|
Hello, I'm Gurvinder Gill with the BBC News.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he expects President Trump to take strong steps and impose further sanctions after a second round of direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey failed to result in a cease-fire. At the meeting in Istanbul, Moscow presented a list of demands known to be unacceptable to Kyiv. Gary O'Donohue has more details from Washington. Russia's pretty sanctioned up to the hill, to be honest, even by the United States, but there's been a lot of pressure for what are called more secondary sanctions. In other words, sanctions on other countries who do any kind of business with Russia. That's something the president has resisted up until now. And the other kind of pressure of course is walking away and that's something the president has threatened and his secretary of state has threatened at various points in time that they will simply give up and not be involved. This is also something they believe Moscow doesn't want. Ukrainian shelling and drone strikes have caused widespread power outages in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine's own Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. The Russian-installed governor in Kherson said the attacks damaged two substations, cutting power to over 100,000 residents. The [human] U.N. Human Rights chief, Volker Türk, has denounced the new American and Israeli-run aid delivery system in southern Gaza, saying it's heartbreaking and shows utter disregard for civilians. He said Palestinians who'd been desperate for food and medicine for almost three months were being made to run for the aid in desperate circumstances. Dozens of Palestinians were shot dead near one of the distribution points. Survivors blamed Israeli troops, though Israel denied responsibility. Ricardo Pérez from UNICEF echoed the criticism of the new aid delivery system. "It's a disaster. After a disaster, it's death day in, day out for children in Gaza. And we've been warning that the U.N. knows what to do. We have a system in place that can work. We have thousands of trucks with food, medicine, vaccines, clean water ready to get in, but we're not being allowed to." An Egyptian national accused of trying to set fire to members of a Jewish campaign group in the U.S. state of Colorado has appeared in court. Mohamed Soliman faces a hate crime charge and 16 counts of attempted murder. He was arrested after he allegedly threw petrol bombs and sprayed burning petrol at a gathering in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Colorado's Governor Jared Polis spoke to the BBC. "We need to find out if there were purchase patterns that showed that he was assembling a deadly arsenal. Unfortunately, Molotov cocktails are not incredibly difficult to construct and he did detonate several of them, injuring a number of people. The goal would be for federal law enforcement, FBI, to really track and investigate people and I obviously wish that they had been successful in this case and prevented this from occurring." World News from the BBC. Voting underway in South Korea in a snap presidential election called after the impeachment of the former president, Yoon Suk Yeol. He was forced from office after a disastrous attempt to declare martial law that's left the country deeply divided. Opinion polls have put the Democratic Party leader, Lee Jae-myung, well ahead of his conservative rival, Kim Moon-soo. A leading U.S. Democratic Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, has welcomed a promise of cooperation from the new Syrian authorities to try to locate the missing American journalist, Austin Tice. He vanished in 2012 near Damascus. Secret Syrian intelligence files uncovered by the BBC have confirmed he was arrested and imprisoned by paramilitaries loyal to the Assad government. The artificial intelligence pioneer, Demis Hassabis, has called for greater international cooperation on AI regulation, though he warned it remains difficult amid current geopolitical tensions. Speaking at an event in London, Mr. Hassabis, who is the head of Google's DeepMind, said AI's rapid integration raises major ethical concerns, including misinformation, the impact on employment and the loss of control. He called for smart, adaptable regulation. New computer simulations suggest the Milky Way may avoid a catastrophic collision with the larger Andromeda galaxy. But researchers now say those predictions may be exaggerated. ??? reports. In the past, scientists had predicted that the two galaxies hurtling towards each other at 100 kilometers per second would collide in four and a half billion years. They'd warned such an event could destroy our solar system, with Earth and the sun possibly drawn into a supermassive black hole at the center of the newly combined galaxy's center. The researchers now believe this probably won't happen, having used telescopes and computer simulations of our universe's future. BBC News. |