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Venezuela legislature advances amnesty bill for political detainees
Venezuela’s legislature on Thursday advanced an amnesty bill proposed by acting President Delcy Rodríguez that could lead to the release of hundreds of opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. Such an amnesty is a central demand of the country's opposition and human rights organisations with backing from the United States. But the contents of the bill have not been released publicly, and rights groups have so far reacted with cautious optimism - and with demands for more information. The bill, introduced just weeks after the US military captured then president Nicolas Maduro, still requires a second debate that has yet to be scheduled. Once approved, it must be signed by Rodríguez before it can go into effect. France 24, February 6

Russian general shot multiple times in Moscow attack
A Russian general has been rushed to hospital after being shot several times in Moscow, officials said. Russia’s Investigative Committee said “an unidentified individual fired several shots” at Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, who has a senior role in Russia’s general staff, before fleeing the scene. “The victim has been hospitalised,” the agency added, without giving any details about the perpetrator. Several high-ranking military officials have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Kyiv has claimed responsibility for some of those attacks. The Times, February 6

US and Iran to start nuclear talks in Oman
Senior Iranian officials arrived in Oman for crunch talks with the US over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme as part of a diplomatic push to avert a new war between the arch-enemies. The negotiations, scheduled to begin on Friday, come as US President Donald Trump has been weighing military options against Iran. He has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, fighter jets and air defences to the region after the Islamic regime brutally cracked down on nationwide protests. Financial Times, February 6

Deepfake fraud taking place on an industrial scale, study finds
Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial”, an analysis published by AI experts has said. Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams - leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus - are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident Database. It catalogued more than a dozen recent examples of “impersonation for profit”, including a deepfake video of Western Australia’s premier, Robert Cook, hawking an investment scheme, and deepfake doctors promoting skin creams. These examples are part of a trend in which scammers are using widely available AI tools to perpetuate increasingly targeted heists. Last year, a finance officer at a Singaporean multinational paid out nearly $500,000 to scammers during what he believed was a video call with company leadership. UK consumers are estimated to have lost £9.4bn to fraud in the nine months to November 2025. The Guardian, February 6

Statin pills much safer than advertised, major review finds
Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, used by millions, are far safer than previously thought, a major review has found. Leaflets in packs should be changed to reflect this and avoid scaring people off using the life-saving pills, say the authors. Statins do not cause most of the possible side effects listed, including memory loss, depression, sleep disturbance, weight gain and impotence, says the team funded by the British Heart Foundation. Meanwhile, they can slash a person's risk of heart attacks and strokes. The results, in The Lancet journal, come from trials involving more than 120,000 people comparing statins with a dummy drug or placebo. Statins are highly effective at lowering "bad" LDL cholesterol levels and have been repeatedly proven to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease - a condition that causes some 10 million deaths worldwide and a quarter of all deaths in the UK, say the researchers from Oxford University. As with any medicine, there can be side effects, but these are few. Reports of adverse effects were almost identical in the placebo group that was not on the medication, suggesting statins are not the cause. None of the patients in the trials knew if the pill they were taking was real or a pretend one. BBC news, February 6

Macron's envoy meets with Russian officials for peace talks in Moscow
French President Emmanuel Macron’s most senior diplomat was in Moscow on Tuesday to hold talks with Russian officials, according to a source familiar with the meeting and two diplomatic sources. The first source said Emmanuel Bonne, who has been at the helm of Macron’s diplomatic cell since 2019, met officials at the Kremlin. He did not give further details beyond saying the aim was to hold dialogue on key issues, most importantly Ukraine. The French presidency neither confirmed nor denied the talks, but said: “As the President said during his doorstep yesterday, discussions exist at a technical level, in full transparency and in consultation with President Volodymyr Zelensky and with the main European colleagues.” The two diplomatic sources said allies had been made aware of the initiative and that Bonne had held talks with Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Macron said in December that Europeans would have to re-engage in direct talks with Putin if the latest US-led efforts to broker a Ukraine peace deal were to founder. France 24, February 5

Sanctions having ‘significant impact’ on Russian economy, says EU special envoy
Western sanctions are having a “significant impact” on the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions envoy has said, ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. David O’Sullivan, a veteran Irish official, said sanctions were “not a silver bullet” and would always face circumvention, but insisted that after four years he was confident they were having an effect. “I am fairly bullish. I think that the sanctions have really had a significant impact on the Russian economy,” he told the Guardian in a rare interview. “We may be, in the course of 2026, coming to a point where the whole thing becomes unsustainable, because so much of the Russian economy has been distorted so much by the building up of the war economy at the expense of the civil economy. I think defying the laws of economic gravity can only go on for so long.” The Guardian, February 5

Canadian pension funds to exit UK’s biggest port operator in £10bn deal
Two Canadian pension giants plan to sell their stakes in Associated British Ports in a deal that they hope will value the UK’s biggest ports operator at more than £10bn. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System - which own 34 per cent and 33 per cent of ABP respectively - have appointed bankers at investment bank Morgan Stanley to explore a sale of their stakes, according to people familiar with the situation. A deal could be reached as soon as the second half of this year, one of the people said, although they cautioned that talks remain at an early stage. Asset manager Hermes, which owns about 6 per cent of the group, could also sell its stake, according to some of the people close to discussions. ABP owns 21 ports in the UK including Southampton and the Humber, and handles around a quarter of the country’s seaborne trade. Financial Times, February 5

Washington Post announces sweeping layoffs as it scales back news coverage
The Washington Post has announced it is laying off one-third of its work force, sharply scaling back the paper's coverage of sports and foreign news. The cuts, announced on Wednesday, will impact employees across departments, with roles in the newsroom's sports, local and foreign sections hit particularly hard. It marks the latest upheaval for the leading US newspaper, which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Executive editor Matt Murray said the cuts would bring "stability". But the announcement was met with condemnation from the paper's employees and some former leaders, one of whom described it as among the "darkest days in the history of" the storied newspaper. "Today's news is painful. These are difficult actions," Murray wrote in a note to staff on Wednesday. "If we are to thrive, not just endure, we must reinvent our journalism and our business model with renewed ambition." In his explanation of the cuts, Murray said that the paper's online traffic had plummeted in the last three years amid the artificial intelligence boom, and that it was "too rooted in a different era". Ahead of the announcement, foreign correspondents and local reporters had pleaded with Bezos to preserve their jobs. BBC news, February 4

BT profits slip as thousands more cut their broadband connection
Broadband line losses have continued to mount at BT but the decline this year will be less severe than expected, the former state telecoms monopoly has said. Openreach, BT’s wholesale broadband network, lost another 210,000 customers during the third quarter of its financial year, below the 242,000 shed in the previous three months. The FTSE 100 constituent now expects a decline of about 850,000 broadband lines for the year, down from previous guidance of about 900,000. The slowdown in losses could provide some relief for Allison Kirkby, BT’s chief executive. The telecoms group has seen a rise in bets against its stock over the past six months. Short sellers have run up a position of about £670 million, or 3.6 per cent of the group’s outstanding share capital, since September. BT is Britain’s biggest broadband provider and has spent billions on rolling out full-fibre across the country. It has connected its faster network to more than 21 million homes, against a goal of 25 million by the end of next year and potentially 30 million by the end of the decade. The Times, February 5