Zelensky accuses Russia of ‘engaging in yet another deception’

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of engaging in “yet another deception” by failing to hand over its peace settlement proposal before a potential meeting between officials from the two countries next week.

“Ukraine has not received it. Our partners have not received it. Even Turkey, which hosted the first meeting, has not received the new agenda,” Mr Zelensky said.

“Despite promises to the contrary, first and foremost to the the United States of America, to President Trump: Yet another Russian deception.”

Moscow has proposed a second round of direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday, two weeks after similar negotiations failed to bear fruit.

Kyiv says the memorandum was due following those talks.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow has drafted the memorandum and will present it at the next direct talks, adding that Kyiv had not responded to the offer of talks on Monday.

Farage abortion plans would have ‘catastrophic consequences for women’

Nigel Farage’s plans to restrict access to abortion would have “catastrophic consequences for women”, campaigners have warned.

The Reform UK leader this week said it is “ludicrous we allow abortion up to 24 weeks” and that the law is “totally out of date”.

MPs and charities have hit back, saying there is “no clinical justification” for reducing the time limit and warned against the “imposition of cruel restrictions” on women seeking abortions.

Stella Creasy, a Labour MP campaigning for a human right to safe and legal abortion, said Mr Farage’s comments on abortion were “all part of the Trumpian playbook” – a reference to his close ties to the US president.

Speaking to The Independent after Mr Farage’s speech on Tuesday, Ms Creasy said: “It is not something he has thought deeply about, but somebody has sat him down and said ‘they are killing babies at birth’.

“There is a shed load of cash coming into anti-abortion activism, so everyone who thinks this could never happen in the UK needs to understand they are not coming in saying they are going to stop all abortions, they are saying ‘babies could live at…’ or ‘shouldn’t women see a doctor before they have one’, and it all sounds very reasonable.

“But in reality, it is a way of restricting access.”

The senior backbencher has tabled an amendment to Labour’s Crime and Policing Bill, which would guarantee women the right to safe and legal abortions. She says the change is essential to protect abortion access “from whoever is in power” after the next general election, amid a rise in anti-abortion organising.

Attacking Mr Farage, Ms Creasy said: “All those who want to use women’s bodies as the battleground for the culture wars or think that isn’t happening present a risk to women’s rights because they either bargain them away for votes or fail to act when we can [do something] to protect them.

“The Trumpian playbook is now very much a part of British politics, and one of the losers in that is always equality. What Farage is really doing is trying to get people to talk about why would a woman have an abortion, as if it’s anybody’s business. Because that is about shaming women.”

Tonia Antoniazzi, a Labour MP campaigning for a separate amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill which would decriminalise abortion, said “no woman should have Nigel Farage dictating their reproductive rights”.

Her amendment would ensure vulnerable women in England and Wales are no longer subject to years-long investigations, criminal charges, and custodial sentences for ending their pregnancies.

She told The Independent: “There is absolutely no clinical, ethical or informed basis for reducing the well-established abortion time limit. Nearly 99 per cent of abortions happen prior to 20 weeks, with the vast majority of those happening prior to 10 weeks.

“It is the most vulnerable women and girls that tend to be those more likely to need later abortion care, that is, women with complex foetal anomaly diagnoses, women who have experienced domestic abuse or trafficking and exploitation, and girls under the age of 18.

“Farage would do well to remember that the vast majority of the public support a woman’s right to choose, and one in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime.

“Currently, women are being arrested, from hospital bed to police cell, under outdated and inconsistent abortion law.”

Speaking at a press conference on the issue on Tuesday, Mr Farage said: “I am pro-choice, but I think it’s ludicrous, utterly ludicrous that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks.

“And yet, if a child is born prematurely at 22 weeks, your local hospital will move heaven and earth and probably succeed in that child surviving and going on and living a normal life. So I believe there is an inconsistency in the law. I believe it is totally out of date.”

He has previously called for parliament to debate implementing stricter time limits on abortion.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said MPs were entitled to their views on abortion, but “it is wrong to suggest that there is any medical evidence that supports a reduction in the abortion time limit”.

BPAS spokesperson Katherine O’Brien said: “Just last year, leading fetal medicine experts wrote to members of parliament to warn that there is no clinical justification for reducing the time limit based on national outcomes data, and that any such move would have catastrophic consequences for women.”

It is supporting Ms Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which it says would “reform our archaic legislation” in a “compassionate and considered” way.

Reform UK was asked to comment.

Lawyers say Tate brothers will return to UK to face charges

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate will return to Britain to defend themselves against charges including rape and trafficking, lawyers for the brothers say.

Andrew Tate, 38, faces 10 charges relating to three women that include rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain, prosecutors said.

Tristan Tate, 36, faces 11 charges relating to one woman that include rape, human trafficking and actual bodily harm.

Romanian courts have issued an order to extradite the two to the UK once their court case is concluded there, British prosecutors said. The pair moved to Romania in 2016.

Lawyers claimed the brothers are at a disadvantage because British prosecutors have not shared any information with them about the charges.

“These are historic allegations and our clients are not even being told who the supposed victims are,” the Holborn Adams law firm said in a statement. “This … demonstrates a different approach on the basis of the profile of our clients.”

British prosecutors authorised charges in January last year against the brothers, who are dual US and British citizens, but the Crown Prosecution Service has only just announced the charges.

Bedfordshire Police issued an international arrest warrant. The Tates “unequivocally deny” the allegations, which date from 2012 to 2015.

The Holborn Adams law firm added that the Tates would return to the UK when their cases in Romania concluded, and that they would be aggressively defended.

The former kickboxers have millions of followers on social media. Andrew Tate has drawn a larger following with self-confessed misogyny.

Almost one in 20 people aren’t paying to use the Tube

Almost one in 20 Tubepassengers are dodging fares – at a cost of £130m a year – amid a surge in violence against the staff who try to stop them.

Almost 5 per cent of fares now go unpaid, new Transport for London (TFL) figures show, pushing up prices when many Londoners are already feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis.

It comes as shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick took to the London Underground himself to catch fare dodgers on camera. He said: “It’s annoying watching so many people break the law and get away with it.”

A video posted on X (Twitter) showed him questioning passengers who barged past barriers without paying for a ticket. He was met with verbal abuse and one warning from a man who claimed he was carrying a knife.

Many of those stopped for fare evasion are already wanted for other crimes, with knives and drugs seized when suspects are stopped and searched.

Now, as part of a new clampdown, TfL has drafted in 500 enforcement officers to try to reduce the number of Tube travellers who are not paying, but many are subjected to violent and racial abuse.

Almost 10,500 reports of work-related violence and aggression were made by TfL staff in 2023/24 – a 5 per cent increase on the previous year. About half of these incidents were linked to fare dodgers.

“People are being sworn at, spat at, pushed and for over 50 per cent of cases where workplace violence is experienced by our frontline teams, fare evading is a trigger,” Siwan Hayward, director of security, policing and enforcement for TfL, told The Independent.

Frontline staff have told The Independent they have also faced racial abuse and say they fear fare evaders they confront could be armed.

British Transport Police figures show there were more than 480 instances nationally where someone was carrying a bladed article, such as a knife, over the past year, and Dr Leroy Logan, former superintendent in the Met Police, warned knife crime is a “massive issue”.

“We know that staff are reluctant to challenge anything unless they’re really in large numbers,” he told The Independent.

“Staff don’t do it because they fear being assaulted. You need visibility, you need high visibility patrols on the Tube and bus networks just to reassure people and support the staff.”

However, it’s not just knife crime, with officers also arresting people who have evaded fares for possession of drugs and theft.

In Finsbury Park in February, officers stopped a man who had pushed through the ticket barrier without paying. He became aggressive and violent, striking one officer in the face when they detained him – he was arrested for fare evasion and assault of an emergency worker. But when police searched him, they also found a stolen phone.

In April, a man was stopped for following someone through the gate at London Bridge. He was searched, and officers found class-B drugs and an electronic item used to remove security tags from goods. He was arrested for going equipped to steal and possession of class-B drugs.

Ms Hayward stressed fare dodging is far from being a “victimless crime” as TfL loses about £130m in revenue – money it could use to make the service “reliable, safer and cleaner”.

Across the Tube, Overground, buses, DLR, and Elizabeth line, 3.4 per cent of people using the service did not pay the fare over the last financial year – a small drop from 3.8 per cent in 2023/24. While 4.7 per cent skip paying the fare on the Tube, according to TfL data from 2024/25.

The common crime is pushing prices up – in March, Tube fares for an adult daily ticket increased by 4.6 per cent.

“People are choosing to commit that crime and we seek to provide a really affordable transport network for London,” Ms Hayward said.

“Bus fares have been frozen, and we try to minimise the increase in rail fares, but people who choose to evade fares are undermining the efforts made to make travel in London affordable and accessible,” she added.

However, as the cost of living continues to rise, fare evasion is likely to become even more widespread.

Manny Hothi, chief executive of Trust for London, said: “There’s no excuse for fare dodging, but the rise in it points to a wider problem. Many Londoners are facing an impossible squeeze on already tight budgets.

“Over half a million are in low-paid work, and the cost of everything from housing to childcare is much higher in London — transport costs just add to the pressure. When fares go up, Londoners who rely on public transport to get to work are forced to cut back elsewhere just to make ends meet.”

The mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, said: “Fare evasion is a criminal offence which deprives TfL of thousands of pounds of vital revenue every year that could be reinvested in London’s transport network.

“That’s why we’re expanding our team of professional investigators to cover the whole network and investing in the latest technology to target the worst offenders. It sends a clear message: fare evasion will not be tolerated, and we will hold those who do it to account.”

Drought declared in northwest England after record dry weather

A drought has officially been declared in northwest England after the UK experienced record dry weather this spring, the Environment Agency has said.

The region entered drought status on 21 May, just days after residents were urged to use less water due to concerns over the low levels of rivers and reservoirs, which are currently at less than 60 per cent capacity across the region.

Earlier this month, prior to the recent bout of rainfall, the agency said northwest and northeast England had both seen their driest start to a calendar year since 1929, while England as a whole had endured its driest February to April period since 1956.

Simultaneously, the UK has experienced its sunniest spring since records began in 1910, with 630 hours of sunshine clocked up across the country between 1 March and 27 May – up from just 377 hours over the same three months last year.

This dry spell, with temperatures set to soar again this week, follows a period of extreme wet weather. England experienced its wettest 12 months on record between October 2023 and September 2024, leading to widespread flooding and agricultural disruption.

Experts warn that these volatile swings between extreme wet and dry periods are indicative of the growing impact of climate change.

England’s overall reservoir storage stood at 84 per cent at the end of April, lower than at this time of year in the drought summer of 2022.

Earlier this month, United Utilities said reservoir levels in northwest England were at just 69 per cent capacity, down from more than 90 per cent at the same point last year. The latest readings show this has since fallen to 58.9 per cent.

As a result, the water company urged residents in the region to use less water. Despite thanking customers for their efforts, United Utilities warned that reservoirs were still lower than expected.

Urging residents to continue doing “all they can to save and recycle water”, a spokesperson said: “We’re continuing to move water around our integrated network to get it to where it is needed, as well as bringing extra water into the system from other sources around the region.”

The company did not respond when asked how far the region could be from hosepipe restrictions, which form part of the company’s Level 2 drought plan.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “The northwest of England has entered drought status due to low water levels in reservoirs and rivers.

“No other areas in England are in drought, and we continue to monitor the situation closely.”

It also emerged on Wednesday that environment secretary Steve Reed had intervened to seize central government control over the planning of two major reservoir projects in East Anglia and Lincolnshire by designating them “nationally significant”, amid growing concerns over the UK’s water supply.

Officials caution that without new reservoirs, population growth, ageing infrastructure, and climate change could cause drinking water demand to exceed supply by the mid-2030s. Water supply shortages are also impeding the construction of thousands of homes in areas like Cambridge.

Water companies across England have committed to bringing nine new reservoirs online by 2050, in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Suffolk, Kent, East Sussex and the West Midlands and Somerset, with the potential to supply 670 million litres of extra water per day.

Additional reporting by PA

AI-powered robot salesperson could be coming to UK showrooms

Robots powered by AI could soon be selling cars to customers in the UK as a global car manufacturer debuts an unusual new member of staff.

Omoda and Jaecoo owner Chery has showed off robotic sales assistant ‘Mornine’ at the Shangai Motor Show on 23 April. It can greet customers, show them around a car, and even make them a tea or coffee.

The AI robot uses machine learning to improve its performance, learning from interactions with customers. It has been trialled in showrooms in Malaysia and could soon be rolled out worldwide, a spokesperson for Chery said.

The car maker added that Mornine has capabilities including perception, cognition, decision making and task execution and explained the “ideal use case” was for “dealer-level admin and service.”

The car brand’s robotics experts said Mornine uses speech and vision inputs that allow it to “accurately interpret commands including physical gestures”.

Ian Wallace, spokesperson for Chery’s Omoda and Jaecoo brands in the UK, said Mornine could even be offered for use in people’s homes in the future if showroom trials go well.

He said: “Mornine is an intelligent showroom aid. She can show customers around a vehicle, she can answer questions and she can make teas and coffees, so in a busy showroom environment, if staff are tied up, she’s there to be a helpful face of the brand.

“She has learning capabilities so she can react to commands and learn your voice so if you were to use her in a household environment she would start to learn what you like and don’t like.”

Chery said the robot uses ‘automotive-grade hardware’ to allow it to walk upright and it has ‘dexterous hands’ to allow it to grip items. It can also distinguish between voices to identify different customers.

The car maker also showcased a robotic dog called ‘Argos’ at the Shanghai show. They say the AI-powered animal is designed to offer companionship to those who are unable to keep real pets at home.

Is Starmer right to pay any attention to Farage?

After Nigel Farage’s keynote speech, Reform’s policies have been dismissed by Keir Starmer as “Liz Truss all over again”. It shows Labour is taking the challenge from Reform UK more and more seriously, and that the main electoral threat to Labour hegemony right now comes not from Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives but from Farage’s latest vehicle for an “insurgency”.

Yet neither Labour nor the Tories seem to have the full measure of Farage.

It’s not as bad as that, because at least Farage recognises – as the former premier still does not – that her disastrous mistake wasn’t so much in her radical tax cuts (unrealistic as they turned out to be) but that she failed to balance them with credible plans to cut spending.

Farage explicitly said this, and offered up cuts in government spending on net zero (the bulk of the “savings”); migrant hostels and other accommodation; diversity, equity and inclusion; and general “waste” as the way to pay for his plans. These, he suggested, would pay for enhanced child benefit, incentives for people to marry and have families, restore the pensioners’ winter fuel payment, raise the threshold for the higher rate of income tax, and – most ambitious of all – take everyone with an income of less than £20,000 out of tax liability altogether.

Yes. Even though Farage’s plan does better than Truss’s mini-Budget in attempting to balance the books, independent experts say it would still blow a gigantic Truss-sized hole in the public finances. Truss scheduled about £45bn in unfunded tax cuts in September 2022, ie, extra borrowing; and the Farage plan implies something like a £50bn to £100bn increase in the budget deficit, which would be the largest in peacetime. Besides that, there is some doubt about whether the cuts to net zero would be as large as claimed, even allowing for the abandonment of the net zero target and the fate of the planet. At various points, Farage has also indicated or given the impression that he’d like to abolish inheritance tax and non-dom taxation, freeze council tax and fuel duty, and subsidise everything from the steel industry to farming. It really does not add up.

Yes. But because immigration has become so toxic, Starmer chose not to attack Reform’s other net zero” policy – no new net migration. The economic impact of that would be to exacerbate labour shortages, push wages higher, cut economic growth and reduce overall living standards.

Reversing the latest Brexit reset, as Farage implies, would also hurt exports and the economy, while the drive to take back all the UK’s fishing rights might well provoke a trade war with the EU, an even more damaging outcome. Farage’s plan to replace the NHS – broken by underfunding and understaffing made worse by Brexit – is underdeveloped, to put it mildly, and a huge vulnerability given his prime demographic of older, less-well-off voters. They, after all, rely on the NHS to keep them going.

For the most part, they couldn’t pay the private health premiums, and even if they could, they wouldn’t be covered for existing conditions, dementia or cancers. Ageing Fargeistes would find using the defunded rump “safety net” NHS and what passes for a Reform UK social care system an uncomfortable experience. There’s also the small matter of Brexit, his proudest boast, yet, paradoxically, regarded even by some of his own voters as a monumental flop. It’s also very much a one-man band: could Reform UK form a remotely competent government? Is the UK really ready for Lee Anderson to be home secretary?

Labour tried that, implying he was a cranky, if malign, irrelevance – and it failed. At 30 per cent or so in the polls and the stunning successes in the local elections and the Runcorn by-election, Farage can no longer be dismissed as a fringe irritation. Because the Tories are yet to recover, and the Lib Dems and Greens tend not to operate in “their” areas, Reform is certainly the fortunate and obvious receptacle for protest votes against a prematurely unpopular Labour government. As the election approaches – it is three to four years away – the government should regain some support if the economy recovers; the same goes for the Tories, as they claim that only they can defeat the Labour Party.

True as that is, it would also provide Reform with plenty of opportunities to build momentum and win power in more councils, as well as devolved administrations. Winning in more Labour strongholds would certainly be welcome to Farage, whose basic strategy would seem to be trying to recreate the coalition of voters that Boris Johnson persuaded to vote for him to “get Brexit done” in 2019.

The last prime minister who had to take on the Farage challenge was David Cameron, who thought an in/out referendum on EU membership would shut Farage up for good. Cameron’s complacency ended his career and helped destroy his party. The most painful irony was (and is) that Brexit so damaged the economy that it created multiple new grievances for Farage to exploit to his advantage, crippling Conservative and Labour administrations alike. Badenoch and Starmer can’t decide whether to ape Farage or attack him.

Like most populists, Farage is slippery. Facts and figures from experts are dismissed as “project fear” (as in the Brexit referendum), and he amplifies voters’ natural anti-political, anti-establishment tendencies to pose as an “outsider” fighting against some malign conspiracy. Even when he is exaggerating, he says “they are lying to you”, and because promises inevitably get broken when in government, it strikes a chord.

Responsible journalism is derided as “fake news” – he takes lots of lessons from the unlikely success of Trump in the US. He is not above using dog whistle tactics. Farage is indisputably good at campaigning, but he is eminently beatable, if only Labour and the Conservatives could regain their political touch.

Gaza’s unfolding famine is an obscenity the world must not tolerate

Who, and what, to believe? The warnings coming from the UN, from every aid agency, and from governments normally friendly to Israel, that famine stalks Gaza – or the complacent denials of the crisis by Benjamin Netanyahu, who states that “you don’t see one, not one emaciated from the beginning of the war to the present”, and dismisses claims to the contrary as “the current fad, the current lie”, which “spreads like wildfire”?

Anyone in any doubt only needs to glance – and these are not easy for the eye to linger upon – at the heart-rending images of skeletal children in Gaza starving to death. The Israeli government has long refused to allow foreign media into the war zone in Gaza, a suspicious policy in itself, but that has not prevented journalists already there and in the region from revealing the harrowing truth about the situation.

What is happening in Gaza is obscene. As one UN official puts it, the Gaza Strip has become “an abyss”. It is an outrage that Israel, the occupying power ignoring its obligations to treat civilians properly, should behave in this manner; it is an even greater act of shame that the world should continue to tolerate it.

The recent deterioration in a situation already dire only adds to the credibility of the grave charges of crimes against humanity levelled at Israel at the International Court. The evidence is mounting. Indeed, the facts speak for themselves.

Since the last fragile ceasefire collapsed in March, the people of Gaza have been under continual bombardment; moved and moved again into “safe spaces” that are anything but; seen their last bits of infrastructure, notably hospitals, blown up; and now deprived of food and medicines.

For three months – until the very latest, pitifully small truck movements – all deliveries to the Gaza Strip were suspended by the Israeli authorities, with no food or medical supplies allowed to enter the enclave. On Wednesday, four people were reportedly killed at an aid distribution site in Rafa, where thousands of starving Palestinians overran fences and Israeli soldiers fired warning shots.

The UN agencies and charities best suited to deliver aid have been excluded by Mr Netanyahu, in favour of the ironically named Gaza Humanitarian Fund controlled by the Israeli authorities and using American armed guards, and which has proved hopelessly inadequate to the task. The fund’s chief, Jake Wood, has even resigned because it is “clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, which I will not abandon”.

All of this only heightens emerging fears about what is unfolding in another of Israel’s occupied or controlled Palestinian Territories, the West Bank. Emboldened by the free hand the United States has given the Netanyahu government in Gaza, extremist ministers have been pushing for the legalisation of unlawful Israeli settlements on land properly owned by Palestinians.

Unlawful, that is, even under Israeli legislation, let alone international law and UN resolutions – simply another intentional and brazen violation of Israel’s obligations as an occupying power of areas taken during the 1967 war. Mr Netanyahu’s most nationalistic cabinet colleagues talk more freely about exercising a claim to Israeli “sovereignty” over the entire area, based on disputed history and not, in any case, founded in international conventions on the right to self-determination.

The forcible expulsion of the Palestinian people seems to be a policy option for the present government of Israel. It has not been discouraged by President Trump’s bizarre vision of turning a depopulated Gaza Strip into a Mediterranean beach resort, albeit one administered by the United States rather than Israel. Either way, it is not intended by either party to become part of an independent Palestinian state living in peace with its neighbour.

The clue to the way Israel has conducted its disproportionate and merciless war is given in the recent remark by Mr Netanyahu that he aims to make Hamas operatives “like fish without the water”, that “without the tool for governance which they use, and that’s basically […] the humanitarian aid that they loot”. True or not, that means the end of humanitarian aid on anything like the scale needed to sustain life.

A Hamas leader was a recent casualty of the Israeli airstrikes, but that does not justify the use of indiscriminate bombing, nor does it justify starving innocent people to death.

That such things are happening is obviously, and primarily, the responsibility of the administration that Mr Netanyahu heads, with any individual Israeli official or troops violating the laws of war. It has always been said, and rightly, that Israel has an inalienable right to defend itself, and it should have done so after the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October. However, that does not mean, and never has meant, that Israel can act as it wishes, above humanitarian considerations and international law.

Administrations that have encouraged or abetted Israel also have a case to answer. Latterly, Western governments have begun to speak out, and take the mildest of diplomatic steps to exert some pressure – but not the Trump White House, which appears to regard any expression of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people as vicious antisemitism.

While America is happy to allow Mr Netanyahu to carry on as he is, with only the vague hope of another ceasefire, it falls to other nations to do more to stop the crisis. It may already be too late to save all the lives now in jeopardy.