French President Emmanuel Macron painted a veneer of European unity by inviting a small number of handpicked European leaders to the Élysée Palace, while the Trump administration sidelined the continent by moving ahead with direct negotiations on Tuesday (Feb. 18) with Russia on the war in Ukraine. Three hours of emergency talks at the Elysee Palace in Paris left leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, NATO and the European Union without a common view on possible peacekeeping troops after a US diplomatic blitz on Ukraine threw a once-solid trans-Atlantic alliance into turmoil.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for US backing while reaffirming he's ready to consider sending British forces on the Ukrainian ground alongside others "if there is a lasting peace agreement." There was a rift though with some EU nations, like Poland, which have said they don't want their military imprint on Ukraine soil. French President Emmanuel Macron was non-committal.

Egyptologists have discovered the first tomb of a pharaoh since Tutankhamun's was uncovered over a century ago. King Thutmose II's tomb was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty. A British-Egyptian team has located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th dynasty pharaohs were more than 2km away, closer to the Valley of the Kings.

The crew found it in an area associated with the resting places of royal women, but when they got into the burial chamber they found it decorated - the sign of a pharaoh. "Part of the ceiling was still intact: a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in kings' tombs," said the field director of the mission Dr Piers Litherland. Thutmose II was an ancestor of Tutankhamun, whose reign is believed to have been from about 1493 to 1479 BC.

At least 18 people, including 14 women, were killed in a stampede at a railway station in India's capital of New Delhi, the Press Trust of India news agency reported Sunday. Many of the victims were Hindu pilgrims who were traveling to the Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj in northern India, according to Delhi's caretaker chief minister, Atishi, who uses only one name. The stampede happened late Saturday (Feb. 15) while thousands of people were gathered at the New Delhi railway station waiting to board a train.

The incident occurred after some passengers slipped and fell on others while coming down from a footbridge that connects train platforms, authorities said. Sheela Devi, who was at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narain Hospital in New Delhi to collect her daughter-in-law's body, said an announcement about a change of train platforms created confusion among the passengers that led to the stampede. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he was "distressed by the stampede."

A man regarded as the first openly gay Muslim imam was fatally shot while sitting in a car in South Africa in what many are calling an assassination because of his teachings. Muhsin Hendricks was ambushed by two men in a pick-up truck while visiting the southern city of Gqeberha on Saturday. Police said the men involved in the killing had their faces covered. A security video of the shooting shows one of them jumping out of their vehicle, running up to the car Hendricks was in and firing a pistol multiple times through a side window. Police said Hendricks was with a driver, who survived.

Police have not established a motive for the killing, but political parties and LGBTQ+ organizations say Hendricks was targeted because he started a mosque in Cape Town for gay Muslims and called for members of the LGBTQ+ community to be welcomed into Islam. Homosexuality is forbidden in Islam.