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Ukraine round-up: Long-range rockets and Kherson torture claims

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After President Joe Biden announced that his administration would supply Kyiv with new long-range missiles in the coming weeks, Russia accused the US of purposefully prolonging the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Biden wrote in the New York Times that the lethal aid would strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating position against Russia and increase the likelihood of a diplomatic solution. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, accused the US of wanting to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian” and said the move discouraged Kyiv officials from seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

The weapons, which Ukraine has long requested, will help strike enemy forces within Ukraine more precisely and from a greater distance, according to President Biden.

Ukraine had promised not to use the new missiles to strike inside Russia, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who warned of a long conflict ahead.

The intervention comes as fighting in the eastern Donbas region heats up, with President Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Russia of “madness” after striking a chemical factory in the city.

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In response to rising energy prices, Germans will receive a €9 monthly travel allowance

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In an effort to combat rising living costs, Germans will be able to travel the country for just €9 per month for the next three months.

The government’s initiative covers all local and regional transportation via trains, buses, and metro, but not intercity trains. The low-cost tickets are also intended to encourage people to abandon their automobiles.

However, the fuel tax has been reduced by around 30 cents per litre, bringing petrol prices below €2. For the next three months, the tax has been reduced to the EU minimum, which means diesel prices will drop by around 14 cents per litre.

The €9-a-month tickets, according to Transport Minister Volker Wissing, are a fantastic opportunity: “We’ve already sold seven million tickets, which is a huge success.”

However, Deutsche Bahn is already experiencing overcrowding, delays, and cancellations, and the plan’s prospect of millions of additional passengers has sparked criticism. In April, fewer than 70% of long-distance trains arrived on time, but Mr Wissing claims the rail network is only operating at 80% capacity. In the hours following the scheme’s implementation on Wednesday morning, no major rail issues were reported.

The federal government, which includes the Green Party, has promised €2.5 billion in compensation to Germany’s 16 state governments to cover the expected increases in staffing and fuel costs. Although the €9 ticket does not include intercity travel, regional trains can be used to travel across the country.

The scheme prompted German social media users to debate whether they should use the ticket to go to work or to the beach on Sylt, a North Sea holiday island. The library in Cologne made a witty announcement: “The social media team meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow in Sylt. FYI”.

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Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, a journalist for BFMTV in France, was killed in Ukraine

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A French journalist working in Ukraine was killed near the eastern city of Severodonetsk, which has been hit by fighting. Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, was killed while covering an evacuation operation for BFMTV.

Officials say shrapnel pierced the armoured vehicle he was riding in, inflicting a fatal neck wound. According to reports, his colleague Maxime Brandstaetter was also hurt. Mr. Leclerc-Imhoff was in Ukraine for the second time to cover the conflict. For the previous six years, he had been employed by BFMTV.

“This tragic event reminds us of the dangers faced by all journalists who have been reporting this conflict at the risk of their lives for more than three months now,” BFMTV said in an online tribute to him. Graphic images of what appears to be the aftermath have been circulated online, according to BBC correspondent James Waterhouse, showing a badly damaged lorry with a smashed windscreen and blood on the interior.

A local Ukrainian journalist who was travelling with Mr Leclerc-Imhoff was not hurt. “I would like to reiterate France’s unconditional support,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter in a tribute to Mr. Leclerc-Imhoff and other journalists reporting on the frontlines from war zones.

“Journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff travelled to Ukraine to document the war’s reality. He was fatally shot on board a humanitarian bus, alongside civilians forced to flee Russian bombs.”

Meanwhile, France’s foreign ministry has demanded a “transparent investigation” into what happened as soon as possible. Brent Renaud, a US journalist, was the first foreign journalist killed while covering the conflict in Ukraine in March.

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Man disguised as old woman smears cake on Mona Lisa portrait at Louvre

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A man dressed as an elderly woman in a wheelchair threw a cake at the iconic Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which is on display at the Louvre in Paris. The painting, however, was unaffected due to the protective glass that encased it.

Witness testimony revealed that the perpetrator was a man in a wheelchair wearing a large wig, according to the Spanish newspaper Marca. To everyone’s surprise, he suddenly stood up and attempted to smash the Mona Lisa’s bulletproof glass before smearing cake on the glass.

Even as the crowd continued to photograph the situation, the museum’s security staff rushed to eject the man from the room shortly after the incident.

As seen in the viral videos, museum employees were seen removing the assailant and cleaning the tarnished glass.

The Mona Lisa, an Italian Renaissance half-length portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is regarded as the archetypal masterpiece. It is housed in the Louvre’s largest room, the Salle des États, which also houses other notable Venetian paintings such as Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana. It is described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.”

Several attempts to steal or destroy the painting have been made over the years. An employee stole it from the museum in 1911, and Bolivian Ugo Ungaza Villegas threw a rock at it while it was on display in 1956. In the years that followed, several more incidents occurred. The subject’s mysterious identity, her enigmatic expression, and the painter’s unmatched art techniques draw thousands of visitors each year.

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Palme d’Or: Triangle of Sadness wins top prize in Cannes for Ruben Ostlund

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On Saturday, Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness won the Palme d’Or, a film in which models and the ultra-rich have their status questioned by unexpected events.

The award is the second for the Swedish director, who previously won it in 2017 for The Square. Park Chan-wook of South Korea took home the award for best director. Park, who is best known for the 2003 thriller Oldboy, took home the award for his erotic crime film Decision to Leave.

The best actor award went to Song Kang-ho for Broker, capping off a strong night for South Korea. Song gained international acclaim for his role in the Oscar-winning film Parasite in 2019. Ostlund, dubbed the “King of Cringe,” told reporters that he wanted to make a film that would make people laugh.

“I think we had one goal when we started making this film – to really, really try to make an exciting film for the audience and bring thought-provoking content,” Ostlund said, adding, “We wanted to entertain them, we wanted them to ask themselves questions, we wanted them to go out and have something to talk about after the screening.”

During its premiere, his film elicited a strong reaction from the audience, with news agency AFP reporting that one scene in particular “left viewers either howling with laughter or turning green.” The story of Triangle of Sadness revolves around two models, played by British actor Harris Dickinson and South African Charlbi Dean, who embark on a luxury cruise.

However, unexpected events have left them stranded, and the need to survive has thrown the social order into disarray.

While the film “makes you laugh,” Ostlund “also makes you think,” according to the entertainment magazine Variety. “We’re bound to see the world differently no matter what sphere he tackles,” it says in its review.

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Severodonetsk: Ukrainian man rides his bike through the besieged city while dodging Russian shells

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By cycling and dodging Russian shells and warplanes, a Ukrainian man managed to escape the heavily bombed eastern city of Severodonetsk unharmed.

Arif Bagirov, 45, told BBC Newshour that it was his “craziest journey.” He described his 70-kilometer (43-mile) bike ride to Bakhmut as “a lot of firing and at least two air strikes near me.”

The editor and blogger predicted that if one shell landed close by, the Russians would most likely avoid hitting the area again. Using these strategies, he was able to reach Bakhmut unharmed. “There were holes in the road, and everything, including cars, was smashed up,” Mr Bagirov said.

“And there was a lot of debris strewn about.” It is, after all, a frontline road. Thankfully, there were no bodies, but it was clear that people had died there.”
Mr Bagirov claimed that avoiding Russian warplanes was easier because he could hear them approaching from afar.
“I found a ditch to lie down in and stayed there until they passed.”
When he finally arrived in Bakhmut, a Ukrainian-controlled city further west, he said it was a huge relief. “When I was riding my bike, it wasn’t so much a sense of fear as it was a sense of anger: ‘This is my land, this is my country!’

And whether you like it or not, I’m going to finish this journey!’ He describes the sensation as “sporting anger, a positive anger” that kept him going. Mr Bagirov, a seasoned cyclist, added, “It was definitely my craziest journey on a bike.” “I’d travelled great distances before, but never in such adverse conditions.”

“I don’t know at the moment,” he said simply when asked about his future plans. I’m just on my way to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and once there, I’ll get some rest.” “As soon as the opportunity presents itself, all I want to do is help my home town again,” he added.

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Alan White, the drummer for Yes, has died at the age of 72

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Alan White, a founding member of the seminal prog-rock band Yes, has passed away.

After a brief illness, the 72-year-old, who was born in Pelton, County Durham, died peacefully at his home in the United States. According to the band, he had been looking forward to an upcoming UK tour and celebrating his 50th anniversary with Yes, which he had joined in 1972.

White collaborated with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Joe Cocker during his career. “Alan White, our beloved husband, father, and grandpa, passed away at the age of 72 at his Seattle-area home on May 26, 2022, after a brief illness,” the band said in a social media post.

“Alan was many things to many people throughout his life and six-decade career: a certified rock star to fans all over the world, a band mate to a select few, and a gentleman and friend to all who met him.”

Former frontman Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire, along with guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye, and drummer Bill Bruford, founded Yes in London in 1968. The band went through several lineups, including White and Rick Wakeman, and experimented with a variety of musical styles.

Owner Of A Lonely Heart, Roundabout, and Long Distance Runaround are some of their biggest hits. White began playing the drums at the age of 12 and was performing in front of an audience at the age of 13.

In the 1960s, he worked with a variety of bands before receiving what he thought was a prank phone call from John Lennon in 1969.

However, it was the former Beatle who called to ask if White would join the Plastic Ono Band, and White went on to play on several of John Lennon’s albums, including Imagine. This led to a meeting with Harrison, who requested that the drummer play on the album All Things Must Pass, which included the single “My Sweet Lord.”

White had only three days to learn the songs before the start of a major US tour when he joined Yes on July 27, 1972. White was the band’s longest-serving member until founding member Chris Squire passed away in 2015. In 2017, Yes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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Elvis biopic: Austin Butler praised, but mixed reviews for film

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Many critics praised actor Austin Butler’s portrayal of Elvis Presley in a new biopic of the singer, which has received generally positive reviews.

The film, directed by Baz Luhrmann, had its world premiere on Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival. Butler “throws himself into the performance,” according to The Wrap, and Total Film predicted an Oscar nomination.

Vanity Fair, on the other hand, called Butler “the only thing that works,” while IndieWire called the film “deliriously awful.” “Yes, it’s a bright and splashy jukebox epic with an irresistible central performance from Austin Butler,” wrote Robbie Collin of The Telegraph, who gave the film four stars.

“But it veers in and out of fashion on a scene-by-scene basis, in that signature Luhrmann way: it’s the most impeccably styled and blaringly gaudy thing you’ll see all year, and all the more fun for it.”

Elvis is “easily Luhrmann’s best movie since Romeo + Juliet,” according to Kevin Maher of the New York Times, in another four-star review. “The musical numbers have a lot of power because of Butler’s performance, but also because of Luhrmann’s editing, which has the kind of frenetic rhythms that are almost impossible to resist (feet will tap),” he said.

When Butler was cast as Elvis Presley in 2019, he reportedly beat out Harry Styles, Ansel Elgort, and Miles Teller.

Butler’s performance was praised by Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent, who wrote that the actor “makes a compelling argument for Elvis’ power, at a time when the musician’s arguably lost a little of his cultural cachet.”

“Butler has the looks, voice, stance, and wiggle down pat,” she said, “but what’s truly impressive is that indescribable, undistillable essence of Elvis-ness – magnetic, gentle, and fierce all at once.”

Steve Pond of The Wrap described the star’s performance as “wildly physical but never cartoonish or disrespectful.”

Total Film’s Jordan Farley said: “Some may be offended by the length of the film, which clocks in at over 150 minutes, but a lack of action isn’t the issue; there’s enough to Elvis’ story to fill 150 hours.

“The problem is that well-edited montages or a time jump bridged by a newspaper headline to fill in the gaps miss a lot of interesting material. Most of Elvis’s Hollywood years, as well as his initial rise to chart-topping fame, are relegated to one of these montage.

“In the end, nothing in Elvis’ life happens gradually – this is a fast-paced life story, but such is the energy that Luhrmann cultivates. At the very least, it’s never dull.”

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Ukraine war: Russian soldiers’ bodies are dumped near Kyiv

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Villagers in Zavalivka called the authorities after their dogs began digging incessantly in the woods.

The topsoil was carefully removed by a Ukrainian military team wearing white protective suits. They discovered a man’s body, lying face down with his legs twisted strangely beneath him. His uniform indicated that he was a Russian soldier.

Russian troops’ remains are still being discovered in and around the villages they passed through or occupied near Kyiv, weeks after they failed to seize Ukraine’s capital. However, Ukraine claims that Russia is uninterested in returning them.

The body was taken from its grave in the woods to a refrigerated train on the outskirts of Kyiv, which now serves as a mobile morgue for the Russian dead. The white plastic sacks are labelled with numbers rather than names, and on the day we visited, there were at least 137 stacked inside two carriages.

The Ukrainians try to identify the dead: the forensics team discovered two bank cards and badges for a Russian motorised rifle brigade on the body that was just brought in.

“At least this one has a chance of getting home,” the man in charge said as he displayed the finds, which included a soiled T-shirt with the Army of Russia logo printed on it.

I confirmed that the man I had just seen exhumed was a young, married soldier from Siberia a few moments later. A carefully posed black-and-white photograph from his social media profile stared out from my phone next to his body bag.

“We don’t abandon our own,” Russia proudly proclaims. It’s a big part of President Vladimir Putin’s pretext for invading Ukraine, where he falsely claimed Russian-speakers required protection.

This pledge does not appear to apply to Russian soldiers.
“The bodies we’ve discovered show they treat people like garbage, like cannon fodder,” Col Volodymyr Liamzin told the BBC. “They don’t require their troops. They throw them here, then flee, leaving the bodies behind.”

Russian soldiers are being urged to surrender and save their lives, while Ukrainian children are being sacrificed.

After the battle, the village elder claims he and others buried the Russians “for sanitary reasons.” When I ask why, he says most of them were blown to bits.

He wasn’t allowed to show us the graves because they are a crime scene until Col Liamzin’s team visits and exhumes the site. However, his to-do list is already lengthy.

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Heard’s team has changed their mind about Johnny Depp’s testimony

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According to a source close to Amber Heard, her team will not call Johnny Depp to the stand in the high-profile trial’s final days.

Ms. Heard’s team had planned to question Mr. Depp further on Monday, but at midday, they abruptly changed course. Mr Depp, 58, is suing his ex-wife for $50 million (£40 million) over a column she wrote in which she claimed to have been the victim of domestic abuse. Ms. Heard, 36, has filed a counterclaim.

This week is expected to be the end of the case. In the remaining days of the defamation trial, British supermodel Kate Moss, a former girlfriend of Mr Depp, is expected to testify.

Ms Heard’s team called several witnesses, including psychologist David Spiegel, to testify in court on Monday in Fairfax, Virginia.

Mr. Depp, according to Dr. Spiegel, “has behaviours that are consistent with both someone who has substance use disorder and someone who is a perpetrator of intimate partner violence.” Dr. Spiegel told jurors that 40-60% of intimate partner violence is committed while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

On cross-examination, Mr. Depp’s lawyers tried to discredit this testimony by pointing out that Dr. Spiegel reached his conclusions without speaking with Mr. Depp.

On Monday, a hand surgeon testified that Mr Depp’s finger was unlikely to have been cut in the way he described during a fight with Ms Heard in Australia.

When Ms Heard threw a vodka bottle at him, Mr Depp claims the tip of his middle finger was severed. Dr. Richard Moore told the jury that the damage to Mr. Depp’s finger was more consistent with being pinched by a closing door.

At the time of the accident, Dr Moore did not examine Mr Depp physically. Mr Depp’s team is expected to rest its case early this week, giving Ms Heard’s team one last chance to persuade the jury.

Mr Depp, according to Ms Heard, was prone to alcohol and drug binges, was easily triggered by jealousy, and was frequently consumed by violent rages.

Mr Depp, for his part, claimed he was a victim of Ms Heard’s erratic behaviour, telling jurors he was subjected to her verbal, emotional, and physical abuse on a regular basis.

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