Antony Blinken says new US sanctions against Russia are in response to Kremlin’s attempt to ‘subvert and polarize free and open societies’. This blog is now closed.
The head of Russia’s security council, Sergei Shoigu, visited North Korea on Friday and met with the country’s leader Kim Jong-un, Reuters reports, citing Interfax.
Reuters has a quick snap that France is to summon Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Paris over the country’s decision to supply further arms to Russia.
Continue reading...Second autopsy to be performed on Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi before funeral in her family’s home town
The body of the slain Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi has landed in Istanbul to continue to its final resting place in her family’s home town on the Aegean coast, with the coffin carried by a procession of Turkish honour guard soldiers.
An autopsy report conducted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Nablus lists Eygi’s cause of death as a brain haemorrhage after a bullet penetrated her skull, as the 26-year-old attended a pro-Palestine protest in nearby Beita.
Continue reading...Police seek to identify intended recipient after drugs found under pallets at four Grand Frais stores
Dozens of kilograms of cocaine have been found in banana deliveries to four of a French supermarket chain’s stores, with police unsure who the intended recipient was.
Staff at Grand Frais branches in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France were astonished to find between 40kg (88lb) and 50kg of drugs hidden under pallets of bananas and were anxious to reassure customers that the cocaine had not come into contact with the fruit.
Continue reading...Protest letter sent to fund’s head over move to send staff to Moscow for first review since invasion of Ukraine
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will send staff to Moscow next week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, in a move that has prompted anger and dismay across European capitals.
Officials of the Washington-based organisation will travel to the Russian capital and meet “stakeholders” before publishing an assessment of the economy and providing recommendations about how the Kremlin might improve its economic handling and tackle issues such as the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Drone operators and a volunteer medic on the ever-changing dynamics on the frontline of the Ukraine incursion
Deep into one recent night, at a Ukrainian mobile drone command point hidden amid the fields and forests close to the border with Russia, the largest of six screens flashed with images of the wiggling course of the River Seym, deep inside Russia on the other side of the border. Straddling the river, a thin band was visible, rendered in white by the night vision imaging: a pontoon bridge.
Inside the command point, Anna, Pavlo and Ivan watched the display intently. “Move in closer,” murmured Ivan, the team’s 48-year-old commander. Pavlo pushed a button and the camera zoomed in. “Yesterday, we destroyed this crossing, but they’ve repaired it again, probably in the last few hours,” he said, picking up his phone to send the information to an encrypted group chat of Ukrainian commanders in the area.
Continue reading...International reaction muted over Russia’s warning about allowing Kyiv to strike it with western-made missiles
European leaders have dismissed Vladimir Putin’s warning that the west would be directly fighting Russia if it allowed Kyiv to strike Russian territory with western-made long-range missiles.
The US and UK are discussing, in conjunction with other allies, allowing Kyiv to strike military targets inside Russia with Storm Shadow missiles, which can hit targets up to 155 miles (250km) from their launch site.
Continue reading...Document detailing ‘deterioration’ under Kais Saied will fuel concerns about bloc’s migration deal with his country
The EU fears its credibility is at stake as it seeks to weigh growing concerns about the crushing of dissent in Tunisia while preserving a controversial migration deal with the north African country, according to a leaked document.
An internal report drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service (EEAS), seen by the Guardian, details “a clear deterioration of the political climate and a shrinking civic space” under the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, who has suspended parliament and concentrated power in his hands since starting his term of office in 2019.
Continue reading...UK PM responds to Putin’s threat that use of long-range British missiles inside Russia would put it at war with Nato
Keir Starmer has told Vladimir Putin that he started the war in Ukraine and could end it at any time after the Russian leader warned that any use of long-range British missiles into Russian territory would put Nato at war with his country.
The prime minister spoke en route to Washington to see US president Joe Biden as he sought to justify a western decision made behind closed doors that would allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia with partly British-made Storm Shadow missiles.
Continue reading...Protests in West Bank village had subsided half an hour before IDF shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, says report
Israeli security forces mischaracterised the events that led up to the fatal shooting of a Turkish-American protester in the West Bank, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed that their soldiers were targeting the leader of a violent protest when they shot Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old member of the International Solidarity Movement who had come from her native Washington state to Israel to protest against settlements in the West Bank.
Continue reading...Comments come after Antony Blinken hints US will lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of weapons inside Russia
Vladimir Putin has said that a western move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be “at war” with Moscow.
Putin spoke as US and UK top diplomats discussed easing rules on firing western weapons into Russia, which Kyiv has been pressing for, more than two and a half years into Moscow’s offensive.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president says his country’s incursion still going to ‘plan’, as Russian forces make rapid advances
Russia says its forces have recaptured 10 settlements after it launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region to push out Ukrainian troops who stormed across the border five weeks ago.
With fierce fighting continuing, Russia’s defence ministry listed the names of 10 settlements it said it had retaken, in a significant blow to Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, acknowledged a Russian counteroffensive had begun.
Continue reading...Dominique Pélicot has been excused from court because of poor health and proceedings could be delayed if he remains ill for a long period
The trial of a French man accused of recruiting strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife has been adjourned until Monday after the suspect was excused from attending in light of his deteriorating health, the court has said.
Should Dominique Pélicot, 71, be unavailable to attend proceedings for a lengthy period of time, then the trial will be postponed to a later date, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, said on Thursday.
Continue reading...Irish building materials firm was identified by Grenfell inquiry as behaving with ‘persistent dishonesty’
A second professional golfer, Leona Maguire, is under pressure to end her sponsorship deal with the Irish company Kingspan after the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster found it behaved with “persistent dishonesty” in selling combustible foam insulation.
Grenfell United (GU), the bereaved and survivors group, is calling on the 29-year-old to drop the firm and stop wearing its logo on her golf shirts after the Ryder Cup player Shane Lowry announced he was doing so earlier this week.
Continue reading...Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was killed while protesting against West Bank settlements, though a witness says she posed no threat
For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and ospreys fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people gathered on the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Michelin, Dunlop, Goodyear and Bridgestone products have found way to Russia via intermediaries
More than $30m (£23m) worth of aircraft tyres made by western manufacturers including the French firm Michelin and Britain’s Dunlop were imported into Russia last year via intermediaries despite attempts to ban the trade, according to a Ukrainian government agency.
Russian aviation is critically dependent on foreign-made tyres and, according to the available customs records, the vast majority imported into the country in 2023 were produced by companies headquartered in France, Britain, the US and Japan.
Continue reading...Decision understood to have already been made in private as secretary of state says in Kyiv that US will continue to adapt policy
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private.
Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had “from day one” been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. “We will continue to do this,” he emphasised.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For more on this story, you can read our full report:
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said Moscow will destroy any new deliveries of long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine by the United States, Reuters reported citing the state TASS news agency.
The State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said “the U.S. and UK stand united with Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and freedom.”
Continue reading...Trial of Dominique Pélicot hears that he allegedly provided sedatives to man he had met in a chatroom
The trial of a French man who recruited dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife has heard how another man living in the same area copied the tactics to drug and rape his own wife.
Dominique Pélicot, 71, is on trial in the southern city of Avignon for repeatedly raping, and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape, his heavily sedated wife in her own bed over a period of a decade in the southern village of Mazan. Fifty other men aged between 26 and 74 are also on trial for their alleged involvement.
Continue reading...Patients and relatives turn on doctors and nurses, with 16,000 reports of physical and verbal assaults in 2023 alone
Doctors’ and nurses’ unions in Italy have called for authorities to consider bringing the army into hospitals in response to an increase in attacks by patients and their relatives that provoked outrage across the country.
In one of the latest, captured on video and widely shared on social media, doctors and nurses were forced to barricade themselves in a room at the Policlinico hospital in Foggia, in the southern region of Puglia, on Friday after about 50 relatives and friends of a 23-year-old woman who died after an emergency operation turned on medical staff. Some healthcare workers were injured, with bloodstains visible on the emergency room floor.
Continue reading...Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public
More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.
Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.
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