Category: 2. World

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was “pretty calm about this. Trump’s way of talking is generally quite harsh, the phrases he uses.”

The two leaders have been in regular contact but this has so far failed to translate into tangible steps towards a ceasefire in Ukraine – something Trump once said he would be able to achieve in a day.

Last week, following a phone call with the Russian president, Trump said he was “very unhappy”.

“He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people, it’s no good,” Trump said of Putin.

The criticism came even as the Trump administration announced a suspension of military aid to Ukraine, reportedly authorised by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby, the under-secretary of defence for policy.

Asked by reporters on Tuesday who had taken the decision, Trump – sitting right next to Hegseth – replied: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

The reversal of the decision may now mean that 10 Patriot missiles may be sent to Ukraine, according to US outlet Axios.

Kyiv relies on the interceptors to try to counter Russia’s missile and drone attacks, which continue to grow in intensity and frequency.

On Tuesday Trump also said he was “looking at” a sanctions bill by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham that would see 500% tariffs imposed on countries that trade with Russia.

Trump has been threatening sanctions on Russia since taking office in January but has so far failed to impose any. In June, he stated that he pointed out sanctions “cost a lot of money” and signalled he was waiting to see whether a deal between Russia and Ukraine would be signed instead.

However, last week the US president said he and Putin had discussed sanctions “a lot” and added: “He understands it may be coming.”

Although the east of the country and Kyiv come under fire on a regular basis, no corner of Ukraine has been spared by Russian strikes.

The city of Lutsk – which lies 90km (56 miles) from the Polish border and is a transit hub for military and humanitarian aid – suffered the brunt of Tuesday’s overnight attack.

Explosions were also reported in the western cities of Lviv and Rivne.

For their part, Russian authorities have said that a Ukrainian drone attack on the border region of Kursk killed three people and injured seven others on Tuesday. A five-year-old boy was reported to have died of his injuries a day later.

Two rounds of ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine took place earlier this year but no other meetings have so far been scheduled – and neither Moscow nor Kyiv appear optimistic that diplomacy will solve the conflict, which was sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Zelensky is in Rome this week to take part in the Ukraine Recovery Conference. He met Pope Leo and is also due to meet US envoy Keith Kellogg.

Several European leaders will also be present, including German Chancellor Friederich Merz, who said on Wednesday that diplomatic means to resolve the war had been exhausted and promised to offer Ukraine air defences.

Meanwhile, Russia’s summer offensive in eastern Ukraine grinds on.

“We are moving forward,” said Peskov on Wednesday. “Each new day the Ukrainians have to accept the new realities.”

Rescue operations under way in Vadodara district after several vehicles fall into river.

At least nine people have been killed after the collapse of a bridge over a river in India’s western Gujarat state, according to authorities.

Gujarat’s Health Minister Rushikesh Patel said several vehicles fell into Mahisagar River when a portion of Gambhira Bridge collapsed on Wednesday morning.

The bridge in the state’s Vadodara district had been constructed in 1985, added Patel.

Anil Dhameliya, a senior civil servant, told reporters at least nine bodies had been recovered, with five others injured in the incident. Rescue operations were under way, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the accident was “deeply saddening” and offered condolences to the families of those who died.

India’s infrastructure has long been marred by safety concerns, sometimes leading to major disasters on highways and bridges.

In 2022, a colonial-era cable suspension bridge collapsed into the Machchu River in Gujarat, sending hundreds plunging into the water and killing at least 132.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) said two of its pilots were killed as a Jaguar fighter jet crashed near a village in Rajasthan’s Churu district on Wednesday.

“An IAF Jaguar Trainer aircraft met with an accident during a routine training mission and crashed near Churu in Rajasthan today. Both pilots sustained fatal injuries in the accident,” the IAF said in a post on X.

The statement added that no damage to any civilian property had been reported.

“IAF deeply regrets the loss of lives and stands firmly with the bereaved families in this time of grief,” the statement read, adding that a court of inquiry had been constituted to determine the cause of the accident.

The aircraft was a Jaguar jet, originally a British-French-made aircraft, that crashed in an agricultural field at around 1:25pm, Rajaldesar Station House Officer Kamlesh told Press Trust of India.

Human body parts were found near the crash site, SHO Kamlesh had added.

An investigation and rescue operations are underway after authorities rushed to the scene, Hindustan Times reported.

The aircraft had taken off from the Suratgarh airbase with two pilots onboard, ANI News reported.

The Indian Express quoted Churu Superintendent of Police Jai Yadav as saying that the incident occurred at around 12:30pm.

Earlier in May, India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan confirmed in May that his country’s fighter jets were shot down by Pakistan during the four-day conflict earlier that month.

In April, the IAF had said it regretted the damage caused to the property near Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district by the “inadvertent drop of a non-explosive aerial store” from an aircraft.

According to Indian media reports at the time, “a heavy metal object fell from the sky from an air force jet on the house of Manoj Sagar […] due to which two outer rooms have been damaged”.

In March of last year, a domestically made light combat IAF jet, called Tejas, crashed in Rajasthan, making it the first such incident since the aircraft was inducted in 2016.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been pushing for local manufacturing as the country seeks to shed its reputation as one of the world’s biggest importers of defence equipment.

A Jaguar fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed on Wednesday afternoon in the Churu district of Rajasthan, Indian media reported, citing defence sources. 

The crash occurred in an agricultural field and rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the site as emergency protocols were activated.

SHO Rajaldesar Kamlesh told PTI news agency that the condition of the pilot remains unclear. Some reports suggest that the pilot is likely to have died in the accident.

#WATCH | First visuals of Air Force’s fighter jet crash from Rajasthan’s Churu

— NDTV (@ndtv) July 9, 2025

The incident marks the third Jaguar fighter aircraft to crash since March 2025. No official comment has been made by the Indian armed forces yet.

Around 2,300 people died of heat-related causes across 12 European cities during the severe heatwave that ended last week, according to a rapid scientific analysis published on Wednesday.

The study targeted the 10 days, ending July 2, during which large parts of Western Europe were hit by extreme heat, with temperatures breaching 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in Spain and wildfires breaking out in France.

Of the 2,300 people estimated to have died during this period, 1,500 deaths were linked to climate change, which made the heatwave more severe, according to the study conducted by scientists at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“Climate change has made it significantly hotter than it would have been, which in turn makes it a lot more dangerous,” said Dr Ben Clarke, a researcher at Imperial College London.

The study covered 12 cities, including Barcelona, Madrid, London and Milan, where the researchers said climate change had increased heatwave temperatures by up to 4 degrees Celsius.

The researchers used established epidemiological models and historical mortality data to estimate the death toll, which reflects deaths where heat was the underlying reason for mortality, including if exposure exacerbated pre-existing health conditions.

The scientists said they used peer-reviewed methods to quickly produce the estimated death toll because most heat-related deaths are not officially reported, and some governments do not release this data.

Last month was the planet’s third-hottest June on record, behind the same month in 2024 and 2023, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said in a monthly bulletin on Wednesday.

Western Europe experienced its warmest June on record, with much of the region experiencing “very strong heat stress” — defined by conditions that feel like a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or more, Copernicus said.

Some estimate 50 metric tonnes of trash remain on the Mt Everest due to decades of climbing and lax regulations.

“In a warming world, heatwaves are likely to become more frequent, more intense and impact more people across Europe,” said Samantha Burgess, Copernicus’ strategic lead for climate.

Researchers from European health institutes reported in 2023 that as many as 61,000 people may have died in Europe’s sweltering heatwaves in 2022, according to new research, suggesting countries’ heat preparedness efforts are falling fatally short.

The build-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere — which mostly come from the burning of fossil fuels — means the planet’s average temperature has increased over time.

This increase in baseline temperatures means that when a heatwave comes, temperatures can surge to higher peaks.