President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team led to progress on narrowing differences on security guarantees Kyiv said must be provided to Ukraine as well as the contentious issue on Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede land in the eastern Donbas.

Kushner and Witkoff are expected to meet over dinner on Monday evening with Ukrainian as well British, German and French leaders for further talks. Trump, who has been briefed twice on the Berlin talks, plans to dial in to the dinner from Washington.

The negotiators and others involved in the peace talks will likely meet in Miami or elsewhere in the United States this weekend to continue their work, according to the U.S. officials.

The U.S. officials also said the administration plans to put forward the security guarantees agreement before the Senate for its approval, although they didn’t specify whether it would be ratified like a treaty, which needs two-thirds approval from the chamber.

The U.S. officials who briefed reporters after Witkoff and Kushner met with Zelenskyy and other European officials in Berlin over the last two days said that such an offer over Ukraine joining the EU would be a major concession by Moscow. But Russia has previously said it does not object to Ukraine joining the EU.

The U.S. officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the U.S. has also agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Kyiv as part of the deal but that such an offer won’t be on the table “forever.”

The latest round of talks between Zelenskyy and U.S. envoys ended Monday as Kyiv faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal while confronting an increasingly assertive Moscow.

Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said on social media that “real progress” had been achieved at the talks in Berlin with President Donald Trump’s special envoy Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner as well as European officials. The talks lasted roughly 90 minutes, after a five-hour session Sunday.

The U.S. government said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after Sunday’s meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”

The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.

Zelenskyy has expressed readiness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join the NATO military alliance if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine’s preference remains NATO membership as the best security guarantee to prevent further Russian aggression however this option doesn’t currently have full backing from all allies.

Still, Ukraine has continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region still under its control as one of the key conditions for peace.

Zelenskyy’s itinerary on Monday also included meetings with German and other European leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron’s office confirmed he would travel to Berlin later Monday.

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“The issue of security in particular will ultimately determine whether this war actually comes to a standstill and whether it flares up again,” a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Stefan Kornelius, told reporters.

The Russian president has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.

Zelenskyy emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.

The Kremlin said Monday it expected to be updated on the Berlin talks by the U.S. side.

Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a “thankless task.”

“I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin,” Peskov said. “He is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.”

Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.

In London, meanwhile, the new head of the MI6 spy agency was set to warn on Monday how Putin’s determination to export chaos around the world is rewriting the rules of conflict and creating new security challenges.

Blaise Metreweli was using her first public speech as chief of the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence service to say that Britain faces increasingly unpredictable and interconnected threats, with emphasis on “aggressive, expansionist” Russia.

Drone strikes continue

Russia fired 153 drones of various types at Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said 133 drones were neutralized, while 17 more hit their targets.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry on Monday said forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. An additional 16 drones were destroyed between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time.

Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow itself, the defense ministry said. Flights were temporarily halted at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.

Damage details and casualty figures were not immediately available.

Madhani reported from Washington. Seung Min Kim in Washington, Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

SYDNEY (AP) — A father and son are suspected by officials to have killed 15 people on a popular Australian beach, shocking a country where gun violence is rare. The government on Monday, a day after the shootings, proposed tougher new gun laws amid criticism that officials didn’t take seriously enough a string of antisemitic attacks.

Here’s a look at what to know from the attack at Bondi Beach:

The suspects attacked a Jewish beachside gathering

Little is known about the suspects in the attack on Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach, but there was widespread shock when officials said that the two men pictured firing weapons in social media videos were related.

The 50-year-old father, who was killed, arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, authorities said, and was an Australian resident when he died. Officials wouldn’t confirm what country he had migrated from.

His 24-year-old Australian-born son, who was shot and wounded, is being treated at a hospital

The target was a Hanukkah celebration where hundreds had gathered to celebrate the first day of the eight-day Jewish holiday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an act of antisemitic terrorism.

Albanese said that Australia’s main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency, had investigated the son for six months in 2019. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that the agency had examined the son’s ties to a Sydney-based Islamic State group cell. Albanese did not describe the associates, but said the spy agency was interested in them rather than the son.

The dead included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. Dozens of others were injured, some seriously.

Police said the father held a firearms license and that he was a member of a gun club, which suggests he was a target shooter.

People leave notes at a flower tribute for shooting victims outside the Bondi Pavilion at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, a day after a shooting. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Praise for a man who tried to help

One dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man’s weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.

The man was identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al Ahmed. The 42-year-old fruit shop owner and father of two was shot in the shoulder by the other gunman and survived.

Hate crimes targeting Jews in Australia are on the rise

A wave of antisemitic attacks have shocked and angered many in Australia over the last year.

Australia has 28 million people and about 117,000 Jews.

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Antisemitic incidents, including assaults, vandalism, threats and intimidation, surged more than threefold in the country during the year after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza in response, the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal reported in July.

Last year, there were antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars have been torched, businesses and homes vandalized with graffiti, and Jews attacked in cities where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population lives.

Albanese in August blamed Iran for two of the attacks and cut diplomatic ties to Tehran.

Israel urged Australia’s government to address crimes targeting Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he warned Australia’s leaders months ago about the dangers of failing to take action against antisemitism. He claimed Australia’s decision — in line with scores of other countries — to recognize a Palestinian state “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”

This is the deadliest shooting in Australia in three decades

Australia has strict gun control laws.

Mass shootings are extremely rare. A 1996 massacre in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gunman killed 35 people, prompted the government to drastically tighten gun laws, making it much more difficult to acquire firearms.

Significant mass shootings this century included two murder-suicides with death tolls of five people in 2014 and seven in 2018, in which gunmen killed their own families and themselves.

In 2022, six people were killed in a shootout between police and Christian extremists at a rural property in Queensland state.

The prime minister said he was pushing for tougher gun laws.

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal authorities on Monday announced the arrests of four alleged members of an extremist group who are suspected of planning coordinated bombing attacks on New Year’s Eve across Southern California.

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The suspects were arrested last week in Lucerne Valley, a desert city east of Los Angeles, where they were suspected of preparing to test improvised explosive devices ahead of the planned bombings, according to the federal criminal complaint filed Saturday.

They are members of an offshoot of a pro-Palestinian group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front, the complaint said. During a news conference Monday, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli described the group as a “radical anti-government” group.

They each face charges including conspiracy and possession of a destructive device, court documents show.

The group is alleged to have been plotting to set off a series of bombings at multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve and also planned to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social media.

Officials said the four suspects were arrested near the desert city of Twentynine Palms, California, home to a Marine Corps base.

Essayli said the four are all from the Los Angeles area. He said one of the suspects created a detailed plan to bomb five or more locations across Southern California on New Year’s Eve.

“It included step-by-step instructions to build IEDs…and listed multiple targets across Orange County and Los Angeles,” Essayli said.

Evidence photos included in the court documents show a desert campsite with what investigators said were bomb-making materials strewn across plastic folding tables.

The suspects “all brought bomb-making components to the campsite, including various sizes of PVC pipes, suspected potassium nitrate, charcoal, charcoal powder, sulfur powder, and material to be used as fuses, among others,” the complaint states.

Federal authorities planned a Monday morning news conference to discuss the arrests.

Just last week at Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings, Twins general manager Jeremy Zoll spoke of seeking “another bat or two with some thump,” to add to the lineup. On Monday, the Twins achieved that, agreeing to a one-year deal with a mutual option with veteran first baseman Josh Bell, a source confirmed.

Washington Nationals’ Josh Bell celebrates his home run as he rounds the bases during the first inning of a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Bell, 33, played in 140 games for the Washington Nationals last season, hitting .237 with a .741 OPS., 22 home runs and 63 runs batted in.  A switch-hitter with some power, his 110 OPS+ last season was 10% better than league average.

The 10-year veteran, Bell began his major league career in Pittsburgh in 2016 and overlapped there for a season with new Twins manager Derek Shelton in 2020.

He’s since bounced around between the Nationals, Miami Marlins, Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, playing for all five teams in the past four seasons.

In his 10 major league seasons, Bell has 193 home runs, including more than 20 in five separate seasons. He hit a career-high 37 in 2019, the year he was named to his first and only All-Star team. In 2022, he won a Silver Slugger Award.

The Twins have had a revolving door at first base in recent years, signing veteran free agents Joey Gallo (2023), Carlos Santana (2024) and Ty France (2025) to fill the position in recent years. Bell, who should also see some time at designated hitter, becomes the latest free-agent addition to add to that list.

By the end of last season, after France had been traded to the Toronto Blue Jays, the Twins were primarily using Kody Clemens at first base with Edouard Julien seeing some time there, as well. Signing Bell allows the Twins to utilize Clemens in a utility role. Besides first base, Clemens also appeared at second and in the outfield for the Twins last season.

The Bell signing is the Twins’ first major-league free agent addition this winter. After conversations with ownership earlier this offseason, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey got the go ahead to make additions to the roster rather than subtract important pieces to further reduce payroll.

“We still believe that there’s a pretty good core here that we can find a way to supplement and go compete,” Falvey said last week. “I think that we’re going to figure out ways that we can add around this team to make it the most competitive team that we can be in ’26.”

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