Zelenskyy hails F-16 commitment on visit to Netherlands

The Netherlands confirmed that it will provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets following approval from the U.S. allowing Ukrainian pilots to get training to fly the planes and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received the assurance on the jets, which he called a “breakthrough agreement,” from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on a visit to Eindhoven on Sunday. Rutte confirmed that Denmark also will deliver F-16 aircraft to Kyiv, after the Biden administration last week gave final approval for the delivery of Dutch and Danish F-16s to Ukraine as soon as pilot training is complete. 

Zelenskyy vows revenge after ‘terrorist’ missile strike on city center

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised retaliation for a Russian missile attack on Saturday that killed seven people including a 6-year-old girl.

The missile hit the city center of Chernihiv, 150 kilometers north of Kyiv. The attack was carried out on a religious Orthodox festival and injured 144 people, including 15 children, Zelenskyy said in a statement early Sunday morning.

“Our soldiers will respond to Russia for this terrorist attack,” Zelenskyy said. “Respond tangibly.”

Russian spacecraft crashes into the moon

The first Russian lunar mission in nearly half a century ended with a bang.

The Luna-25, which left earth on August 10, crash-landed on the moon nine days later after an incident involving the pre-landing maneuvers malfunctioned, Russian space agency Roscosmos said late Saturday on its Telegram channel.

According to Roscosmos, the last communication with the spacecraft was at 2:57 p.m. Moscow time (13:57 CEST) on Saturday. Efforts after that to get back in contact with the craft did not produce any results, the agency said. 

Georgia Conservatives' Warning To GOP: Nominate Trump, And We Will Lose

ATLANTA — Having lost the once reliably Republican state in 2020 and now under a racketeering indictment for trying to steal its presidential election after that loss, how can Donald Trump possibly win Georgia in 2024?

Conservative activists, including those who voted for him twice, worry that the answer is pretty simple: He cannot.

“I don’t think so. We didn’t go for him last time,” said Brenda Mitcham, a retiree from DeKalb County who was attending radio talk show host Erick Erickson’s candidates forum Friday and Saturday.

House Republican To Trump: 'If You're Innocent, Start Acting Like It'

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) slammed Donald Trump for attacking the criminal justice system, telling the former president “if you’re innocent, start acting like it.”

The Colorado Republican appeared on CNN Thursday evening to discuss Trump’s legal predicament and the 2024 presidential race.

Trump has continually attacked those involved in his four felony indictments. Many have since been targeted by violent rhetoric and threats. In Georgia, authorities are investigating threats against grand jurors who voted to indict Trump and 18 others in a racketeering case over their push to overturn the 2020 election.

Paying the price of truth: Nobel peace laureate Dmitry Muratov won’t be silenced by Putin

A few days after he announced he would sell his Nobel peace prize medal at auction – and give the millions of dollars raised to Ukrainian refugees – the Russian newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov was sitting on a train bound for the city of Samara.

Just before the train pulled away from Kazansky station in Moscow, the door to his carriage was flung open and a masked man threw a bucket of stinking red liquid over him, shouting the words: “This is for our boys!” The liquid – it turned out to be paint mixed with acetone – drenched Muratov in crimson and half-blinded him, but he still had the presence of mind to chase his attacker down the platform. He apprehended the masked man talking to a police officer and demanded his arrest. No action was taken.

Playbook: Trump vs. the Murdoch empire, part XVII

While we often point out that making the debate stage is the most important hurdle for any Republican aspirant running in the primaries, hosting a presidential primary debate is enormously important to television networks. But for the Murdoch empire, beset by upstart rivals, it is existential.

RUPERT MURDOCH and DONALD TRUMP are the two most important sources of information for Republican voters, and in the last eight years they have waged war for supremacy. Sometimes they use each other (Trump gets airtime, Fox gets ratings), sometimes they are closely aligned (as in a general election against the Democrats), and sometimes they are openly hostile to one another (during primary season in 2015-2016 and again today when Fox and other Murdoch entities search for an alternative to Trump).

At least seven killed in Russian strike on theatre in centre of Chernihiv

At least seven people were killed and 144 injured in a “vile” Russian missile strike that hit a theatre and a central square in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said.

“I am sure our soldiers will give a response to Russia for this terrorist attack,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, delivered early on Sunday at the end of a visit to Sweden. “A notable response.”

A six-year-old girl named Sofia was among the dead, Zelenskiy said, and 15 of the injured were children. Fifteen others were police officers, interior minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram. Most of the victims were in vehicles, crossing the road, or returning from church when a missile hit the city’s landmark Drama Theatre, he said.

I have long rejected claims that Israel is an apartheid state. Now I believe that is where it is heading

Israel 2023, South Africa 1948. I’ve lived through it before: power grabbing, fascism and racism – the destruction of democracy. Israel is going where South Africa was 75 years ago. It’s like watching the replay of a horror movie.

In 1948, as a teenager in Cape Town, I followed the results of the 26 May election on a giant board on a newspaper building. The winner-takes-all electoral system produced distorted results: the Afrikaner Nationalist party, with its smaller partner, won 79 parliamentary seats against 74 for the United party and its smaller partner.

‘They said my husband had died – but there wasn’t a body’: The families hunting for Ukraine’s missing soldiers

Treading carefully between the plots, Lidiya Sribna, 51, goes from grave to grave placing a red carnation on each of the mounds of soil.

Sometimes, on these visits to Krasnopillya military cemetery on the outskirts of Dnipro, in south-east Ukraine, she will balance sweets or biscuits on the black wooden crosses – a Ukrainian tradition – or give the small plaques a wipe and pick up any litter that has been scattered by the wind.