Election will determine balance of power in New Caledonia before fresh negotiations with France on the territory’s statusPolls opened in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia on Sunday for the archipelago’s first provincial elections since 2019, after the vote was delayed as talks stalled over its political future.The election, initially planned for 2024, will determine the balance of power in New Caledonia ahead of fresh negotiations with France on the territory’s status, with independence remaining the defining political issue. Continue reading...

28 Jun 2026 02:26 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

US president says levy would be imposed immediately and supersede pre-existing trade deals with the country Donald Trump has threatened to place a 100% import tariff on any European country that imposes a tax on digital services from US companies.Writing on Truth Social on Friday, the US president said that “numerous European countries” had been discussing putting a digital services tax on American companies and that “some of these countries are close to actually doing this”. Continue reading...

27 Jun 2026 10:20 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Ukrainian president says Crimea at centre of Kyiv’s ‘policy of ensuring justice’ against Moscow. What we know on day 1,584Authorities in Russian-annexed Crimea have declared an “emergency situation” in a bid to ease the fallout from increasing Ukrainian aerial attacks on the peninsula. Friday’s announcement came amid fuel shortages and power cuts triggered by the Ukrainian attacks on logistics chains and oil facilities across Crimea, the rest of Russian-occupied Ukraine and southern Russia. Kyiv calls its stepped up air attacks fair retribution for Russia’s near-daily barrages on Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying on social media: “We are doing everything to force Russia to end the war and restore justice. And it is Crimea that is at the centre of this policy of ensuring justice.”The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol said emergency ⁠crews had worked to ease power cuts but told residents of Crimea’s largest city to use appliances sparingly to ⁠avoid power overloads and shortages. Crimea authorities have already suspended fuel sales to private motorists, and Sevastopol introduced restrictions on operating ⁠hours for public transport, shops, cafes and street lights. The restrictions come as Russian air defences shot down 660 Ukrainian drones overnight, including over Moscow and Crimea, its defence ministry said on Friday – one of the highest figures since the start of the war. “Today, Ukraine is depriving Russia of this launchpad and drawing a line under its attempts to normalise war,” Zelenskyy said.Two countries on Nato’s eastern flank have warned that Russia is preparing a possible “provocation” in the Baltic states or Poland in an effort to test the cohesion of the western military alliance, reports Dan Sabbagh. Western sources also fear there could be danger on the horizon because the Kremlin is coming under pressure from Ukraine’s campaign of long-range attacks on targets near Moscow and St Petersburg.A Russian drone ⁠strike on ⁠Friday ​killed two passengers aboard a minibus in Ukraine’s south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and ⁠one person in the border Sumy region, regional officials said. Dnipropetrovsk’s regional ⁠governor said on two people ‌died and 12 were injured, including two ‌children, in the strike in Nikopol, while Sumy’s regional governor said a drone strike there killed a man in a village outside ⁠the main regional centre, also called Sumy.An oil tanker suspected of being part of ⁠Russia’s “shadow fleet” was taken to waters near Marseille on Friday, a ⁠day after it ⁠was ​seized by France’s navy near Sicily, local authorities said. The vessel, the Deliver, ⁠is one of nine ships that have been seized across Europe since the ⁠start of 2026, all thought to have been ​used by Russia ‌to evade ‌western sanctions on its oil trade. The Russian embassy in ​France called the seizure “piracy”.Ukraine plans to build domestic computing capacity for artificial intelligence with Kyivstar, the company said on Friday. Kyivstar said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the economy ministry at the ⁠Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdansk, while parent VEON would provide financial backing for a first phase ​that Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov said could ‌need at least 3-5 ‌megawatts of capacity and tens of millions of dollars. “The biggest consumer of Ukrainian AI ‌right now is the military,” Komarov told Reuters. “You cannot run military computing somewhere outside. It is a matter of national security.”Ukraine and Russia swapped 160 captured soldiers on Friday, Moscow and Kyiv said, the latest prisoner of war exchange in war. Zelenskyy said the Ukrainians had all been held captive since 2022 and posted pictures on social media of the men wrapped in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flags, smiling and embracing each other. After the release Russian ⁠human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova said she and her Ukrainian counterpart ⁠Dmytro Lubinets had agreed to ⁠jointly visit prisoners ​of ‌war and ‌had exchanged lists ‌of soldiers being held by both countries, Russia’s state RIA news agency ‌reported.Former Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, once seen as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, has died at the age of 73. Ivanov ⁠was a key member ⁠of the group known as ​the “siloviki”, or strongmen, who, like Putin, had risen through the ranks of the Soviet KGB security service and wielded huge influence after Putin took power at the turn of the millennium. The Kremlin said in a statement on Friday that Putin “expressed his deepest condolences” to Ivanov’s family and friends. Ivanov helped shape Russia’s post-Soviet security state and later framed Nato’s expansion as a strategic concern for Russia. Continue reading...

27 Jun 2026 01:49 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

It’s tempting to treat overwhelm with clever fixes – but that might be part of the problemAccording to my Instagram feed, I am not doing enough. Not spending enough, not saying enough, not taking enough care. I feel more sure of this than anything. And it’s bringing out an irrationality I’m not proud of: one afternoon, in between screengrabs of masked men snatching civilians from their homes, videos of wellness influencers evangelising “anti-trauma” hip stretches, and carousels of political action items disguised as catchy memes, I am served a targeted ad for a “Don’t Talk to Me About AI or I’ll Kill Myself” crochet pattern; and even though I have never crocheted anything in my life, I find myself looking up the materials to get started … on Etsy to avoid supporting any big, Maga-oriented corporations.It’s overwhelming, this general pressure, palpable not only on social media but throughout the larger culture: today’s most urgent issues, from technological end times to tight hips, can only be solved by squeezing as much into the day as humanly possible. Continue reading...

28 Jun 2026 11:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Athena Park flees futuristic marauders in a post-apocalyptic tale that looks handsome but very familiarClose to a decade after the year in which Blade Runner was set, that movie continues to be the gold standard for dystopian futures. That’s obvious from the silty-green murk and Asian signage of the broken-down metropolis where this ponderous sci-fi thriller kicks off; the last remnants of civilisation after an obscure catastrophe called the Event. With the Earth locked in a new dark age, outside the cities a noxious fog keeps everything shrouded in a permanent winter.Lucky then that protagonist the Kid (Athena Park) has the comfiest-looking knitted snood this side of Topshop. She is forced to flee when her father, head of some important clan, is waylaid, asphyxiated and run through by masked marauders demanding to know her whereabouts. Lustrously bearded vassal Nobel (Josh Bainbridge), katana at the ready, is on hand to guide her into the badlands – and hopefully into the arms of an aunt (Lora Burke) she never knew existed. Continue reading...

29 Jun 2026 08:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Film-maker Maria Stoianova mines her father’s video diaries from the 1980s and 90s to document the decline of communism – and his obsession with western shopping mallsHere is an interesting film which does not render up its meaning easily: a personal piece about memory, and an enigmatic essay about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union as it was experienced by one family in Ukraine, based entirely on home-movie video footage. It is innocent and transparent, and yet subtly encumbered by the sadness of history. I can imagine Adam Curtis quoting this in its entirety for some new compilation about the post-communist 20th century.Film-maker Maria Stoianova presents us with video clips shot by her dad, Mykhailo Stoianov, an ice skater and ice dancer with the Ukrainian national ice ballet company who, throughout the communist 1980s and into the new era, toured the US, Canada, the Middle East and western Europe. (Mykhailo even played Blackpool in the UK.) The skaters were a privileged cultural group, encouraged by the Soviet state as diplomatic standard bearers and a source of hard foreign currency, but closely monitored by the KGB at all times; Maria remembers her father recounting a tense conversation with an intelligence officer about working for them. Continue reading...

29 Jun 2026 06:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

There are glimpses of the Curb star at his razor-like best here – but they are desperately few. It’s mainly worth watching for the immaculate Obama introIt is always an emotional blow to see former US president Barack Obama pop up on one’s screen. The Instagram algorithm sends me a lot of him, because it knows I always click on him being charming with babies, statesmanlike in speeches, cool at rallies, articulate and witty at anything, endlessly composed, compassionate, intelligent, handsome, thoughtful – a fully functioning adult human, if you want the short version. The algorithm does not know that I jack-knife in pain before I click and weep softly at how far we – the US sneezed, but the UK has surely caught a cold – have fallen.And then he turns up at the beginning of Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America (one of the offspring of his and Michelle’s TV company, Higher Ground Productions) to remind us that on top of all that he also has immaculate comic timing. As he walks through what I assume is the new Barack Obama Presidential Center, he modulates his performance so beautifully that I almost began to softly weep again. If I’d known what a shambles was to follow after this masterclass, I would have sobbed. Continue reading...

27 Jun 2026 11:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN