Two people were killed in a Russian drone attack on a home in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, local authorities say. Two children, 11 and 15, were also injured in the attack which took place on the eve of new talks between Ukrainian and American negotiators in the US. Negotiations on ending the war have been on hold since the start of the latest conflict in Iran. President Volodymy Zelensky wants his negotiators to discuss the US decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil - implemented by Washington to help keep down global energy prices. Talks mediated by the US have so far failed to stop the fighting in Ukraine or change Russia's demands, and there is little hope of a breakthrough.

Trump says Putin may be helping Iran'a bit' US President Donald Trump has said he believes that Vladimir Putin and Russia are helping Iran a bit amid the conflict with the US and Israel. In an interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged that the US also helps Ukrainian forces as they battle with Russian forces. According to some US media reports, Russia has been sharing the location of US military forces with Iran that could help guide missile and drone attacks across the Middle East. On Thursday, US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff said that Russia's government had assured the Trump administration that it was not providing intelligence to the Iranian government in Tehran. Asked by Fox about the potential of Russian intelligence being shared with Iran, Trump said that I think he [Putin] may be helping them a bit, yeah.

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Overnight into Friday, Russia launched a large attack on Ukraine with missiles and drones, killing at least three and injuring 16 people in the capital Kyiv, according to The Associated Press news agency. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko reported multiple districts in Kyiv were struck, including Desnyanskyi, where a drone crashed into a building and the first two floors of a residential building were damaged.

Which factors determine AI's propensity to support military intervention? While the use of AI in high-stakes decision-making is growing exponentially, we still lack systematic analysis of the key drivers embedded in these models. This paper conducts a conjoint experiment in which large language models (LLMs) from leading providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) are asked to decide on military intervention across 128 vignettes, with each vignette run 10 times. This design enables a systematic assessment of AI decision-making in military contexts. The results are remarkably consistent across models: all models place substantial weight on the probability of success and domestic support, prioritizing these factors over civilian casualties, economic shock, or international sanctions. The paper then tests whether LLMs are sensitive to context by introducing different motivations for intervention. The scoring is indeed context-dependent; however, probability of victory remains the most important factor in all scenarios. Finally, the paper evaluates numerical sensitivity and finds that models display some responsiveness to the scale of civilian casualties but no detectable sensitivity to the size of the economic shock.

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Can the US get all sides to end the war? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? Russian tanker struck off Turkiye as Ukraine targets'shadow fleet' A Russian-flagged tanker in the Black Sea has reported being attacked off the Turkish coast, the third such vessel to have been targeted within a week. The Turkish Directorate General of Maritime Affairs said on Tuesday that the Midvolga-2 had reported coming under attack about 130km (80 miles) from land.

Three people have died and at least 26 others injured in a wave of Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials say. Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described strikes, which caused explosions and fires in residential buildings across the city, as massive. Kyiv's energy infrastructure was also damaged, leaving some buildings in the north-east without heat, he said. Ukraine's air force reported several other regions across the country were also being targeted. Russia's defence ministry said it had downed or intercepted 216 Ukrainian drones that had targeted its industrial facilities and disrupted air travel, according to Reuters news agency.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? Will sanctions against Russian oil giants hurt Putin? Russian forces launched 645 attacks on Ukraine's Zaporizhia region in the past day, killing one person in the Polohivskyi district, Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote in a post on Telegram. A Russian drone attack on a railway facility killed a security guard in Ukraine's Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote in a post on Facebook.

Comparative evidence of how two Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states translate artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions into post-New Public Management (post-NPM) outcomes are scarce because most studies focus on Western democracies. To fill this gap, we examine constitutional, collective choice, and operational rules that shape AI uptake in two contrasting GCC members, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait, and whether they foster citizen centricity, collaborative governance, and public value creation. Anchored in Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework, the study integrates a most similar/ most different systems design with multiple sources: 62 public documents issued between 2018 and 2025, embedded UAE cases (Smart Dubai and MBZUAI), and 39 interviews with officials conducted from Aug 2024 to May 2025. Dual coding and process tracing connect rule configurations to AI performance. Our cross-case analysis identifies four mutually reinforcing mechanisms behind divergent trajectories. In the UAE, concentrated authority, credible sanctions, pro-innovation narratives, and flexible reinvestment rules transform pilots into hundreds of operating services and significant recycled savings. Kuwait's dispersed veto points, exhortative sanctions, cautious discourse, and lapsed AI budgets, by contrast, confine initiatives to pilot mode de - spite equivalent fiscal resources. These findings refine institutional theory by showing that vertical rule coherence, not wealth, determines AI's public value yield, and temper post-NPM optimism by revealing that efficiency metrics advance societal goals only when backed by enforceable safeguards. To curb ethics washing and test the transferability of these mechanisms beyond the GCC, future research should track rule diffusion over time, experiment with blended legitimacy-efficiency scorecards, and investigate how narrative framing shapes citizen consent for data sharing.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? Will sanctions against Russian oil giants hurt Putin? Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said the army's situation has "significantly worsened" in parts of the southeastern Zaporizhia region amid fierce fighting with Russian forces. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he had received an update from Syrskii, which conveyed that the situation" remains difficult" in the Zaporizhia region, as well as in the direction of the embattled city of Pokrovsk .

At least six people have died after Russia launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure and residential targets in Ukraine overnight. A strike on an apartment building in the city of Dnipro killed two people and wounded 12, while three died in Zaporizhzhia. In all, 25 locations across Ukraine, including the capital city Kyiv, were hit, leaving many areas without electricity and heating. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Telegram that major energy facilities were damaged in the Poltava, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions, and work was under way to restore power. In Russia, the defence ministry said its forces had shot down 79 Ukrainian drones overnight. The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched more than 450 exploding bomber drones and 45 missiles.