Transgender women cannot participate in female Olympic events, International Olympic Committee says
Olympic rings stand in front of Ponte di Castelvecchio on day fourteen of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games on February 20, 2026 in Verona, Italy. (Photo by Claudio Lavenia/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Transgender women athletes cannot participate in female Olympic events, the International Olympic Committee said on Thursday, as the committee announced a new policy limiting eligibility for female events to biological females.
The policy will begin for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The committee said the decision was “evidence‑based and expert‑informed,” and “protects fairness, safety and integrity in the female category.”
The IOC said eligibility will be “determined on the basis of a one‑time SRY gene screening.”
The committee said “athletes with an SRY-positive screen, including XY transgender and androgen-sensitive XY-DSD athletes, continue to be included in all other classifications for which they qualify. For example, they are eligible for any male category, including in a designated male slot within any mixed category, and any open category, or in sports and events that do not classify athletes by sex.”
IOC President Kirsty Coventry said in a statement that the new policy “is based on science and has been led by medical experts.”
“At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat,” she said. “So, it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category. In addition, in some sports it would simply not be safe.”
A view of the destruction in the area following Russia’s drone attack in the city of Odessa, Ukraine on February 12, 2026. (Artur Shvits/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that Russia is yet to respond to a U.S.-backed energy truce, as the two combatants continue to exchange long-range drone and missile strikes amid American-led peace talks.
Recent trilateral U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks in the United Arab Emirates were described by all sides as constructive, though appear to have failed to find a breakthrough on several contentious points or secure a new truce covering critical energy infrastructure.
After the most recent round of talks last week, Zelenskyy said that U.S. officials proposed a temporary pause in attacks on energy targets, which would have mirrored the brief pause on such attacks that occurred at the end of January.
Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Kyiv is yet to receive a response from Moscow on the purported offer. “On the contrary, we’ve received a response in the form of drone and missile attacks. This suggests that they are not yet ready for the energy ceasefire proposed in Abu Dhabi by the American side,” he said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 25 missiles and 219 drones into the country overnight, of which 16 missiles and 197 drones were shot down or suppressed.
The impacts of nine missiles and 19 drones were reported across 13 locations, the air force said. “The main targets are Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa,” the air force wrote on Telegram.
Four people, including two children, were also injured in strikes on the central city of Dnipro, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. An earlier strike on the Synelnykove city just outside of Dnipro killed four people and injured three others, the regional administration said in posts to Telegram.
The Interior Ministry said that at least 13 people were injured in a series of drone strikes in the city of Barvinkove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The regional military administration in Odesa said one person was also injured there by Russian strikes.
The Interior Ministry reported damage to several areas of the capital. At least two people were injured by the attacks on Kyiv, according to the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that almost 2,600 residential buildings were left without heating due to “damage to critical infrastructure targeted by the enemy.”
In total, approximately more than 1 million people without heating in the Ukrainian capital, according to Klitschko and Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba.
DTEK — Ukraine’s top private energy firm — reported major damage to its energy infrastructure in Odesa, plus an attack on a thermal power plant.
Ukrenergo, the state energy transmission operator, reported power outages in Kyiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha described the attacks as “Russian terror” in a post to X. “Each such strike is a blow to peace efforts aimed at ending the war. Russia must be forced to take diplomacy seriously and deescalate,” he said.
Zelenskyy said in a post to Telegram, “There needs to be more protection against these attacks.”
“The most effective defense against Russian ballistic missiles is the ‘Patriot’ system, and the supply of missiles for these systems is needed every day,” he added, referring to the U.S.-made surface-to-air missile platform.
“Everything currently available in the air defense program should arrive faster,” he said.
Ukraine continued its own drone strike campaign overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 106 Ukrainian drones overnight into Thursday morning.
Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that two people were killed in drone attacks. At least 15 other people were injured across the region by Ukrainian attacks, the governor said. Gladkov also said Ukrainian forces fired several missiles into the region.
Local officials in the Volgograd, Tambov and Voronezh reported damage to industrial sites and falling drone debris in or close to residential areas.
Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, reported temporary flight restrictions for airports in Kaluga, Volgograd, Saratov, Yaroslavl, Kotlas, Ukhta, Perm and Kirov.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement posted to social media that among the targets of the strikes were the main arsenal of Russia’s missile and artillery forces in the Volgograd region. “This arsenal is one of the largest ammunition storage sites of the Russian army,” the General Staff said.
The ongoing peace talks have seen no easing of long-range strikes by either side, as the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion approaches.
As yet, no next round of talks have been scheduled. Zelenskyy said the U.S. had proposed a new trilateral meeting to be held in Miami, but that, “So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating.”
“We are ready. It doesn’t matter to us whether the meeting will be in Miami or Abu Dhabi. The main thing is that there should be a result,” the Ukrainian president said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday that Moscow had “a certain understanding” regarding the next round of talks. “We expect the next round to take place soon. We’ll also give you directions on the location,” he added, as quoted by the state-run Tass news agency.
Russian Foreign Ministry officials have this week been critical of the ongoing peace push.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week suggested that the U.S. side had drifted from the understandings reached between Moscow and Washington at the August meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Lavrov also said Trump’s administration had failed to roll back former President Joe Biden-era sanctions against Moscow.
Lavrov and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova framed the lack of progress as the fault of Kyiv and its European backers.
“At the current stage, it is the European Union that is preventing the Kyiv regime from making any compromises in exchange for promises to provide everything necessary to continue military operations,” Zakharova said in a briefing on Thursday, as quoted by Tass.
Prince Andrew, Duke of York attends the traditional Easter Sunday Mattins Service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on April 20, 2025 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — One month after the arrest of former Prince Andrew, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police is pushing U.S. officials for unredacted material from the Epstein files.
In an interview with ABC News’ chief investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said his office is in communication with the Department of Justice to access the original documents related to ongoing investigations of both Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former British ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson.
“Of course, there’s a big body of that evidence … in the United States in all those files and at some stage we’re going to need the unredacted evidence,” Rowley said. “We need the original copy and where did it come from and that’s going to be necessary if we get to the stage of court cases.”
While Department of Justice officials have repeatedly insisted that there is nothing more to investigate stateside about the convicted sex offender and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, officials in the United Kingdom are carrying out unprecedented investigations into both Mountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Emails released earlier this year by the Department of Justice suggested that both Mountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson appeared to share sensitive information with Epstein stemming from their roles as the U.K. trade envoy and business secretary, respectively.
In one email released by the Department of Justice and referenced by Rowley, Mandelson appeared to confirm the timing of an impending bailout with Epstein during the European Union’s sovereign debt crisis.
“It looks like it was shared with Epstein so we’re looking at that as to whether that’s a criminal offense and then colleagues in Thames Valley are looking at other documents that Andrew Mountbatten-Winsor potentially shared,” Rowley said.
According to Rowley, his department is also assessing “a whole range of suggested sexual allegations” to determine if any “merit a criminal investigation.”
Suspicion about Mountbatten-Windsor began years ago following the publication of a photograph showing the former prince with his arm around the waist of Virginia Guiffre, who said she was 17 years old at the time of the photograph. Before she died by suicide last year, Guiffre alleged that Epstein trafficked her in 2001 to have sex with the former prince. Mountbatten-Windsor has long denied wrongdoing and told the BBC in 2019 that the allegations are not credible.
When asked about the allegations made by Guiffre, Rowley claimed that the information they received from Guiffre during four recorded interviews could not support an investigation.
“With Virginia Guiffre, we did four of those interviews with her … .and those interviews didn’t give us any evidence or any allegations of sexual offending or trafficking that we could investigate in the UK,” he said. “That’s why that investigation didn’t go forward.”
However, Rowley said he hopes the renewed look at the allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor helps improve the public’s trust that law enforcement is willing to scrutinize anyone regardless of their title or status.
“Those investigations all go wherever the evidence takes them — quite comfortable with investigating sort of famous or powerful people. I think it’s really important for policing to do that, that sense of operating without fear or favor. The law applies equally to everyone, and those cases will go, say, wherever the evidence leads us to,” he said.
Rowley said the investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor comes as the Metropolitan Police is increasingly targeting sexual and domestic violence.
“We’ve developed tactics to be much more proactive and targeting the most dangerous men who pose a threat to women and children just like we do terrorists and organized crime. So, a combination of factors has seen the rates steadily coming down,” he said. “We’re making big progress and most of all — at the center of all this that matters to me and matters to policing — is trust in the police’s building in London.”
Rowley also touted some of the technology used by the Metropolitan Police to lower crime rates such as facial recognition, which he said has allowed officers to identify violent offenders while minimizing intrusion to the broader public.
While he acknowledged that the technology has raised privacy concerns, Rowley argued that the focus on targeting violent offenders using the technology can help improve the public trust — something he says is foundational to the Metropolitan Police’s 200-year history.
“[Policing] should start from the idea of having the consent of people in a democracy and use the minimum force necessary and be focused on the prevention of crime, and those ideas still guide us today,” he said.
Rowley said he hopes being upfront with the public about the work of the Metropolitan Police — from low-level street crimes to allegations against some of the most prominent people in British society — can renew the public’s trust in law enforcement.
“Policing in the UK will operate without fear or favor, that’s the fundamental principle. I think if you don’t have that, you’re never going to have the trust and confidence of the public in policing, so that’s really important to me,” he said.
Smoke rises from Dahieh as the Israeli Army bombs the area after issuing a forced evacuation order in Beirut, Lebanon, on March 5, 2026. (Photo by Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(BEIRUT) — Intense bombardments continue to hit the Dahiyeh suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, as Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah in a wave of attacks that began midnight local time Friday.
At least 217 people have been killed and 798 others have been wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon that began early Monday, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said Thursday.
The Israel Defense Forces said it struck Hezbollah command centers and multi-story structures in Beirut overnight. An ABC News crew on the ground observed nearly two dozen missile strikes hitting Dahiyeh alone.
A number of buildings were seen collapsing in this wave of strikes on Friday as the death toll continues to rise, an ABC News team in Lebanon observed.
The IDF said it attacked more than 500 targets in Lebanon, killing more than 70 Hezbollah members, IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said at a briefing on Friday.
“Hezbollah and the Iranian regime are one. They continue to destroy the state of Lebanon and harm the lives of Lebanese residents,” he said.
Hezbollah responded with several rockets headed south toward Israel overnight, an ABC News team in Lebanon observed.
The latest wave of strikes followed a warning by the IDF to anyone south of the Litani River in Lebanon to evacuate. The IDF warned everyone living in Dahiyeh on Thursday afternoon to evacuate the neighborhood ahead of pending military strikes.
Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee Dahiyeh, according to Lebanese officials.
Overnight, families who fled the neighborhood were seen lighting fires for warmth. Some had tents while others were forced to sleep on the streets with blankets, ABC News observed.
The Lebanese government is actively engaging with intermediaries, including the French and the American ambassador, to try and put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the bombardments, according to Lebanese officials.
Israeli forces have said that they are stepping up their military campaign against Hezbollah infrastructure and leadership in Dahiyeh.
Ahead of the attack on Iran, Israel launched strikes against targets in Baalbek, east Lebanon, in February, saying it killed “several” members of Hezbollah’s missile unit in three different locations.
This week’s strikes were the first time Israel struck Beirut, in central Lebanon, since June 2025.
The Israeli military warned Tuesday that Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price” after the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group fired rockets into northern Israel overnight Monday into Tuesday.
Immediately after the rocket fire, the IDF “launched a large-scale attack against Hezbollah terrorist targets throughout Lebanon, including Beirut,” according to Defrin.
“We attacked dozens of the organization’s headquarters and launch sites,” Defrin said. “We attacked senior commanders. Some of the last surviving senior veterans of this organization. We are currently examining the results of the attack.”
Defrin noted that “forces are deployed along the border in front and are prepared to continue the defense and attack as long as they require.”
