NEW YORK — Final results from a long-running U.S.-based experiment announced Tuesday show a tiny particle continues to act strangely — but that’s still good news for the laws of physics as we know them.
“This experiment is a huge feat in precision,” said Tova Holmes, an experimental physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who is not part of the collaboration.
The mysterious particles called muons are considered heavier cousins to electrons. They wobble like a top when inside a magnetic field, and scientists are studying that motion to see if it lines up with the foundational rulebook of physics called the Standard Model.
Experiments in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to indicate all was well. But tests at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the late 1990s and early 2000s produced something unexpected: the muons weren’t behaving like they should.
Decades later, an international collaboration of scientists decided to rerun the experiments with an even higher degree of precision. The team raced muons around a magnetic, ring-shaped track — the same one used in Brookhaven’s experiment — and studied their signature wiggle at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago.
The first two sets of results — unveiled in 2021 and 2023 — seemed to confirm the muons’ weird behavior, prompting theoretical physicists to try to reconcile the new measurements with the Standard Model.
Now, the group has completed the experiment and released a measurement of the muon’s wobble that agrees with what they found before, using more than double the amount of data compared to 2023. They submitted their results to the journal Physical Review Letters.
That said, it’s not yet closing time for our most basic understanding of what’s holding the universe together. While the muons raced around their track, other scientists found a way to more closely reconcile their behavior with the Standard Model with the help of supercomputers.
There’s still more work to be done as researchers continue to put their heads together and future experiments take a stab at measuring the muon wobble — including one at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex that’s expected to start near the end of the decade. Scientists also are still analyzing the final muon data to see if they can glean information about other mysterious entities like dark matter.
“This measurement will remain a benchmark … for many years to come,” said Marco Incagli with the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy.
By wrangling muons, scientists are striving to answer fundamental questions that have long puzzled humanity, said Peter Winter with Argonne National Laboratory.
“Aren’t we all curious to understand how the universe works?” said Winter.
Dubbed operation “Spiderweb,” Ukraine’s audacious drone attack Sunday on four Russian air bases — one of them deep inside Siberia — has brought the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in modern warfare sharply into focus.
While accounts differ on the extent of the damage caused by the drones, which were reportedly smuggled to the perimeter of the bases in the backs of trucks, Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, put the estimated cost to the Kremlin at $7 billion. Russia has said little about the attacks, although the country’s defense ministry acknowledged in a statement that some planes caught fire.
The strikes have highlighted the increasing importance of drones for both Russia and Ukraine in the war, which entered its fourth year in February. And experts told NBC News that both sides are increasingly turning to cheap, commercially available first-person view or quadcopter drones that can often be purchased from online retailers and easily converted into deadly weapons — simple technology that is having a huge impact on the battlefield in Ukraine and further afield.
Their use is “going to become very, very common,” Robert Lee, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute think tank, told NBC News in an interview.
Drones were used when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown in December, he said. “They’re here and because they’re ubiquitous, because they are quite useful and they’re demonstrating that every day in Ukraine,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that they’re going to be used by all sorts of groups, whether it’s criminal groups or terrorist groups, and they pose a quite significant threat,” he said, adding, “I think we’re a little bit behind the power curve on this and actually getting ready to counter them.”
Targeting civilians
As she was riding her bicycle to a cosmetology appointment in Antonivka, a rural community in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Anastasia Pavlenko, 23, said she noticed a drone “hunting” her.
“It took off, followed me and I zigzagged on the bike,” the mother of two said of the September attack, adding that a second drone suddenly appeared with “a shell attached to it.”
Despite her best attempts to escape, she said the second drone dropped the shell “right on my head” and it bounced down onto her thigh and exploded on the asphalt next to her.
“Blood was coming from my neck, and there were fragments under my ribs,” Pavlenko said, adding she somehow managed to keep cycling and take cover under a bridge where she screamed for help until she started to lose consciousness.
“I just had a small purse, shorts, a T-shirt and long loose hair, so it was clear that I was a girl,” she said, adding that she was not wearing military colors or carrying any weapons when she was hit.
Doctors were unable to remove shrapnel fragments from her neck, ribs, or leg, she said, adding she had been unable to return to work at her coffee shopbecause she “can’t handle physical stress.”
The president of World Boxing has apologized after Olympic champion Imane Khelif was singled out in the governing body’s announcement to make sex testing mandatory.
Algerian boxer Khelif, who won gold at the Paris Games last summer amid scrutiny over her eligibility, was specifically mentioned when World Boxing released its new policy last Friday.
On Monday, its president Boris van der Vorst contacted the Algerian Boxing Federation to acknowledge that was wrong.
“I am writing to you all personally to offer a formal and sincere apology for this and acknowledge that her privacy should have been protected,” he wrote in a letter seen by The Associated Press.
Van der Vorst added he hoped by “reaching out to you personally we show our true respect to you and your athletes.”
Khelif and fellow gold medalist Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan were in the spotlight in Paris because the previous governing body for Olympic boxing, the International Boxing Association, disqualified both fighters from its 2023 world championships, claiming they failed an unspecified eligibility test.
However, the International Olympic Committee applied sex eligibility rules used in previous Olympics and cleared Khelif and Lin to compete.
World Boxing has been provisionally approved as the boxing organizer at the 2028 Los Angeles Games and has faced pressure from boxers and their federations to create sex eligibility standards.
It said there will be mandatory testing for all boxers from July 1 to “ensure the safety of all participants and deliver a competitive level playing field for men and women.”
The governing body announced all athletes over 18 years old in its competitions must undergo a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genetic test to determine their sex at birth. The PCR test detects chromosomal material through a mouth swab, saliva or blood.
If an athlete intending to compete in the women’s categories is determined to have male chromosomal material, “initial screenings will be referred to independent clinical specialists for genetic screening, hormonal profiles, anatomical examination or other valuation of endocrine profiles by medical specialists,” World Boxing said. The policy also includes an appeals process.
Khelif plans to defend her gold medal at the L.A. Games, but some boxers and their federations have already spoken out against her inclusion.
She had intended to return to international competition this month in the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands.
JoEllen Zembruski-Ruple, while in the care of New York City’s renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, swallowed the first three chemotherapy pills to treat her squamous cell carcinoma on Jan. 29, her family members said. They didn’t realize the drug could kill her.
Six days later, Zembruski-Ruple went to Sloan Kettering’s urgent care department to treat sores in her mouth and swelling around her eyes. The hospital diagnosed oral yeast infection and sent her home, her sister and partner said. Two days later, they said, she returned in agony — with severe diarrhea and vomiting — and was admitted. “Enzyme deficiency,” Zembruski-Ruple texted a friend.
The 65-year-old, a patient advocate who had worked for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and other groups, would never go home.
Covered in bruises and unable to swallow or talk, she eventually entered hospice care and died March 25 from the very drug that was supposed to extend her life, said her longtime partner, Richard Khavkine. Zembruski-Ruple was deficient in the enzyme that metabolizes capecitabine, the chemotherapy drug she took, said Khavkine and Susan Zembruski, one of her sisters. Zembruski-Ruple was among about 1,300 Americans each year who diefrom the toxic effects of that pill or its cousin, the IV drug fluorouracil known as 5-FU.
Newer cancer drugs sometimes include a companion diagnostic to determine whether a drug works with an individual patient’s genetics. But 5-FU went on the market in 1962 and sells for about $17 a dose; producers of its generic aren’t seeking approval for toxicity tests, which typically cost hundreds of dollars.
Doctors have only gradually understood which gene variants are dangerous in which patients, and how to deal with them, said Alan Venook, a colorectal and liver cancer specialist at the University of California-San Francisco.
By the time Zembruski-Ruple’s doctors told her she had the deficiency, she had been on the drug for eight days, said Khavkine, who watched over his partner with her sister throughout the seven-week ordeal.
Khavkine said he “would have asked for the test” if he had known about it, but added “nobody told us about the possibility of this deficiency.” Zembruski-Ruple’s sister also said she wasn’t warned about the fatal risks of the chemo, or told about the test.
“They never said why they didn’t test her,” Zembruski said. “If the test existed, they should have said there is a test. If they said, ‘Insurance won’t cover it,’ I would have said, ‘Here’s my credit card.’ We should have known about it.”
Guidance moves at a glacial pace
Despite growing awareness of the deficiency, and an advocacy group made up of grieving friends and relatives who push for routine testing of all patients before they take the drug, the medical establishment has moved slowly.
A panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, or NCCN — specialists from Sloan Kettering and other top research centers — until recently did not recommend testing, and the FDA does not require it.
In response to a query from KFF Health News about its policy, Sloan Kettering spokesperson Courtney Nowak said the hospital treats patients “in accordance with NCCN guidelines.” She said the hospital would not discuss a patient’s care.
On Jan. 24, the FDA issued a warning about the enzyme deficiency in which it urged health care providers to “inform patients prior to treatment” about the risks of taking 5-FU and capecitabine.
On March 31 — six days after Zembruski-Ruple’s death — the network’s expert panel for most gastrointestinal cancers took a first step toward recommending testing for the deficiency.
Worried that President Donald Trump’s FDA might do nothing, Venook said, the panel — whose guidance shapes the practices of oncologists and health insurers — recommended that doctors consider testing before dosing patients with 5-FU or capecitabine.
However, its guidance stated that “no specific test is recommended at this time,” citing a lack of data to “inform dose adjustments.”
Sloan Kettering “will consider this guidance in developing personalized treatment plans for each patient,” Nowak told KFF Health News.
The new NCCN guidance was “not the blanket recommendation we were working toward, but it is a major step toward our ultimate goal,” said Kerin Milesky, a public health official in Brewster, Massachusetts, who’s part of an advocacy group for testing. Her husband, Larry, died two years ago at age 73 after a single treatment of capecitabine.
European drug regulators began urging oncologists to test patients for deficiency in May 2020. Patients with potentially risky genetics are started on a half-dose of the cancer drug. If they suffer no major toxicity, the dose is increased.
A lifesaving ultimatum?
Emily Alimonti, a 42-year-old biotech salesperson in upstate New York, chose that path before starting capecitabine treatment in December. She said her doctors — including an oncologist at Sloan Kettering — told her they didn’t do deficiency testing, but Alimonti insisted. “Nope,” she said. “I’m not starting it until I get the test back.”
The test showed that Alimonti had a copy of a risky gene variant, so doctors gave her a lower dose of the drug. Even that has been hard to tolerate; she’s had to skip doses because of low white blood cell counts, Alimonti said. She still doesn’t know whether her insurer will cover the test.
Around 300,000 people are treated with 5-FU or capecitabine in the United States each year, but its toxicity could well have prevented FDA approval were it up for approval today. Short of withdrawing a drug, however, U.S. regulators have little power to manage its use. And 5-FU and capecitabine are still powerful tools against many cancers.
At a January workshop that included FDA officials and cancer specialists, Venook, the NCCN panel’s co-chair, asked whether it was reasonable to recommend that doctors obtain a genetic test “without saying what to do with the result.”
But Richard Pazdur, the FDA’s top cancer expert, said it was time to end the debate and commence testing, even if the results could be ambiguous. “If you don’t have the information, how do you have counseling?” he asked.
Two months later, Venook’s panel changed course. The price of tests has fallen below $300 and results can be returned as soon as three days, Venook said. Doubts about the FDA’s ability to further confront the issue spurred the panel’s change of heart, he said.
“I don’t know if FDA is going to exist tomorrow,” Venook told KFF Health News. “They’re taking a wrecking ball to common sense, and that’s one of the reasons we felt we had to go forward.”
On May 20, the FDA posted a Federal Register notice seeking public input on the issue, a move that suggested it was considering further action.
Venook said he often tests his own patients, but the results can be fuzzy. If the test finds two copies of certain dangerous gene variants in a patient, he avoids using the drug. But such cases are rare — and Zembruski-Ruple was one of them, according to her sister and Khavkine.
Many more patients have a single copy of a suspect gene, an ambiguous result that requires clinical judgment to assess, Venook said.
A full-gene scan would provide more information but adds expense and time, and even then the answer may be murky, Venook said. He worries that starting patients on lower doses could mean fewer cures, especially for newly diagnosed colon cancer patients.
Power Should Rest With Patients
Scott Kapoor, a Toronto-area emergency room physician whose brother Anil, a much-loved urologist and surgeon, died of 5-FU toxicity at age 58 in 2023, views Venook’s arguments as medical paternalism. Patients should decide whether to test and what to do with the results, he said.
“What’s better — don’t tell the patient about the test, don’t test them, potentially kill them in 20 days?” he said. “Or tell them about the testing while warning that potentially the cancer will kill them in a year?”
“People say oncologists don’t know what to do with the information,” said Karen Merritt, whose mother died after an infusion of 5-FU in 2014. “Well, I’m not a doctor, but I can understand the Mayo Clinic report on it.”
The Mayo Clinic recommends starting patients on half a dose if they have one suspect gene variant. And “the vast majority of patients will be able to start treatment without delays,” Daniel Hertz, a clinical pharmacologist from the University of Michigan, said at the January meeting.
Some hospitals began testing after patients died because of the deficiency, said Lindsay Murray, of Andover, Massachusetts, who has advocated for widespread testing since her mother was treated with capecitabine and died in 2021.
In some cases, Venook said, relatives of dead patients have sued hospitals, leading to settlements.
Kapoor said his brother — like many patients of non-European origin — had a gene variant that hasn’t been widely studied and isn’t included in most tests. But a full-gene scan would have detected it, Kapoor said, and such scans can also be done for a few hundred dollars.
The cancer network panel’s changed language is disappointing, he said, though “better than nothing.”
In video tributes to Zembruski-Ruple, her friends, colleagues, and clients remembered her as kind, helpful, and engaging. “JoEllen was beautiful both inside and out,” said Barbara McKeon, a former colleague at the MS Society. “She was funny, creative, had a great sense of style.”
“JoEllen had this balance of classy and playful misbehavior,” psychotherapist Anastatia Fabris said. “My beautiful, vibrant, funny, and loving friend JoEllen.”
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Wake Forest and baseball coach Tom Walter apologized on Tuesday for what appeared to be a homophobic slur caught by television cameras during an NCAA regional game against Tennessee.
“I am very sorry for my outburst in frustration last night and I recognize the hurt and disappointment it has caused,” Walter said in a statement issued by the school. “I own the consequences and I apologize to the University of Tennessee, to Wake Forest University, and the SEC & ACC.”
Walter said he has watched the video and doesn’t remember the specific moment but acknowledged “that language doesn’t reflect my values or the standards of this program.”
Wake Forest athletic director John Currie said he was “surprised and deeply disappointed” and said he spoke with Walter after the game and again Tuesday morning.
“I feel badly for those most hurt by such words,” Currie said. “This incident … is completely out of character for him and does not meet the standards of Wake Forest Athletics, Wake Forest University or the Atlantic Coast Conference.”
Tennessee beat Wake Forest 11-5 on Monday night to win the Knoxville Regional and earn a best-of-three super regional matchup with Arkansas for a chance to advance to the College World Series.
An Atlantic Coast Conference spokeswoman did not immediate respond to an email seeking comment.
She’s a runner, she’s a track star…she’s somersaulting over the finish line?
High school athlete Brooklyn Anderson was running hurdles in a track and field championship in Eugene, Oregon, and seconds away from the finish line when she tripped.
Video from the event shows Anderson hopping a hurdle and knocking it down before tripping. The track star’s tumbling reflex kicked in, prompting her to somersault twice until she got over the finish line, “sticking the landing” to first place.
Anderson told The Oregonian that she relied on her gymnastics training at the Saturday event.
“I wasn’t sure how far back everybody else was behind me, so I knew to just keep rolling, to keep going, because I really wanted to get first,” the Thurston High School junior told the outlet.
Anderson won the Class 5A 100 hurdles race in 14.93 seconds, the outlet reported.
“I was just so proud,” Anderson said about her win. “Just very, very happy.”
A liberal lawyer has ousted South Korea’s troubled ruling party’s presidential candidate on Tuesday, ending months of political instability that began with a botched declaration of martial law.
A joint exit poll by three major broadcasters, KBS, MBC and SBS,showed that, with 51.7% of the vote, Lee Jae-myungwas well ahead of his conservative rival, Kim Moon-soo, who garnered 39.3%. Another pollster, JoWon C&I, had Lee further ahead with 55.1% of the vote and Kim 36.7%.
NBC News could not independently confirm the results of the surveys. But should they prove correct, Lee, 61, will be sworn in as president of the key U.S. ally on Wednesday.
The election took place six months to the day after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the East Asian democracy of more than 50 million people by abruptly declaring martial law, citing threats from “anti-state forces” and accusing the opposition-controlled parliament of paralyzing the government.
Led by Lee, lawmakers impeached Yoon on Dec. 14 over the short-lived order, after which South Korea was led by a series of acting presidents. The leadership vacuum has hampered South Korea in Washington at a time when it is trying to negotiate with the Trump administration over a 25% “reciprocal” tariff and other levies.
Lee, 61, who narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022, had been considered the most likely to succeed Yoon since his impeachment. The election was triggered in April when Yoon’s impeachment was upheld by South Korea’s Constitutional Court.
But South Korean voters were animated more by anger at Yoon’s conservative People Power Party than an affinity for Lee.
“His victory is not thanks to any particular policy proposals, but rather a result of Yoon’s spectacular collapse,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
Some voters directed their anger at Kim, the candidate for Yoon’s former People Power Party, even though Yoon left the party last month in an effort to help his campaign.
“I believe that Lee will restore the democratic system and establish a democratic government,” said Lee Jung Sup, a company executive in Seoul. “Then, our economy will be revitalized.”
Kim, who was labor minister under Yoon, opposed his impeachment but criticized the martial law declaration. Supporters pointed to Kim’s squeaky-clean record, contrasting it with Lee’s involvement in several criminal trials.
“It is unfair to reflect the martial law declared by the former president onto Kim,” said Oh Chang-soo, a retired religious leader in his 60s.
Lee’s vows to punish those involved in the martial law order have raised fears of further political turmoil. Yoon is still standing trial on charges of insurrection, a crime that is punishable by death or life in prison.
Lee said this week that besides addressing economic concerns and internal division, his main priority is reaching a trade deal with the United States.
In addition to the 25% tariff — which is set to take effect July 9 —South Korea’s trade-dependent economy is vulnerable to sector-specific U.S. levies on some of its most important exports, such as steel and automobiles.
Asked about Trump’s tendency to pressure his negotiating partners, Lee said, “That’s a kind of political behavior exhibited by powerful nations, and we must endure it well.”
“If the president of the Republic of Korea’s kowtowing briefly would allow 52 million people to thrive, then he must do so,” he told South Korea’s Christian Broadcasting System on Monday, using the country’s formal name.
While Trump is a formidable figure, Lee said, diplomacy should be mutually beneficial, and “I’m not an easy opponent either.”
“We have a fair number of cards to play,” he said. “There are things to give and take on both sides.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A massive cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert blanketed most of the Caribbean on Monday in the biggest event of its kind this year as it heads toward the United States.
The cloud extended some 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Jamaica to well past Barbados in the eastern Caribbean, and some 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) from the Turks and Caicos Islands in the northern Caribbean down south to Trinidad and Tobago.
“It’s very impressive,” said Alex DaSilva, lead hurricane expert with AccuWeather.
The hazy skies unleashed sneezes, coughs and watery eyes across the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain indoors or wear face masks if outdoors.
The dust concentration was high, at .55 aerosol optical depth, the highest amount so far this year, said Yidiana Zayas, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The aerosol optical depth measures how much direct sunlight is prevented from reaching the ground by particles, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The plume is expected to hit Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi late this week and into the weekend, DaSilva said.
However, plumes usually lose most of their concentration in the eastern Caribbean, he noted.
“Those islands tend to see more of an impact, more of a concentration where it can actually block out the sun a little bit at times,” he said.
The dry and dusty air known as the Saharan Air Layer forms over the Sahara Desert in Africa and moves west across the Atlantic Ocean starting around April until about October, according to NOAA. It also prevents tropical waves from forming during the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30.
June and July usually have the highest dust concentration on average, with plumes traveling anywhere from 5,000 feet to 20,000 feet above the ground, DaSilva said.
In June 2020, a record-breaking cloud of Sahara dust smothered the Caribbean. The size and concentration of the plume hadn’t been seen in half a century, prompting forecasters to nickname it the “Godzilla dust cloud.”
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Activists on Monday celebrated a decision by Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court to allow nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people to update their birth certificates.
The ruling comes after a group of six nonbinary people filed a lawsuit against Puerto Rico’s governor, its health secretary and other officials.
The ruling means that nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people will now be able to select ‘X’ as their gender marker on birth certificates.
Pedro Julio Serrano, president of Puerto Rico’s LGBTQ Federation, called Friday’s ruling a historic one that upholds equality.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jenniffer González Colón told reporters that she was awaiting recommendations from Puerto Rico’s Justice Department regarding the ruling.
The ruling comes more than seven years after a U.S. federal court ordered Puerto Rico’s government to allow transgender people to change their gender on birth certificates following a lawsuit if they so wished.
Its publication also suggests that Western intelligence agencies are correct in their belief that Putin is not interested in compromise. The memorandum codifies what Putin has been saying all along — that the “root causes” of the war are NATO’s eastward expansion and fomenting Nazism in Ukraine.
The memorandum is “aimed at getting rid of the root causes of this conflict,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Tuesday. “It would be wrong to expect some immediate decisions and a breakthrough here,” he said, adding that “we await the reaction to the memorandum” from Ukraine.
Ukraine and its Western supporters say Russian claims of Nazism are absurd, particularly when the country is governed by Zelenskyy, who is Jewish. NATO and its backers contend that the alliance has only grown because former Soviet republics, such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, have voted to join in the hope of gaining protection from Russia.
Not only is Ukraine unlikely to accept Russia’s absolutist terms, scholars previously interviewed by NBC News believe that Russia knows they won’t. Many see the peace talks as a charade that both sides know will fail, only prolonged to avoid the ire and impatience of President Donald Trump.
Former-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — always a hawkish voice — was unabashed in how he views these discussions at the lavish Ottoman-era Çırağan Palace.
“The negotiations in Istanbul are not needed for a compromise peace on unrealistic conditions invented by someone else,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council wrote on the messaging app Telegram. Rather, he said the aim was “quick victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi government.” He said this goal was “the point of the Russian memorandum, which was published yesterday.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov after the second round of peace talks in Istanbul on Monday.Chris McGrath / Getty Images
All the while Russia, unlike Ukraine’s attacks on military targets, continues to bombard Ukrainian civilians. On Tuesday it “brutally attacked” the embattled city of Sumy, Zelenskyy said, killing at least three people and injuring “many” more.
With both sides still diametrically opposed, Trump’s next move could prove pivotal.
Having once promised to end the war in 24 hours, he has become so frustrated with the intractable reality that he has threatened to walk away.
There are hopes of another Russian-American prisoner swap and even a meeting between the two presidents. And when the memorandum inevitably comes across Trump’s desk, and he is asked about it during one of his question-and-answer sessions in the Oval Office, the president could react in several different ways, according to Nixey, the Russia expert in London.
“Either he will say, ‘Yes, but look at what the Ukrainians have done to Russia, so this memorandum is unsurprising,” Nixey said. “Or he will say, ‘Putin is not playing ball. This hasn’t turned out like I thought it would. I’m washing my hands of the whole thing.”
Keir Simmons reported from Dubai and Alexander Smith reported from London.
