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Authorities in Azerbaijan say they have been left “bewildered” after Russian officials told them that a criminal probe into the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet has been terminated.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, had sent a letter stating that the investigation into the incident, as well as criminal cases, had been closed.

Initial investigations suggested the aircraft was struck by Russian air defense systems amid a Ukrainian drone attack in Russ

“The letter claimed that the criminal case had been closed, which naturally raised serious questions,” Bayramov said, adding that Azerbaijan had sent an official response making clear the matter was far from resolved.

“Our expectation is that the process will be completed in accordance with the statements and apology of the Russian President in Dushanbe,” Bayramov said, referring to a meeting between Vladimir Putin and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in October 2025.

ia’s skies.

“The letter claimed that the criminal case had been closed, which naturally raised serious questions,” Bayramov said, adding that Azerbaijan had sent an official response making clear the matter was far from resolved. 

“Our expectation is that the process will be completed in accordance with the statements and apology of the Russian President in Dushanbe,” Bayramov said, referring to a meeting between Vladimir Putin and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in October 2025.

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This is a story about a missing painting, from an artist you may never have heard of. Though she helped shape European modern art, German artist Gabriele Münter's work was quickly overshadowed in the public's mind by her 12-year relationship with noted abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.

She met Kandinsky in Munich in 1902, and with his tutoring, she "mastered color as well as the line," she told a German public broadcaster in 1957. Together with other artists, they founded an avant-garde arts collective called Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911.

At the time, most modern artists, like Kandinsky, were moving toward more and more abstract work. Not Münter. In her paintings, people look like people and flowers look like flowers. But her dazzling colors, simplified forms and dramatic scenes are startlingly fresh; her domestic scenes are so immediate that they feel like you've interrupted a crucial, private moment.

"Gabriele Münter was so pioneering, so adventurous in her adherence to life," said Megan Fontanella, curator of modern art and provenance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. "She is revitalizing the still life, the landscape, the portrait genres, and presenting them in these really fresh and dynamic ways."

Yet, perhaps due to her relationship with Kandinsky, her work was rarely collected by important museums after her death in 1962 (she herself said she was seen as "an unnecessary side dish" to him), and so her paintings largely disappeared from the public eye.

Now Münter is having a moment, with exhibitions this year in Madrid and Paris, as well as one currently at the Guggenheim in New York. The New York show is an expansive one and includes American street photography in the late 1890s, alongside over 50 paintings, from her dazzlingly colored European landscapes to portraits capturing the expressive faces of people she knew.

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US senator Bernie Sanders amplified his recent criticism of artificial intelligence on Sunday, explicitly linking the financial ambition of “the richest people in the world” to economic insecurity for millions of Americans – and calling for a potential moratorium on new datacenters.

Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democratic party, said on CNN’s State of the Union that he was “fearful of a lot” when it came to AI. And the senator called it “the most consequential technology in the history of humanity” that will “transform” the US and the world in ways that had not been fully discussed.

“If there are no jobs and humans won’t be needed for most things, how do people get an income to feed their families, to get healthcare or to pay the rent?” Sanders said. “There’s not been one serious word of discussion in the Congress about that reality.”

Days from being scheduled to help swear New York mayor-elect and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani into office, Sanders said “the richest people in the world” were pushing the technology. He singled out tech moguls Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel while questioning their motives.

“You think they’re staying up nights worrying about working people and how this technology will impact those people?” Sanders said. “They are not. They are doing it to get richer and even more powerful.”

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The FBI has deployed additional personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs”, director Kash Patel said on social media on Sunday.

The FBI director said the agency had already dismantled a $250m fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during the Covid pandemic in a case that led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions.

Patel said the FBI believes “this is just the tip of a very large iceberg”. Some of those involved in the alleged scheme are being “referred to immigrations officials for possible further denaturalization and deportation proceedings where eligible”.

Patel’s comments comes after federal prosecutors estimate as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes linked to the state’s Somalia population, a figure nearly equivalent to Somalia’s entire GDP.

The FBI director also said he was aware of recent social media reports in Minnesota, which appears to refer to an online report by independent journalist Nick Shirley about a daycare center in Minneapolis that received $4m despite reportedly having no enrolled kids. The 42-minute video has been viewed 84m times since it was posted on 26 December.

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Two helicopters crashed midair in New Jersey on Sunday, killing one person and critically injuring another, authorities say.

Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said rescuers responded to a report of an aviation crash at about 11:25 a.m. Video from the scene shows a helicopter spinning rapidly to the ground. Police and fire crews subsequently extinguished flames that engulfed one of the helicopters.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the crash as a midair collision between an Enstrom F-28A helicopter and Enstrom 280C helicopter over Hammonton Municipal Airport. Only the pilots were on board each aircraft. One was killed, and the other was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Sal Silipino, owner of a cafe near the crash site, said the pilots were regulars at the restaurant and would often have breakfast together. He said he and other customers watched the helicopters take off before one began spiraling downward, followed by the other.

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New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) challenged Elon Musk for claiming that people will “die” over his appointment of a non-firefighter as the new head of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY).

“Experience does matter, which is why I appointed the person who spent more than 30 years at EMS. You know, the workforce that addresses at least 70% of all calls coming into FDNY?” Mamdani wrote in response to Musk in an X post Saturday.

Mamdani’s remarks came after the tech billionaire condemned the self-proclaimed democratic socialist’s decision to appoint Lillian Bonsignore in a Friday X post.

“People will die because of this. Proven experience matters when lives are at stake,” Musk wrote alongside a clip of Mamdani announcing Bonsignore’s new role.

Last week, Mamdani appointed Bonsignore, a FDNY veteran who helmed Emergency Medical Services Operations before retiring from the department in 2022, as FDNY commissioner. She is the second woman to hold the position and the department’s first openly LGBTQ+ commissioner.

Bonsignore is also the first woman to achieve a 4-star rank in FDNY history, Mamdani said in a separate X post celebrating her new position.

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Screen siren Brigitte Bardot, whose portrayals of free-spirited ingenues made her an international sex symbol and the pride of France, and who turned her back on movie stardom in 1973 to become an animal rights activist, has died, according to French media and The Associated Press.

She was 91.

Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, told The Associated Press that she died at her home in southern France. He did not provide a cause of death, and said no arrangements have yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month after a period of ill health.

Leading tributes, French President Emmanuel Macron said Bardot “embodied a life of freedom” and lived a “French existence.” Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally party, which Bardot publicly supported in her later years, referred to her as a “passionate patriot” who represented “an entire era of French history.”

Her death comes two months after she underwent what her staff, described in a statement to AFP as “minor surgery” for an unspecified ailment in October.

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Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza, surrounded by tents and debris, are suffering through more winter rains after two years of Israeli bombardment destroyed much of the Strip.

A polar low-pressure system accompanied by heavy rain and strong winds swept across the Gaza Strip on Saturday. It is the third polar low to affect the Palestinian territory this winter, with a fourth low-pressure system forecast to hit the area starting on Monday, meteorologist Laith al-Allami told the Anadolu news agency.

Many families have been living in tents since late 2023, for most of the duration of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The enclave is imminently facing freezing temperatures, rain and strong winds, as the authorities warn the downpour could intensify into a full-blown storm.

Mohammed Maslah, a displaced Palestinian now in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera in his rugged tent that he did not have a choice but to stay there.

“I could not find anywhere to live in Gaza, except Gaza Port,” he told Al Jazeera. “I’m forced to stay here because my home is under Israeli control. After just a few hours of rain, we were soaked.”

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