Rugby league clubs and stars pay tribute to player Ricky Bibey, a two-time Challenge Cup winner
A former rugby league player has been named by Italian media as the man found dead in a hotel room in Florence.
Ricky Bibey, a two-time Challenge Cup winner with Wigan Warriors and St Helens, was found dead in the room at the Hotel Continentale on Saturday morning, alongside a 43-year-old woman who had suffered serious injuries.
Continue reading...Campaign launched to highlight plight of Maksym Butkevych amid fears he is being singled out over ties to UK
Family and friends of a prominent Ukrainian human rights activist who signed up to fight Russia and was captured have launched a public campaign to highlight his plight over fears he is being wrongly accused of being a “British spy” due to his ties to the UK.
Maksym Butkevych, 45, a former BBC Ukrainian service producer who studied at Sussex University and who sits on the board of Amnesty International’s Ukraine section, is well known as a human rights defender due to his work with refugees in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Civil defence authorities battle blazes that have forced evacuation of thousands of people across continent
Firefighters in Portugal, Spain, France, Greece and Morocco are battling forest fires raging across tens of thousands of hectares as this week’s heatwave continues to bring extreme temperatures and cause hundreds of deaths across south-western Europe.
The second heatwave of the summer – with temperatures hitting 47C (116F) in Portugal and 45C in Spain – has triggered wildfires that have forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
Continue reading...Representative of Ukraine’s defense ministry says ‘preparations for next stage of offensive actions are under way,’ Kyiv Independent reports
Two people were killed in Nikopol on Saturday when heavy Russian shelling hit the southern Ukrainian town, the emergency services and regional governor said.
The regional governor of Dnipropetrovsk, Valentyn Reznichenko, said Russia fired 53 Grad rockets at the town, Reuters reports.
We assess [that] an official Russian delegation recently received a showcase of Iranian attack-capable UAVs.
We are releasing these images, captured in June, showing Iranian UAVs that the Russian government delegation saw that day.
Continue reading...The island’s plans also include special hotels, hiking trails and a village resort, but not all the locals are in favour
Sergio Cossu’s nude awakening came in 1972, when, at the age of 16 and needing a getaway from his family, he ventured to Santa Teresa Gallura, whose stretch of wild, pristine coastline in northern Sardinia was a mecca for hippies from across Europe.
“It was my first solo holiday away from the traditional family setting,” he said. “There was this feeling of an immense connection with nature; from that point on it was impossible to wear a costume on a beach again. There was less of a taboo about nudity back then but, paradoxically, naturism diminished in the 1990s with the explosion of gyms and this focus on having the perfect body. But over the last 20 years, there has been a revival.”
Continue reading...Portugal and Spain among countries affected as rescue forces from Greece help battle blazes in southern France
Firefighters are working tirelessly to tackle wildfires raging in parts of southern Europe as a result of soaring temperatures linked to the climate crisis.
France, Portugal and Spain are among the European countries particularly affected, with temperatures of more than 45C (113F) recorded during a heatwave that is also sweeping the UK.
Continue reading...Beyond the frontlines, academics are fighting to counter the fake tales of their country’s past that are peddled by the Kremlin
At the entrance to Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, a bronze relief of the face of Mykhailo Hrushevsky stares out towards the red-painted portico. A historian by training, and a key figure in Ukraine’s national revival in the early 20th century, Hrushevsky served briefly as the head of Ukraine’s revolutionary rada – or parliament – in 1918.
Taras Pshenychnyi, deputy dean of the history department, pauses to examine the image of his distinguished forebear, and to reflect on the extraordinary times the university is seeing since the Russian invasion.
Continue reading...At least 37 deaths across country since Thursday as residential areas appear to be targeted
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine on Friday evening, as the country braced itself for another string of intensified long-range missile strikes on cities and towns across the country.
At least 37 people have been killed in missile attacks since Thursday that appear to have targeted busy civilian areas and crowded buildings, a tactic Russia has repeatedly denied employing.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour leader, speaking after meeting German chancellor, condemns candidates’ ‘fanciful’ spending plans
Keir Starmer has dismissed the acrimonious Conservative leadership race as a “travelling circus”, in which the candidates have demolished their party’s economic credibility by promising billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts.
Speaking on a visit to Berlin where he held talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the Labour leader highlighted the “fanciful” spending pledges made by the five contenders battling it out to succeed Boris Johnson.
Continue reading...Head of national security council says ‘more and more civilian targets’ being hit, after deadly Vinnytsia attack
A top Ukrainian official has accused Russia of deliberately escalating its deadly attacks on civilian targets, after recent missile strikes including this week’s targeting of the crowded city centre of Vinnytsia, which killed 23 people, including three children.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, told the Guardian that monitoring of Russian strikes suggested an increased emphasis in recent weeks on terrorising Ukraine’s civilian population.
Continue reading...Paul Urey, who was captured and accused of being a mercenary, has died, Donetsk official says
The British aid worker Paul Urey, 45, has died while being held hostage by pro-Russia separatists in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), a local official in the rebel-held territory has said.
His mother, Linda Urey, said she was “absolutely devastated” and described the separatists as “murderers”.
Continue reading...Portugal declares ‘state of contingency’ as France, Spain and Morocco also battle fires, while record heat hits China
Thousands of people in Portugal, Spain, France and Morocco have been evacuated from their homes as firefighters tackle wildfires caused by this week’s heatwave, which has brought extreme temperatures of more than 45C (113F) to parts of Europe and north Africa.
One person has died and at least 135 people have suffered mainly minor injuries since wildfires began in Portugal last week. A “state of contingency” has been in effect since Sunday, and about 800 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to the country’s Civil Protection Authority.
Continue reading...Moscow claims missile attack on civilian area was directed at building where Ukraine air force officials were meeting suppliers
Russia has confirmed it carried out a missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, the latest in a string of deadly attacks on civilian areas, as worries in Ukraine grow that Russia is preparing a new assault in the east.
The Russian defence ministry claimed in a military briefing on Friday that Thursday’s cruise missile attack was directed at a building where top officials from Ukraine’s air forces were meeting foreign arms suppliers.
Continue reading...From Europe to India and the US, the revelations have fuelled anger from across the spectrum, from the drivers to politicians
The release of the Uber files has prompted a frenzy of reaction around the world, piling pressure on senior politicians, fuelling calls for a crackdown on corporate lobbying and drawing outrage from groups including traditional taxi drivers.
The fuse was lit with the publication of revelations from a trove of more than 124,000 documents about Uber spanning from 2013 to 2017, leaked to the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and international media.
Continue reading...Ukraine says up to 70% of Russian missile attacks are deliberately inflicted on “peaceful” Ukrainian cities
Russian and pro-Russian Luhansk People’s Republic separatist forces claim to have entered the outskirts of Siversk in Ukraine’s Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.
Acknowledging that reports have not corroborated, the ministry said Russian forces have been slowly advancing westwards and probing assaults towards Siversk from Lysychansk to open a pathway onward to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Bakhmut is likely to be the next objective, once Siversk is secured,” the report read.
The simple truth is that, as we speak, children, women and men, the young and the old, are living in terror.”
Continue reading...Town festival authorities refuse to play chart-topping Layla by DJ Robin & Schürze, prompting complaints of censorship
They are loud in volume, unsophisticated in tune and often offensively bawdy in content. With titles ranging from Sex With a Bavarian to Big Tits Potato Salad, the ballermann sub-genre of schlager pop is a big hit in German-dominated nightclubs on the Balearic island of Mallorca, but is more likely to elicit winces of embarrassment or Fremdschämen at home.
Yet this week German newspapers have been filled with detailed analysis of schlager song lyrics, and even the country’s justice minister felt inclined to share his musical taste after a Bavarian city decided to banish this holiday season’s ballermann hit from its beer halls for its sexist tendencies.
Continue reading...Liza Dmitrieva, four, was killed in a strike in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday
The life and death of four-year-old Liza Dmitrieva in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday is a symbol of a conflict where death often comes without warning and from above.
A series of video and still images posted on social media appear to track the last hours of Liza, who turned four in March in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her mother, Iryna, lost a leg in the strike, which was condemned by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “an open act of terrorism”.
Continue reading...Ruling targets Danish firms that have exported white cheese labelled as ‘feta’
Twenty years after feta cheese was recognised as exclusively Greek, the EU’s highest court has gone one step further and announced that Denmark would be breaking the law if it continued to allow dairies to sell counterfeit feta outside the bloc.
In Athens, the news elicited immediate glee. “This is a wonderful day for authentic feta cheese,” said Christos Apostolopoulos, who heads the Association of Greek Dairy Industries, which produces 80% of the country’s stock. “We are very pleased and delighted. Our complaints have finally been heard.”
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here
Images of Ukrainian territorial defence troops having dinner outside the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, have dropped over the wires this morning.
Hot meals were served to servicemen after a combat tactic training exercise.
It is going to be a tough 2022—and possibly an even tougher 2023, with increased risk of recession.
The human tragedy of the war in Ukraine has worsened. So, too, has its economic impact especially through commodity price shocks that are slowing growth and exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis that affects hundreds of millions of people—and especially poor people who cannot afford to feed their families. And it’s only getting worse.
Continue reading...Crisis driven by decision of coalition partner Five Star to sit out confidence vote
Italy’s coalition government is teetering on the brink of collapse after the Five Star Movement refused to participate in a confidence vote, raising the spectre of a snap general election.
Five Star, headed by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, is a formerly anti-establishment party that has plummeted in the polls and lost parliamentarians since joining the government, hurt by policy U-turns and internal divisions.
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