📌 Eagles Win, Ukraine–Russia Peace Talks, More

Quarterback Jalen Hurts hoisted the game's Most Valuable Player award as Philadelphia won its second Super Bowl trophy..

Hurts completed 17 of 22 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns in the 40–22 win. His first TD pass put the Eagles up 24–0 before halftime, and his second gave them an insurmountable 34-0 edge.

The Chiefs made the score slightly more respectable, scoring 22 points in the final 16 minutes, but Hurts and the Eagles had built too big a lead.

Hurts also ran for the most rushing yards by a quarterback in a Super Bowl with 72, breaking his own mark set in Super Bowl LVII (70) when Philly came up short against the Chiefs. This time, the Eagles were up enough points to insert backup Kenny Pickett into the game for the final kneel-downs.

The Chiefs set out to bottle up Saquon Barkley, holding him to 97 scrimmage yards on 31 touches. But in the end, Hurts and a relentless Eagles defense were too much for the Chiefs to handle.

”Couldn't be here without my teammates — the effort, the determination everybody displayed to get to this point,” Hurts said. ”It's never been about what any one of us does; it's always been about what we do and how we're responding to certain things. Hell of a game today.”

President Donald Trump said the US is making progress in its talks to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the two men had been in contact. That would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a US president since early 2022. ”I do believe we’re making progress. We want to stop the Ukraine–Russia war,” Trump said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that ”many different communications are emerging.” US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said there ”certainly are a lot of sensitive conversations going on.”

In the coming days, a flurry of US officials are heading to Europe in part to discuss the war, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Keith Kellogg, the special envoy for the Ukraine war.

Waltz indicated that Trump would be willing to use sanctions and tariffs to coax Putin to the negotiating table. Waltz said US and Ukrainian officials would discuss the US gaining access to Ukraine's rare earth resources as compensation for US aid to its eastern European ally.

On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy the following week to discuss ending the war.

High-profile US citizens have been targeted by what the FBI is calling South American Theft Groups.

FBI field offices across the nation and in South America are targeting SATGs whose members are foreign nationals of South American descent and enter the US illegally or overstay their visas to commit crimes, the FBI says in the online video, ”Intercepting South American Theft Groups.”

The crimes include a ”recent trend of break-ins at the homes of professional athletes while they are away at games” and are targeted by the theft groups, the FBI says. ”These informal but sophisticated organizations have burglarized jewelry stores and robbed salespeople,” according to the FBI video.

The FBI says the criminal groups commonly use rental vehicles, fake IDs and documents, multiple burner phones and encrypted messaging apps to communicate, plan and carry out their crimes.

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow are among the many professional athletes who were targeted by alleged SATGs in recent months.

Actor Keanu Reeves was also victimized by a burglary while he was away, and some of the goods stolen from his home were discovered in Chile. Police in Santiago announced the recovery of three luxury watches belonging to Reeves that likely were stolen from his Los Angeles home in late 2023.

Deepseek’s AI model ”is probably the best work” out of China, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, said.

But Hassabis said Deepseek didn’t show scientific advances. ”It’s using known techniques [in AI],” he said, adding the hype has been ”exaggerated.” Deepseek’s claims around its low cost and the chips it uses have been questioned by experts, who said the cost of development for the Chinese firm’s models is higher.

Hassabis said that the AI industry is ”on the path towards artificial general intelligence,” which he describes as ”a system that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities humans have.”

Hassabis said: ”We’re close now, perhaps five years … away from a system like that which would be pretty extraordinary.” He said society needs to prepare for the ”implications” to derive the benefits for the whole society: while mitigating ”some of the risks.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he is ”confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it.”

Many in the industry have also flagged multiple risks associated with AGI. One of the biggest concerns is that humans will lose control of the systems they created, a view shared by prominent AI scientists Max Tegmark and Yoshua Bengio.

The avian flu has recently killed as many as 15 birds at the Queens and Bronx zoos, officials confirmed.

The rash of infections has also killed a red-tailed hawk in the Bronx and a great horned owl in Queens, according to records from the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Three hooded merganser ducks died at the Queens Zoo of avian flu. Nine wild birds and three ”collection ducks” that died at the Bronx Zoo may have been exposed to the virus, and lab tests are pending.

”Vulnerable bird species” were moved to protected areas as curators and vets work with city, state and federal regulators, a Wildlife Conservation Society spokesperson said, adding that the zoos remain open and there's ”little” chance of humans being exposed to the virus.

A deceased flock of Canada geese found in Mount Pleasant, about 16 miles from the Bronx Zoo, were also being tested for the presence of avian flu.

The deaths in the wild bird population come as workers at live poultry markets begin shutting down and disinfecting their businesses on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s orders. There are roughly 84 live bird markets in New York City.

New details and growing shock over emaciated hostages renewed pressure to extend the fragile Gaza ceasefire.

Talks on the second phase, meant to see more hostages released and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, were due to start Feb. 3. But Israel and Hamas appear to have made little progress, even as Israeli forces withdrew Sunday from a Gaza corridor in the latest commitment to the truce.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a delegation to Qatar, a key mediator, but it included low-level officials, sparking speculation that it won’t lead to a breakthrough.

Speaking on Sunday, President Donald Trump repeated his pledge to take control of the Gaza Strip. ”I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it.

”But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back. There’s nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished,” Trump said.

Trump said Arab nations would agree to take in Palestinians and insisted they would leave Gaza if they had a choice. ”They don’t want to return to Gaza if we could give them a home in a safer area. The only reason they’re talking about returning to Gaza is they don’t have an alternative.”

Eeyore was a sad, lonely rescue donkey until a chance encounter with a yoga ball.

Day after day he would exhaust himself pushing, biting, and kicking the yoga ball across his enclosure, until one day the inevitable happened: a hole, a rush of air, and stillness. Homes for Hooves animal rescue shelter in British Columbia, Canada jumped on the case.

Homes for Hooves head Michelle Singleton put out a call to action, hoping that, because many people opt to make donations to her shelter in cash, perhaps others were storing unwanted yoga balls in their closets and would gladly donate them.

The donations rolled in — over 40 yoga balls followed by three rescue donkeys, the chance at regaining a herd that Singleton always hoped would come for the once depressed animal.

Singleton said, having been separated from his kind for his whole adult life, he didn’t know how to behave or what was acceptable. It took six months for him to get the hang of, well, ‘donkeying.’