Türkiye has told allies that it will back the candidacy of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to be NATO's next secretary-general, a Turkish official said on Monday, an important step towards securing him the top job.

NATO's next chief will face the challenge of sustaining allies' support for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion, while guarding against any escalation that could draw the military alliance directly into a war with Moscow.

NATO takes decisions by consensus, so any candidate needs the support of all 32 allies.

Türkiye, along with fellow NATO member states Hungary, Slovakia and Romania - whose President Klaud Iohannis is standing against Rutte - has not publicly voiced its support for Rutte to succeed Jens Stoltenberg, who will be stepping down as the head of the military alliance in October.

Ankara's backing may increase pressure on Iohannis to withdraw from the contest, though Hungary has

expressed opposition to Rutte's candidacy.

Budapest has raised critical comments made by Rutte about its government, but some diplomats say it could change its stance if Rutte pays a visit to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as he did to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan last week.

They expect Slovakia would also fall into line.

The United States, France, Germany, Britain and other alliance members have already voiced support for Rutte's candidacy.

Depending on the outcome of November's US presidential election, Stoltenberg's successor may have to work with Donald Trump, who has faced fierce criticism for calling into question his commitment to defending NATO allies if re-elected.

Rutte - The Netherlands' longest-serving leader - announced his departure from Dutch politics last July, but remains in post. He has good relationships with British, European Union and US leaders, including Trump.

Many NATO members are keen to wrap up the selection process soon, so it does not become part of bargaining over top European Union jobs after elections to the European Parliament in June.

Citing NATO diplomats, Dutch news agency ANP said earlier on Monday that Türkiye had decided to back Rutte's candidacy, but it did not provide further details. Türkiye's state-run Anadolu news agency also confirmed Ankara's backing.

The public prosecutor general's office in Munich on Monday took over the investigation into the stabbing deaths of two Ukrainian men in southern Germany because of a possible political motivation for the crime, German news agency dpa reported.

The two Ukrainians, who were 23 and 36 years old and lived in the southern German county of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, were killed at a shopping center in the village of Murnau in Upper Bavaria. Shortly after the slayings on Saturday evening, police arrested a 57-year-old Russian on suspicion of murder, dpa reported.

The public prosecutor general's office usually takes over investigations from regular prosecutors if there is a possibility that a crime was politically motivated. The Bavarian Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism is also involved in the investigation of the killings, dpa reported, The AP reported.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that it appeared the two men were military servicemen undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany.

The names of the victims and the suspect weren’t released in line with German privacy rules. The motive for the killings isn't yet known, authorities said.

According to an initial investigation, the three men knew each other, but further details need to be verified, local police spokesperson Stefan Sonntag told dpa. There were also indications that all three men had consumed alcohol.

“We have clear evidence that the suspect was under the influence of alcohol,” Sonntag was quoted as saying.

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday expressed concern about the killings.

“This is a worrying incident, no question about it. The circumstances must now be investigated more closely," Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.

“We can only speculate about the motives at the moment," he added. "But it is clear that we cannot tolerate such a thing on German soil anyway and that the Ukrainians, Ukrainians who have fled to us from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, must now be safe.”

More than 1 million Ukrainian refugees have come to Germany since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Germany is also home to a significant Russian immigrant community and 2.5 million Russians of German ancestry who mostly moved to the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Britain expects to have removed Chinese-made surveillance technology from sensitive sites by April 2025, as it seeks to tighten security amid increasing concerns about Beijing's spying activities, the British government said on Monday.

Anxiety has mounted across Europe about China's alleged espionage activity. British police last week charged two men with spying for China, including one reported to have worked as a researcher in Britain's parliament for a prominent lawmaker.

In November 2022, the British government said that visual surveillance systems produced by companies subject to China's National Intelligence Law should not be used at sensitive sites such as government buildings and military bases.

Lawmakers have also called for a ban on the sale and use of security cameras made by Hikvision and Dahua, two partly state-owned Chinese firms, over privacy fears, Reuters reported.

The government said it had found that the vast majority of sensitive sites had never deployed the equipment. Of the small number of sites that did have it, about 50% had since replaced it, and progress was being made for removal of the rest.

"Work is pressing ahead to remove remaining devices, with approximately 70% of sites expected to have their surveillance equipment removed by October this year, and all remaining sites on track for complete replacement no later than April 2025," junior minister Alex Burghart said in the statement.

Britain warned six months ago that Chinese spies were targeting British officials in sensitive positions in politics, defence and business as part of an increasingly sophisticated spying operation to gain access to secrets.

"The government takes the security of the UK's citizens, systems and establishments extremely seriously and we have a range of measures in place to scrutinise the integrity of our arrangements," the statement added.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has given a fresh impetus to the European Union's drive to admit more countries, the bloc's chairman said on Monday, adding he hoped the 27-nation club and prospective new members would be ready by 2030.

European Council President Charles Michel spoke ahead of the 20th anniversary on Wednesday of the EU's "Big Bang" enlargement that added 10 mostly ex-communist nations such as Poland and Hungary but also the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Cyprus to a bloc that had then comprised just 15 members.

"It was a call of history to unite European countries," Michel told reporters of the 2004 enlargement.

"Twenty years later we face a similar challenge because there is this geo-political chaos, including because of this war by Russia against Ukraine. And facing this chaos is the geo-political strategy to reunify once again."

Michel, a former Belgian prime minister, said the 2004 accession countries had seen their shared gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rise from about half of the EU's average back then to 80% now.

Current applicants to join today's EU of 450 million people include six Balkan countries, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Ukraine is by far the largest prospective member, with some 40 million and a large farming sector.

"Because of the war launched by Russia against Ukraine, there is a new impetus, a reinvigoration of the (EU) enlargement strategy," said Michel, Reuters reported.

"It is challenging. But what is the alternative? The alternative would be a terrible, irresponsible mistake from the EU," he said, calling for the EU and candidate countries to carry out by 2030 the reforms necessary for a new enlargement.

The EU sees itself as an economic peace project born from the ashes of World War Two. Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia have also joined since 2004, while Britain is the only country ever to leave, following a 2016 referendum.

Some in the West have grown critical of the EU's eastern expansion following years of feuds over the bloc's liberal democratic values with nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary in recent years.

Wealthy members are also wary about admitting a large, relatively poor nation such as Ukraine, which could suck up too many resources from EU coffers. But Michel said the payoff would be boosting the EU's international clout.

"The EU is one of the three major regional forces across the world together with China and the United States. And with this new enlargement the idea is not only to get bigger. It is also be more influential."

He said Kyiv would need special transition arrangements as it will need to rebuild following the war, while the EU would also have to tread carefully in fully opening up to Ukraine's large population and food exports.

Israeli officials on Monday appeared to be increasingly concerned that the International Criminal Court may issue arrest warrants against the country’s leaders.

The ICC launched a probe three years ago into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian militants going back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, but it has given no indication such warrants are imminent. There was no comment from the court on Monday.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said late Sunday that it had informed Israeli missions of “rumors” that warrants might be issued against senior political and military officials. It was not clear what sparked the Israeli concerns, The Associated Press reported.

"We expect the court to prevent the issuance of arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, adding that such warrants would “provide a morale boost” to Hamas and other militant groups.

A series of Israeli announcements in recent days about allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza meanwhile appears to be aimed in part at heading off possible ICC action.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”

“The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it,” he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was not clear what prompted the post.

The ICC investigation covers allegations going back to the 2014 war in Gaza as well as Israel’s construction of Jewish settlements in occupied territory that the Palestinians want for a future state.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said during a visit to the region in December that the investigation is “moving forward at pace, with rigor, with determination and with an insistence that we act not on emotion but on solid evidence.”

Neither Israel nor its close ally the United States accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, but any warrants could put Israeli officials at risk of arrest in other countries. They would also serve as a major rebuke of Israel’s actions at a time when pro-Palestinian protests have spread across US college campuses.

The International Court of Justice, a separate body, is investigating whether Israel has committed acts of genocide in the ongoing war in Gaza, with any ruling expected to take years. Israel has rejected allegations of wrongdoing and accused both international courts of bias.

Authorities on the Greek island of Samos said Monday that a migrant died and 25 others were rescued from a sinking dinghy that had left the nearby coast of Türkiye.
A search and rescue operation was launched, assisted by the European border protection agency, Frontex, for others possibly missing, officials said.
According to The Associated Press, the coast guard said it responded to a distress call on Sunday. Twenty-three people were rescued from the sinking vessel while two others were pulled from the water. A third man found unresponsive was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Police on a nearby shore found 10 migrants early Monday. They were detained for questioning to determine whether they had also been in the dinghy and made it ashore.
Despite intense patrolling in the eastern Aegean Sea by the Greek coast guard and Frontex, Türkiye-based smugglers frequently target nearby Greek islands as an entry point into the European Union.

Small towns in Oklahoma began a long cleanup Monday after tornadoes flattened homes and buildings and killed four people, including an infant, widening a destructive outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the US.

Punishing storms that began late Saturday in Oklahoma injured at least 100 people, damaged a rural hospital, washed out roads and knocked out power to more than 40,000 customers at one point, state officials said. Tornadoes on Friday in Iowa and Nebraska also caused wide destruction and were blamed for one death, The Associated Press reported.

The destruction was extensive in Sulphur, a town of about 5,000 people south of Oklahoma City, where a tornado crumpled many downtown buildings, tossed cars and buses and sheared the roofs off houses across a 15-block radius.

“You just can't believe the destruction,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said during a visit to the hard-hit town. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”

Stitt said about 30 people were injured in Sulphur, including some who were in a bar as the tornado struck. Hospitals across the state reported about 100 injuries, including people apparently cut or struck by debris, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. An infant was among those killed, Hughes County Emergency Management Director Mike Dockrey told Oklahoma television station KOCO.

White House officials said President Joe Biden spoke to Stitt on Sunday and offered the full support of the federal government.

The deadly weather in Oklahoma added to the dozens of reported tornadoes that have wreaked havoc in the nation's midsection since Friday. Another death was reported Sunday in Iowa, where officials in Pottawattamie County said a man critically injured during a tornado Friday had died.

In Oklahoma, authorities said the tornado in Sulphur began in a city park before barreling through the downtown, flipping cars and ripping the roofs and walls off of brick buildings. Windows and doors were blown out of structures that remained standing.

Farther north, a tornado near the town of Holdenville killed two people and damaged or destroyed more than a dozen homes, according to the Hughes County Emergency Medical Service. Another person was killed along Interstate 35 near the southern Oklahoma city of Marietta, state officials said.

Heavy rains that swept into Oklahoma with the tornadoes also caused dangerous flooding and water rescues. Outside Sulphur, rising lake levels shut down the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, where the storms wiped out a pedestrian bridge.

Stitt issued an executive order Sunday declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties due to the fallout from the severe weather.
Residents in other states were also digging out from storm damage. A tornado in suburban Omaha, Nebraska, demolished homes and businesses Saturday as it moved for miles through farmland and into subdivisions, then slammed an Iowa town.

The tornado damage began Friday afternoon near Lincoln, Nebraska. An industrial building in Lancaster County was hit, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated, and the three injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

One or possibly two tornadoes then spent around an hour creeping toward Omaha, leaving behind damage consistent with an EF3 twister, with winds of 135 to 165 mph (217 to 265 kph), said Chris Franks, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds spent Saturday touring the damage and arranging for assistance for the damaged communities. Formal damage assessments are still underway, but the states plan to seek federal help.

Ukraine's top commander said on Sunday Kyiv's outnumbered troops had fallen back to new positions west of three villages on the eastern front where Russia has concentrated significant forces in several locations.

The statement by Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi reflected Ukraine's deteriorating position in the east that Kyiv hopes it can stabilize once it takes delivery of US weapons under a $61 billion aid package approved this week.

"The situation at the front has worsened," he wrote on the Telegram app, describing the "most difficult" areas as west of occupied Maryinka and northwest of Avdiivka, the town captured by Russian forces in February.

Kyiv's troops, he said, had taken up new positions west of the villages of Berdychi and Semenivka, both north of Avdiivka, and Novomykhailivka, further south near the town of Maryinka.

"In general, the enemy achieved certain tactical successes in these areas, but could not gain operational advantages," Syrskyi said, adding that Russia had committed four brigades to the assault.

Freshly rested Ukrainian brigades were being rotated in those areas to replace units that had suffered losses, he said.

His statement did not mention the status of Novobakhmutivka, another village near Berdychi, that Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured.

Moscow's troops have been slowly advancing since capturing the bastion town of Avdiivka, taking advantage of Ukrainian shortages of artillery shells and manpower.

Online battlefield maps produced by open-source intelligence analysts suggest they have advanced more than 15 km (9.5 miles)in the direction of the village of Ocheretyne since capturing Avdiivka.

Further up the front, the Kyiv-held town of Chasiv Yar is a key emerging battleground because of its position on elevated ground that could serve as a gateway to the cities of Kostiantynivka, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Syrskiy described Chasiv Yar and the village of Ivanivske to its northeast as the "hottest spots" on that part of the front. Russia's defence ministry said it had repelled Ukrainian counter-attacks near Chasiv Yar.

KHARKIV BUILDUP

In what could prove a worrying development for Ukraine, Syrskiy said his forces were closely monitoring an increase in the number of Russian troops in the area of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.

The northeastern city of 1.3 million just 30 km from the Russian border has been hammered by airstrikes in recent months in what Kyiv has said is a deliberate effort by Moscow to make Kharkiv uninhabitable.

Syrskiy said there were so signs that Russia was directly preparing for an offensive in the north of the country.

"In the most threatening directions, our troops have been reinforced by artillery and tank units," he said.

Ukraine is currently expecting a long-awaited a shipment of US military aid which officials say is critical to holding off Russia's two-year-old invasion.

A Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters this week that Russia was conducting airstrikes on Ukrainian rail lines to disrupt the delivery of US weapons to the front and to complicate military logistics.

Russian officials threatened the West on Sunday with a "severe" response in the event that frozen Russian assets are confiscated, promising "endless" legal challenges and tit-for-tat measures.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia would never cede territories seized from Ukraine in exchange for the return of frozen assets, Reuters said.
"Our motherland is not for sale," Zakharova wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
"Russian assets must remain untouched because otherwise there will be a severe response to Western thievery. Many in the West have already understood this. Alas, not everyone."
In response to Russia's war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia's central bank and finance ministry and blocked about $300 billion of sovereign Russian assets in the West, most of which are in European not American financial institutions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate comment that there was still a lot of Western money in Russia which could be targeted by Moscow's counter-measures.
"The prospects for legal challenges (against the confiscation of Russian assets) will be wide open," he said. "Russia will take advantage of those and will endlessly defend its interests."

As students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at college campuses across US dug in Saturday and dozens of demonstrators were arrested, some universities moved to shut down encampments after reports of antisemitic activity.

With the death toll mounting in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.

Early Saturday, police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston. Massachusetts State Police said about 102 protesters were arrested and will be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Protesters said they were given about 15 minutes to disperse before being arrested.

As workers pulled down tents and bagged up the debris from the encampment, several dozen people across from the encampment chanted, "Let the Kids Go," and slogans against the war in Gaza. They also booed as police cars passed and taunted the officers who stood guard over the encampment.

The school said in a statement that the demonstration, which began two days ago, had become "infiltrated by professional organizers" with no affiliation to the school and antisemitic slurs, including "kill the Jews," had been used.

"We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus," the statement posted on the social media platform X said.

The Huskies for a Free Palestine student group disputed the university’s account, saying in a statement that counterprotesters were to blame for the slurs and no student protesters "repeated the disgusting hate speech."

Students at the protest said a counterprotester attempted to instigate hate speech but insisted their event was peaceful and, like many across the country, was aimed at drawing attention to what they described as the "genocide" in Gaza and their university’s complicity in the war.

The president of nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology put out a statement Saturday saying the encampment there had become a "potential magnet for disruptive outside protesters" and was taking hundreds of staff hours to keep safe.

"We have a responsibility to the entire MIT community — and it is not possible to safely sustain this level of effort," MIT President Sally Kornbluth said. "We are open to further discussion about the means of ending the encampment. But this particular form of expression needs to end soon."

Indiana University campus officers and state police arrested 23 people Saturday at an encampment on the school’s Bloomington campus. Tents and canopies had been erected Friday night at Dunn Meadow in violation of school policy, university police said in a release. Members of the group were detained after refusing to remove the structures, police said. Charges ranged from criminal trespass to resisting law enforcement.

At the University of Pennsylvania on Friday, interim President J. Larry Jameson called for an encampment of protesters on the west Philadelphia campus to be disbanded, saying it violates the university’s facilities policies, though about 40 tents remained in place Saturday morning.

The "harassing and intimidating comments and actions" by some protesters violate the school’s open expression guidelines as well as state and federal law, Jameson said, and vandalism of a statue with antisemitic graffiti was "especially reprehensible and will be investigated as a hate crime."

A faculty group said Saturday that it was "deeply disturbed" by the university president’s email, saying it included "unsubstantiated allegations" that "have been disputed to us by faculty and students who have attended and observed the demonstration."

The university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors said Jameson's statement "mischaracterizes the overall nature of an antiwar protest that necessarily involves strong emotions on both sides but has not, to our knowledge, involved any actual violence or threats of violence to individuals on our campus."

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.

Israel and its supporters have branded the protests as antisemitic, while critics of Israel say it uses such allegations to silence opponents. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

At Columbia University, where protesters have inspired pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country, students representing the encampment said Friday that they reached an impasse with administrators and intended to continue their protest.

Though the university has repeatedly set and then pushed back deadlines for the removal of the encampment, the school sent an email to students Friday night saying that bringing back police "at this time" would be counterproductive.

Decisions to call in law enforcement, leading to hundreds of arrests nationwide, have prompted school faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas to initiate or pass votes of no confidence in their leadership. They are largely symbolic rebukes, without the power to remove their presidents.

But the tensions pile pressure on school officials, who are already scrambling to resolve the protests as May graduation ceremonies near.

The University of Southern California drew criticism after refusing to allow the valedictorian, who has publicly supported Palestinians, to make a commencement speech. Administrators then scrapped the keynote speech by filmmaker Jon M. Chu. The school announced the cancellation of its main graduation event Thursday, a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested by police in riot gear.

USC President Carol Folt made her first public statement late Friday addressing the controversies as "incredibly difficult for all of us."

"No one wants to have people arrested on their campus. Ever. But, when long-standing safety policies are flagrantly violated, buildings vandalized, Department of Public Safety directives repeatedly ignored, threatening language shouted, people assaulted, and access to critical academic buildings blocked, we must act immediately to protect our community," Folt said.

Arizona State University said 69 people were arrested early Saturday on suspicion of criminal trespassing for setting up an unauthorized encampment on a lawn on its Tempe campus. The protesters were given chances to leave, and those who refused were arrested.

"While the university will continue to be an environment that embraces freedom of speech, ASU’s first priority is to create a safe and secure environment that supports teaching and learning," the university said in a statement.