Prime minister to visit worst-hit areas as red weather alert extended in Emilia Romagna region
More than 36,000 people have now been forced from their homes by deadly floods in northeast Italy, regional officials have said, as rising waters swallowed more houses and fresh landslides isolated hamlets.
Violent downpours earlier this week killed 14 people, transforming streets in the cities and towns of the Emilia Romagna region into rivers.
Continue reading...Pilot and two passengers died at scene of accident in steep and forested area in west of country
A tourist plane crashed in a wooded, mountainous area of western Switzerland on Saturday, killing the three people onboard, police said.
The small tourist plane crashed in a steep and forested area near Ponts-De-Martel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel at about 10.20am (0820 GMT), regional police said.
Continue reading...Warning comes after Joe Biden said US would back joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets
Providing Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets would be a “colossal risk” for western nations, a senior Russian minister has warned, as Washington and London reasserted their commitment to equipping the embattled nation with the military hardware it needs.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been pushing western allies to supply the jets for months, with Downing Street saying on Saturday that the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had again discussed the matter with him at the G7 summit in Japan.
Continue reading...Leading art museums are reassessing their works after a Belgian journalist traced how a fascist sympathiser acquired a Jewish dealer’s collection
In August 1940, Samuel Hartveld and his wife, Clara Meiboom, boarded the SS Exeter ocean liner in Lisbon, bound for New York. Aged 62, Hartveld, a successful Jewish art dealer, left a world behind. The couple had fled their home city of Antwerp not long before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, parting with their 23-year-old son, Adelin, who had decided to join the resistance.
Hartveld also said goodbye to a flourishing gallery in a fine art deco building in the Flemish capital, a rich library and more than 60 paintings. The couple survived the war, but Adelin was killed in January 1942. Hartveld was never reunited with his paintings, which were snapped up at a bargain-basement price by a Nazi sympathiser and today are scattered throughout galleries in north-western Europe, including Tate Britain.
Continue reading...Ukraine denies Wagner claim that city has fallen and says fighting ongoing in some parts
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has arrived in Hiroshima, Japan, to attend the G7 leaders’ summit in the city.
Reuters reports that live footage broadcast by multiple media outlets showed Zelenskiy disembark from a French government aircraft.
With Russia likely maintaining relatively few uncommitted combat units in Ukraine, the redeployment represents a notable commitment by the Russian command.
Russia’s leadership likely continue to see capturing Bakhmut as the key immediate war aim which would allow them to claim some degree of success in the conflict.
Continue reading...Billionaire former prime minister, 86, had been suffering from a lung infection linked to leukaemia
Silvio Berlusconi has been discharged from hospital in Milan, declaring “the nightmare” is over, more than six weeks after the former Italian prime minister was admitted with leukaemia and a lung infection.
“Today, after 45 long days, I finally returned home,” the 86-year-old billionaire media mogul said in a statement after leaving the San Raffaele Hospital on Friday.
Continue reading...Moscow also denied consular access to detained journalist as US imposes more punitive measures in response to Ukraine invasion
Russia’s foreign ministry has said former President Barack Obama is among 500 US citizens who will be banned in response to the latest round of sanctions announced by Washington.
The ministry also said on Friday that Russia had refused the latest US request for consular access to the detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in March on suspicion of spying.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed. You can find our latest full report below:
European Council president Charles Michel said on Friday that the EU would call on China to step up pressure on Russia to stop its military aggression in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima, Michel also said that it was in the EU’s interest to maintain a “stable and constructive” cooperation with China.
We now have official confirmation of Zelenskiy’s planned in-person visit to the G7.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses Arab League leaders in Saudi Arabia; US to back international effort to train Ukrainian fighter pilots
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has addressed Arab League leaders in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He asked them not to turn a blind eye to what was happening in Ukraine. “Unfortunately there are some among the world, and here among you, who turn a blind eye to those cases and illegal annexations. I am here so everyone can take an honest look, no matter how hard the Russians try to influence, there must be independence,” he said.
After the visit, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister declared the country to be neutral in the conflict.
The US has said it will back a joint international effort to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 and other modern fighter jets, marking a significant boost to western support for Kyiv as it prepares a major counteroffensive. The news was welcomed by Zelenskiy and the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, whose RAF will be involved in the initiative.
Russia has imposed sanctions on the former US president Barack Obama, in response to the US doing likewise to 300 individuals, companies and institutions. The US measures are largely targeted at energy production.
Ukraine claimed it destroyed 19 drones and missiles out of 28 launched on Friday morning. “Three Kalibr missiles launched from the Black Sea and 16 drones were shot down. Shelling continues on an almost daily basis,” the Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said. Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, has posted on Telegram to say that five drones were shot down overnight above his western Ukrainian region.
Vladimir Putin has said the west is trying to break up Russia into different states based on ethnic and national lines. In a speech on Friday he said the sanctions were helping unite the Russian people rather than divide them. In comments reported by Reuters, he said: “There are attempts to drive a wedge between peoples of our country. They say Russia should be divided up into tens of different states.”
The Russian security council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, has claimed that the US was involved in the killing of a pro-war military blogger in a bomb blast in St Petersburg in April, and the car bombing of a nationalist writer and politician earlier in May.
More than 100,000 people have enlisted in the Russian army so far this year, the former president Dmitry Medvedev has said, as Moscow seeks to recruit volunteers for its offensive in Ukraine.
Five members of a Belarusian regiment fighting with Ukrainian forces have been killed in the flashpoint city of Bakhmut, a Belarusian opposition leader living in exile said on Friday. “Heartbroken by the death of five members of the Belarusian Kastus Kalinouski regiment fighting for Ukraine in Bakhmut,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Twitter.
The G7 group of nations has urged Russia to stop its objection to the renewal of the Black Sea grain deal and told it to halt “threatening global food supplies”.
Russia has refused the latest US request for consular access to the detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in March on suspicion of spying.
A judge is poised to decide whether a Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of leaking highly classified military documents, including sensitive information about the war in Ukraine, will remain behind bars while he awaits trial. Jack Teixeira is due back in federal court in Worcester, Massachusetts, where a magistrate judge is expected to hear arguments on prosecutors’ request to keep the 21-year-old locked up before issuing a ruling.
The Pentagon overestimated the value of the ammunition, missiles and other equipment it sent to Ukraine by about $3bn, a Senate aide and a defence official told Reuters on Thursday. The error may lead the way for more weapons being sent to Kyiv for its defence against Russian forces.
Continue reading...Shift in stance could allow countries such as the Netherlands to send US-designed fighter jets to Ukraine
US officials have indicated that the White House would not block any European countries seeking to export F-16 jets to Ukraine, potentially averting a standoff over the issue at the G7 summit in Japan.
The shift in stance, first reported by the Washington Post, could eventually allow countries such as the Netherlands to export the US-designed jets once pilots and ground crews have been trained.
Continue reading...Foreign minister’s comments at odds with unity G7 nations want to project at summit in Hiroshima
Hungary has stepped up threats to block further EU funds for weapons to aid Ukraine, marring a show of unity from western nations at the G7 summit.
The Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has said his government will block a further €500m from the European peace facility, a fund used to reimburse EU member states that supply military aid to Ukraine, unless Kyiv removes Hungary’s OTP Bank from its list of war sponsors.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president to take part in Hiroshima talks on Sunday as leaders target exports to Russia
The G7 has unveiled further sanctions targeting Russia over its war against Ukraine, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy prepared to attend the Hiroshima summit in person.
“Our support for Ukraine will not waver,” the G7 leaders said in a statement on Friday, vowing “to stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”.
Continue reading...Free app designed to shed light on ‘mental load’ overwhelmingly carried by women when it comes to chores
The Spanish government is hoping to encourage men to do more at home by developing a free app that will log how much time each household or family member spends on domestic chores.
Announcing the measure in Geneva earlier this week, Spain’s secretary of state for equality, Ángela Rodríguez, said the aim was to shed light on the invisible “mental load” overwhelmingly carried by women when it comes to domestic tasks.
Continue reading...Acclaimed actor in European art cinema also secured a prominent role in US soap opera Dynasty
Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who became a star of 60s and 70s art cinema with roles in films such as Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, and Ludwig and Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, has died aged 78. His death was announced by his management agency, which posted a statement on its website saying Berger had “passed away peacefully but unexpectedly” in Salzburg, the city where he grew up.
Born Helmut Steinberger in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1944, Berger studied acting in London before moving to Italy, where he met and began a relationship with acclaimed director Luchino Visconti, nearly 40 years his senior. Visconti gave him his first acting role, a small part in the comic anthology The Witches, and subsequently cast him in a spectacular role in his landmark 1969 epic The Damned. Berger played Martin von Essenbeck, a scion of a wealthy industrial family who struggle for control over the business in interwar Germany as the Nazis rise to power; for the film, Berger famously performed in drag as Marlene Dietrich and was subsequently nominated for a Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer.
Continue reading...UK and Netherlands want to create ‘international coalition’ to procure US-made fighter jets and train Ukrainian pilots and crews
Washington risks opening a rift with European allies over its reluctance to contemplate supplying F-16 fighters to Ukraine, with the issue likely to crop up at the forthcoming G7 summit in Japan.
This week, after Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Europe, the UK and the Netherlands said they would create an “international coalition” to procure the US-made F-16s and train Ukrainian pilots and crews.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here
The FT today has a piece by Felicia Schwartz in Washington and Henry Foy in Tokyo casting forward to later in the year, and raising the spectre that European allies worry about the longevity of US support for Ukraine. They write:
Washington has been Ukraine’s dominant source of weaponry and US officials say sufficient preapproved funds remain to sustain Kyiv for about five more months, covering a crucial counter-offensive planned for the coming weeks.
But European allies are increasingly uncertain about whether the US will come close to matching its existing $48bn package, adopted in 2022, particularly as it requires a vote in Congress this autumn against the backdrop of more partisan debate on the war.
Continue reading...This week’s floods are latest weather disaster to hit country, as policymakers finally begin to respond to crescendo
This week, parts of northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region received half their average annual rainfall in just 36 hours. Rivers burst their banks and thousands of acres of farmland lie submerged. By Thursday evening, an estimated 20,000 people had been left homeless and 13 were confirmed dead.
It is just the latest weather disaster to hit the country. Six months ago, 12 people died on the southern island of Ischia in a landslide triggered by torrential rain. Eleven more were killed last September by flash floods in the central region of Marche.
Continue reading...Fans describe decision to go ahead as ‘outrageous’ and call on US star to reschedule Emilia-Romagna event
Bruce Springsteen has been criticised in Italy for going ahead with a concert in Ferrara on Thursday evening after the northern Emilia-Romagna region was hit by deadly floods.
Fans of “The Boss” urged him on social media to reconsider out of respect for the dead and homeless after torrential rains caused landslides and made rivers break their banks.
Continue reading...High-resolution satellite imaging of city in eastern Ukraine lay bare its destruction after months of bombardment
High-resolution satellite images published by Maxar provide stark insights into the destruction of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, caused by months of bombardment and fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
The images show Bakhmut from above in May 2022 and May 2023.
Continue reading...Older and disabled people trapped in homes as rescuers battle harsh conditions in Emilia-Romagna region
Older and disabled people were trapped in their homes as rescuers worked under pounding rain throughout the night to save people in the most catastrophic flooding to affect Italy in 100 years.
The floods in the northern Emilia-Romagna region have claimed 13 lives as of Thursday evening. An estimated 20,000 have been left homeless in a disaster that caused 23 rivers to burst their banks and 280 landslides, engulfing 41 cities and towns.
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