Patriots for Europe gets Danish and Flemish nationalists as latest members, amid EU anger over Hungary PM’s latest unauthorised foreign policy foray
Viktor Orbán’s rightwing political movement attracted enough parties on Saturday to achieve recognition from the European Union parliament in a boost for the Hungarian prime minister’s self-styled effort to “change European politics”.
The nationalist and pro-Russia leader announced on 30 June his intention to form an EU parliamentary grouping called “Patriots for Europe”.
Two bodies recovered from rubble of southern house while collision of oil truck and minibus in western Rivne region leaves single survivor. What we know on day 865
Russian shelling killed three civilians in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson on Saturday, officials said. Two bodies were recovered from the rubble of a house that came under fire in the morning in a village near Beryslav, north of Kherson town, prosecutors said. An artillery strike in the evening killed one person in a village south of the town, said the region’s governor, Oleksander Prokudin.
Russian night-time strikes left more than 100,000 households without power in northern Ukraine and cut off the water supply to a regional capital, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday. The northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, was plunged into darkness after Russian strikes late on Friday damaged energy infrastructure, the Ukrainian energy ministry said. Hours later, the Ukrainian public broadcaster reported that Russian drones hit the provincial capital, also called Sumy, cutting off water by hitting power lines that feed its system of pumps. Russian state news agency RIA cited a local pro-Kremlin “underground” leader as saying Moscow’s forces hit a plant producing rocket ammunition in the city. The claim could not be independently verified.
Fire broke out at a gas pipeline in Crimea, Russian-installed officials said on Sunday, blaming an accident and stating there were no casualties. Videos online showed a large fire, said to have followed one or more explosions in the Alushta district.
Russian air defence units downed seven Ukrainian drones each in the southern Belgorod and Kursk regions on the Ukrainian border on Saturday, officials and the military said. Russia’s defence ministry said seven drones were intercepted over the Belgorod region, which is subjected to nearly daily Ukrainian attacks. Alexei Smirnov, the governor of Kursk region, farther north and west, also reported seven drones had been downed over his region. He said Ukrainian forces had shelled about 10 villages across the day.
Ukraine’s air force commander said his forces had duped Russian troops into deploying missiles against sophisticated models put in place to look like military targets. Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram that the models depicted fighter aircraft and a surface-to-air missile battery. They were put in place at an airfield near the central city of Kriviy Rih and a district of the Black Sea port of Odesa. A video attached to Saturday’s post, described as footage from a Russian reconnaissance drone, showed what Oleshchuk said were Russian Iskander missiles attacking the depictions. “Air force personnel conducted passive defence measures!” he wrote.
In Ukraine’s eastern frontline region of Donetsk, Russian shelling killed 11 civilians and wounded 43 on Friday and overnight to Saturday, said the regional governor, Vadym Filashkin. Five people died in the town of Selydove, south-east of Pokrovsk, the eastern city that has emerged as a frontline hotspot. The Ukrainian general staff said on Saturday morning that Ukrainian and Russian forces clashed 45 times near Pokrovsk over the previous day. Hours later, the Russian ministry of defence said its troops had captured a village about 30km (19 miles) east of the city.
An oil truck collided with a minibus in western Ukraine on Saturday, killing 14 people, including a six-year-old child, and leaving a single survivor, emergency services said. The report on Telegram was accompanied by pictures of an overturned vehicle in a cornfield in the Rivne region. It said the survivor was in serious condition and being treated for her injuries.
Japan has announced a joint project with Cambodia to share knowledge and technology on landmine removal with countries worldwide including Ukraine. Under the Japan Cambodia landmine initiative, “Japan will provide full-scale assistance to humanitarian mine action in Ukraine”, Japan’s foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said in Phnom Penh. “Next week, we will provide Ukraine with a large de-mining machine, and next month, here in Cambodia, we will train Ukrainian personnel on how to operate the machine.”
Temperatures could crest 100F (38C) in many regions after breaking records and sparking dozens of wildfires
A long-running heatwave that has already broken records, sparked dozens of wildfires and left about 130 million people under a high-temperature threat is about to intensify enough that the National Weather Service has deemed it “potentially historic”.
The NWS on Saturday reported some type of extreme heat or advisory for nearly 133 million people across the nation – mostly in western states where the triple-digit heat, with temperatures 15F to 30F higher than average, is expected to last into next week.
Writer, who died in his Los Angeles home, also worked without credit on The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde
Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown, considered one of the greatest screenplays of all time, has died at age 89.
Towne, the screenwriter also nominated for his films Shampoo and The Last Detail, died on Monday among family members at his Los Angeles home, said his publicist, who did not disclose a cause of death.
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