This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy has now arrived in Singapore for the annual Shangri-La security summit, where he will address delegates tomorrow.
He is expected to hold talks with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other leaders attending the conference, seeking support for a “peace summit” this month in Switzerland.
Continue reading...Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid become first Swedes to be knighted by their monarch for almost 50 years
Abba have received one of the most prestigious Swedish knighthoods after being awarded an order of chivalry last handed out almost 50 years ago.
The pop legends were recognised by King Carl XVI Gustaf on Friday for their cultural impact, which has taken Swedish pop music to a huge global audience.
Continue reading...Interior ministry says 18-year-old Chechen suspected of planning ‘Islamist-inspired’ attack in Saint-Étienne
French security services have arrested a Chechen teenager suspected of plotting an “Islamist-inspired” attack on a football game during this summer’s Olympics, the interior ministry has said.
The domestic intelligence agency DGSI arrested an 18-year-old of Chechen origin in Saint-Étienne, in south-east France, the ministry said on Friday, calling it the “first foiled attack against the Olympic Games”.
Continue reading...Suspect wounded and officer injured after stabbing of far-right activist at rally in Mannheim
German police have shot and wounded a man who injured six people in a knife attack on a rightwing demonstration in the south-western city of Mannheim.
Footage showed a bearded man wearing glasses attacking people in the city’s central Marktplatz. One person appeared to be stabbed in the leg and a police officer who tried to intervene appeared to be cut in the neck. Another officer then shot the attacker.
Continue reading...German move to allow Ukraine to use weapons in area bordering Kharkiv follows similar announcements from US
Ukraine’s defence ministry said it is continuing to target Russian infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in Sweden today.
Continue reading...Senior officials say decision marks serious escalation and their threat to use tactical nuclear weapons is not a bluff
The Kremlin has said Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied weapons against targets in Russia demonstrates Washington’s deep involvement in the conflict, as some of Vladimir Putin’s allies increased their nuclear threats against the west.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Friday that Moscow was already aware of attempts by Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory with weapons provided by the US.
Continue reading...Carriers including easyJet and Ryanair face being banned from charging for carry-on luggage
Budget airlines including easyJet and Ryanair have been hit with fines totalling €150m (£128m) by the Spanish government for policies that include charging passengers extra for cabin luggage.
In the biggest sanction issued by the Spanish government’s ministry of social rights and consumer affairs, the carriers easyJet, Ryanair, Vueling and Volotea have been penalised after an investigation launched last summer.
Continue reading...‘World’s largest botnet’ – spread through infected emails – taken down through coordinated police action among several countries
US authorities announced on Thursday that they had dismantled the “world’s largest botnet ever”, allegedly responsible for nearly $6bn in Covid insurance fraud.
The Department of Justice arrested a Chinese national, YunHe Wang, 35, and seized luxury watches, more than 20 properties and a Ferrari. The networks allegedly operated by Wang and others, dubbed “911 S5”, spread ransomware via infected emails from 2014 to 2022. Wang allegedly accrued a fortune of $99m by licensing his malware to other criminals. The network allegedly pulled in $5.9bn in fraudulent unemployment claims from Covid relief programs.
Continue reading...Ex-regional president Carles Puigdemont among high-profile beneficiaries after MPs approve law by 177 votes to 172
Spanish MPs have given their final approval to the deeply divisive amnesty law that the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, offered Catalan separatists in return for helping him back to power after last year’s inconclusive general election.
The new law, approved by 177 votes to 172 in Spain’s 350-seat congress of deputies, will apply to about 400 people involved in the symbolic independence referendum of November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in four decades.
Continue reading...Edouard Baer says he ‘does not recognise himself’ in allegations of harassment and assault by six women
Edouard Baer, a French actor best known for playing Asterix on screen, has become the latest star to feel the impact of sexual assault allegations as his live show in Paris was cancelled.
Baer, who played the fictitious Gaul in the 2012 blockbuster Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia alongside Gérard Depardieu, was accused by six women of harassment and sexual assault in a joint article by online news site Mediapart and the feminist website Cheek last week.
Continue reading...Marin Mrčela also calls on EU to join Group of States Against Corruption to show it is serious about tackling misconduct
Political parties across Europe, including the UK, should be forced to publish the names of their private funders before elections, not after, the president of the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body has said.
Unveiling the annual report of the Group of States Against Corruption (Greco), Marin Mrčela, who is the justice of the supreme court of Croatia, also called on the European Union to stop using “excuses” not to join the body.
Continue reading...Ukraine’s top commander says enemy sending reinforcements to area but lacks numbers for a major push
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it was finalising a proposal for “retaliatory measures” against the EU over the bloc’s ban on the broadcast of four Russian media outlets on its territory.
The EU said earlier this month it was suspending the distribution of the Voice of Europe, the RIA Novosti news agency and the Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers.
Continue reading...Gabriel Attal cautions against backing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which leads solidly in polls for European elections
The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has said voters choosing the far right in the European elections next week risk becoming like British people who regret backing Brexit.
“Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,” he told RTL radio on Thursday. “A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote, or voting for something that was negative for their country.
Continue reading...Deaths of members of British al-Hilli family and French cyclist in remote layby have baffled detectives since 2012
Detectives from France’s cold case unit have ordered DNA analysis of evidence in the unsolved killing of a British family and a French cyclist in a remote Alpine village 12 years ago.
Clothes belonging to one of the victims, cigarette butts found at the scene and pieces of the gun used in the killings are to be tested in the hopes of solving the mystery of the murders, described by the local prosecutor as “an act of gross savagery”.
Continue reading...Aircraft operated by KLM was preparing to depart when incident occurred at busy Amsterdam hub
A person has died after falling into the spinning turbine blades of a departing passenger jet at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.
The death occurred on the apron outside the busy hub’s terminal as a KLM flight was preparing to depart for Billund in Denmark.
Continue reading...Copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Refugees was due to be returned to Helsinki’s central library month after USSR invaded Finland
A book borrowed from a Helsinki library has been returned – 84 years overdue.
A Finnish translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novel Refugees was received by librarian Heini Strand on Monday at the main desk at the Helsinki Central Library Oodi.
Continue reading...The actor, who became the first transgender woman to win the best actress prize at Cannes, had earlier dedicated her award to ‘all the trans people who are suffering’
The first transgender woman to be awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival filed a legal complaint on Wednesday over a “sexist insult” from a far-right politician after her win.
Karla Sofía Gascón and co-stars jointly received the accolade on Saturday for their performances in French auteur Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set narco musical Emilia Perez.
Continue reading...Plumes of lava reach 50 metres into air as people are moved away from Grindavík near Blue Lagoon spa
A volcanic eruption has begun on the Reykjanes peninsula in south-western Iceland, according to the country’s meteorological office, shortly after authorities evacuated the nearby town of Grindavík.
“An eruption has started near Sundhnúkagígar, north of Grindavík,” the Icelandic meteorological office said in a statement on Wednesday, almost three weeks after the end of a previous eruption that started on 16 March.
Continue reading...A parliamentary employee’s home and offices raided amid accusations they were ‘paid to promote Russian propaganda’
Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office has said that police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European parliament and at his office in the parliament’s building in Brussels over possible Russian interference. Prosecutors said in statement that the suspect’s office in Strasbourg, where the EU parliament’s headquarters are located in France, was also searched, AP reported.
The Swedish government has said it will donate military aid to Ukraine worth 13 billion kronor (£962 million) in the largest help package Sweden has so far donated. “It consists of equipment that is at the top of Ukraine’s priority list,” deputy prime minister Ebba Busch said. It includes air defence, artillery ammunition and armoured vehicles, AP reported.
Russia’s human rights commissioner said on Wednesday that prisoner of war exchanges between Russia and Ukraine had been suspended for several months, the state TASS news agency said on Wednesday. TASS cited Tatyana Moskalova as blaming what she called Kyiv’s “false demands.” There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Antony Blinken, is set to arrive in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on Wednesday. It the first stop of a brief Europe tour during which he will aim to solidify the western support for Ukraine across Nato allies and neighbouring countries. The US top diplomat’s trip comes as Ukraine is trying to fend off intensifying Russian attacks in the east and as President Vladimir Putin warns that allowing Kyiv use western weapons to hit inside Russia would trigger a global conflict.
Western countries should let Ukraine strike military bases inside Russia with the sophisticated long-range weapons they are providing to Kyiv, French president Emmanuel Macron said, pressuring his allies in the most recent sign of a potentially significant policy shift that could help change the complexion of the war. The question of whether to allow Ukraine to hit targets on Russian soil with Western-supplied weaponry has been a delicate issue since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022, AP reported.
Ukrainian military shot down 13 drones out of 14 launched by Russia in an overnight attack on three regions, the country’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday. Drone debris fell on energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s northwestern region of Rivne, governor Oleksandr Koval said on Telegram. The attack triggered a defence mechanism that cut power to some localities, although it has since been restored, Reuters reported.
The Russian capital Moscow has been successfully protected from Ukrainian drones, a high-ranking Russian air force official said on Wednesday, according to the TASS state news agency. The official was quoted as saying that Ukrainian drones could cover a distance of up to 2,500 kilometres (1,553 miles).
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk has said its forces will further fortify the border with Belarus and can use “all available means” to defend the Nato nation’s frontier, after a soldier was seriously wounded with a knife by a migrant. Tusk said that a buffer zone some 200 metres (660ft) wide would be set up along the border, which is also the European Union’s eastern frontier, in addition to a 190-kilometre (118-mile) long metal barrier already in place to prevent an influx of migrants crossing from Belarus.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that planes from its Black Sea Fleet had destroyed two Ukrainian Crimea-bound sea drones in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Western countries should let Ukraine strike military bases inside Russia with the sophisticated long-range weapons they are providing to Kyiv, French president Emmanuel Macron said, pressuring his allies in the most recent sign of a potentially significant policy shift that could help change the complexion of the war.
Continue reading...Catalan authorities ask relatives to provide DNA to help identify 522 members of International Brigades from US, Canada, Britain and Ireland
Researchers in Catalonia have identified 522 members of the International Brigades, including 286 American and 86 British volunteers, who died or disappeared in the region during the Spanish civil war, raising hopes their remains could be found and buried with dignity nine decades after they perished.
About 35,000 people from 50 countries travelled to Spain between 1936 and 1938 to join the brigades to help defend Spain’s democratically elected government against Gen Francisco Franco’s military coup.
Continue reading...