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A regional train has derailed in southern Switzerland, injuring five people, police said, as the risk of avalanches in the region has reached its second-highest level.

The accident on Monday near the town of Goppenstein occurred amid heavy snow and at an altitude of 1,216 metres (4,000 feet), according to the AFP news agency.

“According to initial findings, an avalanche may have crossed the tracks shortly before the train passed,” police said, adding that the public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.

“Five people were injured. One of them was taken to hospital,” police added.

The train accident follows a series of deadly avalanches across the Alps in recent days involving skiers.

On Friday, three skiers were killed after being swept away by an avalanche in the upmarket French Alpine resort of Val d’Isere.

Cedric Bonnevie, who oversees the resort’s pistes, said one of the victims was a French national while the others were foreign citizens.

He said one victim appeared to have been caught in the avalanche high on the mountain slope, while the other two were part of a group of five, including a professional guide, lower on the mountain face and did not see the avalanche approaching.

In Italy, rescuers said last week that a record 13 backcountry skiers, climbers and hikers had died in the mountains over the previous seven days, including 10 in avalanches triggered by an exceptionally unstable snowpack.

Fresh snowfall during recent storms, combined with windswept snow sitting on weak internal layers, has created especially dangerous conditions across the Alpine arc bordering France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, Italy’s Alpine Rescue said.

“Under such conditions, the passage of a single skier, or natural overloading from the weight of snow, can be sufficient to trigger an avalanche,” Federico Catania, Alpine Rescue’s spokesperson, said.

The avalanche deaths have occurred on ungroomed mountain slopes, away from the well-maintained and monitored Winter Olympic sites in Lombardy near the Swiss border, Cortina d’Ampezzo in Veneto, and the cross-country skiing venues in Val di Fiemme, within the autonomous province of Trentino.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that his government will not repatriate Australian women and children from Syria who have been identified as relatives of suspected ISIL (ISIS) fighters.

“We have a very firm view that we won’t be providing assistance or repatriation,” Albanese told ABC News on Tuesday.

Albanese said that while it is “unfortunate” that children have been affected, Australia is “not providing any support”.

“As my mother would say, you make your bed, you lie in it,” he said.

“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life,” he added.

A spokesperson for Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke also warned that those who return to Australia from Syria will face the law if they have committed crimes.

“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia, they will be met with the full force of the law,” the spokesperson said, according to the Reuters news agency.

A total of 34 women and children holding Australian citizenship were released on Monday from the Kurdish-controlled Roj detention camp in northern Syria.

The Australians, who are said to be relatives of ISIL fighters, were later returned to the camp due to what was described as “technical reasons”, the Reuters and AFP news agencies reported.

Roj detention camp director Hakmiyeh Ibrahim told Al Jazeera that the women and children from 11 families were handed over to relatives “who have come from Australia to collect them”.

The women and children were seen boarding minibuses to reach the Syrian capital, Damascus, from where they were to depart for Australia.

But halfway through the trip, Kurdish escorts were ordered to turn back, as the group did not have permission “to enter government-held territory”, according to Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, who is reporting from Aleppo.

Rashid Omar, an official at the Roj camp, later confirmed to AFP that the Australian nationals were forced to return to the detention facility. He said that representatives of the families were still working to resolve the issue with Syrian authorities.

‘Concern in the Australian population’

The humanitarian organisation Save the Children Australia filed a lawsuit in 2023 on behalf of 11 women and 20 children, seeking their repatriation, citing Australia’s “moral and legal responsibility” to its citizens. The Federal Court ruled against Save the Children, saying the Australian government did not control their detention in Syria.

A 17-year-old Australian boy died while under detention in Syria in 2022.

Rodger Shanahan, a Middle East security analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Australian government is facing more resistance to the return of its citizens from Syria following the deadly Bondi Beach attack in December, in which 15 people were killed, at a Jewish festival in Sydney.

“I think that there’s a concern in the Australian population that people might appear to have done away with their radical views, but they still retain them deep down,” Shanahan said.

While Kurdish-led forces still control the Roj camp, they withdrew from the larger al-Hol camp in January, when Syria’s central government’s security forces took control of the area.

At one point, the al-Hol camp housed some 24,000 people, mostly Syrians, but also Iraqis, and more than 6,000 women and children with foreign nationalities.

Governments around the world have been resisting the repatriation of their citizens from the camps in Syria.

The Roj camp also housed United Kingdom-born Shamima Begum, who was 15 when she and two other girls travelled from London in 2015 to marry ISIL fighters in Syria. In 2019, the UK government revoked Begum’s citizenship soon after she was discovered in a detention camp in Syria.

Since then, Begum has challenged the decision, which was turned down by an appeals court in February 2024.

United States President Donald Trump has said that he will be involved “indirectly” in the second round of the high-stakes nuclear talks between Iran and Washington in Geneva.

Trump’s comments on Monday came as Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi travelled to the Swiss city for meetings ahead of the indirect talks with the US.

Tensions in the Gulf region remain high ahead of the crucial negotiations, with the US deploying a second aircraft carrier to the region and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warning that any attack on Iran would prompt a regional war.

Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that the discussions on Tuesday were significant.

“I’ll be involved in those talks, indirectly. And they’ll be very important,” he said. “Iran is a very tough negotiator.”

Asked about the prospects for a deal, Trump said Iran had learned the consequences of its tough approach last June, when the US joined in Israel’s 12-day war on Iran and bombed three of its nuclear sites.

The attacks came amid indirect talks between Iran and the US on Tehran’s nuclear programme and resulted in their derailment.

However, Trump suggested Tehran was motivated to negotiate this time. “I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” he said.

Despite the US president’s comments about Iran seeking an agreement, the talks face major potential stumbling blocks. Washington has demanded that Tehran forgo uranium enrichment on its soil and has sought to expand the scope of talks to non-nuclear issues, such as Iran’s missile stockpile.

But Tehran, which insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, has said it is only willing to discuss curbs on its programme in exchange for sanctions relief. It has said it will not accept zero uranium ‌enrichment and that its missile capabilities are off the table.

‘Fair and equitable deal’

Araghchi, who arrived in Geneva earlier on Monday, said he was in the city “with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal”. He added, in a post on X, “What is not on the table: submission before threats.”

The Iranian diplomat also met with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in Geneva for a round of technical discussions. Tehran had suspended cooperation with the United Nations watchdog body after the US and Israel’s attacks on its nuclear sites.

The IAEA has been calling on Iran for months to say what happened to its stockpile of 440kg (970 pounds) of highly-enriched uranium following the Israeli-US strikes and to let inspections fully resume, including in three key sites that were bombed: Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.

Tehran has allowed IAEA some access to the sites that were not damaged, but has not allowed inspectors to visit other sites, citing a potential risk of radiation.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said there was “optimism” in the Iranian capital ahead of the talks.

“Officials here say the Iranian delegation in Geneva includes fully authorised economic, legal, political and technical teams. This signals that the Iranian side is ready for some serious concessions, particularly regarding its nuclear programme,” he said.

But Serdar noted that the talks come in the face of a massive US military build-up in the region, which continues to grow. The Iranians, too, he said, were not “stepping back”, with the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launching military drills in the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf on Monday.

Iran has ⁠repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital international waterway and oil export route from Gulf Arab states, in retaliation against any attack. The move would choke a fifth of global oil flows and send crude prices sharply higher.

Iran has also threatened to strike US military bases in the region in the event of an attack, promoting concerns of a wider war.

“This military escalation is going on in parallel with the diplomatic engagement. The regional countries are also stepping up diplomacy, because they have their concerns and they have their own fears,” Serdar said.

Billionaire Thomas J Pritzker has announced that he is retiring as executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation over his long association with sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, which came to light in recently released US Justice Department files.

Pritzker, 75, who has served in the role of Hyatt Hotels’ executive chairman since 2004, also said on Monday that he will not seek re-election to the company’s board at its 2026 annual stockholder meeting.

In a letter to the Hyatt board and a related statement, Pritzker expressed deep regret over maintaining contact with Epstein, who took his own life in prison in 2019, and Maxwell, describing it as “terrible judgement”, with no excuse for not distancing himself sooner.

“Good stewardship also means protecting Hyatt, particularly in the context of my association with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell which I deeply ‌regret,” he said in the statement.

“I exercised terrible judgement in maintaining contact with them, and there is no excuse for failing to distance myself sooner.”

Newly released documents by the Justice Department show that Pritzker had ongoing and regular contact with Epstein for years after the financier’s conviction on sex crime charges in 2008, according to The New York Times.

Pritzker is the latest powerful figure facing repercussions after the release of millions of pages of documents showing the depth of Epstein’s network of business, political and cultural elites in the US and around the world.

Goldman Sachs chief legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler resigned last week over her ties to Epstein. Norwegian police said they had conducted searches of properties owned by former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland as part of a corruption investigation into his connections with the late sex offender.

The head of DP Ports World, the world’s largest port operator, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, was also replaced over his close friendship with Epstein, while economist Larry Summers resigned from the OpenAI board late last year.

Former United Kingdom ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, has been asked to submit himself for an interview and answer questions as part of a US congressional investigation into Epstein.

In a letter sent to Mandelson by Democratic Representatives Robert Garcia and Suhas Subramanyam, both members of the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee, the lawmakers said it was “clear” that the former ambassador “possessed extensive social and business ties” to Epstein and requested that he make himself available for a transcribed interview.

Mandelson took up the prestigious post as the UK’s ambassador to the US in February 2025. He was removed from the role in September 2025 after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government said new information had come to light showing the much deeper nature of his longstanding ties with Epstein.

The Mandelson controversy has led to calls for Starmer to stand down as prime minister, with critics questioning his judgement in appointing him to the ambassador’s role.

Lebanon’s government has said that its military will need at least four months to complete the second phase of its plan to dismantle Hezbollah’s arsenals in the country’s south.

The announcement by Minister of Information Paul Morcos on Monday comes amid growing pressure from the United States and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, including near-daily Israeli attacks on the country.

The bombings come despite Israel agreeing to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 to end more than a year of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah.

The conflict left the Lebanese armed group badly weakened, with much of its leadership killed.

Under the ceasefire deal, Lebanon’s government committed to dismantling Hezbollah’s arsenal and tasked its military with drawing up a plan to do so.

The military said last month that it had completed the first phase of the five stage plan, covering the area between the Litani River and the country’s southern border with Israel.

The second phase concerns the area between the Litani and the Awali rivers, about 40km (25 miles) south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Morcos, the Lebanese information minister, told a news conference after a cabinet session that the government “took note of the army leadership’s presentation” on the second stage of the plan.

“There is a timeframe of four months, extendable depending on available capabilities, Israeli attacks and hindrances on the ground,” he said.

Hezbollah, which has dismissed efforts to disarm it as a US-Israeli plan, has rejected calls to surrender weapons north of the Litani River, saying it understands the ceasefire agreement to apply “exclusively south” of the waterway.

Before the cabinet session on Monday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said that “what the Lebanese government is doing in focusing on disarmament is a grave sin, because this issue serves the goals of the Israeli aggression”.

“Stop all action to restrict weapons,” he added in a televised address, saying the government’s “successive concessions” were partly to blame for Israel’s persistent attacks.

Qassem’s comments came as the Israeli military launched new raids on southern Lebanon, striking a bus in the town of Hanin and a car in the town of Talloussah and killing at least two people.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack on Talloussah, saying it attacked a Hezbollah fighter who was trying to rebuild the group’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

Israel has previously criticised the Lebanese military’s progress on disarming Hezbollah as insufficient.

In addition to the regular strikes, it also continues to occupy five areas in Lebanese territory, blocking the reconstruction of destroyed border villages and preventing tens of thousands of displaced people from returning to their homes.

According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli forces have killed more than 370 people since the ceasefire, while the United Nations said Israel has launched more than 10,000 air and ground attacks in the year since it agreed to halt hostilities.

Lebanon filed a complaint with the UN last month about the repeated Israeli violations, urging the UN Security Council to push Israel to end its attacks and fully withdraw from the country.

At least two people have been killed, and three others are in critical condition after a mass shooting at a high school ice hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The suspected gunman died, it appears by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after opening fire, Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves said at a news conference on Monday.

“It appears that this was a targeted event; that it may be a family dispute,” Goncalves added, without providing more details about the suspect or the victims.

Authorities said the first emergency call reporting the shooting was received at 2:28pm local time (19:28 GMT), adding that investigators are still working to piece together the events leading up to the attack.

According to a report by the Providence Journal news outlet, video footage appears to show a rapid burst of about 13 shots over six seconds, followed by a final shot roughly 11 seconds later from an area outside the camera’s view.

Several shots were heard at the Dennis M Lynch Arena before spectators at the hockey match and student athletes began reacting, dropping to the floor to take cover, looking for shelter, and eventually fleeing towards the exits.

Support to Pawtucket

“What should have been a joyful occasion, with dozens of families, students, and supporters gathered to celebrate Senior Night … was instead marked by violence and fear,” Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien said in a statement.

“Our prayers go out to the victims, their families, and everyone impacted by this devastating incident.”

In a post on X, FBI director Kash Patel said agents from the agency’s Boston Division have been deployed to Pawtucket to support the investigation.

The latest outbreak of gun violence comes roughly two months after a separate shooting at Brown University, a few miles south of Pawtucket. The attack killed two students, wounded nine others, and led to a days-long manhunt across the state.

Pawtucket, located just north of Providence and along the Massachusetts state border, is a city of approximately 75,000 people. It is the fourth-largest city in the state.