Airport will share 164 cancellations between airlines until Sunday as it seeks to avoid diversions
Thousands of passengers flying to and from Gatwick this week will have their flights cancelled after the airport announced a cap on movements because of a shortage of staff in air traffic control.
Gatwick imposed an immediate cap on Monday of 800 flights taking off or landing a day.
Continue reading...Incident that left police officer and four attackers dead marks one of gravest escalations in violence for years
Kosovan authorities say they have recovered a large cache of arms after ethnic Serb gunmen stormed a village in the restive north at the weekend, battling police and barricading themselves into a monastery.
“We can easily say that the equipment was destined for several hundred other assailants,” the interior minister, Xhelal Sveçla, said on Monday.
Continue reading...Russian forces repelled near Bakhmut after counterattacks on two villages recently retaken by Ukraine; air raid alerts in all Ukrainian regions.
Air raid alerts were sounding in all Ukrainian regions on Sunday evening. The alerts were called at 12.30am local time on Sunday with the air force warning of incoming missile and drone strikes. Explosions were record in Kyiv Rih, and Odesa.
Two people were killed on Sunday after Russian shelling struck the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. The region’s governor said at least eight people were also injured in the attack as Ukrainian armed forces responded to Russian advances in the east and south.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces says its fighters had repelled Russian attacks on two villages near Bakhmut. Russian forces had “tried to restore lost positions near Klishchiivka … but were unsuccessful.”
The mayor of Russia’s Kursk had to cancel the Kursk City Day fireworks celebration after a Ukrainian drone struck an administrative building, damaging the roof. There have been more reports of explosions.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy handed awards to two Polish volunteers during a stopover in Poland on Saturday but did not meet any officials amid strained relations between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain imports.
An imprisoned Russian opposition figure has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Siberia, where he was placed in a tiny “punishment cell”, his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said.
Russia’s suspension of petrol exports will probably limit already tight supplies in the global market and have the biggest impact on countries that depend on Russian fuel supplies, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. In its latest intelligence update, the ministry said Russians had probably faced localised petrol and diesel shortages in recent weeks.
Pope Francis has said the weapons industry is a key driver of the “martyrdom” of Ukraine’s people in the war with Russia, saying countries should not “play games” by promising weapons and then withholding them as this would only continue their misery. The Associated Press reports that the pontiff appeared to refer to Poland’s recent announcement that it was no longer sending arms to Ukraine when reporters asked him about the war as he was returning to Rome from a visit to Marseille, France.
The Russian-installed head of the Donetsk oblast has imposed a curfew banning the presence of civilians on streets and in public places from 11pm until 4am from Mondays to Fridays, Reuters reported. Denis Pushilin published a decree on Sunday that forbade assemblies, rallies and demonstrations, in addition to other mass events, in the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk oblast – unless they were permitted by the local operational headquarters for military threat response.
The European Commission has sent another €1.5bn in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine. The commission has pledged a total of €18bn to Ukraine – the country has already received €12bn. The funds go towards keeping essential public services running, such as hospitals, schools and housing for relocated citizens, as well as paying wages and pensions.
Continue reading...Centre-left entrepreneur wins 56.69% of vote in stunning and unprecedented rise ‘from nowhere’
Stefanos Kasselakis, an outsider with no previous experience of politics in Greece, has emerged the victor of an electric race to lead the leftwing Syriza, the country’s main opposition party.
The Greek-American entrepreneur, who announced his candidacy for the post barely four weeks ago, attained 56.69% of the vote against 43.31% for Efi Achtsioglou, a former labour minister who had long been viewed as the favourite. Kasselakis’ win now makes him one of the most powerful people in Greece.
Continue reading...Sunday’s attack marks serious escalation in Kosovo after months of mounting tensions with Serbia
A standoff between gunmen and Kosovo authorities at a monastery near the border with Serbia ended after four people were killed, authorities in Pristina said, after a police operation to regain control of the area.
“We put this territory under control. It was done after several consecutive battles,” Xhelal Svecla, Kosovo’s minister of internal affairs, told reporters after the standoff was over.
Continue reading...Governing body suppressed personal apology from judge in question following incident 18 months ago
Gymnastics Ireland suppressed a personal apology letter to a young gymnast whose treatment at a medal ceremony sparked international outrage, and have refused to acknowledge or tackle systemic racism in the sport, her family say.
Video of the event in March 2022 shows a judge handing out participation medals to a line of young gymnasts, but ignoring the only black girl. A photographer, coach and other officials look on without intervening, with an audience of hundreds in the stands.
Continue reading...Designer revisits his lifelong interest in science, with iridescent silks and undulating 3D layers
Giorgio Armani may be the world’s most recognisable designer, but as the 89-year-old wrote in his autobiography, his childhood ambition was to be a physician.
While that particular goal eluded him, at his fashion show in Milan on Sunday afternoon he revisited his lifelong interest in science, citing his inspiration for his new collection as “vibrations”.
Continue reading...Civilians forbidden from being on streets and public places from 11pm until 4am, with mass events banned
Volodymyr Zelenskiy met top US financiers – including Mike Bloomberg – during his visit to the US. According to Reuters, they discussed investment and the reconstruction of Ukraine during this meeting.
A Ukrainian drone has struck an administrative building in Russia’s Kursk oblast, the regional governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram – on Kursk City Day.
Continue reading...Kurti claims EU special envoy to talks has lost neutrality and there is ‘no moving further with this method’
EU-brokered talks between Kosovo and Serbia have become so one-sided that they have reached a dead end, Kosovo’s prime minister has said.
More than a decade of European-led mediation efforts, most recently in Moldova and Brussels, have failed to normalise relations between the two countries, and Belgrade still refuses to recognise Kosovo’s independence, declared in 2008 under a UN-sponsored plan.
Continue reading...Putin seen playing table tennis and accompanying then mayor of St Petersburg on fishing trip
Video footage has emerged showing an awkward-looking Vladimir Putin wearing a shell suit and sporting a longer haircut on a visit to Finland during the early 1990s.
The Finnish broadcaster YLE obtained the previously unseen amateur film from an anonymous source. It was shot on a May Day holiday soon after Putin – then about 40 and a KGB officer – had become an adviser to Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg at the time.
Continue reading...Human rights lawyers are working with Ukraine’s public prosecutor to prepare dossier to submit to the international criminal court
Human rights lawyers working with Ukraine’s public prosecutor are preparing a war crimes dossier to submit to the international criminal court (ICC) accusing Russia of deliberately causing starvation during the 18-month-long conflict.
The aim is to document instances where the Russian invaders used hunger as a weapon of war, providing evidence for the ICC to launch the first prosecution of its kind that could indict the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Continue reading...Five of ‘afro-trap’ pioneer’s fellow defendants also imprisoned over killing in what prosecutors said was a fight between rival gangs
French rapper MHD has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for the 2018 murder of a young man in Paris who was rammed with a car before being set upon by a mob and stabbed.
Five of his fellow defendants were also jailed over the killing, receiving terms of between 10 and 18 years over what prosecutors said was a fight between rival gangs. Three other men were acquitted.
Continue reading...US agrees to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems; Ukraine reports advances in Zaporizhzhia area
The United States has decided to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), an important boost to Kyiv’s capacity to target Russian military logistics at long range distances as the country prepares for a second winter at war. President Joe Biden told the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a private meeting that a small number of the weapons would be transferred, NBC reported, citing US officials. Ukraine has been asking for ATACMS for months.
Ukraine has reported breaking through Russian defence lines in the Zaporizhzhia area in the country’s south, with a general leading the counteroffensive there saying the advance is still under way. “On the left flank [near the village of Verbove] we have a breakthrough and we continue to advance further,” Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy told CNN. He said progress was “not as fast as it was expected, not like in the movies about the second world war”, but it was important “not to lose this initiative”.
Nine people were killed and 16 injured, among them two generals, in a Ukrainian airstrike on Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters in Crimea, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence. Kyrylo Budanov told the Voice of America that “among the wounded is the commander of the group, Col Gen [Alexander] Romanchuk, in a very serious condition. The chief of staff, Lt Gen [Oleg] Tsekov, is unconscious.” A Ukrainian missile hit the headquarters in Sevastopol on Friday. Russia’s defence ministry said one military serviceman was missing as a result.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said Ukraine’s formula for peace is “completely not feasible” and that the war will be resolved on the battlefield if Kyiv and the west stick to the plan as a basis for negotiations. Lavrov accused western powers of directly fighting Russia, in comments at the United Nations.
Lavrov said Russia left the Black Sea grain deal because promises to Moscow had not been met. On the latest proposals by the UN secretary general to revive the deal, Lavrov said: “We don’t reject them, they are simply not realistic.”
Lavrov said he would go to Pyongyang next month for more negotiations following agreements reached by Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Three successive commanders of one of Russia’s most prestigious airborne regiments have either resigned or been killed since its invasion of Ukraine, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. That highlighted the “extreme attrition and high turnover in Russia’s deployed military, even amongst relatively senior ranks”, it said in its intelligence update.
Russian spies are using hackers to target computer systems at law enforcement agencies in Ukraine in a bid to identify and obtain evidence related to alleged Russian war crimes, according to Ukraine’s cyber-defence chief.
Norwegian police have arrested a former commander of the Wagner mercenary group on suspicion that he attempted to illegally re-enter Russia after seeking asylum in Norway earlier this year, the lawyer for Andrei Medvedev said.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy held an impromptu meeting with the head of the Sudanese sovereign council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, where they discussed Russia-funded armed groups. The meeting took place at Shannon airport in Ireland.
Sergei Lavrov told the UN general assembly the “time has come for mutual trust building” between Armenia and Azerbaijan and that Russian troops “will certainly help with this”.
Azerbaijani soldiers and Russian peacekeepers are working jointly to disarm separatist fighters in the ethnically Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani army spokesman has said.
Continue reading...Russian foreign minister says Zelenskiy’s 10-point proposal to end the war and resumption of exports from Black Sea are ‘not realistic’
Russia’s foreign minister has told the UN that Ukraine’s proposed peace plan and the latest proposals to revive the Black Sea grain initiative were “not realistic”.
Sergei Lavrov spoke at a press conference on 23 September after a week of intense global diplomacy at the annual gathering of world leaders at UN headquarters in New York where Ukraine and its western allies sought to drum up support for Kyiv.
Continue reading...Armenians in region have been without adequate food or fuel supplies for months due to blockade by Azerbaijani forces
A Red Cross aid convoy headed to Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday, the first since Azerbaijan retook the breakaway region three days ago, as ethnic Armenians there complained of being abandoned by the world.
The Armenians of Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, were forced to declare a ceasefire on 20 September after a lightning 24-hour military operation by the much larger Azerbaijani military.
Continue reading...Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, new leader of the Netherlands’ VVD party, is a talk show darling. Will that be enough to take her to the very top?
She is a former child refugee who wants to reduce immigration, has opened the door to the far right and could be the Netherlands’ first female prime minister. At a packed party conference in Rotterdam on Saturday, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), launched her campaign for November’s elections with a call for liberty and security.
“From my parents, I learned to cherish freedom and stand up for others when their freedom was threatened,” she said. “But we face losing ever more of this ‘oxygen’, with ever less understanding for one another and politics operating increasingly from distrust. It’s not for nothing that our manifesto is called: giving space, defining borders.”
Continue reading...Once dismissed as a swimming pool drink, rosé is becoming the go-to wine for the French as traditions change
For the French, a glass of chilled blush rosé was once considered a delicate but not entirely serious “swimming pool drink”; a summer apéritif for lightweight, often female, tipplers.
Real wine lovers would select a red heavy with tannins, or a traditional white – both considered the true expression of French terroir, the untranslatable concept encompassing not just the soil in which the vines grow but also the natural, geological climatic and cultural elements associated with it.
Continue reading...Sergei Lavrov rules out any moves at compromise in speech that also addresses Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
Andrey Kortunov, an adviser to the Russian foreign ministry and director of Russian international affairs council, has been on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme discussing the strike on Russian navy’s Black Sea HQ.
Kortunov emphasised the “psychological” importance of long range missiles being used in the strike. “I think psychologically it’s important because it’s a long range missile - its destruction power is pretty significant. But militarily, I don’t think it really makes that big a damage – after all it didn’t hit any really critical military targets and the damage at least according to the reports we received is quite limited.”
Who opened investigations? Germany, Denmark and Sweden, a the leaks happened in their exclusive economic zones.
What have they found? German federal prosecutors seized objects from a sailing yacht in January and found traces of explosives.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s public prosecutor said the “primary assumption is that a state is behind it”.
What has Ukraine said? The New York Times reported in March that US officials had seen information suggesting it was done by a “pro-Ukrainian group”, without Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s knowledge. Zelenskiy has repeatedly denied Ukraine was behind the sabotage.
Could it be a false flag? Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, views Russia as “the most likely” culprit. The Kremlin has denied responsibility.
Continue reading...Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border tells story of brutal treatment of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe
A prize-winning film sharply critical of the Polish government’s attitude to refugees has opened at cinemas across the country, after being attacked in the run-up to its release by members of the Polish government.
Green Border, a feature film by the celebrated director Agnieszka Holland, won the special jury prize in Venice last month. It tells the story of a Syrian family trying to get to Europe via the Belarus-Poland border in 2021, and the brutal treatment they receive at the hands of Polish border guards.
Continue reading...Six Portuguese young people claim inadequate policies to tackle global heating breach their human rights
A key plank of the UK government’s defence against the biggest climate legal action in the world next week has fallen away as a result of the U-turn by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on green policies.
The UK is one of 32 countries being taken to the European court of human rights on Wednesday by a group of Portuguese young people. They will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that the nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.
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