Category: Uncategorized

Shabir Ahmed, known as ‘Daddy’ by his victims, was jailed for a total of 22 years in August 2012.

Source: BBC.

In his first-ever interview, Morgan McSweeney tells the BBC the party did not deliver quickly enough in office.

Source: BBC.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia hammered Kyiv in an 11-hour drone and missile attack overnight into Thursday morning, killing at least 18 civilians in the city and injuring scores more in what Moscow said was retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities.

Loud explosions shook the Ukrainian capital for hours during the night, with many people sheltering in subway stations after authorities issued air raid warnings. Emergency crews were still digging through the rubble of collapsed and charred apartment buildings in search of victims as dawn broke.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the deadly bombardment was in response to Ukraine’s long-range strikes that have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s increasingly frequent and large-scale attacks — described by Zelenskyy as a 40-day blitz — have especially targeted oil refineries, causing a fuel crisis that has frustrated Russians, more than four years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Ukrainian officials say they are trying to force Putin to the negotiating table, but so far Moscow’s response has been to hit back.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war, most recently by the Trump administration, haven’t produced results. Putin thinks that time is on his side, that Western support will peter out and that Ukraine’s resistance will eventually collapse under pressure from strategic bombing, Western analysts say.

Ukraine’s top diplomat says it was a ‘night of horror’ in Kyiv

The attack killed 18 people in Kyiv, the Emergency Service said. More than 90 others were injured, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it was a “night of horror” in the capital.

Damage was recorded in 30 locations across the city, mainly residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. Some 20 residential buildings were damaged, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Flashes from exploding drones and missiles lit up the night, and loud booms echoed through Kyiv. Tracers from air defense fire streaked through the air as a huge pall of black smoke rose into the sky.

Kyiv resident Serhii Budko said three or four ballistic missiles hit his district of the city. “We were inside the shelter and felt the shelter shaking — the ceiling and floor, everything,” the 24-year-old told The Associated Press.

In Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, people were trapped inside a damaged nine-story residential building, and in the Darnytskyi district six levels of a nine-story building collapsed.

Russia’s General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov reported the results of the “massive retaliatory strike” to Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

The bombardment was “exclusively against military or military-linked targets,” Peskov said.

Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.

Sybiha said in April that domestic production meets up to 75% of Ukraine’s military needs and accounts for up to 95% of long-range strikes against Russia. The location of the factories making those weapons is secret.

Elsewhere, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region a Russian guided bomb strike killed a 7-year-old girl and wounded four other people, including an 11-year-old girl, all members of the same family, regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said.

Ukrainian officials urge countries to provide more air defenses

The attack used “high-precision long-range weapons” and drones on “military industry facilities and fuel and energy complexes in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as military airfield infrastructure in four other regions of Ukraine,” the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement said.

It published a list of targets it said the barrage hit, mostly plants manufacturing and assembling Ukrainian drones, missiles and components.

Russia fired 74 missiles, 24 of them ballistic, and 496 drones of various types in the attack, Ukraine’s air force said.

Ukraine’s air defenses have improved throughout the war, especially in countering Russian drones. But ballistic missiles are harder to stop, and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly pleaded with partner countries to supply more Patriot missile systems that offer the best protection.

Sybiha urged countries not to delay decisions on supplying air defense systems and missiles.

He rejected any Russian attempts to justify the strikes as retaliation for Ukraine’s long-range attacks, saying Ukraine was exercising its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter while Russia remained the aggressor.

Sybiha said on X that the death toll may rise as rescue teams continue their work.

Ukraine attacks another Russian oil refinery

Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries overnight in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, starting a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said.

Also, Ukrainian forces struck a railway bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, it said. The bridge was used by Russian forces to transport personnel, weapons and military supplies, according to the General Staff.

Ukraine’s recent success with drone strikes that keep Russian troops pinned down on the front line, disrupt Russian supply lines in the rear and damage oil facilities have brought a significant change in the war, Western analysts say.

“Russia’s spring-summer 2026 offensive has failed to achieve operationally significant gains thus far, and Russian forces’ rate of advance in June 2026 (was) a fraction of the rate of advance that Russian forces achieved in June 2025,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late Wednesday.

The post Major Russian attack kills 18 in Kyiv as Ukrainian strikes batter Moscow’s oil sector appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.

U.S. tourists love French pharmacies. But what should FIFA-bound visitors pick up stateside? Here’s the most popular American pharmacy buys they could hoard.

Source: Vogue

From The Hill

Republican lawmakers are brushing off President Trump’s strident criticism of mail-in ballots, saying it won’t deter GOP voters from using the voting method. The Supreme Court ruled this week that mail-in ballots may count if they are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward. Trump slammed the decision, calling it a “tremendous loss in the Supreme Court” while pressing for lawmakers to…

From The Hill

The American experiment has proven, among other things, that ownership creates opportunity.

Officials are ramping up their efforts to keep beachgoers safe from the shore and sky with a fleet of drones to patrol the waters from above for sharks.

Source: ABC News

The Princess of Wales doubled down on her extroverted summer style with another color-drenched look on the fourth day of the 2026 Wimbledon Championships.

Source: Vogue

A man and a woman who scaled to the very top of New York’s Empire State Building on Thursday, identified as internet daredevils 32-year-old Ivan Kuznetsov and 33-year-old Angelina Nikolau, are facing multiple criminal charges including felony burglary, reckless endangerment and trespassing. NBC’s Valerie Castro reports for TODAY.

This post was originally published on NBC News.

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

A few summers ago, we signed our older kid up for a very outdoorsy camp. The organizers prided themselves on getting children comfortable with nature and the elements; they told us that kids would only go indoors if absolutely necessary.

Then, a punishing heat wave hit New York City. Our kid came home with a weird heat rash that took days to go away. Later that summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires forced the camp to take shelter at a nearby school. 

My kid did not enjoy the experience, but I don’t blame the camp. Organizers around the country have had to change their programs or even cancel camp in response to extreme heat, smoke, and other realities of our modern summer. 

The result is often a loss of outdoor time, which is critical for kids’ physical health and social development. That loss is especially troubling at a time when recess is dwindling, and school is becoming increasingly screen-based. Kids need as much summer as they can get.

It’s still possible to give campers the fun new experiences they need, experts say. But it takes a new layer of planning and adaptability as climate change, increasingly, factors into every decision.

“Our focus really should be not on less outdoor activity,” Allison Poulos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions, told me. “It’s just smarter outdoor activity.”

What kids lose when it’s too hot for camp

As I’m writing this story, extreme heat warnings are affecting more than 160 million Americans as a “heat dome” closes over the Midwest and Northeast. In some parts of New York state, “feels like” temperatures are expected to go as high as 110 degrees.

This is, sadly, our new normal. Higher average temperatures due to climate change are making heat waves more common and extreme. “When a heat dome or a high-pressure system sets up, it’s now starting from a hotter floor,” Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, recently told NPR. “That makes the extreme heat more likely.”

As we’ve seen during recent heat waves across Europe, extreme heat can be dangerous. Kids are especially vulnerable because their bodies heat up more quickly and are less efficient at cooling off by sweating, said Harleen Marwah, a pediatrician at Mass General Brigham for Children who has spent her career working on the intersection of climate and health.

Children also don’t necessarily recognize when they’re getting too hot and may “push themselves to play to a point where they’re in an unsafe situation,” Marwah told me. “It really puts the onus on the caregiver to be monitoring closely.”

In the face of triple-digit heat, sometimes organizers have no choice but to cancel camp. The recent heat wave has already led to cancellations in the Midwest.

But calling off camp presents real childcare problems for parents, who typically have to work in the summer, no matter how hot it gets. It’s also not great for kids, who get real benefits from the outdoor playtime that camp can provide.

Being outside is “an opportunity for physical activity, which is good for overall health, and also becoming increasingly limited as people spend more time indoors and more time behind screens,” Marwah said.

Being in green spaces, especially, is good for kids’ mental and emotional wellbeing, Marwah said. “Outdoor play creates a space where children can learn about nature as well, and that’s an opportunity that gets missed out on if things have to be canceled.”

How camp can survive climate change

Whenever possible, camps should adapt to the heat instead of completely cancelling activities, experts say. It’s a process Kevin Martin, director of recreational sports at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, knows well. Known as “Jambalaya” to the hundreds of campers who come to the campus every summer, Martin said this summer has already been punishing.

“Man, it’s been hot,” he told me. “The mosquitoes have been biting.”

But Texas A&M camps haven’t canceled or reduced their hours. Instead, the heat “has made us be more innovative,” Martin said.

Even if other outdoor activities are canceled, the pool stays open, especially since swimming is “magnificent” for campers’ mental health, Martin said. But counselors enforce mandatory water breaks even during swim time.

That’s crucial, Marwah said, because playing in water, while cooling in the short term, can actually mask the signs of dehydration.

Beyond making sure campers get plenty of water, camps can also think about the design of their outdoor spaces, including using materials that heat up less quickly and creating space for shade, ideally from trees, Marwah said. 

That takes time and money, but one thing camps can do right now is structure their schedules with the forecast and heat index in mind, keeping outdoor activities in cooler parts of the day. 

When it’s just too hot to be outside, there are ways to keep kids active. Poulos and her team have found that playing in an indoor gym, with room to move around, offers some of the same benefits as outdoor play. At Texas A&M, campers retreat to the gym for dodgeball, Pop-A-Shot, and an introductory basketball game called Nukem. “I don’t know what is about Nukem, but they love Nukem,” Martin said.

His campers have the benefit of being on a campus with college-level athletic facilities. But even camps with fewer resources can use what they have to support play on hot days. Camps with smaller indoor spaces, for example, can rotate kids between inside and outside so that everyone gets to play and no one gets too hot, Poulos said.

All of this adaptation takes work — it’s one of the many burdens climate change is placing on communities around the world. But planning ahead is also an opportunity to help kids contribute to the solution.

Martin likes to get campers’ input on games they want to play — as a member of Gen Z, he already feels out of step with what they’re into. “When you get their buy-in and ask them, ‘What do y’all enjoy playing? What do you want to play?’” he said. “They are [so excited for] the camp at that point, because they feel valued.”

What I’m reading

A new report says that the Department of Education may no longer be able to do its job of enforcing federal education law after the Trump administration cut 40 percent of staff and terminated $2 billion worth of contracts and grants in 2025. The report was incomplete because department staff did not comply with interview requests, meaning even internal investigators were unable to assess the full scope of the damage.

The Texas State Board of Education has approved a required reading list for public school students that includes a Bible excerpt in most grades, sparking concern among teachers and advocates for the separation of church and state.

The latest viral squishy toy is a stick of butter.

My horror-loving older child enjoyed The Witch’s Wings and Other Terrifying Tales, a graphic novel based on that millennial mainstay Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

Also in throwbacks, my little kid is now obsessed with Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a 1980s cartoon that predates even me. My older kid calls it “old-timey” and “ancient.”

Source: Vox.

From layering tricks to accessory pairings, these printed dress styling tips show you how to wear a statement patterned midi or mini with ease.

Source: Vogue

From The Hill

As America has become increasingly polarized politically, the ABA has simply followed one of the two poles.