Ukraine says F-16 pilot killed while repelling Russian air attack
Kyiv said on Sunday a Ukrainian F-16 fighter pilot was killed while repelling a Russian attack that involved hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, as Moscow intensifies overnight air barrages in the fourth year of war. Lucy Fielder has more.
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The Sun
39 minutes ago
- The Sun
Hospitals and unis MUST follow new rules on trans toilets and changing rooms, demands Starmer after landmark court case
SIR Keir Starmer has ordered hospitals, universities and public bodies to follow new rules on trans toilets and changing rooms. The PM said they must observe the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on single-sex spaces after complaints some were reluctant to act. It comes after critics warned some NHS trusts, universities and government departments are dragging their feet on implementing the decision. Asked if they need to get on with it, Sir Keir told reporters: 'We've accepted the ruling, welcomed the ruling, and everything else flows from that as far as I'm concerned. 'And therefore, all guidance of whatever kind needs to be consistent with the ruling and we need to get to that position as soon as possible.' In April, Britain's top judges ruled the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, not self-declared gender identity - even for those with a Gender Recognition Certificate. The landmark judgment confirmed single-sex spaces like toilets, changing rooms and hospital wards can legally be reserved for biological women only. The ruling dealt a major blow to campaigners who had pushed for trans women to access female-only spaces, even after legally changing their gender on paper. Keir says 'woman is an adult female' & insists he's 'pleased' by court trans ruling after years of woke dithering 1
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
7/7: Homegrown Terror review – the shock of that horrific day will never subside
It's 20 years since 52 innocent victims and four suicide bombers died in the 7 July terror attacks on London, and, as time passes, the significance of the event has naturally faded from view: the city and geopolitics has moved on, and the day has become a memory filed under the shorthand reference '7/7'. The key to an appropriate appreciation now of what happened and why, and what those directly affected were put through, is fine detail of a kind that was unavailable in the chaos of the moment. The first two parts of Sky's documentary series 7/7: Homegrown Terror have many such revelations that bring you up short. There is a wide selection of interviewees, but they have been judiciously chosen, especially in the case of the survivors. All are individually perspicuous, and, collectively, their stories turn horror and monstrous bad luck into multi-faceted narratives, starting with the what-ifs, the if-onlys and the ironies. Michael Henning, who was an insurance broker on his way to work and who now has a wry lyricism as he communicates his experiences, remembers a row with his girlfriend that ended with her sarcastically imploring him not to die on his way to the office: 'I like to think I followed her instructions to the letter.' Charity worker Mustafa Kurtuldu missed his tube train but was 'lucky' that another, unusually, turned up immediately. Thelma Stober was so elated by having worked on London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympics – it was announced on 6 July 2005 that the Games were coming to London – that she went into the office on her day off. The greater irony was that the official UK terror threat level had recently been lowered: that nobody was expecting what was about to happen was true on a macro level, as well as for individuals going about their ordinary day. When the programme reaches the point where the bombs went off, those who were there give piercingly vivid descriptions of what they experienced. Henning remembers a slow-motion split-second during which he was enveloped in orange, then silver, then pitch black; Stober awoke on the train tracks, her foot twisted backwards, someone else's hand on her forehead. She talks of the guilt she felt as a Christian as she struggled to escape, when she would have liked to have been able to help others. The sheer horror of the carnage is underlined by the anguished testimony of Inspector Steve Mingay, the police officer on duty at King's Cross station that day, who was thus the first person to reach the tube train that had blown up on its way to Russell Square. 'The floor is sticky,' he says in an urgent present tense, reliving the moment as he must have done thousands of times since that day, without the shock ever subsiding. 'There's body parts … there's body parts.' The modern documentary-maker's trick of lingering on the interviewee after they've stopped talking can feel contrived, but there is such emotional power in seeing Mingay say his piece, then reach for a water bottle which he can't sip from because his hands are shaking too much. Then he puts his head in his hands and sobs. Alongside its stunningly stark re-creation of what happened – there are further macabre descriptions of the carnage provided by forensic investigators who were charged with sifting through the human remains and trying to work out which belonged to the bombers – Homegrown Terror also looks at the trickier question of why it happened. We see archive footage of Tony Blair and George W Bush, announcing that their response to the 11 September 2001 attack on the US was 'fighting terrorism', although their military responses were guaranteed to provoke more of it. Then we travel to Beeston, Leeds, where two of the bombers lived, to hear about a British-Asian community dogged by racism and poverty, its young men vulnerable to radicalisation. An associate of the bombers remembers how talk of jihad initially meant fighting to protect Muslims being oppressed overseas, in Chechnya or Kashmir, for example, before some of his acquaintances moved on to something much darker, aimed at revenge on their own home country. The associate's words are spoken by an actor, as are those of a friend of 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, and recollections taken from a memoir written by Hasib Hussain's late father, expressing his disbelief at what had happened to his beloved son. Such artifices are deployed without letting the programme tip into melodrama. The bigger problem is whether we receive any comprehensive answers to the question of how the attacks happened and what else could have been done, but we are given enough background information to take a view. In trying to help us make sense of something that is so hard to fully comprehend or process, Homegrown Terror does just about all it can. 7/7: Homegrown Terror aired on Sky Documentaries and is on Now.
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Ukraine war: Mariupol residents deny Russian stories about the city
"What they're showing on Russian TV are fairy tales for fools. Most of Mariupol still lies in ruins," says John, a Ukrainian living in Russian-occupied Mariupol. We've changed his name as he fears reprisal from Russian authorities."They are repairing the facades of the buildings on the main streets, where they bring cameras to shoot. But around the corner, there is rubble and emptiness. Many people still live in half-destroyed apartments with their walls barely standing," he been just over three years since Mariupol was taken by Russian forces after a brutal siege and indiscriminate bombardment – a key moment in the early months of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Thousands were killed, and the UN estimated 90% of residential buildings were damaged or recent months, videos and reels from several pro-Russia influencers have been painting a picture of a glossy city where damaged structures have been repaired and where life has gone back to the BBC has spoken to more than half a dozen people - some still living in Mariupol, others who escaped after spending time under occupation - to piece together a real picture of what life is like in the city."There are a lot of lies floating around," says 66-year-old Olha Onyshko who escaped from Mariupol late last year and now lives in Ukraine's Ternopil. "I wouldn't say they [Russian authorities] have repaired a lot of things. There's a central square – only the buildings there have been reconstructed. And there are also empty spaces where buildings stood. They cleared the debris, but they didn't even separate out the dead bodies, they were just loaded on to trucks with the rubble and carried out of the city," she adds. Mariupol is also facing severe water shortages."Water flows for a day or two, then it doesn't come for three days. We keep buckets and cans of water at home. The colour of the water is so yellow that even after boiling it, it's scary to drink it," says James, another Mariupol resident whose name has been have even said the water looks like "coca cola".Serhii Orlov, who calls himself Mariupol's deputy mayor in exile, says the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal which supplied water to the city was damaged during the fighting."Only one reservoir was left supplying water to Mariupol. For the current population, that would've lasted for about a year and a half. Since occupation has lasted longer than that, it means there is no drinking water at all. The water people are using doesn't even meet the minimum drinking water standard," says are frequent power cuts, food is expensive, and medicines are scarce, residents tell us."Basic medicines are not available. Diabetics struggle to get insulin on time, and it is crazy expensive," says BBC has reached out to Mariupol's Russian administration for a response to the allegations about shortages and whether they had found an alternative source for water. We have not got a response so the hardships the most difficult part of living in the city, residents say, is watching what Ukrainian children are being taught at Kozhushyna studied at a university in Mariupol for a year after it was occupied. Now he's escaped to Dnipro."They are teaching children false information and propaganda. For example, school textbooks state that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Odesa, Crimea and even Dnipropetrovsk regions are all already part of Russia," says Andrii. He also described special lessons called "Conversations about Important Things" in which students are taught about how Russia liberated the Russian-speaking population of these regions from Nazis in 2022."Teachers who refuse to take these lessons are intimidated or fired. It's like they are reprogramming the minds of our children," says John, a Mariupol World War Two Victory Day celebrations in May, images from Mariupol's central square showed children and adults dressed up in military costumes participating in parades and performances – Soviet-era traditions that Ukraine had increasingly shunned are now being imposed in occupied territories. Mariupol was bathed in the colours of the Russian flag – red, blue and some Ukrainians are waging a secret resistance against Russia, and in the dead of the night, they spray paint Ukrainian blue and yellow colours on walls, and also paste leaflets with messages like "Liberate Mariupol" and "Mariupol is Ukraine".James and John are both members of resistance groups, as was Andrii when he lived in the city."The messages are meant as moral support for our people, to let them know that the resistance is alive," says main objective is collecting intelligence for the Ukrainian military."I document information about Russian military movements. I analyse where they are transporting weapons, how many soldiers are entering and leaving the city, and what equipment is being repaired in our industrial areas. I take photos secretly, and keep them hidden until I can transmit them to Ukrainian intelligence through secure channels," says James. Occasionally, the resistance groups also try to sabotage civil or military operations. On at least two occasions, the railway line into Mariupol was disrupted because the signalling box was set on fire by risky work. Andrii said he was forced to leave when he realised that he had been exposed."Perhaps a neighbour snitched on me. But once when I was at a store buying bread, I saw a soldier showing my photo to the cashier asking if they knew who the person was," he left immediately, slipping past Mariupol's checkposts and then travelling through numerous cities in Russia, and through Belarus, before entering Ukraine from the those still in the city, each day is a challenge."Every day you delete your messages because your phone can be checked at checkpoints. You're afraid to call your friends in Ukraine in case your phone is being tapped," says James. "A person from a neighbouring house was arrested right off the street because someone reported that he was allegedly passing information to the Ukrainian military. Your life is like a movie – a constant tension, fear, distrust," he talks continue between Ukraine and Russia, there have been suggestions from within and outside Ukraine that it would need to concede land in exchange for a peace deal."Giving away territory for a 'deal with Russia' will be a betrayal. Dozens risk their lives every day to pass information to Ukraine, not so that some diplomat in a suit will sign a paper that will 'hand us over'," says John."We don't want 'peace at any cost'. We want liberation."Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Anastasiia Levchenko, Volodymyr Lozhko and Sanjay Ganguly
