Russia warns Britain is ‘playing with fire’ over its support of Ukraine

• The UN and humanitarian partners are providing emergency relief in Nepal and China following severe flooding that resulted in multiple deaths and missing persons. • Response teams are deploying essential personnel and critical supplies, including food, shelter, and medical equipment, to affected regions.

Earth’s shadow will appear to be a reddish ‘blood moon’ due to the way sunlight is scattered by the atmosphereA near total lunar eclipse will be visible across large swathes of North and South America on Thursday night with millions of people expected to be able to see one of nature’s marvels.Lunar eclipses occur when Earth moves between the sun and the moon and its shadow is cast on to the lunar surface. Thursday night’s event will see 96% of the moon darkened by the Earth’s shadow at its peak moment. Continue reading...

Letters obtained by Guardian and AP contradict testimony that 2019 visit to Samoa had ‘nothing to do with vaccines’Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, telling lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times. Continue reading...

Motoring series to return after break since serious injuries to co-host Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff in crash during filmingTop Gear, the long-running motoring show which has been off air since its co-host Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff was seriously injured in a crash during filming almost four years ago, is to return to the BBC, the broadcaster confirmed today.After Flintoff’s accident at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey the BBC said the series would be “rested” for the foreseeable future. Continue reading...

Plane was headed for airport in Seldovia from Anchorage, and was submerged in water after the crashA small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters next to a remote coastal town in Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone on board, according to officials.The Piper PA-24 was headed for the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage, according to a statement from the Alaska Department of Public Safety. Seldovia’s airport is about 136 miles (219 km) south-west of Anchorage. Continue reading...

City residents had accused council of giving ‘free rein’ to campaign promoting England flags Birmingham city council is seeking an injunction to stop members of an anti-migrant group from erecting flags, including union jack and St George’s flags, on public infrastructure across the city.A nationwide campaign to give prominence to the England flag, which resulted in thousands of St George’s crosses being flown from lamp-posts, roundabouts and other public infrastructure, is believed to have started last summer in Birmingham. Continue reading...

Safety features including usage limits and night-time blocks to be set by default. Plus changes to famous French cheesesDon’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning. Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit. The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing.What will be changing in the apps? The biggest alteration is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is now required to make many of its safety limitations the default setting for accounts created by teens, a pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety. Nick Robins-Early and Johana Bhuiyan explain more in this piece: six key takeaways from the end of the Meta trial.Will other companies be affected? Meta is putting the agreement forward as a precedent for other social media companies to follow. The company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers … to implement this new framework.” Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general.Are campaigners satisfied with the result? Arturo Béjar, an ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower, said the outcome “is not an all-clear to say the product is safe. The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well, you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day’. It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.”How did it happen? As this visual guide explains, at 8.37am on Wednesday an enormous section ⁠of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the capital Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border. Continue reading...

Analysis by Institute for Policy Studies found that between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%. Continue reading...

Number of Neets is 30,000 higher than a year ago but figures boost efforts to reverse rise in economic inactivity The number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) across the UK fell below 1 million in the latest three-month period. In a boost to the government’s efforts to reverse years of rising economic inactivity among people aged 16 to 24, the Office for National Statistics said its surveys showed there were an estimated 981,000 Neets in April to June, compared with 1,012,000 in January to March.On an annual basis, the number of Neets was 30,000 higher than a year ago, but the fall covering the most recent three-month period will give a lift to ministers concerned that, at 13%, the proportion of young people outside work, education and training remains among the highest in Europe. Continue reading...

Minister calls for Instagram owner to extend sweeping new safeguards for young users to BritainUK politics live – latest updatesBusiness live – latest updatesThe UK government expects the Instagram owner Meta to roll out the same protections for children in Britain as those it agreed in the US on Wednesday, as part of a court settlement that could cost the company up to $18bn (£13bn).Pat McFadden, Labour’s work and pensions secretary, said on Thursday that he did not want young people in the US to have “a higher rate of protection” than those in Britain, after Meta settled a lawsuit brought by dozens of US states accusing the company of harming children with dangerous products. Continue reading...

Rescue teams are searching for nearly 1,500 missing people, mostly tourists, after floods kill at least 165Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updatesRescue teams in Nepal are searching for at least 33 British nationals who are among those missing after flash floods ravaged its border with Tibet, killing at least 165 people.Nearly 1,500 people are missing, the majority of them tourists, authorities have said, after a glacier collapse triggered devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet, roaring down valleys and razing entire villages. Continue reading...