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Ukraine war briefing: International protest over arrests at anti-corruption agency

Ukraine war briefing: International protest over arrests at anti-corruption agency

The Guardian4 days ago
Ukrainian security services arrested officials from the country's main anti-corruption agency, the NABU, on Monday and conducted dozens of searches in a crackdown that the agency said went too far and had effectively shut down its entire mission. The SBU said it had arrested one of the officials as a suspected Russian spy and others for alleged ties to a banned party. But NABU, which has embarrassed senior government officials with corruption allegations, said the 'vast majority' of cases involved unrelated allegations such as years-old traffic accidents.
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said the searches conducted without court orders showed that authorities were exerting 'massive pressure' on Ukraine's corruption fighters. Ambassadors of G7 nations in Kyiv issued a statement saying they had 'serious concerns and intend to discuss these developments with government leaders'. Anti-corruption campaigners have been alarmed since Vitaliy Shabunin, a top anti-corruption activist, was charged earlier this month with fraud and evading military service. Volodymy Zelenskyy's office denies that prosecutions in Ukraine are politically motivated.
Russia and Ukraine will hold new peace talks on Wednesday in Istanbul, said Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president. It is a follow-up to two earlier rounds that made little progress on ending their war. Zelenskyy has offered to hold direct talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Russia has broadcast footage from inside a plant assembling the deadly attack drones it fires at civilian targets in Ukraine on a daily basis. The video was published on Sunday by Zvezda, a TV channel owned by the Russian defence ministry, showing workers with their faces blurred assembling jet-black triangle-shaped attack drones. 'This is the world's largest factory producing unmanned combat aerial vehicles, and the most secretive one,' said plant director Timur Shagivaleev, who has been sanctioned by the US. The plant is near the town of Yelabuga in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. Russia's Geran drones are based on Iranian Shahed drones.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, arrived in Kyiv on Monday for a surprise visit while rescuers were still sifting through the rubble from a massive drone and missile barrage against the Ukrainian capital. Six districts of Kyiv came under attack on Monday, sparking fires at a supermarket, multiple residential buildings and a nursery, authorities said. The entrance to a metro station where civilians were sheltering from the barrage was damaged. 'This inhumane, cynical and cruel violence has no military purpose,' Barrot said.
Barrot visited the Chornobyl power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. In February, Ukraine accused Russia of using an explosive drone to damage the confinement arch protecting the structure – prompting France to pledge €10m to help fix it. Barrot said Russia 'targets energy infrastructure in defiance of international law, security and nuclear safety'.
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The sneaky way Anthony Albanese will turn Australia into a high-taxing European nation with new super tax
The sneaky way Anthony Albanese will turn Australia into a high-taxing European nation with new super tax

Daily Mail​

time40 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

The sneaky way Anthony Albanese will turn Australia into a high-taxing European nation with new super tax

Anthony Albanese risks turning Australia into a high-taxing European nation with his plan for a radical new tax on superannuation savings, an investment group warns. The federal government wants to impose a new 15 per cent tax on unrealised gains on super balances above $3million, where capital growth would be taxed before assets are sold. Wilson Asset Management chairman Geoff Wilson said this departure from taxing capital gains after assets are sold would see Australia share a similarity with European nations, which are renowned for their high taxes and targeting the rich. 'Australia is proving to be no different from Norway, Spain and Sweden, where taxing unrealised gains led to capital exodus and therefore lower than expected tax revenue,' he said. In 2023, the Labor government announced that from July 1, 2025, 0.5 per cent, or 80,000, of super balances with more than $3million would be hit with a new 15 per cent tax on unrealised gains. This would be in addition to the 15 per cent tax on earnings that already exists for all super during the accumulation or working phase. The debut of a new tax on unrealised gains also marks the biggest change to the capital gains tax since it was introduced in Australia in 1985. Previously, European nations have been the main enthusiasts for taxing the notional or paper value of assets, based on gains during a financial year. Norway applies a 38 per cent unrealised gains tax on the wealth of those who leave. Sweden does a similar thing, but with a 30 per cent exit tax on unrealised gains. Spain also has an exit tax, based on unrealised gains, if someone with a large investment portfolio leaves the country to become a tax resident elsewhere. Germany during the 1970s and 1980s taxed unrealised gains on wealth, but the policy was notoriously difficult to administer. France still has a wealth tax that applies on assets worth more than €1.3million (AU$2.1million) of real estate assets, but it stops short of taxing unrealised gains. Other European nations, renowned for having higher income taxes to fund more services, do not touch retirement savings in the way Labor is proposing to do. US Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris last year campaigned to tax unrealised gains on wealth - but only for the ultra rich with assets worth US$100million (AU$152million) or more. Australia would be the first to apply an unrealised gains tax to superannuation, in a bid to raise $2.3billion a year in Budget revenue. Left-leaning crossbench senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie last year declined to back Labor's Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions bill, because they are opposed to taxing unrealised gains. The Greens back taxing unrealised gains but want the threshold reduced to $2million, but indexed to inflation. They hold the balance of power in the Senate, and Labor is still negotiating amendments with the minor party. The government has previously flagged giving Australians a year's notice from the time legislation is passed, with Mr Wilson noting panic selling was already occurring in self-managed super funds to avoid the potential new tax. 'Despite requiring Senate approval, the proposed tax on unrealised gains has already prompted a rush to liquidate assets ahead of the 30 June 2026 implementation date,' he said. Wilson Asset Management has proposed an alternative super tax strategy to Labor's plan to tax unrealised gains, in a submission to the government's Economic Reform Roundtable, where it argued it would raise $2.433billion in revenue. 'The outcome of the proposal would allow the government to increase tax revenue from high balance accounts without breaching the realisation principle of the tax act,' Mr Wilson said. 'Our proposal is in the national interest and a Budget-positive alternative to the government's proposed policy to tax unrealised gains in superannuation.' He proposes to keep the existing structure of taxing realised capital gains, but adding a new 15 per cent tax to balances of $3million to $6million. A 17.5 per cent tax would apply for balances of $6million to $10million, rising to 20 per cent for balances of $10million to $20million and 25 per cent for balances above $20million.

Trump news at a glance: president dismisses continued Epstein and Maxwell furore as ‘not a big thing'
Trump news at a glance: president dismisses continued Epstein and Maxwell furore as ‘not a big thing'

The Guardian

timean hour ago

  • The Guardian

Trump news at a glance: president dismisses continued Epstein and Maxwell furore as ‘not a big thing'

Donald Trump continued to face questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein as he landed in Scotland ahead of meeting British prime minister Keir Starmer and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen. The US president denied reports that he was briefed about his name appearing in the Epstein files after landing on Friday evening local time. He was also asked about the justice department's questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell and suggestions he might offer her clemency. Trump: 'I don't know anything about the conversation, I haven't really been following it.' 'A lot of people have been asking me about pardons [for Maxwell]. Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons' he went on. 'You're making a very big thing over something that's not a big thing.' Here are the key US politics stories today: The furore over Donald Trump's ties with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continued on Friday as new revelations about the pair's relationship threatened to mire the president's golfing trip to Scotland, where he arrived late on Friday. After landing at Glasgow Prestwick airport at about 8.30pm local time, the US president denied reports that he had been briefed about his name appearing in files pertaining to the case against the late Epstein. He also said he had not 'really been following' the justice department's interview with Epstein's convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Read the full story The EU appears to be on the verge of signing a trade deal with Donald Trump after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced she would meet the US president on Sunday during his four-day trip to Scotland. Trump landed in Scotland on Friday evening before the opening of his new golf course in Aberdeenshire. He said he was also planning to meet the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Saturday. Read the full story The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, held a second in-person meeting on Friday with Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Blanche had confirmed the two met behind closed doors in Tallahassee, Florida, on Thursday, at the federal prosecutor's office within the federal courthouse in the state capital, and they met again on Friday. Read the full story Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was driving to his landscaping job with his mother and two male friends when they were pulled over by the Florida highway patrol. In one swift moment, a traffic stop turned into a violent arrest. Video of the incident captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, appears to show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men. The video has put fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used by US law enforcement officials as the Trump administration sets ambitious enforcement targets to detain thousands of immigrants every day. Read the full story The White House has announced that it will release $5.5bn in frozen education funds back to US states. That announcement came on Friday after Donald Trump's administration decided to abruptly withhold the congressionally approved funds a day before their 1 July release for the 2025-26 school year. South Park co-creator Trey Parker had the briefest response to anger from the White House over this season's premiere, which showed a naked Trump in bed with Satan. Two high-ranking officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were placed on administrative leave on Friday, fueling speculation that the Trump administration was retaliating against them for actions taken during the president's first term. Catching up? Here's what happened on 24 July 2025.

School-leavers losing their lives for Russia in Putin's war with Ukraine
School-leavers losing their lives for Russia in Putin's war with Ukraine

BBC News

time2 hours ago

  • BBC News

School-leavers losing their lives for Russia in Putin's war with Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly promised that no 18-year-olds called up to serve Russia will be sent to fight in Ukraine, but a BBC Russian investigation has found at least 245 soldiers of that age have been killed there in the past two government rules mean teenagers fresh out of school have been able to bypass military service and go straight into the regular army as contract may make up only a fraction of Russian losses, but cash bonuses and patriotic propaganda have made signing up an attractive Petlinsky enlisted two weeks after his 18th birthday. He was killed in Ukraine just 20 days later: one of hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed in Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine which has also claimed the lives of at least 13,500 Ukrainian civilians since Putin launched the invasion in February 2022. Petlinsky's aunt Ekaterina said he had dreamed of a career in medicine and won a place at a medical college in Chelyabinsk, an industrial regional centre in the Urals."But Sasha had another dream," she told a school memorial event. "When the special military operation began, Sasha was 15. And he dreamed of going to the front."In Ukraine, the call-up age is has managed to avoid a national mobilisation by offering lavish sums to men of fighting age - an especially attractive deal for those in poorer regions with few job men had to have at least three months of conscript service under their belts before signing a restriction was quietly dropped in April 2023, despite protests from some MPs, so now any young man who has reached the age of 18 and finished school can sign up to join the education system has ensured they are ready to enlist. Since the full-scale invasion began, teachers have been required by law to hold classes dedicated to the "special military operation", as the war is officially returning from the front visit schools to talk about their experiences, children are taught how to make camouflage nets and trench candles, and even nursery school pupils are encouraged to send letters and drawings to the the start of the last school year on 1 September 2024, a new subject was brought into the a throwback to the Soviet era, senior students are once again being taught how to use Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades as part of a course called "The Basics of Safety and Homeland Defence".In many regions, military recruiters now attend careers lessons in schools and technical colleges, telling young people how to sign up as contract soldiers after they Ivanov grew up in a small village in Siberia and dropped out of college where he was learning to be a got into trouble with police, and when he was accused of robbing a small shop in November 2024, he complained to his mother and girlfriend he had been beaten into giving a confession. His friend Mikhail told the BBC that Vitaly had always planned to do his military service when he turned 18. Then, together, they would go and find work building roads in Kazan, ​​a city about 3,700km (2,300 miles) to the he signed a contract to join the army. His family have not ruled out that it was the police who "persuaded" day before he left he called his mother, Anna, to say he was about to leave."I'm off to the North-Eastern Military District," he other words, he was heading for and Alexander reached the frontline at about the same time in last message home on 5 February was to say he was being sent into combat."This was his first and last combat mission," says enlistment office rang her a month later to say he had died on 11 February. As part of BBC Russian's ongoing project using open sources to count Russia's war dead, we have identified and confirmed 245 names of 18-year-old contract soldiers killed in Ukraine between April 2023 - when the rules for joining up were eased - and July were enlisted as contract servicemen and, judging from published obituaries, most joined the armed forces according to our research, since the start of the full-scale invasion at least 2,812 Russian men aged 18-20 years have been killed in BBC's figures are based on open-source information and because not every death is publicly reported, the real losses are bound to be late July the BBC had established the names of 120,343 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale war. Military experts estimate that makes up 45-65% of the real death toll, which would equate to 185,143 to 267,500 dead. When Alexander Petlinksy turned 18 on 31 January, the first thing he did was to apply to take a year out of college so he could sign a contract with the Defence he had wanted to become a doctor, he also dreamed of going to fight in next month he was already at the front, and on 9 March he died."As a citizen of the Russian Federation, I am proud of my son," his mother, Elena, told the BBC."But as a mother - I can't cope with this loss."She declined to say friend Anastasia says the fact that 18-year-olds are signing contracts to join the army is now a very "painful subject" for her."They're young and naive, and there's so much they don't understand," she says. "They just don't grasp the full responsibility of what they're doing."

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