Money will go towards repairing country’s energy infrastructure as well as providing humanitarian assistance
US vice-president, Kamala Harris, has pledged more than $1.5bn in aid for Ukraine’s energy sector and its humanitarian situation amid its ongoing war with Russia.
Harris made the announcement at a peace summit in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she met Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. She is expected to address the summit later.
Continue reading...Dogged by age issue, president, 81, is now highlighting Trump’s many peculiarities, from hair style to Bible sales
Taking a line out of Donald Trump’s playbook, Joe Biden offered his rival a tongue-in-cheek birthday greeting on X on Friday, saying: “Happy 78th birthday, Donald. Take it from one old guy to another: Age is just a number.”
The president then coupled his thoughts with a caustic video sarcastically touting “78 of Trump’s historic … ‘accomplishments’” before a Biden re-election campaign spokesperson added: “On behalf of America, our early gift for your 79th: making sure you are never president again.”
Continue reading...This lvie blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here
Three people were killed and five others injured by Russian shelling in Ulakly village in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, local governor Vadym Filashkin wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
He said the village was hit by cluster munitions, adding that administrative buildings, a private house, a shop and eight cars were damaged.
Continue reading...FOI reveals non EU migrants could be caught in ‘Windrush style scandal' at end of 2024 as Home Office struggles to contact them
More than 4 million non-EU migrants living in Britain will need to switch to digital “eVisas” by the end of this year or risk being unable to prove their legal rights, according to figures seen by the Observer.
Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs) – given to all foreign nationals with permission to live in the UK for at least six months – demonstrate proof of an individual’s right to study, access public services and claim benefits. But they are being replaced under the Home Office’s digitisation programme.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our UK election coverage here
David Cameron has said that being prime minister was a “good apprenticeship” for serving as foreign secretary, in an interview with the Times.
Speaking about his decision to take the role, Cameron said he had told his family he was “going to really go for this job and give it everything I had”. In just over six months, Cameron said he had visited 35 countries as foreign secretary.
I really like having the focus. That juggling act, as prime minister, is incredibly difficult. You have to do so many different things and different topics. I loved the challenge of it, but it does mean you’re always frustrated.”
When I look at Starmer I think he’s sitting there with his fingers crossed to please, please, please let them pass judgment on Lettucegate, three prime ministers and all the rest of it.
I think we can win this election. Even when I was ahead in the polls in 2010, or somewhere behind in the polls in 2015, I used to say ‘can win’ rather than ‘will’ because it’s up to the public, it’s up to the country.”
Continue reading...Subatomic instrument will be able to accurately pinpoint locations under ground and under water, where satellite signals are often blocked
Dr Joseph Cotter takes some unusual pieces of luggage on his trips on the London underground. They include a stainless steel vacuum chamber, a few billion atoms of rubidium and an array of lasers that are used to cool his equipment to a temperature just above absolute zero.
While not the average kit you would expect to find being dragged into carriages on the District Line, this is the gear that Cotter – who works at Imperial College London’s Centre for Cold Matter – uses on his underground travels.
Continue reading...Former infectious disease head says big pharma tried to poach him while he was nation’s Covid chief
Before Anthony Fauci retired from his lengthy run as the US government’s top infectious disease doctor, major pharmaceutical companies tried to lure him away from his post by offering him seven-figure jobs – but he turned them down because he “cared about … the health of the country” too much, he says in a new interview.
Fauci’s comments on his loyalty to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niad) – which he directed for 38 years before retiring in December 2022 – come only a couple of weeks after he testified to Congress about receiving “credible death threats” from far-right extremists over his efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi also exchanged for Hamid Noury, who was serving life in Sweden for role in death of political prisoners
Johan Floderus, the Swedish EU diplomat held in captivity for two years in Iran, has been freed and is on his way home, the Swedish prime minister announced.
Ulf Kristersson said on Saturday that the Iranian lifer Hamid Noury was being exchanged for Johan Floderus and the Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi.
Continue reading...Marine Le Pen’s party is breaking record high scores across vast areas of the country, polls show, with an increase in its influence inevitable
It is 8pm on Sunday 7 July. Polling stations have just closed after the second round of snap French parliamentary elections – the country’s most momentous ballot in living memory – and the first estimations flash up on the nation’s TV screens.
President Emmanuel Macron has lost his gamble. The National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen has more than trebled its tally of deputies in the assemblée nationale to just over 290: an absolute majority. France’s next government will be far right.
Continue reading...Hi-tech imaging reveals the artist tinkered with Herri met de Bles’s painting to improve the composition of figures
One benefit of being among history’s greatest artists is that if you don’t much like a painting done by someone else, you can just improve it. The Flemish master Sir Peter Paul Rubens certainly knew how to paint people; Rubenesque is still used to describe a curvaceous, ample body. So when he noticed the inferior quality of the religious figures depicted on an otherwise accomplished landscape hanging on his wall, it turns out he simply picked up his paint palette.
A newly rediscovered Herri met de Bles painting, titled The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in an Extensive Landscape with Travellers, set a puzzle for art historians because the style of the landscape background did not match the group of people. Hi-tech imaging of the canvas carried out by a London auction house has since “completed the jigsaw”, revealing the way Rubens had tinkered with a painting now thought to have belonged to his own collection.
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