EU to give Tunisia €1bn to fight trafficking and prop up ailing economy

Von der Leyen to return with Italian and Dutch PMs despite warnings over ‘breakdown’ of democracy under Saied

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is to return to Tunisia on Sunday with the prime ministers of Italy and the Netherlands to sign off the details of a €1bn deal aimed at combating people smuggling and supporting the country’s collapsing economy.

Sources have confirmed they are expecting to sign off on a memorandum of understanding only days after a group of politicians in the European parliament warned that Tunisia should not be handed a deal on a “silver plate” amid fears of a “breakdown” of democracy in the country.

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European heatwave to lead to 55mph gusts in UK, warns Met Office

Sweltering temperatures in Europe directing low-pressure systems towards UK and yellow wind warning is in place

Sweltering temperatures in Europe are forecast to lead to 55mph winds and heavy rain in the UK due to low-pressure systems being directed towards the country.

The Met Office has issued a yellow wind warning that is in place across south-west England and Wales until Friday evening, while another covering areas of central and southern England will come in on Saturday morning.

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Hollywood on the Tiber: stars return to Rome studios once home to Heston and Fellini

Sprawling Cinecittà complex is in demand again thanks to tax breaks and boom in film and TV production

Walk through the 1930s-built, dusty pink gates of Cinecittà, the legendary film studios in Rome, and the magic of its golden era is immediately palpable. This is where Charlton Heston rode to victory in his chariot race in Ben Hur, which went on to win 11 Oscars. It is where the real-life love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton played out on the set of Cleopatra, and where Federico Fellini produced classics including La Dolce Vita and Amarcord.

The sprawling Cinecittà was opened with great pomp by Benito Mussolini in 1937, in part to make films promoting the dictator’s fascist propaganda. During the second world war it was first occupied by the Nazis and later became a refuge to the thousands made homeless by the allied bombing of the Italian capital.

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Jacob Zuma in Russia for ‘health reasons’, spokesperson says

Ex-president of South Africa receives medical treatment day after court rules he should return to prison

The former South African president Jacob Zuma is receiving medical treatment in Russia, his spokesperson has said, a day after the country’s highest court upheld a ruling that he should return to prison.

“Zuma travelled to Russia last week for health reasons,” Mzwanele Manyi said on Friday.

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Kyiv accepts counteroffensive not advancing quickly; Moscow plays down grain deal claim – as it happened

Andriy Yermak says West are not pressuring Ukraine to go faster ; Kremlin denies Turkish claim deal will be renewed. This live blog is closed

Oleg Kiper, governor of Odesa region, reports on Telegram this morning that several settlements within the region are currently without power. However, he states this is due to adverse weather conditions overnight, rather than action by Russian Federation forces, who struck the port city earlier this week with drones causing a fire in a grain facility.

In Russia the Interfax news agency reports that three Ukrainian drones (UAVs) were intercepted in the Voronezh region.

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Cluster munitions from the US arrive in Ukraine

The bombs, which open in air to deploy scores of deadly bomblets, are banned in 120 countries, but not in the US, Ukraine or Russia

Cluster munitions provided by the United States have now arrived in Ukraine, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday.

The munitions – bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets – are seen by the US as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian frontlines. US leaders debated the thorny issue for months, before President Joe Biden made the final decision last week.

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Hungarian bookstore fined for selling LGBTQ+ novel in youth section

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman was on shelves for young people and did not have closed packaging as required by controversial law

A government office in Hungary has levied a hefty fine against a national bookseller over a LGBTQ+ graphic novel series, saying it violated a contentious law that prohibits the depiction of homosexuality to minors.

The bookseller, Líra Könyv, is Hungary’s second-largest bookstore chain. It was fined 12m forints ($36,000 or £27,400) for placing Heartstopper by the British author Alice Oseman in its youth literature section, and for failing to place it in closed packaging as required by a 2021 law.

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Biden ‘serious’ on prisoner swap for US reporter Evan Gershkovich

Biden says process ‘under way’ to free Wall Street Journal reporter held in Russia and accused without evidence of spying

Joe Biden has said he is serious about pursuing a prisoner exchange for the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia for more than 100 days, and claimed the process was “under way”.

“I’m serious on a prisoner exchange,” Biden told reporters on Thursday when asked about Gershkovich’s continued detention in Russia.

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Committee report is rightfully scathing on UK’s China strategy

The ISC’s warnings are unlikely to act as much of a brake on Britain’s approach to China

If there is one constant in the UK’s policy towards China over the past three decades it has been its short-termism and inconsistency, the scathing intelligence and security committee report on China rightly finds, comparing Britain’s endless course corrections with Beijing’s capacity to think strategically about how to advance the global interests of the Chinese Communist party.

If Downing Street thinks in terms of the next news bulletin, China has a planning cycle that in some of its documents takes it to 2049, as the ISC was told by one of its intelligence agency witnesses.

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Ukraine’s top security official dismisses Ben Wallace’s criticisms of Kyiv

Oleksiy Danilov says UK defence secretary misspoke when calling for more gratitude as he was ‘emotional’

Ukraine’s top security official has dismissed criticism of Kyiv from British defence secretary Ben Wallace, suggesting Wallace misspoke due to a surfeit of emotion.

“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what he said,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told the Guardian in Kyiv on Thursday. “Everyone can say something when they are emotional and then regret it … I know for sure this isn’t his actual position.”

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Italian man cleared of assault because grope only lasted ‘between five and 10 seconds’

Judge trying case of caretaker accused of sexually assaulting teenage student rules grope too fleeting to be a crime

An Italian judge has provoked outrage after clearing a school caretaker of sexually assaulting a teenage girl because the grope lasted only “a handful of seconds”.

A 17-year-old student at a school in Rome complained of being groped by the caretaker as she walked up a staircase with a friend in April 2022.

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Biden says ‘no real prospect’ of Putin using nuclear weapons – as it happened

US president plays down worries during Finland visit when asked about whether Russian president could escalate action in Ukraine. This live blog is now closed

Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk, has posted an operational update listing a number of settlements that suffered bombardment and “massive artillery shelling” damaging houses and residential buildings. He stated that “In total, the Russians wounded 8 residents of Donetsk region in one day.”

The claims have not been independently verified. Donetsk is one of the partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation claims to have annexed.

In the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, during a night attack, a fragment of a downed drone hit the 25th floor of a building, destroying one of the apartments.

The man whose apartment was hit was at home – he was wounded by shrapnel, he was given help, now he is in a stable condition, reports our correspondent, who managed to talk to him.

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Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 505 of the invasion

Biden labels Putin ‘craven’ as Nato summit ends; G7 signs declaration outlining support for Ukraine

US president Joe Biden concluded a Nato summit on Wednesday denouncing Russian president Vladimir Putin as “craven” and promising Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy full support even without membership in the military alliance. Biden, who has made unifying Nato countries a foreign policy priority, said Putin had badly underestimated their resolve.

“This is very important. For the first time since our independence, we have established a foundation of security for Ukraine on its path to Nato,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “These are concrete security guarantees confirmed by the world’s top seven democracies. Never before have we had such a security base and it is at the level of the G7.” Zelenskiy reaffirmed statements he made at the summit in Lithuania that “we have removed any doubts or ambiguity about whether Ukraine will be in Nato. It will be.”

Ben Wallace, the British defence secretary said “people want to see a bit of gratitude” and Ukraine needed to put more emphasis on saying thank you for western help when he was asked about president Zelenskiy’s complaints on Tuesday that the country had not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato. Wallace said Ukrainians’ haste to get all the help they could meant they did not always say they were grateful for the help received.

UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, distanced himself from Wallace’s comments, saying Zelenskiy has expressed gratitude for UK support. He highlighted that president Zelenskiy had expressed gratitude on multiple occasions, including his address to parliament earlier this year. “I know he and his people are grateful to the UK,” said Sunak.

Zelenskiy said he “didn’t understand” Wallace’s comments. He also said “we could express our words of gratitude personally to the minister”.

The G7 signed a declaration outlining support for Ukraine and help towards governance reforms needed for ‘Euro-Atlantic aspirations’. The member nations said they would provide security and economic support, including modern military equipment, across land, air, and sea, intelligence sharing and the training of Ukrainian forces in exchange for Ukraine committing to reforms “to underscore its commitments to democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and media freedoms”, “put its economy on a sustainable path” and strengthen “democratic civilian control of the military”.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sweden’s Nato accession will not be put to Turkish parliament until autumn when it reopens. Speaking at a news conference after the Nato summit in Vilnius, Erdogan said that Sweden would provide a roadmap for Turkey regarding the steps to take against purported terrorism before the ratification.

UN secretary-general António Guterres has proposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of grain from Ukraine in return for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s agricultural bank to the SWIFT international payment system, sources told Reuters. The last two ships traveling under the Black Sea agreement are currently loading cargoes at the Ukrainian port of Odesa ahead of the deadline.

An 81-year-old man was killed after shelling in Kherson. His 82-year-old wife was wounded in shelling of the southern city of Kherson, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram on Wednesday.

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Russian spy chief confirms call to CIA director after Wagner revolt

Sergei Naryshkin says he and Bill Burns discussed the mutiny and ‘what to do with Ukraine’ in phone call last month

Russia’s foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin has said that he and his CIA counterpart discussed the shortlived mutiny a week earlier by Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and “what to do with Ukraine” in a phone call late last month.

Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, told Russia’s TASS new agency on Wednesday that Bill Burns had raised “the events of June 24” – when fighters from the Wagner mercenary group took control of a southern Russian city and advanced towards Moscow before reaching a deal with the Kremlin to end the revolt.

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Pistoletto sculpture destroyed in suspected arson attack in Naples

Venus of the Rags, one of the contemporary Italian artist’s most famous works, was burnt to cinders

One of the most famous works by Italian contemporary artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venus of the Rags, has been burnt to cinders in a suspected arson attack in Naples.

The installation, in which a statue of the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility stands next to a vast pile of coloured, discarded clothes, was destroyed where it stood on display near the town hall in the southern Italian city.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy ‘doesn’t understand’ complaint from UK minister about Kyiv’s lack of gratitude – as it happened

This live blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here

In the last few moments an air alert that had been in place across some of southern Ukraine has been lifted, however there is still a warning in place about artillery fire in Nikopol.

This is not unusual, as the city lies on the right-bank of the Dnipro, opposite Russian occupied territory near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and occupied city of Enerhodar.

This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

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Stitch in time: France to help pay for clothes to be mended to cut waste

People will be able to claim back €6-€25 of cost of repairing clothes and shoes in latest environmental measure

A broken heel, a rip in trousers, buttons missing from a shirt? Don’t throw them away if you live in France, where the government will pay a “repair bonus” to have them mended in a new scheme aimed at cutting waste.

An estimated 700,000 tonnes of clothing is thrown away in France every year, two-thirds ending up in landfill.

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Hungarian bookseller wraps LGBTQ+ books in plastic to stop people reading them

Libri bows to pressure to comply with ‘child protection’ law after takeover by foundation linked to PM

Hungary’s largest bookseller has started wrapping books that feature LGBTQ+ characters in plastic to prevent customers from opening them in stores after it was taken over by a private foundation with close ties to Viktor Orbán.

Libri, which is also the country’s largest publisher, said in an email that the packaging was a request from the Hungarian consumer protection authority to follow the controversial “child protection” law that came into force in 2021.

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EU passes nature restoration law in knife-edge vote

MEPs back law to place recovery measures on 20% of EU’s land and sea by 2030 by dozen votes

The EU has narrowly passed a key law to protect nature – a core pillar of the Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s European Green Deal – after months of fiery debate and an opposition campaign scientists criticised as misleading.

The nature restoration law will place recovery measures on 20% of the EU’s land and sea by 2030, rising to cover all degraded ecosystems by 2050.

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