Fox Corp (FOXA.O) Chairman Rupert Murdoch is set to be questioned under oath on Tuesday in a defamation lawsuit over his network’s coverage of unfounded vote-rigging claims during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Election technology company Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from Fox News Network, which it alleges spread false claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Republican Donald Trump and in favor of his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Fox has argued that it had a right to report on Trump’s claims of vote manipulation and that Dominion’s lawsuit would stifle press freedom. A judge rejected the network’s bid to toss the case in December 2021. A Fox spokesperson declined to comment.

“From the highest levels down, Fox knowingly spread lies,” Dominion said in a statement.

Murdoch, 91, is the most high-profile figure to face questioning in the case, which is part of a multi-front legal campaign by Dominion against Fox and other conservative outlets and commentators who accused the company of conspiring to oust Trump.

The deposition comes as special committees of the boards of directors for News Corp (NWSA.O) and Murdoch-controlled Fox Corp consider a proposal from Murdoch to re-combine, nearly a decade after the companies split.

Murdoch will be questioned via videoconference on Tuesday and Wednesday by lawyers for Dominion, according to a filing in Delaware Superior Court. The session will not be open to the public.

Dominion has also sought communications from Murdoch, his son Lachlan Murdoch and other Fox News personnel as it looks to prove that the network either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice,” which public figures must prove in order to prevail in defamation cases.

Doug Mirell, a defamation lawyer who has followed the litigation, said he believes Dominion has an “air-tight” case for actual malice because Fox hosts pressed forward with vote-rigging allegations “well after it was quite clear that these claims were demonstrably false.”

Dominion alleged in its March 2021 lawsuit that Fox amplified the false theories to boost its ratings and stay abreast of hard-right competitors including One America News Network, which Dominion is also suing. The complaint cited instances where, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell appeared on Fox News and falsely claimed Dominion software may have manipulated vote counts in favor of Biden.

On Nov. 30, 2020, for example, Powell appeared on Sean Hannity’s program, where she falsely stated that Dominion machines “ran an algorithm that shaved off votes from Trump and awarded them to Biden. And they used the machines to trash large batches of votes that should have been awarded to President Trump.”

Murdoch’s high-stakes deposition on Tuesday comes as Dominion has spent the past several months questioning a parade of Fox News hosts, executives and producers.

On Dec. 5, Murdoch’s eldest son and executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp (FOXA.O), Lachlan, sat for a deposition in Los Angeles. Murdoch’s other son, James Murdoch, was questioned in October.

Fox hosts and co-hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro and Bret Baier have also been questioned in recent months, court records show, as well as former host Lou Dobbs. Fox News Chief Executive Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace have also sat for depositions.

A five-week trial in the case is scheduled to begin on April 17.

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The European Parliament took steps on Tuesday to strip lawmaker Eva Kaili of her senior assembly post after she and others faced charges that World Cup host Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decisions, charges she has denied.

Kaili, a Greek politician and one of 14 vice presidents in the parliament, was among four people arrested in Belgium at the weekend over the scandal that has triggered outrage in Brussels and risks denting the EU’s image at home and abroad.

The case, in which police uncovered bundles of cash, some of it in a suitcase in a hotel, casts a shadow over the European Parliament which seeks to be a moral compass in Brussels, taking EU governments to task and criticising global rights abuses.

Qatar has denied any wrongdoing.

The parliament acted quickly to loosen ties with Kaili.

“The integrity of @Europarl_EN comes first and foremost,” President Roberta Metsola tweeted as she announced the unanimous vote by leaders of the assembly’s political groups to remove Kaili from the vice president’s role.

Parliament is expected to confirm the decision in a vote at about noon (1100 GMT), although Kaili will remain a lawmaker.

“Her position is that she is innocent, I can tell you that,” Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, Kaili’s lawyer in Greece, told Open TV in a first public comment. “She has nothing to do with financing from Qatar, nothing – explicitly and unequivocally”.

Several EU states including Germany, said the EU’s credibility was at stake. Countries which have faced assembly from the assembly, including EU member Hungary, said it had lost the moral high ground.

“From now on the European Parliament will not be able to speak about corruption in a credible manner,” Hungary Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on Facebook.

Belgian police searched 19 homes and the offices of the parliament from Friday to Monday as part of their investigation and seized computers, mobile phones and cash, some of it found in a suitcase in a hotel room.

Belgian prosecutors said they had suspected for more than four months that a Gulf state was trying to buy influence in Brussels. Although no state was publicly named by prosecutors, a source with knowledge of the case said it was Qatar.

Several European lawmakers called for Kaili to quit.

“Given the extent of the corruption scandal, it is the least we could expect of her,” said MEP Manon Aubry, who co-chairs the Left group.

Manfred Weber, of the conservative European’s People Party, said: “Our colleagues at the European Parliament have been deeply shocked. These developments represent a heavy burden.”

The Greek authorities on Monday froze Kaili’s assets in Greece.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was expected to appear before a magistrate in the Bahamas on Tuesday as U.S. authorities prepared to unveil criminal and civil charges against the former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.

The hearing in the Bahamas a day after his arrest there would be Bankman-Fried’s first in-person public appearance since the stunning collapse of FTX, which filed for bankruptcy in November after struggling to raise money as traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours.

Police in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, said the 30-year-old was arrested after 6 p.m. on Monday (2300 GMT) at his luxury gated community called the Albany in the capital, Nassau.

Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement on Monday evening the arrest came at the request of the U.S. government, and an indictment against Bankman-Fried would be unsealed on Tuesday.

A lawyer for Bankman-Fried did not respond to requests for comment.

The Bahamas’ attorney general’s office said it expects him to be extradited to the United States.

It was not immediately clear what would take place at the hearing or whether Bankman-Fried would decide to fight extradition, potentially setting up a high-stakes battle.

Police in the Bahamas said in a statement he was arrested due to “various Financial Offences against laws of the United States, which are also offences” in the Bahamas.

The U.S. charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Bankman-Fried has apologized to customers and acknowledged oversight failings at FTX, but said he doesn’t personally think he has any criminal liability.

The charges are expected to come just hours before Bankman-Fried was previously scheduled to testify before Congress about the collapse of the exchange.

He said he was pressured into nominating John Ray as the new chief executive by the lawyers advising his firm at the time, according to a draft of his prepared remarks seen by Reuters.

Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019 and rode a cryptocurrency boom to build it into one of the world’s largest exchanges of the digital tokens. Forbes pegged his net worth a year ago at $26.5 billion, and he became a substantial funder of U.S. political campaigns, media outlets and other causes.

FTX’s liquidity crunch came after Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion in customer funds to his proprietary trading firm, Alameda Research, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. At least $1 billion in customer funds had vanished, the people said.

Bankman-Fried resigned as FTX’s chief executive officer the same day as the bankruptcy filing.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, led by veteran securities fraud prosecutor Williams, in mid-November began investigating how FTX handled customer funds, a source with knowledge of the probe told Reuters.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission separately authorized charges against Bankman-Fried, which will also be filed publicly on Tuesday, SEC official Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.

Ray is expected to tell members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee that the cryptocurrency exchange had “unacceptable management practices” including the commingling of assets and lack of internal controls, according to prepared remarks.

Russia on Tuesday dismissed a peace proposal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that would involve a pullout of Russian troops, saying Kyiv needed to accept new territorial “realities”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those realities included Russia’s addition of four Ukrainian regions as its “new subjects” – annexations it proclaimed in September but which most countries of the United Nations have condemned as illegal.

He was responding to a request by Zelenskiy to leaders from Group of Seven powers on Monday for more military equipment, support for financial and energy stability, and backing for a peace solution that would start with Russia withdrawing troops from Ukraine, beginning this Christmas.

“These are three steps towards a continuation of hostilities,” Peskov said.

“The Ukrainian side needs to take into account the realities that have developed during this time,” he added when asked about the proposed Russian troop withdrawal.

“And these realities indicate that new subjects have appeared in the Russian Federation. They appeared as a result of referendums that took place in these territories. Without taking these new realities into account, no kind of progress is possible.”

There could be “no question” of Russia starting to pull out its troops by the end of the year, he said.

Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed as illegal shams the “referendums” that Peskov referred to in four regions of south and eastern Ukraine that Russia partly occupies, saying they were conducted at gunpoint.

Since the annexations, Russia has lost significant ground in the south and east of Ukraine and has spoken more frequently of its willingness to hold peace talks.

But it says it does not see Ukraine and the West, which is supplying Kyiv with weapons, as ready to negotiate. Moscow has rejected charges that its talk of diplomacy is an attempt to buy time to allow its depleted forces to regroup after nearly 10 months of war and a series of defeats and retreats.

Ukraine says Russia must halt its attacks and withdraw from all territory it has occupied, and Zelenskiy urged G7 leaders on Monday to back his idea of convening a special Global Peace Summit.

The summit would be focused on the implementation of Kyiv’s 10-point peace plan that insists on, among other things, Russia’s withdrawal of all its troops from Ukraine and no territorial concessions on Kyiv’s part.

“No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor that determines how events develop,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Monday.