International

French marine experts attempted yesterday to rescue a beluga whale that swam up the Seine river and return it to the sea, officials said, a complex and risky operation for an animal already sick and malnourished. The 4m (13’) cetacean, a protected species usually found in cold Arctic waters, was spotted a week ago heading towards Paris, and is now some 130km (81 miles) inland: it had swum nearly halfway to Paris before local authorities confined the all-white whale in a large lock system at Saint-Pierre-La-Garenne in Normandy. It was unclear why the whale had strayed so far from its natural habitat. “An operation to transport the beluga astray in the Seine will be attempted this evening,” said government officials in the Eure department, who are orchestrating the effort, yesterday. The animal’s health has deteriorated after it refused to eat. However, its condition is currently “satisfactory”, Isabelle Brasseur of the Marineland sea animal park in southern France, Europe’s biggest, told AFP. She is part of a Marineland team sent to assist with the rescue, alongside the Sea Shepherd France NGO. “What’s exceptional is that here the banks of the Seine are not accessible for vehicles ... everything is going to have to be done by hand,” Brasseur said. So far the beluga has not turned around, and experts have dismissed any attempt to “nudge” it back toward the English Channel with boats, saying that it would stress the weakened animal and probably be futile in any case. Starting around 8pm (1800 GMT), the team attempted to get the animal weighing 800kg (nearly 1,800 pounds) onto a refrigerated truck and drive it to an undisclosed seawater basin where it can be treated for several days before being released into the open sea, the Eure authorities said. “There it will, we hope, have a better chance of survival,” said NGO Sea Shepherd France, which is assisting the operation, yesterday. It added that tranquillisation is not an option, since belugas are so-called “voluntary breathers” that need to be awake to inhale air. “In any case, we have to get it out of there ... and try to figure out what is wrong,” Brasseur said. Veterinarians will keep constant watch during the move. “There may be internal problems that we can’t see,” she said, despite the fact that belugas are “extremely hardy” as a species. Interest in the beluga’s fate has spread far beyond France, generating a large influx of financial donations and other aid from conservation groups as well as individuals, officials said. On Monday Sea Shepherd issued a public appeal in particular for heavy-duty ropes, nets, mattresses and other equipment. Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far. According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000km from the Seine. The trapped whale is only the second beluga ever sighted in France. The first was pulled out of the Loire estuary in a fisherman’s net in 1948.

Liz Truss, the frontrunner to be Britain’s next prime minister, stuck to her plan to cut taxes to help households cope with a looming 230% leap in energy prices, despite warnings that lower taxes won’t help those facing increased poverty and destitution. The Bank of England warned last week that Britain was on course for a long recession as unprecedented energy prices push inflation towards 13%, but any political response has been hampered by the race to select a new prime minister on September 5. While European governments seek to conserve gas usage and increase storage following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain’s government has split into warring camps led by Truss and rival Rishi Sunak who have clashed over how to respond. A spokesman for outgoing leader Boris Johnson said it was not his place to intervene. He remains prime minister until September 5, but has only recently returned from holiday. Foreign Secretary Truss was asked five times by a reporter in a TV interview if she would provide financial support to households who cannot afford to pay the £4,266 annual bill that is forecast to hit in January, up from £1,277 earlier this year. She said her priority was to cut taxes, rather than funnelling cash back to households via energy support. “What I’m promising is from day one, people will have lower taxes,” she said, adding she would also halt green levies, which would reduce energy bills by less than 8%. Her critics say tax cuts would benefit the wealthy over the hardest hit. Truss’s response sparked criticism on the day that forecasting group Cornwall Insight raised its energy price estimates. Cornwall now expects the cap on a typical household energy contract to rise by 82% in October, adding to the 54% rise that came into force in April. It will take average annual bills for gas and electricity to £3,582, driven by soaring wholesale costs and changes in the way the cap is set. The cap is then expected to rise to £4,266 in January, compared with Cornwall’s previous forecast of £3,616. A move by Russia to cut gas exports to the West has driven up bills across Europe, forcing governments in Italy, France and elsewhere to intervene to protect their citizens. In Germany bills have nearly trebled in a year, while France has capped electricity tariff rises at 4%. Sunak, Britain’s former finance minister, previously announced a £37bn package of measures to try to ease the cost of living crisis this winter, including a £400 credit on energy bills for every household. Since then wholesale gas prices have more than doubled. Campaign group End Fuel Poverty Coalition said around a third of households, or 10.5mn, could be classed as being in fuel poverty by January, limiting their ability to spend on anything but fuel, food and others bills. Ed Miliband, energy spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, described the Cornwall forecast increase as “catastrophic”, while vocal consumer campaigner Martin Lewis urged the “zombie” government to wake up, saying: “This will leave many destitute.”

The UK’s meteorological agency yesterday issued an “amber” warning for extreme heat while the country’s biggest water provider said restrictions loom, as Britain braces for another punishing heatwave later this week. The warning by the Met Office, covering much of southern England and parts of eastern Wales from tomorrow through Sunday, predicts possible impacts to health, transport and infrastructure from the heat. Temperatures are set to soar to the mid-30s Celsius for several days, it noted. The sweltering conditions come just weeks after the last heatwave pushed the mercury over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in Britain. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk and severity of droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather events. “Thanks to persistent high pressure over the UK, temperatures will be rising day-on-day through this week and an extreme heat warning has been issued,” Met Office deputy chief meteorologist Dan Rudman said in a statement. Months of exceptionally dry weather across England are taking their toll, with Thames Water – which supplies London and its surroundings – the latest water provider to warn of imminent restrictions. The firm said it is planning to issue a so-called hosepipe ban in the coming weeks “given the long-term forecast” of hot and dry weather for the southeast. Several other UK water suppliers have already announced similar moves ahead of this week’s heatwave, but Thames Water’s 15mn customers would make it the most impactful so far. The Met Office has confirmed it was the driest July in England since 1935, and little or no rain is forecast for most of the parched areas in the short term. “Water companies are already managing the unprecedented effects of the driest winter and spring since the 1970s,” said Peter Jenkins, of Water UK, which represents the industry. “With more hot, dry weather forecast, it’s crucial we be even more mindful of our water use to minimise spikes in demand and ensure there’s enough to go around.” The parched conditions have seen wildfires break out near houses, including on the outskirts of London, a relatively rare occurrence in Britain.

Singer Olivia Newton-John, who gained worldwide fame as the high school sweetheart Sandy in the hit movie Grease, died yesterday after a 30-year battle with cancer. She was 73. Newton-John “passed away peacefully at her ranch in Southern California this morning, surrounded by family and friends,” said a statement from her husband John Easterling posted on her official social media accounts. The entertainer, whose career spanned more than five decades, devoted much of her time and celebrity to charities after first being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. The British-born and Australian-raised star dedicated a number of albums and concerts to raise funds for research and early detection of the disease, including the construction of a health centre named after her in her adopted home Melbourne. “I don’t like to say ‘battled’,” a defiant Newton-John told Australia’s Channel Seven TV in September 2018 after revealing she had been diagnosed with cancer for a third time. “I like to say ‘win over’, because ‘battled’ sets up this anger and inflammation that you don’t want.” Newton-John is best-known for starring in the 1978 musical Grease alongside John Travolta, as the-girl-next-door Sandy, who trades her ankle-length skirt and prim and proper hair for skin-tight black pants and a perm. The high school sweetheart-turned-bad girl resonated with audiences worldwide, and continues to capture hearts decades after the movie was released. “Making it was fun but you never know with movies if audiences are going to go with it or not, even if you love it,” she said in a Forbes interview in 2018. “It is incredible that it is still going but it’s not even just that, it’s showing no signs of stopping. You say “Sandy and Danny” and people instantly know what you’re talking about.” Grease remained the highest-grossing musical for three decades, with Newton-John and Travolta maintaining a close relationship long after the film was made. “She was my favourite thing about doing Grease,” Travolta said in an interview to mark the film’s 40 anniversary in 2018. There was no one else “in the universe” who could play Sandy, he said of Newton-John, who turned 29 during the making of Grease and later revealed she had to be convinced by Travolta to take up the role after self-doubts that she was too old to play a teenager. “If you were a young man in the 70s..., if you remember that album cover with Olivia with that blue shirt on, with those big blue eyes staring at you,” Travolta recalled. “Every boy’s, every man’s dream was: ‘oh I would love for that girl to be my girlfriend’.”

A Moscow court yesterday ordered journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who denounced Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, to pay a new fine for discrediting the Russian army. In March, Ovsyannikova shot to prominence for interrupting a live TV broadcast to denounce Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Her lawyer did not rule out yesterday the possibility she could face a criminal probe in the future. Last week, another court ordered the 44-year-old journalist to pay 50,000 roubles (around $800) for discrediting the Russian army. Yesterday, Ovsyannikova, a former editor at state-controlled Channel One, said Moscow’s Cheryomushkinsky district court ordered her to pay 40,000 roubles. Ovsyannikova’s lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov told AFP she was fined for a post on Facebook. Two convictions within the space of six months can lead to a criminal case. In court, Ovsyannikova said she “trolled” the judge but he did not seem to understand her irony. “America and Europe are to blame for the fact that there is no longer freedom of speech, just courts and fair elections in Russia. And people are put in jail for calling for peace,” she said in court, according to her statement on messaging app Telegram. Ovsyannikova, a mother of two, was briefly detained in July. Her short detention came several days after she demonstrated alone near the Kremlin, holding up a sign criticising the military intervention in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin. After sending troops to Ukraine, Moscow adopted laws imposing sentences of up to 15 years in prison for spreading information about the military deemed false by the authorities. Russian authorities have not announced the opening of any criminal investigation against Ovsyannikova. In the months following her March protest, Ovsyannikova spent time abroad, working for three months for Germany’s Die Welt. In early July, she announced that she was returning to Russia to settle a dispute over the custody of her two children. The journalist, who worked for state TV for 19 years, told AFP in a recent interview she had to sell her car to bring in some extra money. Ovsyannikova, who does not currently have a permanent job, works as a freelancer for foreign media.

Ukraine said yesterday that renewed Russian shelling had damaged three radiation sensors and hurt a worker at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, in the second hit in consecutive days on Europe’s largest nuclear facility. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Saturday night’s shelling “Russian nuclear terror” that warranted more international sanctions, this time on Moscow’s nuclear sector. Kyiv said Russia hit a power line at the plant on Friday. However, the Russian-installed authority of the area said Ukraine hit the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility. Reuters could not verify either side’s version. Events at the Zaporizhzhia site have alarmed the world. “(It) underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster,” International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday. Elsewhere, a deal to unblock Ukraine’s food exports and ease global shortages gathered pace as another four ships sailed out of Ukrainian Black Sea ports while the first cargo vessel since Russia’s February 24 invasion docked. The four outgoing ships had almost 170,000 tonnes of corn and other food. They were sailing under a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to try to help ease soaring global food prices that have resulted from the war. Before Moscow’s invasion, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports. The disruption since then has threatened famine in some parts of the world. Putin’s troops are trying to gain full control of the Donbas region of east Ukraine where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea to the south in 2014. Russian forces stepped up their attacks north and northwest of Donetsk city in the Donbas yesterday, Ukraine’s military said. The Russians attacked Ukrainian positions near the heavily fortified settlements of Piski and Avdiivka, as well as shelling other locations in the Donetsk region, it said. Kyiv also says Russia is massing troops in southern Ukraine to prevent a potential counter-offensive near Kherson. Ukraine’s chief war crimes prosecutor said almost 26,000 suspected war crimes committed since the invasion were being investigated, with 135 people charged, of whom 15 were in custody. Russia denies targeting civilians. Beyond Ukraine, a proxy battle played out at the International Chess Federation where former Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich won a second term as president, defeating Ukraine’s Andrii Baryshpolets. And after days of controversy, Amnesty International apologised for “distress and anger” caused by a report accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians. That had infuriated Zelensky and prompted the head of the rights group’s Ukraine office to resign.

Jumping from rock to rock to rock over a creek formed off Austria’s Jamtal glacier, scientist Andrea Fischer worries that precious scientific data will be irreversibly lost as the snow and ice melt faster than ever. “I couldn’t have imagined that it would ever melt as dramatically as this summer... Our ‘archive’ is melting away,” says the glaciologist. Fischer — vice director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences — has spent more than 20 years surveying Jamtal and four other Alpine glaciers across Austria’s highest peaks for the oldest areas of ice. For scientists looking to reconstruct the Earth’s climate in the distant past, such ice formations are a unique time capsule stretching back thousands of years. The glaciers contain an invaluable treasure trove of data — as they grew, the ice encapsulated twigs and leaves, which can now be carbon-dated, Fischer explains. And based on the age of such material and the depth where it was found, scientists can infer when ice grew during colder periods, or when warmer conditions caused it to melt. But now the glaciers are melting rapidly — including the one in the remote and narrow Jamtal valley, not far from where tourists found the stunningly preserved 5,300-year-old mummy of Oetzi, the Iceman, in the 1990s. Temperatures in Europe’s highest mountains have risen by nearly two degrees Celsius in the past 120 years — almost double the global average, according to the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA). The Alps’ roughly 4,000 glaciers have since become one of the starkest signs of global warming. The Jamtal glacier has been losing about one metre (three feet) from its surface annually, but this year it has already lost more than a metre, Fischer says. “And we’ve got at least two months of summer left... where the glacier is entirely exposed to the sun,” she warns. Snow usually protects most of the glacial ice from the sun until September, but the little snow that fell last winter had already melted by early July. “This year is outrageous compared to the average of the past 6,000 years,” says Fischer. “If this continues, in five years, Jamtal glacier won’t be a glacier anymore.” By the end of the summer, Fischer fears that about seven metres of depth will have melted off the surface — or about 300 years of climate “archives”. “We need the data the glaciers hold to understand the climate of the past — and to create models of what awaits us in the future,” she says. Fischer and her team have drilled on both the Jamtal and other nearby glaciers to extract data, taking out ice samples up to 14m deep. As temperatures rise and the glaciers become more unstable, they are compelled to take additional safety precautions — 11 people died in a glacial ice avalanche in the Italian Dolomites in July, the day after temperatures there rose to new records. In Galtuer, the nearest village to Jamtal with 870 residents who are mostly dependent on tourism, the Alpine Club is already offering a “Goodbye, glacier!” tour through the once ice-filled valley to raise awareness about the effects of climate change. Where the ice has retreated, scientists found that within three years about 20 species of plants, mostly mosses, have taken over. In some areas, larches are growing, according to Fischer. “If the glacier is gone in five years, that’s a pity, because it’s part of the landscape,” says Sarah Mattle, who heads the Alpine Club. “But then there’ll also be new paths, and maybe there’ll be an easier hike over the mountains than over the ice. It’ll all be a matter of adapting,” the 34-year-old adds. Other locals like Gottlieb Lorenz, whose great-grandfather was the first manager of the 2,165-metre-high Jamtal cabin set up as a refuge for mountaineers, are heartbroken. “My heart is bleeding when I think about how magnificent and mighty the glacier was and what a miserable tiny pile it is today,” the 60-year-old says. He points at a black-and-white photo taken in 1882 showing a thick ice sheet flowing past the cabin. Today, the ice is a 90-minute hike away.

Hopes of saving a malnourished beluga whale that has swum up the Seine river were receding yesterday, as rescuers said they were in a race against the clock to find a solution. The whale was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel. Since Friday it has been between two locks some 70km north of the French capital. But leaving it in the warm stagnant water between the lock gates is no longer an option. “He has to be moved in the coming 24-48 hours, these conditions are not good for him,” Sea Shepherd France head Lamya Essemlali told AFP. Specialists held out “little hope” for the visibly underweight whale as they were “in a race against the clock” to save the creature, Essemlali said. “We are all doubtful about its own ability to return to the sea,” she said. “Even if we ‘drove’ it with a boat, that would be extremely dangerous, if not impossible”. Before swimming between the two locks, “he had the tendency to be heading toward Paris. It would be catastrophic if he reached there,” Essemlali said. However, “the euthanasia option has been ruled out for the moment, because at this stage it would be premature”, she said. The whale still has “energy ... turns its head, reacts to stimuli”, she said after a meeting of experts and French officials. Although rescuers have tried feeding it frozen herring and then live trout, the animal was refusing the food. “His lack of appetite is surely a symptom of something else... an illness. He is malnourished and this dates back weeks, if not months. He was no longer eating at sea,” Essemlali said.

With no street or statue to remember Yugoslavia’s late strongman Josip Broz Tito, a new tour in the Croatian capital Zagreb is hoping to trace the leader’s complicated legacy in a city where he remains divisive. Adored by some and hated by others, Tito remains a polarising figure four decades after his death across the former Yugoslav republics, including Croatia, where he helped usher in prosperity and authoritarianism alike. The tour’s curator Danijela Matijevic said the idea for the project came in 2017, after authorities in Zagreb stripped Tito’s name from a prominent square. The move was the latest in a string of measures over the years aimed at ridding the country of its Yugoslav past, removing plaques and monuments along with renaming streets and squares. But for Matijevic, history still matters. “Tito was definitely one of the 20th century’s political giants,” Matijevic said. The “Walk with Tito” tour, launched last year, takes people to eight sites in downtown Zagreb linked to the Croatian-born leader and the anti-fascist movement he founded at the start of World War II, commonly known as the Partisans. It stops at the square once named after Tito, the main railway station where Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime deported people to concentration camps, and a passage named after two sisters who were resistance heroes. The tour does not indulge in sugar-coating the past as it explores Tito’s successes along with his share of failures. The late leader is known for charting a middle road for the socialist federation he founded, siding neither with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. “Tito had good relations with the West but did not neglect good ties with the East either, positioning Yugoslavia somewhere between and benefiting from both,” said Zagreb-based historian Hrvoje Klasic. The move kept Yugoslavia out of the Cold War’s chaos and made it the most prosperous communist country. But there was also repression and simmering nationalism that exploded after his death, leading to the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia which sparked a series of wars and killed around 130,000 people in the 1990s. Following the conflicts and Croatia’s independence, Tito and Yugoslavia have been largely disregarded, deemed an aberration in the country’s past. But for Matijevic, Tito and his legacy are also personal — two of her grandparents fought with his Partisans during World War II. During a two-year stint in Germany, Matijevic was inspired by how the country had grappled with its past, and this helped lay the groundwork for the Tito tour project. “(I was) amazed how Germans handled their turbulent 20th century history,” Matijevic said. The guide’s attempt to delve into Croatia’s past has not been entirely smooth. Since starting the tours, Matijevic has been targeted with abuse on social media and has also been threatened with outright violence, in a case being investigated by authorities. In December, right-wing politician Igor Peternel also slammed the Zagreb tourist board for including information about the tour in its brochures, lambasting the body for “promoting Tito and Yugoslavia”. “It is absolutely unacceptable... an ideological provocation and shame,” said Peternel, a member of the capital’s city council. But many who have taken the tour found it worthwhile. Economist Vedrana Basic said she was pleased “to learn something new”, adding that it was rare to “hear much about Tito in Zagreb” these days. Tanja Simic, a retired journalist from the capital, agreed. “We should capitalise on our history in a touristic sense regardless what one may think about some of its parts”, Simic said.

Noxious gases from an Icelandic volcano threaten to pollute the air of a nearby village and risk spreading to the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said yesterday. The weather agency said that it expects particularly heavy gas pollution in Vogar, a village of some 1,000 inhabitants about 5km (three miles) northeast of Fagradalsfjall, the uninhabited valley where the volcano is located. It said the pollution could reach Reykjavik, 40km from the volcano, by today. Concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO2) could reach up to 2,600 microgrammes per cubic metre, a level considered “unhealthy for the sensitive”, according to the Environment Agency of Iceland. However, the IMO warned that their models were uncertain since the “flow from the eruption is very uneven”. The warning came after measurements showed that activity had halved at the volcanic fissure, which has been spewing glowing lava since Wednesday, and that the length of the crack had shrunk from an initial 360m (1,181’) to around 130m. Although more powerful than a previous eruption in the same area last year, the initial lava flow of around 32cu m (1,130cu feet) per second had decreased by the second day to around 18cu m per second, according to an assessment published late on Thursday. “This behaviour is very similar to what is usually observed during eruptions in the country – the eruption is powerful at the beginning and then subsides,” the Institute of Earth Sciences said in a statement. The field of lava from the eruption covered 144,000sq m on Thursday. “The (lava) flow is strongest in the middle of (the fissure) and there are indications that it may extend northwards,” authorities warned. The pressure in the tunnel feeding the eruption is not balanced, which geophysicists say could lead to a new eruption at a new location. “New fissures can open in the immediate vicinity of the eruption site with little notice,” the IMO said. Visitors have flocked to the eruption in record numbers to marvel at the flow of lava. According to authorities, more than 4,200 people walked the 14km round trip to the site on the Reykjanes peninsula on Thursday, about two hours from the nearest car park.

Wildfires raging through Europe this summer have burned the second largest area on record, even though the region is only halfway through its typical fire season, according to data from the European Union’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). A dozen European countries have suffered major blazes this year, forcing thousands to evacuate and destroying homes and businesses. Countries including Italy, Spain and France still face extreme fire risk. Wildfires have burned 600,731 hectares in EU countries this year so far, the data showed. That ranks as the second-highest total for any year since 2006, when records began. In 2017, 987,844 hectares were burned. This year’s burned area is more than double the size of Luxembourg. No other year in the dataset had seen such a high amount of burned land in Europe by August. The Mediterranean region’s typical fire season runs from June to September. Climate change is exacerbating fires, by increasing the hot and dry conditions that help them spread faster, burn longer and rage more intensely. Hotter weather saps moisture from vegetation, turning it into dry fuel – a problem exacerbated by shrinking workforces in some areas to clear this vegetation. Victor Resco de Dios, professor of forest engineering at Spain’s Lleida University, said that the large fires France and Portugal suffered in early July were “extremely unusual” and demonstrated how climate change is causing the fire season to start earlier and last longer. “Today’s fires in the Mediterranean can no longer be extinguished ... large fires are getting bigger and bigger,” he said. The JRC data covers wildfires bigger than 30 hectares, so if smaller fires were included the total burned would be even higher. Southern European countries such as Portugal and Greece experience fires most summers, but hotter temperatures are pushing severe wildfire risk north, with Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic among those hit this season. Some action can help to limit blazes, such as setting controlled fires that mimic the low-intensity fires in natural ecosystem cycles. However, without steep cuts to the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, scientists concur that heatwaves, wildfires and other climate impacts will worsen significantly. Meanwhile, firefighters backed by more than 20 aircraft battled a wildfire in northwestern Spain which appears to have been started deliberately, local authorities said yesterday. Fanned by strong winds and a heatwave, the blaze has already destroyed some 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of forest and scrubland in Galicia, the regional government said in a statement. “Everything indicates it was started intentionally,” it said. The fire started out on Wednesday in several spots near the town of Verin near the border with Portugal, which is experiencing its worst drought in a century. They authorities said the blaze did not currently pose a threat to “inhabited areas”. Since the weekend, much of Spain has been in the grip of its third heatwave since June.

An “unprecedented” fire broke out yesterday around a German police munitions storage site in a popular forest in western Berlin, sending plumes of smoke into the skies and setting off a series of explosions. The fire began in the Grunewald forest in the early hours of the morning, with residents reporting a series of explosions. Firefighters were initially unable to tackle the blaze directly due to the danger of further blasts, with emergency services setting up a 1,000m (3,280’) safety zone around the site. Around 250 emergency personnel were deployed to the site. The fire had spread across 50 hectares by the evening, according to police, but the emergency services were hoping to bring it under control overnight. The most dangerous zones have been identified and firefighters have been cleared to proceed to within 500m of the blaze in some areas, they said. The army had earlier sent in a tank aimed at evacuating munitions at the affected storage site as well as remote-controlled de-mining robots, while drones circled the air to assess the emergency. The firefighters laid hoses through the forest from nearby rivers and lakes, and an armoured vehicle supplied by the Bundeswehr was cutting a fire break through the forest at the southern edge of the perimeter zone. “Everything is prepared at the borders of the perimeter. That is where we want to stop it,” a spokesperson for the fire service told Reuters. Water cannons were also deployed around the safety zone to prevent the fire from spreading. However, authorities said that no firefighting helicopters were available as they were already in use to tackle forest fires in eastern Germany. They also said the 1,000m safety zone applied to the air, so there was a limit to how useful it would be to drop water on the fire from above. Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey interrupted her holiday to visit the scene, calling the events “unprecedented in the post-war history of Berlin”. She advised Berliners to close their windows but said the danger was minimal as there were no residential buildings within a 2km (1.2-mile) radius and so no need to issue evacuation orders. Road and rail traffic had been disrupted but was expected to return to normal in the course of the evening. The fire came as a heatwave swept across Germany, with temperatures hitting 39° Celsius (102° Fahrenheit) yesterday. Scientists say climate change is making heatwaves around the world more frequent and more intense, which increases the risk of fires. Germany has suffered a series of forest fires this summer, with Brandenburg – the state that surrounds Berlin – among the hardest hit areas, along with the mountainous parts of Saxony state. Police said they were investigating what set off the fire in Grunewald. The store holds munitions uncovered by police, but also unexploded World War II-era ordnance which is regularly dug up during construction works. German media have questioned the wisdom of having a bomb disposal site located in a major city. “At least 25 tonnes of World War II ammunition and illegal fireworks were hoarded at the munitions site there, in the middle of the forest. How can this be?” Berlin newspaper BZ asked. Cyclist Hellmut Schmidt, 64, who commutes through the forest to work, told AFP that “when you see all these fires, of course you worry”. “But I don’t know where else you could have (a munitions site) in Berlin ... if it was further from the city, then it would also be dangerous with the transport because something could explode,” he said. Giffey said local authorities would “have to think about how to deal with this munitions site in the future and whether such a place is the right one in Berlin”. The German capital is rarely hit by forest fires, even though its 29,000-hectares of forests make it one of the greenest cities in the world. Heavy thunderstorms are expected to sweep into the country from the west today, the German weather service said. A cold front is predicted to bring temperatures down by more than 10C overnight in western Germany, falling to around 20-25C today. Berlin frequently carries out bomb disposal operations as explosives are still being discovered from World War II. The Grunewald site is used to defuse such old munitions, as well as weapons and fireworks, a fire department spokesperson said. It has been in operation since 1950 and is equipped with fire alarm systems and a firebreak that is several metres wide, police said on Twitter. The explosives stored there were being continuously sprinkled with water.

A Russian court has sentenced US basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison after finding her guilty of deliberately bringing cannabis-infused vape cartridges into Russia, a ruling that US President Joe Biden called “unacceptable”. The court “found the defendant guilty” of smuggling and possessing “a significant amount of narcotics”, judge Anna Sotnikova told a court in the town of Khimki just outside Moscow. Sotnikova sentenced Griner, 31, to nine years in prison and said she would also have to pay a fine of 1mn roubles ($16,590). Griner was escorted out of the courtroom in handcuffs by police after the ruling, turning to reporters and saying: “I love my family.” Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star, was arrested in mid-February as she arrived to play for Russian side UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA offseason – a common path for American stars seeking additional income. In previous hearings, Griner said she was regularly tested by US, Russian and European leagues. The WNBA star said she had permission from a US doctor to use medicinal cannabis to relieve pain from her many injuries – “from spine to cartilages”. Her case threw the Texan into the geopolitical maelstrom triggered when President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, propelling US-Russian relations to a new post-Cold War low. Her sentencing could now pave the way for a US-Russia prisoner swap that would include the 31-year-old athlete and an imprisoned Russian who was once a prolific arms dealer. Griner had admitted having the vape cartridges containing hashish oil but said that she had made an honest mistake by inadvertently packing them. Before the verdict, she tearfully pleaded with a Russian judge not to “end her life” with a harsh prison sentence. Biden, under pressure to bring home Americans held in Russia, called on Russia to free Griner immediately and said his administration would continue to work for her release. “Today, American citizen Brittney Griner received a prison sentence that is one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney,” he said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates.” Griner’s lawyers said they would appeal a verdict they said was “absolutely unreasonable”. Her defence team said the court had ignored all evidence they had presented, as well as Griner’s guilty plea. “She is very upset, very stressed,” said Maria Blagovolina, partner at Rybalkin Gortsunyan Dyakin and Partners, after the hearing. “She can hardly talk. It’s a difficult time for her.” The Russian prosecutor had called for Griner to be sentenced to 9-1/2 years prison if she was found guilty of bringing illegal drugs into the country. Griner was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on February 17 with the cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. While she pleaded guilty, she said she had neither intended to bring a banned substance to Russia nor to hurt anybody. “I made an honest mistake and I hope that in your ruling, that it doesn’t end my life here,” Griner said in court yesterday before breaking down in tears. “My parents taught me two important things: one, take ownership of your responsibilities and two, work hard for everything that you have. That’s why I pled guilty to my charges.” “I want to say again that I had no intent on breaking any Russians laws,” she told the court. “I had no intent, I did not conspire or plan to commit this crime.” Griner also referred to the international politics around her case, saying: “I know everybody keeps talking about political pawn and politics, but I hope that is far from this courtroom.” Cannabis is illegal in Russia for both medicinal and recreational purposes. Griner’s defence team had called for her to be acquitted. Alexander Boikov, one of her lawyers, said some of the case files had been drawn up in violation of the law. The United States has offered to exchange Russian prisoners for American citizens including Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan. One source familiar with the situation said that Washington is willing to exchange convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout, whose life helped inspire the 2005 Hollywood film Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage. Russian officials have said a deal has not been reached. They argue that Griner – known as “BG” to basketball fans – violated laws and should be judged accordingly. USA Basketball said in a message on Twitter that it is disappointed at yesterday’s ruling but it would remain engaged with the US State Department in the effort to get Griner home. “We will not be satisfied until BG is back in the US and reunited with her loved ones, teammates and fans,” it said. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement that the verdict against Griner is “unjustified and unfortunate”. Griner appeared at the hearing in a grey T-shirt and round-rimmed glasses. Before taking a seat in the defendant’s cage, she held up a picture of UMMC Ekaterinburg, the team she played for in Russia during the WNBA offseason. In her testimony last week, Griner expressed puzzlement as to how the vape cartridges ended up in her luggage as she was flying back to Russia to join UMMC Ekaterinburg for the playoffs. “I still don’t understand to this day how they ended up in my bag,” said Griner, the first pick overall in the 2013 WNBA draft. “If I had to guess on how they ended up in my bags, I was in a rush packing.” Griner had been prescribed medical marijuana in the United States to relieve pain from chronic injuries, a treatment method that is common among elite athletes because it has fewer side effects than some painkillers.

A volcano has erupted on a mountain near Iceland’s capital Reykjavik after days of rising earthquake activity in the area, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said yesterday. Images and livestreams by local news outlets MBL and RUV showed lava and smoke spewing from a fissure in the ground on the side of the Fagradalsfjall mountain, which last year saw an eruption that lasted six months. Tourists and residents should avoid the area due to poisonous gases, although there was no immediate risk of damage to critical infrastructure, the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement. A “code red” was declared to prohibit airplanes from flying over the site although helicopters were sent in to survey the situation, the IMO told Reuters. If the outbreak was confirmed to be similar to the fissures seen last year, the aviation alert would likely be lowered to orange, signalling less danger, an agency spokesperson said. “Currently, there have been no disruptions to flights to and from Iceland and international flight corridors remain open,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The Reykjanes Peninsula is a volcanic and seismic hot spot, and the outbreak took place just 25km from Reykjavik and 15km from the nation’s international airport. In March last year, lava fountains erupted spectacularly in the area from a fissure 500-750m long, continuing until September and attracting thousands of Icelanders and tourists to the scene. Unlike the eruption in 2010 of the ice-covered Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which halted some 100,000 flights and forced hundreds of Icelanders from their homes, this eruption is not expected to spew much ash or smoke into the atmosphere. Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, among the largest on the planet, Iceland frequently experiences earthquakes and has high volcanic activity as the two plates move in opposite directions.

Ukraine yesterday dismissed comments by ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that Russia wanted a “negotiated solution” to the war and said any dialogue would be contingent on a Russian ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops. Schroeder, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and increasingly derided in Germany for his pro-Russia stance, said last month’s agreement on grain shipments from Ukraine, aimed at easing a global food crisis, might offer a way forward. The first grain ship since the war started passed through the Bosphorus Strait yesterday en route to Lebanon. “The good news is that the Kremlin wants a negotiated solution,” Schroeder told Stern weekly and broadcasters RTL/ntv, adding he had met Putin in Moscow last week. “A first success is the grain deal, perhaps that can be slowly expanded to a ceasefire.” In response, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak described Schroeder as a “voice of the Russian royal court” and made clear that the grain agreement would not lead to negotiations. “If Moscow wants dialogue, the ball is in its court. First — a cease-fire and withdrawal of troops, then — constructive (dialogue),” Podolyak wrote on Twitter. The grain agreement, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, has been hailed as a rare diplomatic success in the more than five months of war since Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a “special military operation”.  Tentative efforts at peace talks in the early stages of the conflict went nowhere. But Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky played down its importance yesterday, saying the shipment was a fraction of the crop Kyiv must sell to help salvage its shattered economy. The ship, Razoni, left Odesa on the Black Sea early on Monday carrying 26,527 tonnes of corn to the Lebanese port of Tripoli. Zelensky, speaking via video to students in Australia, interpreter, said more time was needed to see whether other grain shipments would follow. “Just recently, thanks to the UN in partnership with Turkey, we had a first ship with the delivery of grain, but it’s still nothing. But we hope it’s a tendency that will continue,” he told the students. He said Ukraine, one of the world’s top grain producers before the war, had to export a minimum 10mn tonnes of grain to urgently help bring down its budget deficit which was running at $5bn a month. A senior Turkish official said three ships could leave Ukrainian ports daily following the Razoni’s departure, while Ukraine’s infrastructure minister said 17 more ships had been loaded with agricultural produce and were waiting to set sail. Ukraine’s forecast for its wartime 2022 harvest has increased to 65mn-67mn tonnes of grain from 60mn tonnes, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said yesterday. In a Telegram message, he praised farmers for pressing ahead with the harvest, even in areas where shelling continues.“The war...is almost killing the economy. It’s in a coma,” Zelensky said. “Russia’s blocking of the ports is a great loss for the economy.” Ukraine said yesterday that Russia had started creating a military strike force aimed at Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih and warned that Moscow could be preparing new offensive operations in southern Ukraine.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Liz Truss, the frontrunner to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, was forced to backtrack on one of her most striking pledges a day after announcing it following a backlash from fellow Conservatives and opposition parties. In the first big misstep of her campaign, Truss set out plans to save billions of pounds a year in government spending in a pledge opponents said would require cutting the pay of public sector workers, including nurses and teachers, outside of the wealthy southeast of England. Truss had said late on Monday she would introduce regional pay boards rather than having a national pay agreement, tailoring pay to the cost of living where people actually work. But after criticism yesterday, Truss said: “I never had any intention of changing the terms and conditions of teachers and nurses. But what I want to be clear about is I will not be going ahead with the regional pay boards.” The U-turn came as a poll showed Truss with a smaller lead over her rival Rishi Sunak than previously thought. A survey of 807 Conservative Party members by Italian data company Techne carried out July 19-27 found Truss was backed by 48%, compared with 43% for former finance minister Sunak. The result suggests a much tighter race than a previous poll of Conservative members carried out by YouGov on July 20-21, which gave Truss a 24-point lead over Sunak. Truss’s public sector pay plan had faced criticism from the main opposition Labour Party and some Conservative lawmakers. The Conservatives won the biggest majority in three decades at the 2019 national election by upending conventional British politics and winning in more industrial areas in central and northern England with a pledge to reduce regional inequalities. One Truss-supporting Conservative lawmaker said the miscalculation would damage the rest of the campaign. “This was a completely avoidable error, but I don’t think in the end it will stop her being prime minister,” he said. Sunak supporter Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, said he was “speechless” at the proposal. Millions of nurses, police officers and soldiers would have had their pay cut by £1,500 ($1,828) a year, Sunak’s campaign said. Rachel Reeves, Labour’s finance spokesperson, said Truss’s plan would have sucked money out of local communities. “This latest mess has exposed exactly what Liz Truss thinks of public sector workers across Britain,” she said. Sunak and Truss are competing for the votes of about 200,000 Conservative members who will select the next prime minister, with the winner announced September  5. Taxes have dominated the campaign race so far. Sunak has accused Truss of being “dishonest” with voters over her promises of immediate tax cuts, saying he would wait until inflation is under control before cutting taxes.

• Ukraine consults US in using HIMAR rocket systems-official • First wartime Ukraine grain export ship nears Turkey • US slaps sanctions on ex-Olympic gymnast ‘close to Putin’ Russia yesterday accused the United States of direct involvement in the Ukraine war while the first ship carrying Ukrainian grain to world markets since Moscow’s invasion headed towards Lebanon without problems. Russia said it was responding to comments by Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, about the way Kyiv used US-supplied long-range HIMARs rocket-launch systems based on what he called excellent satellite imagery and real-time information. Skibitsky told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper there was consultation between US and Ukrainian intelligence officials before strikes and that Washington had an effective veto on intended targets, though he said US officials were not providing direct targeting information. Russia’s defence ministry, headed by a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said the interview showed that Washington was entangled in the conflict despite repeated assertions that it was limiting its role to arms supplies because it did not want a direct confrontation with Moscow. “All this undeniably proves that Washington, contrary to White House and Pentagon claims, is directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement. “It is the Biden administration that is directly responsible for all Kyiv-approved rocket attacks on residential areas and civilian infrastructure in populated areas of Donbas and other regions, which have resulted in mass deaths of civilians.” There was no immediate reaction to the ministry’s allegations from the White House or Pentagon. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of carrying out devastating missile attacks on civilian targets on an almost daily basis. Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians. Deliveries of sophisticated long-range weapons systems from Western nations to Ukraine are seen as vital if Kyiv’s forces are to turn the tide of the war, in which Russia relies heavily on long-distance bombardments of urban areas. Russia’s verbal attack on Washington came after Turkey said that the first ship carrying Ukrainian grain since Russia’s invasion blocked exports more than five months ago was on track to arrive safely in Istanbul last night. The vessel, the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, was sighted in the southern Black Sea off Turkey’s coast, a Reuters witness said, and was expected to enter the Istanbul straits around 9pm, the Turkish Defence Ministry said. The Razoni’s departure on Monday from the Ukrainian port of Odesa for Lebanon via Turkey under a July 22 safe passage deal has raised hopes of further such departures, which could help ease a burgeoning global food shortage. Loaded with 26,527 tonnes of corn, the ship was to be inspected by Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN officials today morning before continuing to its planned final destination, the Lebanese port of Tripoli. Turkey expects roughly one grain ship to leave Ukraine’s Black Sea ports each day as long as the safe passage agreement holds, a senior Turkish official, who asked to remain anonymous, said yesterday. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky called the Razoni’s departure “the first positive signal” but warned it was too early to predict how things would play out. “We cannot have illusions that Russia will simply refrain from trying to disrupt Ukrainian exports,” he said. For the safe passage deal to stick, there are other hurdles to overcome, including clearing sea mines and creating a framework for vessels to safely enter the Ukraine conflict zone and pick up cargoes. Known as Europe’s breadbasket, Ukraine hopes to export 20mn tonnes of grain held in silos and 40mn tonnes from the harvest now under way, initially from Odesa and nearby Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk, to help clear silos for the new crop. Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of laying mines that now float around the Black Sea and represent a hazard to shipping. Russia has called the Razoni’s departure “very positive” news. It has denied responsibility for the food crisis, saying Western sanctions have slowed its exports. Adding to those sanctions, the US yesterday targeted Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast the Treasury Department described as having a close relationship with Putin. Putin has denied they are romantically linked. The Treasury Department said in a statement Kabaeva heads the National Media Group, a pro-Kremlin group of television, radio and print organisations. The sanctions also target Publichnoe Aktsionernoe Obschestvo Magnitogorskiy Metallurgicheskiy Kombinat (MMK), one of the world’s largest steel producers, as well as the majority owner and chairman of the board of directors, Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, the Treasury said.

As thousands of bullfighting aficionados gather across southern France for traditional summer ferias, opponents of the practice are reviving their fight for an outright ban, confident that public opinion is finally on their side. “I think the majority of French people share the view that bullfights are immoral, a spectacle that no longer has its place in the 21st century,” said Aymeric Caron, a popular former TV journalist and animal rights activist who was recently elected to parliament as part of the hard-left France Unbowed party. For years, critics have sought a final legal blow against what they call a cruel and archaic ritual, but none of the draft bills presented have ever been approved for debate by National Assembly lawmakers. French courts have also routinely rejected lawsuits lodged by animal rights activists, most recently in July 2021 in Nimes, home to one of France’s most famous bullfighting events. But Caron, based in Paris, told AFP that the time was ripe for a new proposal given growing concerns about animal welfare, with a draft bill to be submitted this week. “I do indeed hope this bill will be debated in parliament in November... it would be a first,” he said. The prospect seems all the more likely after France Unbowed won dozens of new seats in recent elections, helping to strip President Emmanuel Macron of his centrist majority in parliament. The goal is to modify an animal welfare law that allows exceptions for bullfights — as well as cock fighting — when it can be shown that they are “uninterrupted local traditions.” Such exceptions are granted to cities including Bayonne and the mediaeval jewel of Mont-de-Marsan in southwest France near Spain, where the practice has its origins, and along the Mediterranean coast including Arles, Beziers and Nimes. For Caron, “it’s not a French tradition, it’s a Spanish custom that was imported to France in the 19th century to please the wife of Napoleon III, who was from Andalusia,” the countess Eugenie de Montijo. That argument is unlikely to convince the jostling crowds who packed the streets of Bayonne for the bullfighting feria that ended Sunday, a sea of fans clad all in white except for bright red bandanas or sashes. “The people who want to ban it don’t understand it. Bullfighting is a drama that brings you closer to death... You’re afraid, but that’s a part of life,” said Jean-Luc Ambert, who came with friends from the central Auvergne region. Like many other fans, his friend Francoise insisted that bullfighting is an art as much as a sport, where “a man puts his life on the line, while respecting the animal.” “We’re not trying to convert anyone — I just want the people against it to leave us alone,” she told AFP. The guest star of the Bayonne feria, Spanish matador Alejandro Talavante, did indeed find an appreciative audience, with the crowd demanding the award of the bull’s ear for his performance. It’s a conflict that echoes the widening rift in France between rural dwellers steeped in deep agriculture traditions, and Parisians and other urban residents accused of trampling on the country’s cultural heritage — often derided as “the Taliban of Paristan.” Andre Viard, president of the national bullfighting association, shrugged off the threat of a ban. “This comes up in every parliamentary session,” Viard told AFP of Caron’s efforts to find allies for the France Unbowed initiative. “We tell the other parties: Why do you want to be associated with a bill that attacks a cultural freedom protected by the Constitution, and territorial identity?” The debate echoes similar opposition in other countries with bullfighting histories, including Spain and Portugal as well as Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. In June, a judge in Mexico City ordered an indefinite suspension of bullfighting in the capital’s historic bullring, the largest in the world. Caron is banking on support from across the political spectrum, including top members of Macron’s party such as the head of his parliamentary group Aurore Berge, who was among 36 lawmakers who called for a bullfighting ban last year. An Ifop poll earlier this year found that 77% of respondents approved of a ban, up from 50% in 2007. “More and more people are concerned about animal suffering, including in bullfights,” Claire Starozinski of the Anti-bullfighting Alliance told AFP, adding that many people don’t realise that the bulls are actually killed. “I know there are MPs from other parties who will support me, and have said so,” Caron said — though he admitted that more mainstream lawmakers such as Berge might be reluctant to join his leftish campaign. “Is she going to remain true to her convictions, or make a political calculation that prevents her from supporting me? That’s what will be at stake in the talks over the coming weeks and months.”

The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a deal to ease Russia's naval blockade was expected in Istanbul "after midnight," as Kyiv said Tuesday it had begun mandatory evacuations from the war-torn Donetsk region. The Sierra Leone-registered ship, Razoni, set sail from Odessa port for Lebanon Monday under an accord brokered by Turkey and the United Nations that it is hoped will get millions of tonnes of trapped Ukrainian produce to world markets and curb a global food crisis.  Turkish officials said it would arrive in Istanbul "after midnight".  The ship had cautiously made its way through a specially cleared corridor in the mine-infested waters of the Black Sea.  The Marine Traffic website showed the vessel -- which is carrying 26,000 tonnes of maize -- off the coast of Bulgaria by 0900 GMT.  It will be inspected by a special coordination centre involving representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN at sea in the mouth of the Bosphorus before being allowed to progress. The five-month halt of deliveries from Ukraine -- one of the world's biggest grain exporters -- has contributed to soaring food prices, hitting the world's poorest nations especially hard. Kyiv says at least 16 more grain ships are waiting to depart but President Volodymyr Zelensky cautioned it was too early to celebrate. "Let's wait and see how the agreement works and whether security will be really guaranteed," Zelensky said in a video address late Monday.  The breakthrough pact signed in July was the first significant accord involving Ukraine and Russia since Moscow invaded its neighbour on February 24.   - Donetsk evacuations -   Yet Russia has continued to pound cities and towns across Ukraine's sprawling front line. Kyiv said it had started mandatory evacuations from the eastern region of Donetsk bearing the brunt of the Russian offensive after Zelensky urged the estimated 200,000 remaining residents to leave.  Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vershchuk said a train carrying "women, children, elderly people, many people with reduced mobility" arrived in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi on Tuesday morning. Officials have said they want to get residents out of the battered region before the start of winter as gas pipes for heating have been severed. In the south of the country, the head of Ukraine's Kryviy Rig military administration said Russian shelling had killed two civilians in a minibus trying to leave the Moscow-controlled Kherson region. Oleksander Vilkul said two other passengers were in serious condition in hospital with burns.  The mayor of the city of Mykolaiv, the closest to where Ukrainian forces are looking to launch a counter-offensive in Kherson, said Russian strikes had damaged a university dormitory.    - More Western arms -   He said in a briefing that 403 people had been killed in his region since the invasion but that a looming Ukraine counter-offensive for the neighbouring Kherson region "will result in a decrease of shelling". Ukraine was bolstered by more supplies of Western arms -- particularly long-range artillery -- as it looks launch a major push in the south to retake Kherson. The United States announced a new tranche of weapons worth $550 million for Ukraine's forces, including ammunition for increasingly important rocket launchers and artillery guns. "Our artillerymen are ready to turn night into day to expel the Russian invaders," Ukraine's Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said. On the diplomatic front, Washington, London and Paris used a review of a key United Nations nuclear treaty to rebuke Moscow for "irresponsible and dangerous" talk about possibly deploying nuclear weapons. Russian President Vladimir Putin rebuffed the accusation, telling the Tenth Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Review Conference there could be "no winners" in a nuclear war and it should "never be unleashed". The Kremlin nevertheless accused Britain, one of Kyiv's most vocal supporters, of deliberately worsening relations between Russia and the West. It blacklisted 39 British citizens, including Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and former prime minister David Cameron, saying they "contribute to the hostile course of London, aimed at the demonisation of our country and its international isolation".

British Conservative frontrunner Liz Truss won another heavyweight endorsement yesterday as party members began a month of voting to decide the next occupant of 10 Downing Street. Truss’s lagging rival Rishi Sunak vied to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts - and potentially to host a future women’s football World Cup in Britain after England’s “Lionesses” won the European championship. Truss attended Sunday’s final against Germany, and the first victory by any England football team in a major tournament since 1966 wiped the prime ministerial race off newspaper front pages. The Tory contenders went  head to head yesterday in a members’ hustings, in the southwestern city of Exeter - the second of 12 such events before the winner is announced on September 5. Sunak, a polished debater, needs to recapture momentum after Truss steamed into a strong polling lead on a platform of immediate tax cuts to address Britain’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi joined other luminaries of Boris Johnson’s cabinet in backing the foreign secretary against Sunak, his predecessor in the Treasury. “Liz understands that the status quo isn’t an option in times of crisis,” Zahawi wrote in The Telegraph, attacking Sunak’s plan to prioritise fighting inflation now, before cutting taxes later. “We need a ‘booster’ attitude to the economy, not a ‘doomster’ one, in order to address cost-of-living woes and the challenges on the world stage,” the new chancellor said. Sunak’s resignation from the scandal-tainted Johnson’s cabinet helped spark a ministerial exodus that forced the prime minister out last month. As they began receiving postal and online ballot forms, a large minority of the roughly 200,000 Tory members is said by pollsters to nurse a grievance against Sunak - one shared by Johnson. The prime minister is not formally taking sides, but has told aides that he intends to give his successor some words of advice, “whoever she may be”, The Sunday Times reported. Despite her endorsements from the likes of Zahawi, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis and Tory centrist Tom Tugendhat, Truss has warned against complacency. The foreign secretary has markedly improved her sometimes robotic public delivery — seen most notoriously in a 2014 speech when she was environment secretary. Returning to her former field, the Remainer-turned-Brexit zealot promised to “unleash” farmers from European Union regulations to improve the UK’s food security. Truss also vowed to tackle labour shortages in agriculture, partly caused by post-Brexit restrictions on immigration which have forced UK farmers to leave fruit rotting in fields and to slaughter healthy livestock. Both the contenders have stressed the need for unity once the election is out of the way, aware that the opposition Labour party is riding high in the polls amid the economic crisis and political tumult of Johnson. But their supporters have not been holding back, especially combative Truss ally Nadine Dorries. The culture secretary retweeted an image portraying Johnson as Julius Caesar, being stabbed in the back by Sunak. Last year, Conservative MP David Amess was stabbed to death by an Islamic State group follower. In view of that, Dorries’ retweet was “distasteful and even verging on dangerous”, Sunak supporter Greg Hands, a government minister, told Sky News.