Russia defaults on debt for first time since 1998 – reports

Kremlin owes about $40bn but has been shut out of international financial system since invasion of Ukraine

Russia is poised to default on its debt for the first time since 1998, further alienating the country from the global financial system after sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.

The country missed a deadline of Sunday night to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments of $100m (£81.2m) on two eurobonds due originally on 27 May, Bloomberg reported on Monday morning.

Continue reading...

Japanese told to turn off lights to save energy amid Tokyo heatwave

Extreme temperatures forecast for capital this week after premature end to rainy season

Japan’s government has warned tens of millions of people in the Tokyo region to save energy or face power cuts, as the capital battles record June temperatures after a premature end to the rainy season.

Temperatures of 35C (95 degrees Fahrenheit) were forecast in the city throughout the day, with similarly extreme weather expected for the rest of the week, according to the Japanese meteorological agency.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian spouses in Gaza suffer from double conflict

Women who relocated to Gaza are unable to visit or contact family, and face similar problems in their adoptive home

For more than a decade, Natalya Hassoumi’s family in Ukraine have worried about her safety in the Gaza Strip; they have been unable to reach her for days at a time while airstrikes have pummelled the isolated Palestinian territory. Now, Hassoumi is experiencing something similar. She has not heard from her parents and siblings in Russian-occupied Kherson for three weeks.

“I think the Russians must be making people switch to using Russian networks and sim cards, but I don’t know what’s happening,” the 41-year-old doctor said. “It’s very hard not knowing.”

Continue reading...

Collapse of bullfight stands in Colombia leaves four dead, hundreds injured

Chaos overtakes city of Espinal after wood and bamboo stands collapse during cultural festival

At least four people were killed and hundreds injured in Colombia on Sunday after spectator stands at a bullfight collapsed, authorities said.

The bull reportedly escaped from the plaza hosting the spectacle and was causing panic in the streets of Espinal, Tolima, a city of nearly 60,000 people about 145km (90 miles) south-west of Bogotá, the capital.

Continue reading...

‘There is a lot of excitement’: Tour de France comes to Denmark

Anticipation mounts in greatest cycling nation in the world for world’s greatest cycling race

Cycle paths have been painted yellow, knitting enthusiasts have made a giant yellow jersey, and preparations are being made for a flotilla of boats flying yellow flags. The “big yellow party” comes to Denmark on 1 July when the country widely regarded as the best in the world for cyclists hosts the opening stage of the world’s greatest cycling race.

The Tour de France was originally slated to start in Copenhagen in 2021, but was transferred to Brest in response to a Covid-related scheduling conflict with the European Championships.

Continue reading...

Gold miner in Canada finds mummified 35,000-year-old woolly mammoth

Discovery in the Klondike ranks as the most complete mummified mammal found in the Americas

It was a young miner, digging through the northern Canadian permafrost in the seemingly aptly named Eureka Creek, who sounded the alarm when his front-end loader struck something unexpected in the Klondike gold fields.

What he had stumbled upon would later be described by the territory’s palaeontologist as “one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world”: a stunningly preserved carcass of a baby woolly mammoth thought to be more than 35,000 years old.

Continue reading...

‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversal

Top Democrats again call for appointing additional justices to blunt conservative super-majority which made ruling possible

Leading Democrats on Sunday continued calling the supreme court’s legitimacy into question after it took away the nationwide right to abortion last week, and some again lobbied for appointing additional justices to the panel so as to blunt the conservative super-majority which made the controversial ruling possible.

The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggested to ABC’s This Week that there was urgency to do that because supreme court justice Clarence Thomas indicated within Friday’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that he’s open to reconsidering precedents guaranteeing contraception, same-sex marriage rights and consensual gay sex.

Continue reading...

Murdered British journalist Dom Phillips laid to rest in Brazil

My brother was killed because he tried to tell the world what was happening to the rainforest, says Sian Phillips

The British journalist Dom Phillips has been laid to rest in Brazil, exactly three weeks after he was gunned down while journeying through the Amazon with the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.

Pereira and Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, disappeared while travelling on the Itaquaí River on Sunday 5 June.

Continue reading...

British Muslim travel agencies in uproar over Saudi hajj changes

Saudi Arabia tells pilgrims to use new online system and to seek refunds from any agencies they have already paid

British Muslim travel companies have said they face going out of business, with travellers potentially losing thousands of pounds, after Saudi Arabia launched a new system for applying for the hajj pilgrimage.

The Saudi government announced this month that pilgrims from Europe, the US and Australia could no longer book through travel agencies and would instead have to apply through a lottery system.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: one killed as Kyiv hit by missile strikes; G7 leaders gather in Germany – live updates

Strikes hit Shevchenkivskiy district of Ukraine capital, says mayor Vitali Klitschko; G7 leaders to discuss energy and food crisis at Bavarian retreat

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, says two people have been taken to hospital after Sunday morning’s missile strikes, with search and rescue operations continuing. In a Telegram post, Klitschko said people may still be trapped under rubble at a residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district.

Some of the dozens of long-range Russian missile strikes on Saturday were, for the first time, launched from Tu-22 bombers deployed from Belarus, Ukraine’s military says.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 123 of the invasion

Kyiv under attack as G7 leaders meet in Germany; focus of Russia’s campaign shifts to Lysychansk

Kyiv has come under attack for the first time since 5 June, with Russian missiles striking at residential buildings and a Kindergarten in the Shevchenkivskyi district of the capital. At least five people were injured, including a seven-year-old girl. There are unconfirmed reports that her father was killed in the attack. A Russian woman was among the injured.

Another civilian was killed in a missile attack on Cherkasy south-east of the capital. A bridge over the Dnipro river was also hit.

Both the attacks on Kyiv and Cherkasy are being seen message of defiance by Russia to G7 leaders gathering at a summit in Bavaria, Germany. Russia said it hit military targets in Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Lviv. Joe Biden condemned the Russian attacks as “more barbarism”. Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz said they showed the importance of G7 unity.

Members of the G7 have confirmed a ban on imports of Russian gold. The move by Britain, the United States, Japan and Canada is part of efforts to tighten the sanctions squeeze on Moscow. Gold exports were worth $15.2bn to Russia in 2021, and their importance has increased since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UK and France have agreed to provide more support for Ukraine, according to Downing Street. Leaders of the G7 have spoken of their solidarity for Ukraine. “We have to stay together,” Joe Biden said.

Russian forces are trying to cut off the strategic twin city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, having reduced Sievierodonetsk to rubble. Lysychansk is set to become the next main focus of fighting, as Moscow has launched massive artillery bombardments and airstrikes on areas far from the heart of the eastern battles. Ukraine called its retreat from Sievierodonetsk a “tactical withdrawal” to fight from higher ground in Lysychansk on the opposite bank of the Siverskyi Donets river.

Russian news footage has showed defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s visiting troops involved in the Ukraine war. It is unclear if he visited Ukrainian territory, but the footage appeared to confirm that colonel-general Gennady Zhidko is now commanding troops in Ukraine.

The mayors of several European capitals have been duped into holding video calls with a deepfake of their counterpart in Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. The mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey, took part in a scheduled call on the Webex video conferencing platform on Friday with a person she said looked and sounded like Klitschko. “There were no signs that the video conference call wasn’t being held with a real person,” her office said in a statement.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Saturday that Ukraine will win back all the cities it has lost to Russia, including Sievierodonetsk. “All our cities – Sievierodonetsk, Donetsk, Luhansk – we’ll get them all back,” he said in a late-night video address. Zelenskiy also admitted that the war was becoming difficult to handle emotionally.

Continue reading...

Oslo shootings won’t stop fight against hate, says Norway’s prime minister

Jonas Gahr Støre joined mourners, church leaders and royalty at the memorial service to the victims of the attack

Fatal shootings at a gay bar in Oslo would not halt the fight against “discrimination, prejudice and hate”, Norway’s prime minister has said, as the country paid tribute to the victims of the attack in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The altar and aisles of the Norwegian capital’s cathedral were draped with rainbow flags for a special memorial service on Sunday attended by mourners, government ministers, church leaders and Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

Continue reading...

Concerns that India is ‘back door’ into Europe for Russian oil

Volume of Russian crude bought and then exported by India suggests some of it may end up in European petrol stations

The huge blue and red hull of the SCF Primorye came into port at Vadinar, western Gujarat, India, earlier this month. The 84,000-tonne oil tanker, built in 2009 and sailing under the Liberian flag, had arrived from the port at Ust-Luga, a settlement in Russia near the border with Estonia.

Until 2017, the Vadinar oil refinery was controlled by Essar – the Indian owner of the Stanlow refinery in Ellesmere Port. Since then a consortium including the sanctioned Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft and the commodities trader Trafigura, which holds a 24.5% stake, have owned Nayara Energy, which runs the refinery.

Continue reading...

Calls for investigation over deaths in Moroccan-Spanish border crossing

NGOs say toll could be as high as 37 after hundreds of people break into border control area in attempt to reach Melilla enclave

Human rights campaigners in Spain and Morocco have called for investigations to be launched in both countries after a mass attempt to scale the border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla left at least 23 people dead.

Spanish officials said about 2,000 Africans made their way to the iron fence at dawn on Friday, with more than 500 managing to slip into a border control area after cutting an opening with shears.

Continue reading...

Boris Johnson warns of risk of fatigue in west’s support for Ukraine

At G7 summit, PM pushes for renewed sanctions and says he would welcome a visit to UK by Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Boris Johnson has warned about the likelihood of “fatigue” among western nations over continued support for Ukraine, as he began talks at the G7 summit in Germany, where he hopes to push for renewed sanctions against Russia.

Before the first day of the annual gathering of political leaders, held amid ultra-tight security in the Bavarian countryside, Johnson also hailed a new international ban on importing Russia gold.

Continue reading...

Ghislaine Maxwell put on suicide watch, but isn’t suicidal, ahead of sentencing

Move prompts Maxwell’s attorney to seek to postpone her sentencing because she can’t properly prepare for the hearing

Guards at the federal prison where Ghislaine Maxwell awaits her sentencing for her role in an elaborate child sexual abuse case have placed her on suicide watch, though she isn’t suicidal, according to court records.

The move prompted the British socialite’s attorney to write a letter telling the judge in the case that Maxwell would seek to postpone her sentencing Tuesday because she can’t properly prepare for the hearing. Prison officials on Friday took away Maxwell’s legal papers – along with her regular clothes, toothpaste and soap – while putting her in solitary confinement and on suicide watch, said the letter from her attorney Bobby Sternheim.

Continue reading...

G7 grapples with packed agenda of world turned upside down

Analysis: A price cap on Russian oil and potential famine in Africa are among issues pressing for attention

A price cap on Russian oil, deferral of climate change commitments, a potential famine in Africa and the further supply of weapons to Ukraine are to crowd into a meeting of G7 world leaders over the next three days held against the backdrop of the biggest geopolitical crisis since 1945.

The agenda reveals how the world has been turned upside down since leaders of the industrialised nations last met in Cornwall a year ago in a summit chaired by Britain, largely to focus on the threat posed by China.

Continue reading...

Capitol attack hearings: if Republicans did nothing wrong, why were pardons sought?

The email from Alabama’s Mo Brooks potentially reveals what conduct by lawmakers he feared might be criminal

When the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack revealed the evidence that showed Republican members of Congress sought preemptive presidential pardons after January 6, one of the most striking requests came from Congressman Mo Brooks.

The request from Brooks to the Trump White House came in an 11 January 2021 email – obtained by the Guardian – that asked for all-purpose, preemptive pardons for lawmakers involved in objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

Continue reading...

‘Very, very modest’: Johnson vs Trudeau on whose private jet is smaller

With the official UK plane in use by Prince Charles, Canada Force One pips prime minister’s stand-in Airbus A321 by 2 metres

If you are a billionaire, it is standard to insist your private jet is the larger. For prime ministers, however, it is seemingly more politically expedient to argue the opposite.

Such was the narrative as Boris Johnson met the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, for a bilateral meeting on the first day of the G7 conference of major industrialised nations in southern Germany.

Continue reading...

‘Dom Phillips was natural storyteller – for us, he was always Uncle Dom’

Nieces of journalist killed in the Amazon pay tribute to their uncle, who sent frequent and funny emails about life in Brazil

Dom Phillips was a storyteller. Through his career as a journalist, he told the stories of those who were unable to speak out and whose views were overlooked. His second book, How to Save the Amazon, aimed to do exactly this – to speak the story of the Amazon and the Indigenous people within it, and provide solutions to preserve their culture in conjunction with current Brazilian society.

For us, however, he was always Uncle Dom. He has been present in our lives since we were born and was very much involved with our upbringing when we were small children. He remained a positive influence, even when he moved to Brazil in 2007.

Continue reading...