Photos Show British Aircraft Carrier Reaching Indo-Pacific Waters
The goal of the eight-month deployment is to reaffirm the United Kingdom's commitment to security in the Mediterranean and Indo-Pacific regions, the Royal Navy said on Tuesday.
The Houthis-an Iran-backed armed group in Yemen-halted attacks in the Red Sea following a deal with the United States. Both sides exchanged fire in the crucial waterway from March to early May.
The Prince of Wales left its home port in southern England in late April for a mission known as Operation Highmast. This will take the aircraft carrier to the Western Pacific Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Middle East for joint war games with U.K. allies and partners.
The naval strike group led by the Prince of Wales completed what the Royal Navy called a safe passage through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, arriving in the Indian Ocean from the Eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, marking the next stage of its global deployment.
Officially released photos show that the U.K. Carrier Strike Group, which includes multiple British, Canadian, Norwegian, and Spanish naval vessels, completed the transit in late May. A U.S. destroyer, USS Truxtun, was also seen sailing with the strike group in the Red Sea.
The presence of the Truxtun complicates any potential Houthi attempts to target non-U. S. ships within the carrier strike group, the specialist outlet The Maritime Executive said. The U.S. destroyer also operated alongside the Prince of Wales in the Mediterranean last month.
The Royal Navy did not disclose whether the carrier strike group conducted any operations, including escorting shipping, while in the Red Sea, the specialist outlet Navy Lookout noted.
During its transit in the Red Sea, the Prince of Wales launched its F-35B stealth fighter jets, according to photos released by the Royal Navy. These aircraft are designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, as well as intelligence gathering and electronic warfare missions.
Before departing Europe, the U.K. Carrier Strike Group conducted a naval exercise with the Italian Carrier Strike Group in the Ionian Sea, south of Italy, the Royal Navy said. The drill involved 21 warships, three submarines, 41 fighter jets, 19 helicopters, and 10 patrol aircraft.
U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said on April 22: "As one of only a few nations capable of leading a deployment of this scale, the Royal Navy is once again demonstrating that U.K. defense is strong, modern, and ready to meet the threats of today and tomorrow."
Commodore James Blackmore, commander of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group, said on April 22: "Working closely with partners from across the globe, Operation Highmast will demonstrate credible deterrence and our support to NATO and the rules-based international order."
It remains to be seen whether the Prince of Wales will have the opportunity to operate with American aircraft carriers when it reaches the Western Pacific Ocean during its deployment.
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California's controversial parental rights bill
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The Supreme Court has protected this relationship for 102 years, he added. Beginning with Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the courts have asserted a child doesn't belong to the state. And 'just earlier this year, Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court case regarding parental opt-outs of certain curriculum in the public schools,' reaffirmed parental rights as fundamental, as Estrada put it. He said he is optimistic California Gov. Gavin Newsom will listen to reason. He's a dad to four children himself, the legal counsel noted, adding, 'Parental rights are for everyone and the government should not come between that.' Proponents of the bill argue it will help ease disruptions for children when families are separated because of immigration issues. Parents facing tough situations, like sudden deportation because of their undocumented immigration status, are often faced with 'impossible choices,' Alliance for Children's Rights said in a statement. Incarceration, military service or illness are other reasons where such an affidavit comes into play. 'Some make the difficult choice to suspend their parental rights through the complicated probate guardianship process, others opt to use a caregiver's authorization affidavit for a more informal arrangement.' The statement noted these affidavits are already an existing route for caregivers who aren't the parent or legal guardian. This paperwork doesn't transfer over the custody of the child — a court order would still be required. Solve the daily Crossword
NBC News
an hour ago
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Trump and Zelenskyy's meeting with European leaders marks a historic moment
WASHINGTON — Seven European leaders joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington on Monday in a rare display of trans-Atlantic unity. The gathering marked the first time in decades that such a broad delegation of allies had assembled at the White House under such pressing circumstances. Shortly after noon, one by one, the heads of state and NATO partners passed the White House gates, where they were met by President Donald Trump's chief of protocol, and in Zelenskyy's case, by Trump himself. Some met with Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and other officials that morning. Others made their way to the White House directly from Dulles and other airports. They were there to bolster Zelenskyy after a disastrous White House visit in February, when he clashed with Trump and Vice President JD Vance — and after Trump held a nearly three-hour one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. The show of support for Zelenskyy involved French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who pivoted from their own national agendas to present a united front as Trump seeks an urgent end to Russia's war in Ukraine. The display took place within days of Trump's meeting with Putin in Alaska and ahead of a possible Trump-brokered meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy as Trump casts himself as a potential peace broker. Inside the Oval Office on Monday, evoking a boardroom scene, Trump sat behind the Resolute desk, military flags at his back, as Zelenskyy and the European delegation faced him, as reflected in a photo shared by the White House. 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Yahoo
2 hours ago
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‘Nearly two million more casualties': The numbers that show Russia is years from victory
Donald Trump's message – or rather, the message he transmitted from Vladimir Putin – to Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington on Monday was stark: accept the deal Russia is offering, because otherwise you'll lose the war. But if Moscow appears strong now, Ukraine and its European allies believe, it's partly because Trump's choices have made it stronger – namely, his decisions to curtail US military aid, interrupt intelligence sharing and, above all, accept Putin's insistence on a peace deal before a ceasefire. And in fact, Russia is far from battlefield supremacy. Just hours before the Oval Office discussions, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) declared it would take 4.4 years of fighting at current rates of advance for Russia to capture the remainder of territory it has 'annexed'. It would also, according to the MoD calculations based on Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties, cost Russia an additional 1.93m killed and wounded to achieve Putin's goals. That would be on top of the more than one million casualties it has already sustained. In other words, Russia could be headed for breaking points of its own. How long can Russia last? All of which raises the question, if Trump chose to throw his weight behind Ukraine, could he change the tide? Should the US president be asking not how much Ukraine must surrender, but how long Russia can last? Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King's College London, points to two potential Russian breaking points: the military and the economic. Predictions about when either will come has become something of a mug's game, he cautions. Nor should we underestimate Russia's capacity to keep going. 'But eventually they do reach a pinch point: there are strains on the economy. There are strains on the military. A breaking point will come,' he says. 'Because Trump is in a hurry, Putin has the ability to sort of shift that sense of emergency, so that, all of a sudden, it feels like this sort of political breaking point for the West – whereas, if there was a little bit more strategic patience and consistency from the White House, the opposite would actually be true.' The British Defence Intelligence assessment about the Russian rate of advance is meant for public consumption rather than real strategic analysis. Applying the same crude logic to British military performance in the First World War, one might have said in early 1918 that the Allies were decades from victory. By the end of that year, Germany had suffered a devastating defeat, and arguing about rates of advance and attrition in the previous four years were not much use to German negotiators at armistice talks. 'The problem is, wars are not linear,' points out Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert in the Russian and Ukrainian militaries. Nor are they boxing matches to be decided on points. Nonetheless, Russia's advance is indeed painfully slow. Even a recent 10-mile infiltration near Dobropillia, while initially alarming for Ukraine, failed to achieve an operational breakthrough. It ended instead with hundreds of Russians being captured or killed. 'Limitless manpower is a myth' In the Oval Office, the US president led Zelensky over to an easel holding a large map of Ukraine showing the current line of control. The implication: to stop the conflict, the map will have to be redrawn. There was little progress on Monday, however, partly because Zelensky and his allies see that map in a very different way. Speaking after the talks Emmanuel Macron said that in the past 1,000 days of war Russian forces 'took less than one per cent' of Ukrainian territory. 'Those who are saying… 'The Ukrainians are lost. They will lose'. It's total fake news,' the French president said. As the Institute for the Study of War has pointed out, Russian forces are currently struggling to complete the encirclement or envelopment of Kupyansk despite 22 months of offensive operations. It took them 14 months to cover the 6.4 miles from the eastern to western outskirts of Toretsk, and 26 months to advance 6.8 miles from western Bakhmut to the western edge of Chasiv Yar. And yes, says Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and veteran watcher of the Russian military, it is true to say that Russia faces increasing risk as the war goes on. 'The question is not how much territory is Russia gaining per day. The only question that's actually being tested in the fighting in 2024 and 2025 is which proposition is more likely to be true: is Russia able to sustain its offensive effort and eventually put Ukraine in an untenable position? Or is Ukrainian defence more viable and more likely to exhaust Russian offensive potential, if not this year then next?' he says. 'This is what both parties are looking at to try to inform their decision on the questions of how much time they have and whether they can hope to attain a better and different outcome.' At the moment, Kofman says, time seems to favour Russia. Ukraine is not facing either imminent defeat or a collapse of the front line that would force it to sign a humiliating surrender, but the Russians are accelerating. Year-on-year, their pace of advance has picked up in 2025 compared to 2024. And while Ukraine has serious problems with manpower, Russia still has a steady supply of men to replace battlefield losses, which, according to Britain's Defence Intelligence, currently stand at 1,060,000, including 250,000 killed or missing presumed dead. The recent Russian infiltration at Dobropillia shows that Ukraine's drone units, despite their remarkable effectiveness, cannot stabilise the front alone in the absence of sufficient infantry. For now, however, the Russians are struggling to translate their dominance in infantry into decisive advantage. 'Russia's vulnerability is simply that they are far too slow and they don't have the force quality, nor do they employ the tactics, to achieve a major breakthrough. So their overall approach is deeply inefficient and costly in terms of manpower,' says Kofman. 'The political leadership doesn't care about this, but Russia does not have limitless manpower either – that's a myth. It also does not have limitless time. That's another myth.' Russia 'on the verge of recession' There are other constraints on Russia too, Kofman argues. 'The reality is that the war is a significant strain on the Russian economy. Despite outwardly projecting the ability and willingness to keep fighting for many more years, if the war enters 2026 and Russia doesn't appear to be winning decisively on the battlefield, it is eminently unclear that they, too, will not run into significant sustainability problems that could force them to a much weaker negotiating position,' he says. That explains why Putin may be keen to seal a deal now: he feels comparatively strong, but knows the moment of apparent dominance may not last. For two years, Russia's economy appeared to defy gravity, turning massive military spending into rapid GDP growth despite Western sanctions. But the sugar high appears to be over. And the signs of the comedown are everywhere. In June, Maxim Reznikov, the minister of economic development of the Russian Federation, warned the St Petersburg economic forum that the country was 'on the verge of recession'. The following month, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, the country's second largest steel producer, reported a 21.1 per cent collapse in profits and a sharp drop in output that it attributed to high interest rates and a general slowdown in the Russian economy. Indeed, at the end of July, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2025 growth estimate for Russia to 0.9 per cent, down from an initial 1.5 per cent forecast it made in April. Even that was a dramatic drop from the 4.3 per cent growth the IMF estimated in 2024. And inflation has prompted the ministries of agriculture and of trade and industry to draft a law for price caps on vegetables, poultry and dairy products, according to a report in Kommersant, a Russian business daily, earlier this month. 'The economy is an interesting thing because there's an objective standpoint to it, which is, frankly, that they do have considerable fiscal and monetary headroom, and they remain very good at managing the economy, albeit at increasing cost,' says Greene. 'But eventually they do reach a pinch point.' 'If you remember back to January, the very last thing the Biden administration did was to impose some new sanctions, somewhat unexpectedly, on the Russians. And that sent Russian markets into a tailspin for two or three weeks. If the West were interested in manufacturing those sorts of moments of unpredictability, then it would bring some very real risks, including near-term risks, for the Russian economy.' 'They're playing with fire' None of these factors mean Russia is facing imminent collapse, says Ian Bond, deputy director for the London-based Centre for European Reform. There is no sign that the casualty rate or the economic strains of the war have created any kind of serious domestic political challenge to Putin so far. 'But Russia is strong until it's not. It looks mighty, and then mental fatigue sets in, and things fall apart quite quickly,' he says. 'Is that going to happen this time? We simply don't know,' Bond adds. But, he argues, it is a reason for Europe and Ukraine to resist acquiescing to a bad deal – like surrendering Donbas – that would leave them much more vulnerable. These are the considerations that Russian, Ukrainian and European leaders will be weighing up as Trump shepherds them into more negotiations in the coming weeks. In the final analysis, 'war is very much an uncertain business, and even though some things may be in Russia's favour, there's a great deal of uncertainty', says Kofman. 'And keep in mind the external factors: at the end of the day, much for Russia depends on things, like the price of oil, that they can neither predict nor control. The longer things go on, the more they're playing with fire.' Solve the daily Crossword
