Ukraine-Russia War
The United States agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said it was ready to support Washington’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia. After more than eight hours of talks in Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ball is in Moscow’s court.
Russian sources said President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to embrace the proposal, adding that any agreement would have to take Russian battlefield advances into account and address Moscow’s concerns. Follow the latest.
US politics
Senate Democrats are wrestling with how to respond to a stopgap funding bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, choosing between voting for a bill many of them oppose or allowing a government shutdown.
Donald Trump will meet with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin later today, with the US president’s trade policies and the conflict in Gaza among the potential topics of conversation.
The Department of Education said it would lay off nearly half its staff, a possible precursor to closing altogether, as government agencies scrambled to meet Trump’s deadline to submit plans for a second round of mass layoffs.
In other news
Pakistani security forces are carrying out a rescue operation to free dozens of passengers taken hostage by separatist militants who hijacked their train in the southwest of the country. Suicide bombers were seated next to some of the passengers, complicating rescue efforts, security sources said.
A plane carrying former Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court took off for Rotterdam, a source told Reuters, after being delayed by a few hours. For the families of drug war victims, his arrest revived hopes for justice.
The weather in some of the world’s most densely populated cities is swinging from droughts to floods and back again as rising temperatures play havoc with the global water cycle, a study commissioned by the charity WaterAid showed.