Drone Onslaught On Kyiv, Crete Wildfires Rage On, Ryanair Surprise

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🗞️ FRONT PAGE​​

With the headline “eternal pain,” Porto-based sports daily O Jogo mourns the tragic deaths of Diogo Jota, a 28-year-old international forward for Liverpool and Portugal’s national soccer team, and his 25-year-old brother André Silva, who played for the Portuguese Penafiel club. Both died yesterday when their Lamborghini left a road near Zamora, Spain, after a tire burst, crashed and caught fire. Representatives of Jota’s Liverpool club described Jota’s passing as a “tragedy that transcends Liverpool Football Club” as fans gathered outside Anfield stadium to pay their respects.

🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Kyiv hit by barrage of drone strikes as Putin rejects Trump’s truce bid. Ukraine said Russia fired a record 550 drones and 11 missiles during a long night of bombardment. The strikes came hours after a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which Trump said he was “disappointed” that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump plans to speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday. Read this piece on Trump and Zelensky’s complicated relationship from Italian newspaper La Stampa, translated into English by Worldcrunch.

• Trump says he expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on “final” peace proposal. Donald Trump said on Friday it would probably be known in 24 hours whether the Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to accept what the U.S. president has called a “final proposal” for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza early on Friday, while another 20 people were shot dead while waiting for aid. Follow Worldcrunch’s international coverage of the Middle East here.

• Russia becomes first state to recognize Afghanistan’s Taliban government. Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi called the move a “courageous” decision. He met Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, in Kabul on Thursday, where Zhirnov officially conveyed Moscow’s decision to recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

• Trump to sign “Big, Beautiful” bill on U.S. Independence Day. U.S. President Donald Trump will sign his flagship tax and spending bill Friday in an Independence Day ceremony featuring fireworks and a flypast by the type of bomber that bombed Iran. 

• Mali coup leader granted five-year term in power. Mali’s military leader Assimi Goïta has been granted a five-year presidential term by the transitional parliament, which is renewable without elections. The junta leader, who has seized power twice, had promised the return of democracy last year, but it never materialized.

• Actor Michael Madsen dies aged 67. The actor, best known for his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, was found unresponsive by authorities responding to a 911 call at his Malibu home and is believed to have died of cardiac arrest, according to a representative. Madsen’s credits include Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

• News Quiz! Irish low-cost airline company Ryanair has announced a surprise change to its cabin baggage policy. What is it? 

A. It will increase the size of free cabin bags
B. It will turn overhead compartments into vending machines
C. It will charge an extra 2 euro-fee for glasses cases
D. It will introduce a rack for oversized Toblerones

[Answer below]

#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS

16 years

After a 16-year hiatus, Britpop icons Oasis are set to reunite tonight in Cardiff, Wales, kicking off their highly anticipated 41-date world tour despite past tensions and ticket sale chaos. Fans are thrilled to see fractious brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher back on stage together — after splitting in 2009 due to a backstage argument just before a Paris festival concert — although the tour has been billed as a one-time event.

📰 IN OTHER NEWS

🇮🇷🇺🇸 In 1979, Iran was seduced by a cleric who promised freedom and delivered tyranny. In 2025, a chaotic U.S. president may be using lies of his own to help dismantle that same regime.
— WORLDCRUNCH

💸 A new phone, a fancy car, a full fridge: for a long time, politicians assumed that prosperity was all it took to keep democracies running. But that view of human nature is now having serious consequences.
— DIE ZEIT

🗳️ Some women in India say the states’ cash transfer schemes to encourage voting are paternalistic. Others say they’re the only way to get the money they need.
— GLOBAL PRESS JOURNAL

📣 VERBATIM

“Russia will not back down.”

— Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that “Russia will not back down,” following Putin’s one-hour phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday. Putin said during the call that Moscow will not give up on its goal of eliminating the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine, referring to the Kremlin’s argument that the full-scale invasion of the country in 2022 was aimed at preventing it from joining NATO and being used by the Western alliance as a launchpad to attack Russia. For his part, Trump later said he was “very disappointed” with Putin.