Russia-Ukraine war: at least 19 injured in drone attack; US ambassador meets with jailed reporter Evan Gershkovich in Moscow – as it happened

Child among people injured in attack in Sumy; Lynne Tracy visits Wall Street Journal reporter in prison after court upholds FSB request to extend his detention

In her regular operational update, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar has re-stated that Ukraine is making incremental gains in both the east and the south, and said that 37.4 sq km (14.4 sq m) of territory had been reclaimed.

On the Telegram messaging app Maliar said Ukrainian forces were advancing in the Bakhmut direction, adding that Russian forces were attacking in the Lyman, Avdiivka and Mariinka directions in the Donetsk region.

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Greek shipwreck does little to dissuade Pakistanis leaving for Europe

Officials in Punjab say they can’t to stop the exodus, as families tell of loved ones lost on the perilous route via Africa and the Mediterranean

In one of the busiest hubs for trafficking in Pakistan, would-be migrants are continuing to leave for Europe despite hundreds of people drowning after a trawler sank off the Greek coast last month, the Guardian has found.

In the past week, at least two more people from the district of Mandi Bahauddin, in eastern Pakistan, have left with the help of traffickers. The continued migration comes as families mourn loved ones believed to be on the Greek shipwreck, most of whose passengers were from Pakistan, and those missing after previous forlorn attempts to reach Europe.

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MPs and peers urge UK government to do more to free jailed activist in Egypt

More than 100 signatories express concern in letter to foreign secretary over lack of progress in case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah

More than 100 MPs and peers have written to the foreign secretary to express concern over the lack of progress to free a jailed British-Egyptian activist.

It comes seven months after the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, shook hands with Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, while Alaa Abd el-Fattah was close to death due to a hunger strike.

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Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years

At least eight Palestinians killed and dozens injured as major Israeli offensive targets city of Jenin

Israel has launched a major aerial and ground offensive into the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, its biggest military operation in the Palestinian territory in years, in what it described as an “extensive counter-terrorism effort”.

At least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 injured, 10 seriously, in the attack that began at about 1am on Monday, and the death toll is likely to rise, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

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Crowds gather at French town halls to show solidarity as protests ease

People turn out across the country to support local government after arrests on Sunday fell to 49 from 719 on Saturday

Violent protests in France over the police shooting of teenager Nahel M appeared to ease after five nights of unrest as crowds gathered at town halls across the country to show solidarity with local governments targeted in the violence.

Police made 49 arrests nationwide on Sunday, French media reported, citing the interior ministry, down significantly from 719 arrests the day before, and 1,300 on Friday.

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Mother of Cheshire boy, 7, kidnapped by father says Saudi lawyers ‘too scared’ to help

Exclusive: Ranem Elkhalidi meeting Foreign Office officials this week as she continues fight to bring her son home

A woman whose seven-year-old son was kidnapped by his father and taken to Saudi Arabia has said lawyers in the country are too afraid to get involved with her case, as she prepares for a meeting with the Foreign Office this week.

Ranem Elkhalidi has vowed to keep fighting for the safe return of her Cheshire-born son Ibrahim, who was taken from his primary school six months ago by her estranged husband, Hamzah Faraj, a Saudi national, in breach of a court order.

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Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina dies after being wounded in Kramatorsk strike

Author who had been working to document Russian war crimes since the invasion was hospitalised with skull fractures after Tuesday’s missile strike

An award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher wounded in a Russian missile strike on a restaurant last week has died, the freedom of expression group PEN has said.

Victoria Amelina, 37, was wounded when a Russian missile destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing 12 people, including four children, and wounding dozens.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 495 of the invasion

Ukrainian and Russian troops both advancing in different areas amid ‘fierce fighting’, says Kyiv; Biden to visit UK and Finland on Nato summit trip

Ukraine has said Russian troops are advancing in four areas in the east of the country amid “fierce fighting” but reports that Kyiv’s forces are moving forward in the south. Russian troops were advancing near Avdiivka, Mariinka, Lyman and Svatove, said the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar. “Fierce fighting is going on everywhere,” she wrote on social media on Sunday. Russian accounts said Moscow’s forces had repelled Ukrainian attacks near villages ringing Bakhmut and in areas farther south, including the strategic hilltop town of Vuhledar.

The US president, Joe Biden, will travel to Europe in a week for a three-nation trip, including a Nato summit, focused on reinforcing the international coalition backing Ukraine amid its counteroffensive against Russia. Biden is set to depart on Sunday 9 July for Britain and then head to Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, for the meeting of Nato leaders, followed by a one-day visit to Helsinki for talks with his Nordic counterparts, the White House has said.

A top Russian propagandist has accused Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin of going “off the rails” after receiving billions in public funds, as Moscow’s new narrative takes shape after Wagner’s brief mutiny. “Prigozhin has gone off the rails because of big money,” Dmitry Kiselev, one of the main faces of the Russian propaganda machine, said on his weekly television show on Sunday. Prigozhin led his forces in a short-lived rebellion against Russia’s top military brass just over a week ago in a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.

Four civilians were injured by Russian shelling in the southern city of Kherson, the prosecutor general’s office said on Sunday, including two in a direct hit on a high-rise building. Russian forces fired on the residential area from the occupied east bank of the Dnipro River, also reportedly damaging civilian infrastructure.

Award-winning Ukrainian writer and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina, 37, has died after being wounded in a Russian missile strike in Kramatorsk, the freedom of expression group PEN has said. The attack last Tuesday destroyed the Ria Pizza restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city, killing another 12 people, including four children, and wounding dozens.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy paid tribute in Odesa to those serving in the navy on Ukrainian Navy Day on Sunday in a video posted on Twitter. The Ukrainian president said: “The enemy will in no way dictate its terms in the Black Sea.”

Two British peers were among 50 people who attended a party organised by the Russian ambassador to the UK at his residence in west London last month to mark the creation of a Russia independent of the Soviet Union. The Conservative Lord Balfe and crossbencher Lord Skidelsky attended the event at which the Russian envoy, Andrei Kelin, spoke and sought to justify the invasion of Ukraine, according to the Sunday Times.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s media holding company is to shut down, the director of one of its outlets said. Patriot Media, whose most prominent outlet was the RIA FAN news site, had taken a strongly nationalist, pro-Kremlin editorial line while also providing positive coverage of Prigozhin and his Wagner group.

Poland will send 500 police officers to its border with Belarus, Poland’s interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, has said. Warsaw earlier announced a tightening of security because of concerns over the Wagner group’s presence in Belarus.

Energy giants TotalEnergies and Shell have defended activities linked to Russia after a critical report into their trading in natural gas despite the war in Ukraine. The campaign group Global Witness said TotalEnergies was the third-biggest player in Russian liquified natural gas last year and Shell the fourth, behind two Russian companies. Both companies said on Sunday they were tied to ongoing contracts despite pulling out of Russian partnerships after Ukraine was invaded last year.

Russia has cancelled its 2023 Maks international airshow, probably over security concerns after recent uncrewed aerial vehicle attacks inside the country, according to the UK Ministry of Defence’s latest intelligence report.

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France riots: calmer night reported despite 700 arrests

Grandmother of Nahel M calls for calm as 45,000 police and gendarmes deployed in fifth night of rioting

The grandmother of a teenage boy, whose fatal shooting by police sparked five nights of rioting in France, has called for calm as authorities said the scale and intensity of the violence appeared to be waning, despite an arson attempt on a mayor’s home.

Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, said the police deployment would be unchanged, with 45,000 officers on duty around the country, after protesters again torched cars, looted shops, damaged infrastructure and clashed with police on Saturday night.

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Ukrainian forces gradually advance on Bakhmut; four people injured after shelling in Kherson – as it happened

Eastern Command spokesperson says Ukrainian forces are ‘pressuring’ Russian troops in Donetsk Oblast; Russian shelling hits residential area. says Ukraine

Poland will send 500 police officers to its border with Belarus, the Polish minister of the interior, Mariusz Kaminski, said on Sunday, Reuters reports.

“Due to the tense situation on the border with Belarus I have decided to bolster our forces with 500 Polish police officers from preventive and counterterrorism units,” he wrote on Twitter.

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Baltimore shooting: two dead and dozens injured in US city

Two adults killed and 28 wounded in incident, according to local police who are still searching for shooter

Two people have been killed and 28 wounded in a mass shooting in Baltimore, including three who are in critical condition, police have said.

The Baltimore Police Department acting commissioner, Richard Worley, confirmed there were a total of 30 victims during a press conference at the scene on Sunday. Police said they were still looking for the shooter.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

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British peers attended Russian ambassador’s party in London

Lords Balfe and Skidelsky were at event in June where ambassador sought to justify Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine

Two British peers were among 50 people who attended a party organised by the Russian ambassador to the UK at his opulent residence in west London last month, to mark the creation of a Russia independent of the Soviet Union.

Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador, spoke at the event where he sought to justify his country’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, while those attending included the Conservative Lord Balfe and cross-bencher Lord Skidelsky.

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South African Zulu king’s entourage denies ‘poisoning’ rumours

Confusion as spokesperson says reports Misuzulu Zulu in hospital after falling ill were untrue

Uncertainty reigned on Sunday over the health of South Africa’s Zulu king, the head of the country’s most influential traditional monarchy, with his spokesperson denying reports he had been hospitalised.

Misuzulu Zulu, 48, ascended the throne last year after the death of his father, Goodwill Zwelithini, amid a bitter feud over the royal succession.

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Israel’s far-right government fans the flames of vigilante settler violence

Religious nationalists emboldened now their representatives are major players in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new administration

Five bullet holes now scar the walls and window of Hummus Restaurant, a modest fast food outlet near the settlement of Eli on the Israeli-built highway running the length of the occupied West Bank.

On 20 June two gunmen affiliated with Hamas, the militant group in control of the Gaza Strip, shot and killed four people here in one of the worst attacks committed by Palestinians against Israelis in years. The incident was triggered by a huge Israeli army raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, which killed five people. The restaurant attack in turn led to a revenge rampage the next day by Israeli settlers on neighbouring Palestinian villages, in which one person was killed and about 30 homes and 60 cars set alight.

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Second world war British fighter planes unearthed in Ukraine

Remains of eight Hurricanes dating back to 1940s conflict found south of Kyiv

Authorities in Ukraine have discovered the remains of eight British Hurricane fighter planes dating back to the second world war.

The aircraft, found near an unexploded bomb dating from the same conflict in a forest south of Kyiv, were sent to the Soviet Union by Britain after Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941.

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‘Some never came back’: how Russians hunted down veterans of Donbas conflict

Exclusive: Ukrainians who fought against separatists tell of kidnap and torture by invaders; the fate of hundreds of others is a mystery

Viktor Kushyn knew Russian soldiers were after him. He sensed it from the first day of Moscow’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February last year, when Russians occupied his village in the Kharkiv region.

So when two Russian service personnel stopped him in the street one morning in May 2022, he didn’t resist. He spent the next few days locked in a cellar with other men who, like him, had fought against Russian-backed separatists between 2014 and 2022 in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

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UK to breach Iran nuclear deal with refusal to lift sanctions

Decision by UK and other European powers comes amid uncertainty over future of 2015 agreement

The UK and other European powers are expected to announce plans to breach the 2015 Iran nuclear deal for the first time when they confirm they are not going to lift sanctions on Tehran’s use of missiles this October as required in the agreement.

Donald Trump took the US out of the nuclear deal in 2018, but Germany, France and the UK remained inside the deal, even though Iran responded to the US walkout by breaching the agreed limits on the quality and quantity of enriched uranium. Iran is closer to producing weapons-grade uranium than ever before.

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‘Times have changed’: New York’s veteran subway announcer on coming out as trans

Bernie Wagenblast’s voice is known to millions of passengers on the AirTrain service. Now, at 66, she’s happy with a new life

One of the first voices millions of commuting New Yorkers hear each morning is the measured tone of former traffic reporter Bernie Wagenblast reminding them to stand away from the platform edge. Wagenblast, AKA “the voice of New York”, reminds AirTrain passengers at JFK or Newark that the doors are closing, and hosts a podcast about infrastructure, including episodes on Ohio’s bridges and wildlife crossings in Oregon. But that neutrally pan-American male voice, honed by years of practice to impart clarity and authority but not alarm, is changing.

Earlier this year, Wagenblast, 66, went on the radio to present herself publicly as a transgender woman, and has this month been participating in US Pride celebrations with gusto, including the march at Asbury Park on the Jersey shore. Wagenblast is still Bernie, but that’s now derived from Bernadette, not Bernard.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 494 of the invasion

Putin’s admission of funding Wagner could open doors for war crimes trial; Zelenskiy warns of ‘serious threat’ at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Vladimir Putin’s admission that the Wagner group had been “fully funded” by the Russian state could make it easier for an international court to prosecute him for war crimes, experts in international law have said. In the year to May 2023 alone, Wagner reportedly received more than 86bn roubles from the state budget, or over a billion dollars.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned that a “serious threat” remains at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and that Russia is “technically ready” to provoke a localised explosion at the facility. Zelenskiy cited Ukrainian intelligence as the source of his information and called for greater international attention to the situation at the facility, the largest nuclear plant in Europe.

Air defence systems were engaged early on Sunday in repelling a Russian air attack on Kyiv, Ukraine’s air force said. Witnesses heard blasts resembling the sound of air defence systems hitting targets, but there was no immediate information about potential damage.

A 51-year-old man has been killed and two others injured by shelling in Mala Tokmachka, a village near the frontline in the south-eastern region of Zaporizhia, local officials said. The head of the local military administration, Yuriy Malashko, described the site as a “frontline community under merciless enemy fire”.

US president Joe Biden will host Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson next week to talk about transatlantic security cooperation and the war in Ukraine, the White House said. The two leaders “will review our growing security cooperation and reaffirm their view that Sweden should join Nato as soon as possible”.

Austria, a neutral country, announced its intention to join the European Sky Shield initiative, launched in 2022 by Germany against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer said the decision did not call into question the neutrality of the country but cited “a threat that has considerably worsened”. “We must and will take precautions to protect our country against the risk of drone or missile attacks,” he said.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez pledged the EU’s “unequivocal” support for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv on the first day of Spain assuming presidency of the bloc. Sanchez said his visit “demonstrates a clear and unequivocal political commitment” to Ukraine’s bid to join the EU.

Ukrainian president Zelenskiy has expressed frustration over the slow deliveries of weapons and lack of clarity over pilot training by “some” western nations. “There is no schedule of training missions. I believe that some partners are dragging their feet. Why are they doing it? I don’t know,” Zelenskiy said.

Two children have been injured in the Russian shelling of a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to the regional governor. A nine-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy were injured and are receiving medical treatment.

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‘We are seen as less human’: inside Marseille’s districts abandoned by the police

In 2021 Emmanuel Macron promised victims of the city’s drug crime he would help. Grieving residents tell how he failed them

Inside, Emmanuel Macron was sharing a typically polished vision of a rejuvenated, safer Marseille. Yet it was outside the spruced-up gym in the impoverished Busserine district - tensions building on the hottest day of the year – where the real story was playing out.

Little more than 12 hours before the police killing of a 17-year-old boy 500 miles north in Nanterre would convulse the country, scores of officers clutching assault rifles and bulletproof riot shields clashed with teenagers of north African descent, trading insults as officers profiled potential troublemakers.

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