US president tells cabinet Tehran is delaying in hope of better terms after November congressional elections
Donald Trump has accused Iran of trying to stall on making a peace agreement by running down the clock before November’s US midterm elections in the hope of getting better terms.
“They thought they were going to out-wait me, you know, ‘We’ll out wait him, he’s got the midterms,” the US president told a meeting of his cabinet at the White House on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Anne Keast-Butler says Russian forces are ‘going backwards on the battlefield’ for first time since late 2022
Nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion more than four years ago, according to a new estimate from the head of the British spy agency GCHQ.
Anne Keast-Butler, the chief of the electronic intelligence agency, said in her first speech in the job that Russian forces were “going backwards on the battlefield” inside Ukraine for the first time since late 2022.
Continue reading...Igor Lytvynchuk is scheduled to appear in court on charges of harassing and attempting to harass a protected animal
The lawyer for a tourist accused of hurling a rock at an endangered Hawaiian monk seal says his client was trying to protect sea turtles and has since been assaulted, threatened and doxed.
Igor Lytvynchuk, 38, of Covington, Washington, is scheduled to appear in court in Honolulu on Wednesday on charges of harassing and attempting to harass a protected animal.
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Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, posted this on social media about Tony Blair’s latest intervention this morning.
Tony Blair.
What the billionaire class have paid for.
Spot the difference between “Tony Blair says” and “Nigel Farage says”
Continue reading...Robert Kenyon castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project on rugby league forum in 2016
Reform UK’s candidate for the Makerfield byelection has castigated Brexit as an economically self-harming project promoted by politicians who “peddled the nationalistic pish”, raising more doubts about his commitment to Nigel Farage’s signature achievement.
The comments by Robert Kenyon, unearthed on a defunct rugby league forum and first reported by the Telegraph, follow the emergence of another post in which he said people would be wrong to assume he had voted for Brexit.
Continue reading...Relatives pay tribute to Shanice Brookes, 30, a charity worker and mum who had ‘energy you could never forget’
The family of a woman who was an innocent bystander when she was fatally shot outside a bar in Sheffield city centre at the weekend have paid tribute to her.
South Yorkshire police on Wednesday named the victim as Shanice Brookes, a 30-year-old charity worker. Her family described Brookes, who lived in Sheffield, as “one of a kind” with the “biggest heart” and “energy you could never forget”.
Continue reading...After winning the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival, the exiled auteur sent a direct message to the Russian president urging him to stop the war
Accoladed director Andrey Zvyagintsev has sent a direct message to Vladimir Putin urging him to start listening to the Russian people and end the “senseless” war in Ukraine, continuing a war of words between Russia’s most revered living film-maker and the Kremlin that started at the Cannes film festival awards ceremony over the weekend.
“Except for the limbs torn off from your fellow citizens in the name of an illusory goal, except for the massacre of young people that the country needs to build life and the future – nothing good is on the horizon if we don’t stop,” the exiled auteur said in a message sent to the Russian president’s press secretary through official channels on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Authorities say no hope for survivors after tank containing a chemical solution ruptured and killed one person
Crews were set to resume searching on Wednesday for nine workers at a Washington state paper mill where a tank imploded, but authorities said there was no hope of finding any more survivors.
One person was confirmed dead and nine people were reported injured on Tuesday after a tank at Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co in Longview imploded, releasing a highly destructive chemical mixture called “white liquor”. But nine other workers remained missing.
Continue reading...More than 52,000 people respond to Commons committee’s call for evidence amid criticism of loan terms
Thousands of graduates have told an official inquiry their horror stories and bad experiences relating to student loans, underlining what the chair of an MPs’ committee called massive levels of “frustration and upset”.
Amid an ongoing row over the ballooning cost of degree course debts, more than 52,000 people responded to a call for evidence by the Commons Treasury select committee as part of its inquiry into student loans and the taxation of graduates.
Continue reading...Mark Carney announces purchase of Saab’s GlobalEye early warning aircraft to patrol Arctic territory
Canada has announced plans to buy a fleet of early warning planes from Sweden’s Saab rather than a competing option from Boeing, as the country seeks to reduce reliance on US defense firms.
Mark Carney, the prime minister, said on Wednesday that Canada would opt for Saab’s GlobalEye, which is based on Bombardier’s Global 6500 jet. Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail plane – which has suffered from delays and cost overruns – had also been in contention.
Continue reading...As the budget fight plays out fiercely online, Labor senator Ellie Whiteaker turns to a zebra and a giraffe for help
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Selling a complicated federal budget isn’t exactly child’s play, but Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers could do worse than following the example of their colleague’s toy giraffe and zebra to help explain their contentious tax changes.
The budget fight is dominating parliament and Senate estimates, but it’s being fought just as fiercely online. The weapons of choice? Memes, fluffy animals and a questionable reference to a serial killer cannibal.
Continue reading...Video appears to show divers discovering group sitting on a rock surrounded by flood water
Rescuers have reached five of seven people who have been trapped for a week in a flooded, remote cave in Laos, after days spent navigating narrow, inundated passageways amid persistent rain.
Video footage shared on social media by rescue divers showed the five men crouched together on a rocky ledge in a dark cave chamber, surrounded by muddy water. “There’s no need to cry,” one of the rescue team told the men, who first entered the cave on Wednesday. Two men remain unaccounted for.
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