Audiences suspicious of AI being used to create news, survey shows | Technology News

News consumers most opposed to use of AI for sensitive topics such as politics, report finds.

Most news consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom would be uncomfortable with journalism produced mainly by artificial intelligence (AI), a survey has found.

Only 23 percent of respondents in the US and 10 percent in the UK would be comfortable with AI-produced news, with consumers especially suspicious of the technology being used for sensitive topics such as politics and crime, the survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism showed on Monday.

Just over half of US respondents and 63 percent UK respondents said they would be uncomfortable with AI-led news, respectively, with 18 percent answering they would be neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

Respondents were least resistant towards using AI to generate text-based content, illustrations and stylised graphics, and most strongly opposed to the use of AI for creating realistic-looking photographs and video.

“Our findings show audiences are most open to AI uses that are behind the scenes and areas where AI can help improve their experiences using news, providing more personalised and accessible information,” the institute said in its annual Digital News Report accompanying the survey.

“They are less comfortable when it comes to public-facing content, sensitive or important topics, and synthetic videos or images that may come across as real, and where the consequences of error are viewed as most consequential. Overall, there is consensus that a human should always be in the loop and complete automation should be off limits.”

The findings come as newsrooms around the world are adopting AI amid plunging revenues and heavy job cuts.

Numerous news outlets globally have implemented AI tools for tasks ranging from research to transcribing interviews and content creation.

News Corp Australia’s executive chair Michael Miller last year revealed that the media company was producing about 3,000 articles a week using AI.

As it announced a 100 million euro cost-cutting programme last year, German tabloid Bild warned staff that it expected to make further cuts due to “the opportunities of artificial intelligence”.

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 843 | Russia-Ukraine war News

As the war enters its 843rd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, June 17, 2024.

Fighting

  • Seven people, including two young boys, were injured in a Russian attack on the village of Nova Poltavka village in the eastern Donetsk region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

Politics and diplomacy

  • Dozens of countries backed Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally-recognised borders, and urged dialogue for a lasting settlement after a two-day peace-building summit in Switzerland. Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates did not sign up to the statement. Switzerland said it was prepared to host a follow-up summit.
  • The final communique also included a call for the full exchange of prisoners of war, and the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. Kyiv says that as many as 20,000 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians since Moscow began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
  • At a news conference after the summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said China should communicate its peace proposals on ending the war to Ukraine directly, instead of doing so via media outlets. Beijing did not send a representative to the summit.
  • The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) warned in its annual yearbook that diplomatic efforts to control nuclear arms had suffered major setbacks amid strained international relations over the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, noting that Moscow had suspended its participation in the New START treaty, and staged tactical nuclear drills.
  • About 500 people gathered in Kyiv under heavy police guard for the Ukrainian capital’s first Pride march since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Weapons

  • Zelenskyy said the current level of Western military aid being sent to Ukraine was not enough to ensure Kyiv’s victory against Russia forces.

 

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Euro 2024: Mbappe, Griezmann presence makes France the title favourites | UEFA Euro 2024 News

⚽ France – Key Euros Stats ⚽

Euro appearances: 10
Euro titles: 2
Best finish: Winners (1984, 2000)
Euros record: W21 D12 L10
Goals scored: 69
Biggest win: 5-0 (vs. Belgium in Euro 1984)
Player to watch: Antoine Griezmann
World ranking:
2nd
Team nickname:
Les Bleus (The Blues)
Group fixtures:

  • June 17: Austria vs France (Dusseldorf Arena, Dusseldorf, 9pm local/19:00 GMT)
  • June 21: Netherlands vs France (Leipzig Stadium, Leipzig, 9pm local/19:00 GMT)
  • June 25: France vs Poland (BVB Stadion, Dortmund, 6pm local/16:00 GMT)

How to follow our Euro 2024 coverage: UEFA Euro 2024 on Al Jazeera

Euro 2024 is the fifth successive major tournament that France will enter as favourites.

They’ve made it to the final in three of the past four World Cups and European Championships – and were an Emiliano Martinez save away from being consecutive World Cup champions at Qatar 2022.

This astonishing level of consistency can be credited to the seemingly bottomless pool of talent the nation can draw from.

Take, for example, how the emergence of Mike Maignan and William Saliba has offset the retirements of Hugo Lloris and Raphael Varane. Or how Aurelien Tchouameni has seamlessly plugged the Paul Pogba-shaped hole in midfield.

Similarly, Marcus Thuram’s performances for Inter Milan this season have shown he’s ready for the baton to be passed to him once Olivier Giroud retires. The uninterrupted talent supply chain has crossed over to another French team on the cusp of its next major tournament at Euro 2024.

Culture is key

The team culture that manager Didier Deschamps adopts has added another dimension to their ongoing success.

Despite the global superstars at his disposal, his genius lies in how he gets them to put aside their egos when playing for the national team. The collective supersedes the individual, and it’s a principle Deschamps has adhered to himself.

The reintegration of Adrien Rabiot and Karim Benzema – two players who the manager had fallen out with in the past – before Euro 2020 demonstrated this. Benzema scored four goals in four games at the COVID-19 delayed tournament while Rabiot went on to establish himself as a key pillar in the France midfield.

Deschamps’s management style is the perfect blend of trust and merit. N’Golo Kante’s selection for Euro 2024 is the latest example of this.

The 33-year-old’s career has been beset by injuries in the last couple of years – he last played for France in June 2022 and made just nine appearances for Chelsea in the 2022/2023 season. Following a move last summer to Al Ittihad, where he went on to play 44 games, Deschamps believes Kante can again be an asset to his side.

“He has had a full season, albeit not in a European league as he plays in Saudi Arabia, where he has regained his full physical fitness,” Deschamps said as he announced his squad on French TV channel TF1.

“And I think that with his experience and his background, I’m convinced that our team will be stronger with him.”

The infusion of experience into the squad has been matched by the injection of youth, with 18-year-old Warren Zaire-Emery and Bradley Barcola both earning call-ups.

France coach Didier Deschamps knows he has a team good enough to go all the way at Euro 2024 [Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Griezmann the glue guy

Superstar Kylian Mbappe is the obvious centrepiece to this France side – the 25-year-old topped Les Bleus’ goals (9) and assists (5) charts in their unbeaten qualification campaign for Euro 2024.

However, as was the case in Qatar in 2022, the heartbeat of the team remains veteran forward Antoine Griezmann.

The Atletico Madrid star has been a constant presence in Deschamps’s managerial reign. His record of playing 84 consecutive games for France came to an end in the March friendlies against Chile and Germany, which he missed through injury.

Griezmann’s versatility makes him indispensable to Deschamps.

He came of age at Euro 2016 as a second striker, scoring six goals to win the Golden Boot.

At Euro 2020, he often found himself playing on the left of a front-three forward line to accommodate Mbappe and Benzema.

With France reeling from injuries at the 2022 World Cup, Deschamps decided to deploy him in midfield. The experiment worked, with Griezmann notching up the joint-highest assists total in Qatar.

It is a role he will reprise in Germany this summer, and at age 33, this is Griezmann’s last chance to win the trophy that has eluded him in his storied France career.

At 33, France’s Antoine Griezmann knows this is his final chance for Euro glory [Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters]

France’s recent European Football championship appearances have been defined by heartbreak.

At Euro 2016, they lost the final in extra time to Portugal on home soil.

Just when it felt like they were hitting their stride at Euro 2020, they suffered a shock exit to Switzerland in the round of 16.

The World Cup win in 2018 does not do justice to the level of dominance France have shown over the past decade. This year’s Euros presents a golden opportunity for Les Bleus to seal their legacy as one of the best national sides in history.

⚽ France’s final squad for Euro 2024 ⚽

Captain: Kylian Mbappe

Goalkeepers: Alphonse Areola (West Ham United), Mike Maignan (AC Milan), Brice Samba (Lens)

Defenders: Jonathan Clauss (Marseille), Ibrahima Konate (Liverpool), William Saliba (Arsenal), Jules Kounde (Barcelona), Theo Hernandez (AC Milan), Ferland Mendy (Real Madrid), Benjamin Pavard (Inter Milan), Dayot Upamecano (Bayern Munich)

Midfielders: N’Golo Kante (Al Ittihad), Eduardo Camavinga (Real Madrid), Adrien Rabiot (Juventus), Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid), Aurelien Tchouameni (Real Madrid), Warren Zaire-Emery (Paris Saint-Germain), Youssouf Fofana (AS Monaco)

Forwards: Kylian Mbappe (Real Madrid), Bradley Barcola (Paris Saint-Germain), Ousmane Dembele (Paris Saint-Germain), Kingsley Coman (Bayern Munich), Marcus Thuram (Internazionale), Randal Kolo Muani (Paris Saint-Germain), Olivier Giroud (Los Angeles FC)

You can follow the action on Al Jazeera’s dedicated Euro 2024 tournament page with all the match build-up and live text commentary, and keep up to date with group standings and real-time match results and schedules.

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Al-Qaeda affiliate claims responsibility for June attack in Burkina Faso | Conflict News

The attack on June 11 was one of the deadliest suffered by the West African nation’s army.

An armed group linked to al-Qaeda, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), has claimed responsibility for what it said was an attack on June 11 that killed more than 100 Burkina Faso soldiers in the Mansila area near the border with Niger, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

On Sunday, SITE quoted a JNIM statement as saying that five days ago “fighters stormed a military post in the town, where they killed 107 soldiers and took control of the site”.

Several videos shared online by JNIM showed raging gunfire around the army base. Another video showed a display of ammunition and dozens of weapons, and at least seven captured Burkina Faso soldiers.

June’s reported attack has been one of the deadliest suffered by the West African Sahel nation’s army.

Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Al Jazeera that the government is trying to fight the armed groups but has not recruited professional soldiers to do so.

“They recruited 50,000 volunteers, many of whom got only a short period of training. So they’re kind of vulnerable to losses and it is not very efficient, unfortunately. Almost every day now, there are incidents like this,” he said.

“Right now you have 50-60 percent of [Burkina Faso’s] territory which is outside government control … The government is trying hard, they’re buying weapons, they have a military partnership with Russia but they’re not very successful.”

Niger and Mali are also struggling to contain fighting linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). The unrest is also threatening the stability of the Sahel region as the armed groups, who control swathes of territories in Burkina Faso and Mali, use them as bases to target southern coastal countries.

Laessing noted that while Mali and Niger have similar problems, their countries are much bigger.

“Burkina Faso is the smallest of the three and very densely populated … Whenever the army attacks, you have many more civilian victims, that makes it so brutal,” he said.

Over more than a decade, armed groups have killed thousands and displaced more than two million in Burkina Faso.

Moreover, the country has topped the recent Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) list of the world’s most neglected displacement crises.

The violence killed more than 8,400 people last year, double the number of deaths from the previous year, according to the NRC.

About two million civilians were trapped in 36 blockaded towns across Burkina Faso by the end of 2023.

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Netanyahu opposed to Israeli military ‘tactical pauses’ for Gaza aid | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to plans announced by the military to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip to facilitate aid delivery into the Palestinian enclave.

The military had announced the daily pauses from 05:00 GMT until 16:00 GMT in the area from the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards.

“When the prime minister heard the reports of an 11-hour humanitarian pause in the morning, he turned to his military secretary and made it clear that this was unacceptable to him,” an Israeli official told the Reuters news agency.

The military clarified that normal operations would continue in Rafah, the main focus of its ongoing assault in southern Gaza, where eight soldiers were killed on Saturday.

Israel forces razed homes in the area and attacks there continued on Sunday, despite it being the first day of Eid al-Adha, the most important Muslim celebration of the year.

An Israeli attack on two homes in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed nine people, including six children, according to the Palestinian state news agency Wafa.

Meanwhile, at least two Palestinians in Rafah’s western Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood were killed in another Israeli attack, which the military followed up by targeting an ambulance trying to reach the victims, according to Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondents on the ground.

The Israeli military also announced the death of three soldiers, two of them reservists, in fighting on Sunday.

Divisions among government, army

Netanyahu’s opposition to the tactical pauses underlined political tensions over the issue of aid coming into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a growing humanitarian crisis and looming famine.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads one of the far-tight nationalist religious parties in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, denounced the idea of a tactical pause, saying whoever decided it was a “fool” who should lose their job.

Far-right government ministers want to slash aid coming into Gaza further, even though it has been largely cut since Israel took over the vital Rafah border crossing. And for months, right-wing Israelis have been protesting and blocking roads to prevent aid shipments from reaching Gaza, further straining the flow of desperately needed aid to the territory.

Prior to the May 6 seizure of the crossing, there was already an inadequate flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, especially into northern Gaza where famine has already taken hold.

The spat was the latest in a series of clashes between members of the coalition and the military over the conduct of the assault on Gaza, now in its ninth month.

It came a week after centrist former general Benny Gantz quit the government, accusing Netanyahu of having no effective strategy in Gaza.

The divisions were laid bare last week in a parliamentary vote on a law on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant voting against it in defiance of party orders, saying it was insufficient for the needs of the military.

Religious parties in the coalition have strongly opposed conscription for the ultra-Orthodox, drawing widespread anger from many Israelis, which has deepened as the war has gone on.

Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, the head of the military, said on Sunday that there was a “definite need” to recruit more soldiers from the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox community.

Despite growing international pressure for a lasting ceasefire, an agreement to halt the fighting still appears distant, more than eight months since October 7, when Israel unleashed its most ruthless offensive in Gaza following Hamas attacks into southern Israel.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 37,300 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health ministry figures, and destroyed much of the enclave.

Although opinion polls suggest most Israelis support the government’s aim of destroying Hamas, there have been widespread protests attacking the government for not doing more to bring home around 120 captives who have been held by Hamas in Gaza since October 7.

As fighting in Gaza has continued, a lower-level conflict across the Israel-Lebanon border is now threatening to spiral into a wider war as near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group have escalated.

In a further sign that fighting in Gaza could drag on, Netanyahu’s government said on Sunday that it was extending until August 15 the period it would fund hotels and guest houses for residents evacuated from southern Israeli border towns.

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England, Serbia fans clash ahead of Euro 2024 football game | UEFA Euro 2024 News

England play Serbia in Group C of the UEFA European Football Championship in Germany.

Police have rushed to separate brawling football fans ahead of the match between England and Serbia at the Euro 2024 football tournament in Germany.

On Sunday, social media footage showed men throwing chairs at each other outside a restaurant festooned with Serbian flags in the western city of Gelsenkirchen. One group beat a hasty retreat as riot police arrived and wrestled at least one man to the ground.

A Serbian fan told The Associated Press that a group of people had thrown glasses and stones at the area outside a downtown bar where he and others were sitting together drinking beer.

“There was a clash and we are fine. So that’s it, we are going to the game, we hope we will win. This is about football,” said the man, who identified himself only as Vladimir and said he was from the Serbian capital Belgrade.

Reporters who arrived shortly after the incident found the street littered with broken glass and tables as several dozen police officers stood by.

The match on Sunday evening between England and Serbia has been tagged “high risk” by police over concerns over potential fan violence.

“So far what ‘high risk’ means practically is that lower-alcohol drinks will be sold and no alcohol at all can be drunk inside the stands in the stadium,” Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said, reporting from Munich.

Only low-alcohol beer is being served in the Gelsenkirchen stadium in an attempt to reduce the potential for problems.

“One complicating factor is that UEFA, the parent organisation of these championships, has said that the barriers inside the stadium have to be removed … that suggests the English and Serbian fans could be intermingling inside the stadium,” Kane noted, adding that the German police have been putting in a lot of effort to prevent such hooligan scuffles.

About 20,000 England fans and 10,000 from Serbia are expected to converge on the city for the game.

The match will be played at Arena AufSchalke and starts at 9pm local time (19:00 GMT).

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Euro 2024: Portugal vs Czechia – Ronaldo, Schick resume Golden Boot battle | UEFA Euro 2024 News

Euro 2020’s top goal scorers, Cristiano Ronaldo and Patrik Schick, will face off in their Euro 2024 group opener in Germany.

The joint top scorers at the last European Championship will face each other as Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal play Patrik Schick’s Czech Republic in their Euro 2024 Group F opener at Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena.

Ronaldo and Schick both scored five at the COVID-delayed Euro 2020 and are likely to shoulder the goal-scoring burden for their sides this time around.

The tournament could be Ronaldo’s international swansong, although the 39-year-old appears as hungry for goals and adulation as ever as he prepares to kick off his sixth Euros on Tuesday.

While he may have moved away from Europe’s elite to play in Saudi Arabia, the goal-getting instincts of the leading scorer in men’s international football seem as razor-sharp as ever.

Having finished second-top scorer in qualifying with 10 goals and smashed 35 in 31 league games for Al Nassr last season, the seemingly ageless Ronaldo warmed up for the tournament with a brace in their final friendly against Ireland.

Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo will play in his sixth European Football Championships at Euro 2024 in Germany [Darko Bandic/AP]

While Ronaldo lifted the trophy in 2016, he may still be harbouring a sense of unfinished business on the international stage.

Having sat out most of that final eight years ago through injury, he has failed to propel Portugal to further glory at two subsequent World Cups and at Euro 2020, when they were knocked out in the last 16.

This has been one of Portugal’s most gilded generations but with Ronaldo and 41-year-old defender Pepe in the twilight of their careers, Euro 2024 has the feel of a last hurrah.

With a squad bulging with talent, Portugal will be, on paper, one of the best teams in Germany. They won all of their 10 games in the qualifiers, scoring 36 and conceding twice.

Yet their manager Roberto Martinez knows all about the pitfalls of leading a supremely talented bunch of players at international tournaments, having failed to turn Belgium’s so-called “Golden Generation” into tournament winners.

Martinez, however, also knows he has arguably the game’s best in Ronaldo.

“We have 23 players. We create competitiveness and the game makes decisions,” he said earlier this month. “But Cristiano is prepared to help the team and give everything he can give. And there is no other player in the world of football who can bring what Cristiano can to the dressing room.”

Schick, who won goal of the tournament at Euro 2020 for his stunner against Scotland from the halfway line, will spearhead a Czech side with very different expectations.

The Czechs finished second in qualifying behind Albania, winning four of their eight matches in a group that also included Poland, Moldova and the Faroe Islands.

With Schick absent from the final rounds of qualifying, they found goals hard to come by but, fresh from winning the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen, he seems to have shaken off the injuries that hampered him and that could spell trouble for Portugal.

Portugal vs Czechia kicks off at 2100 local time (19:00 GMT) on Tuesday, June 18.

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Muslims observe Eid al-Adha in the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza | Religion News

Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Adha, or the feast of sacrifice, which commemorates the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, before God offered a sheep in his place.

As part of the festival, which follows the annual Hajj pilgrimage, worshippers typically slaughter sheep and offer part of the meat to the needy.

This year’s celebration came against the backdrop of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional conflict.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were not able to celebrate Eid al-Adha the way they had in previous years.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, dozens gathered on Sunday morning near a destroyed mosque to perform Eid prayers. They were surrounded by debris and the rubble of collapsed houses. In the town of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Muslims held their prayers in a school-turned-shelter. Some, including women and children, went to cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones.

“Today, after the ninth month, more than 37,000 martyrs, more than 87,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed,” Abdulhalim Abu Samra, a displaced Palestinian, told The Associated Press news agency after prayers in Khan Younis. “Our people live in difficult circumstances.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, also reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are trying to cling to a sense of hope. “Palestinians are trying to do their best, despite Israel’s ongoing aggression, to bring happiness to young children, as many of them will wake up today and celebrate Eid without their parents.”

The Government Media Office in Gaza said on Saturday that Israel was barring the entry of sacrificial animals into the enclave, thus preventing Palestinians from performing sacrificial rituals as part of Eid al-Adha.

Meanwhile, at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, 40,000 Muslims performed Eid al-Adha prayers, much less than the estimated 100,000 who attended in 2023. On Sunday, Israeli forces also assaulted worshippers entering the mosque and blocked others from reaching the holy site, the Wafa news agency reported.

In Ramallah in the West Bank, Palestinians also convened for the Eid prayers. “We suffer greatly and live through difficult moments with [what’s happening to] our brothers in Gaza,” said Mahmoud Mohana, a mosque imam.

In Lebanon, where Hezbollah has traded nearly daily attacks with Israel over the war in Gaza, visitors made their way into the Martyrs Cemetery near the Shatila camp for Palestinian refugees in Beirut early on Sunday morning, bearing flowers and jugs of water for the graves of their loved ones, an annual tradition on the first day of Eid.

Officials also extended Eid greetings, with a message of peace.

“I extend my solidarity with all Muslims who, because of conflict, violence & division, will not be able to celebrate with their loved ones,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hoped that the holiday would bring “peace to our spiritual geography, especially Palestine and Sudan”.

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Peace summit stands behind Ukraine, calls for dialogue to end Russia war | Russia-Ukraine war News

World leaders call for the release of prisoners of war and the return of thousands of Ukrainian children taken by Russia.

Dozens of countries at the Summit on Peace in Ukraine have declared that Kyiv’s “territorial integrity” should be respected, as they urged “dialogue between all parties” to find a lasting settlement in the ongoing conflict with Russia.

In a final communique issued at the end of a major two-day diplomatic summit in Switzerland on Sunday, the vast majority of countries represented also backed a call for the full exchange of captured soldiers and the return of deported Ukrainian children.

“We believe that reaching peace requires the involvement of and dialogue between all parties,” the document stated.

In his closing speech on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he hopes the “results” will be achieved “as soon as possible”.

“We’ll prove to everyone in the world that the UN Charter can be restored to full effectiveness,” he said.

He later added that Russia was “not ready for a just peace”.

“Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything – if they leave our legal territories,” Zelenskyy said.

Not all attendees backed the summit’s closing document, with Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates among those not included in a list of supporting states displayed on screens at the summit.

Brazil, which was listed as an “observer” on the list of attendees, also did not feature as a signatory.

The final document also reaffirmed “the principles of sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all states, including Ukraine, within their internationally recognised borders.”

More than 90 countries had gathered in the Swiss resort of Burgenstock for the summit, dedicated to discussing Kyiv’s proposals for a route out of the conflict.

Moscow was not invited and has rejected the summit as “absurd” and pointless.

Kyiv had worked hard to secure attendance from countries that maintain warm relations with Russia.

Prisoner exchange, return of Ukrainian children

The final document also called for all prisoners of war to be released in a “complete exchange” and for all Ukrainian children who had been “deported and unlawfully displaced” to be returned to Ukraine.

Kyiv accuses Russia of abducting almost 20,000 children from parts of the east and south of the country that its forces took control of.

Working groups at the summit also addressed the issues of global food security and nuclear safety.

“Food security must not be weaponised in any way,” the declaration stated, adding that access to ports in the Black and Azov Seas was “critical” for global food supply.

The countries represented at the summit also called for Ukraine to have “full sovereign control” over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Located in the south of Ukraine, the facility is Europe’s largest nuclear energy site and has been controlled by Russian forces since early in the war.

On Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry declared that its forces have taken control of another village in the Zaporizhia region, according to the Interfax news agency.

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Euro 2024: Hamburg police fire shots at axe-wielding person at fan parade | UEFA Euro 2024 News

The incident comes hours before the German city staging a Euro 2024 match between Netherlands and Poland.

The German police have fired shots at a person who allegedly threatened officers with a pickaxe and an incendiary device on the sidelines of a Euro 2024 football fan parade in central Hamburg, according to a police post on social media platform X.

A major police operation was under way and the suspect was receiving medical care for injuries, the post on Sunday added.

The incident occurred in the St Pauli district of the city as Poland and the Netherlands prepared to play against each other in Hamburg’s Volksparkstadion at 3pm (13:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Fan marches were scheduled before the games, and a parade for Dutch supporters was held at 12:30pm (10:30 GMT), around the time of the incident.

Germany is hosting the monthlong tournament that began on June 14.

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