内容摘要：A staff member sprays an elephant with water at the animal refuge Ostok Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Culiacan, Mexico, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A staff member sprays an elephant with water at the animal refuge Ostok Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Culiacan, Mexico, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had announced plans to lift the sanctions last week. She said the move was “conditional” and that sanctions could be resumed if the new government of Ahmad al-Sharaa - a former rebel commander who led the charge that unseated Assad in December - doesn’t keep the peace.Kallas said in a statement Wednesday that removing sanctions “is simply the right thing to do, at this historic time, for the EU to genuinely support Syria’s recovery and a political transition that fulfils the aspirations of all Syrians.”

Wednesday’s decision slapped “restrictive measures” on two people and three armed groups that were accused of “targeting civilians and especially the Alawite community” - referring to the religious minority to which Assad belongs - during violence in March on the coast and of torture and “arbitrary killings of civilians.”Clashes erupted at the time after a group of Assad loyalists attacked security forces near the coastal city of Latakia. Rights groups reported widespread revenge killings as militants from Syria’s Sunni majority - some of them officially affiliated with the new government’s security forces - targeted Alawites, regardless of whether they were involved in the insurgency. Hundreds of civilians were killed.The new government in Damascus has promised to hold perpetrators accountable, but a body formed to investigate the violence has yet to release its findings. While there have not been large-scale attacks on Alawites since March, members of the community

and say that individual incidents of kidnappings and killing continue to take place.The two people targeted by the new sanctions are Mohammad Hussein al-Jasim, leader of the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade, and Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr, leader of the Hamza Division, both armed groups that the EU said had taken part in the attacks. The militias were also slapped with new sanctions, as was another armed group, the Sultan Murad Division.

Since seizing power, al-Sharaa’s government has struggled to weld a patchwork of undisciplined former rebel factions together into a national army.

The lifting of the broader sanctions on Syria comes days after the United States granted Syria sweeping exemptions from sanctions in a first step toward fulfilling President Donald Trump’s pledge to lift a half-century of penalties on a country shattered by 13 years of civil war. A measure by the U.S. State Department waived for six months a tough set of sanctions imposed by Congress in 2019.A stray bobtail cat rests at a park in Nagasaki, southern Japan, on April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia’s mayor honored actor and producer Quinta Brunson with a key to the city Wednesday in a ceremony dedicating a separate mural at Brunson’s alma mater, which was the inspiration for her show “Abbott Elementary.”The producer, writer and comedian gazed at the shiny key handed to her by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and quipped: “Wow! I want to ask the question on everybody’s mind: What does it open?”

Brunson used the ceremony held at Andrew Hamilton School to celebrate the power of public education, public schoolteachers and music and arts education. Her parents and siblings were in attendance, along with Joyce Abbott, the teacher who inspired the name of the show’s fictional school, the “real life Gregory” and other teachers and classmates.The mural, titled Blooming Features, was created by artist Athena Scott with input from Brunson and Hamilton students and staff. Its brightly colored depictions of real people from the school wrap around the outside of the school’s red brick facade.