By DÁNICA COTO and ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ, Associated Press

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Monday that his administration is not in talks with the U.S. government, a day after President Donald Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.

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Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested that Cuba “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not say what kind of deal.

Díaz-Canel wrote that for “relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.”

He added: “We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”

His statements were reposted by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez on X.

On Sunday, Trump wrote that Cuba would no longer live off oil and money from Venezuela, which the U.S. attacked on Jan. 3 in a stunning operation that killed 32 Cuban officers and led to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro.

Cuba was receiving an estimated 35,000 barrels a day from Venezuela before the U.S. attacked, along with some 5,500 barrels daily from Mexico and roughly 7,500 from Russia, according to Jorge Piñón of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, who tracks the shipments.

Even with oil shipments from Venezuela, widespread blackouts have persisted across Cuba given fuel shortages and a crumbling electric grid. Experts worry a lack of petroleum would only deepen the island’s multiple crises.

The situation between the U.S. and Cuba is “very sad and concerning,” said Andy S. Gómez, retired dean of the School of International Studies and senior fellow in Cuban Studies at the University of Miami.

He said he sees Díaz-Canel’s latest comments “as a way to try and buy a little bit of time for the inner circle to decide what steps it’s going to take.”

Gómez said he doesn’t visualize Cuba reaching out to U.S. officials right now.

“They had every opportunity when President (Barack) Obama opened up U.S. diplomatic relations, and yet they didn’t even bring Cuban coffee to the table,” Gómez said. “Of course, these are desperate times for Cuba.”

Michael Galant, senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., said he believes Cuba might be willing to negotiate.

“Cuba has been interested in finding ways to ease sanctions,” he said. “It’s not that Cuba is uncooperative.”

Galant said topics for discussion could include migration and security, adding that he believes Trump is not in a hurry.

“Trump is hoping to deepen the economic crisis on the island, and there are few costs to Trump to try and wait that out,” he said. “I don’t think it’s likely that there will be any dramatic action in the coming days because there is no rush to come to the table.”

Cuba’s president stressed on X that “there are no talks with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.”

The island’s communist government has said U.S. sanctions cost the country more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

NEW YORK (AP) — Paramount Skydance is taking another step in its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying Monday that it will name its own slate of directors before the next shareholder meeting of the Hollywood studio.

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Paramount also filed a suit in Delaware Chancery Court seeking to compel Warner Bros. to disclose to shareholders how it values its bid and the competing offer from Netflix.

Warner Bros. is in the middle of a bidding war between Paramount and Netflix. Warner’s leadership has repeatedly rebuffed overtures from Skydance-owned Paramount — and urged shareholders to back the sale of its streaming and studio business to Netflix for $72 billion. Paramount, meanwhile, has made efforts to sweeten its $77.9 billion hostile offer for the entire company.

Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery said its board determined Paramount’s offer is not in the best interests of the company or its shareholders. It again recommended shareholders support the Netflix deal.

David Ellison, the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, said Monday that it’s committed to seeing through its tender offer. “We do not undertake any of these actions lightly,” he said in a letter to shareholders of Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. has yet to schedule its annual meeting or a special meeting to consider the Netflix offer, and Paramount did not name any potential candidates for the board.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday said she will hold a short hearing in the next two weeks on procedures that police said allowed them to seize and look through Luigi Mangione’s backpack when he was arrested in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

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U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett said the hearing in the death penalty case will be limited to just one witness: an officer from the police department in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was arrested in December 2024.

The officer, she said, must have “sufficient authority and experience to testify about the established or standardized procedures in use” at the time of Mangione’s arrest “for securing, safeguarding, and, if applicable, inventorying the personal property of a person arrested in a public place.”

She ordered prosecutors to confer with Mangione’s lawyers on a suitable hearing date, putting him back in court sooner than a scheduled Jan. 30 conference. Because the hearing will focus on procedures, the officer being called as a witness “need not have had any personal involvement” in Mangione’s arrest, Garnett said.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges, which carry the possibility of life in prison.

Mangione’s lawyers want Garnett to bar prosecutors from using certain items found in the backpack, including a gun police said matched the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which Mangione purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive. Echoing their arguments at a recent state court hearing, they contend the search was illegal because police had not yet obtained a warrant.

Officers began searching the backpack at the McDonald’s restaurant where Mangione was arrested while eating breakfast on Dec. 9, 2024, five days after Thompson was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Altoona is about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.

Prosecutors say officers searched the bag legally because Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect’s property at the time of arrest for dangerous items and police later obtained a warrant. Among the items found at the McDonald’s, according to officer testimony at a recent court hearing, was a loaded gun magazine.

Officers continued searching the bag at a police station and found the gun and silencer. They performed what’s known as an inventory search and found the notebook and other notes, including what appeared to be to-do lists and possible getaway plans, according to testimony. That search, which involves cataloging every piece of a suspect’s seized property, is also required under Altoona police policy, prosecutors said.

Laws concerning how police obtain search warrants are complex and often disputed in criminal cases.

As part of her inquiry, Garnett ordered federal prosecutors to provide her with a copy of the affidavit submitted to obtain a federal search warrant in the matter. Mangione’s lawyers contend that searching the backpack before getting a warrant may have influenced how the affidavit was written, but prosecutors say no specific details about items, such as the notebook writings, were mentioned in the document.

By EILEEN NG and EDNA TARIGAN, Associated Press

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia and Indonesia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, as concerns grew among global authorities that it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images.

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The moves reflect growing scrutiny of generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text and concern that existing safeguards are failing to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children.

Last week, Grok limited image generation and editing to paying users following a global backlash over sexualized deepfakes of people, but critics say it didn’t fully address the problem.

An emailed request for comment by The Associated Press to xAI resulted in an automated reply from the media support email address which stated, “Legacy Media Lies.” This was the same message received from a different email when asked for comment regarding the global backlash.

Regulators in the two Southeast Asian nations said that existing controls weren’t preventing the creation and spread of fake pornographic content, particularly involving women and minors. Indonesia’s government temporarily blocked access to Grok on Saturday, followed by Malaysia on Sunday.

“The government sees nonconsensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity and the safety of citizens in the digital space,” Indonesian Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid said in a statement Saturday.

The ministry said the measure was intended to protect women, children and the broader community from fake pornographic content generated using AI.

Initial findings showed that Grok lacks effective safeguards to stop users from creating and distributing pornographic content based on real photos of Indonesian residents, Alexander Sabar, director-general of digital space supervision, said in a separate statement. He said that such practices risk violating privacy and image rights when photos are manipulated or shared without consent, causing psychological, social and reputational harm.

In Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission ordered a temporary restriction on Grok on Sunday, after what it said was “repeated misuse” of the tool to generate obscene, sexually explicit and nonconsensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors.

The regulator said that notices issued this month to X Corp. and xAI demanding stronger safeguards drew responses that relied mainly on user reporting mechanisms.

“The restriction is imposed as a preventive and proportionate measure while legal and regulatory processes are ongoing,” it said, adding that access will remain blocked until effective safeguards are put in place.

Investigation launched in U.K.

Launched in 2023, Grok is free to use on X. Users can ask it questions on the social media platform and tag posts they’ve directly created or replies to posts from other users. Last summer, the company added an image generator feature, Grok Imagine, that included a so-called spicy mode that can generate adult content.

The Southeast Asian restrictions come amid mounting scrutiny of Grok elsewhere, including in the European Union, the United Kingdom, India and France.

On Monday, the U.K.’s media regulator said that it launched a formal investigation into whether Grok “complied with its duties to protect people in the U.K. from content that is illegal.”

The regulator, Ofcom, said that Grok-generated images of children being sexualized or people being undressed may amount to pornography or child sexual abuse material.

“The content created and shared using Grok in recent days has been deeply disturbing,” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said.

___

Edna Tarigan reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.