Category World News

Three members of one family were killed in a Russian drone strike in the Chernihiv region’s northern town of Pryluky, according to Ukrainian authorities.

A local first responder’s wife, daughter, and one-year-old grandson were killed in the attack, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko on Thursday morning.

When Russia launched six drones into the town overnight, the family was one of five killed, according to regional governor Viacheslav Chaus.

He claimed that six more people had been taken to the hospital.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, blasted the attacks and accused Moscow of “constantly trying to buy time for itself by killing.”

When it doesn’t feel the world’s pressure and condemnation are strong enough, it kills again, he wrote on X.

According to Zelenskyy, Russia targeted the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro, and Kherson regions with 103 drones and one ballistic missile over the course of one night.

“This is yet another reason to put maximum pressure on one another.” We demand that the United States, Europe, and everyone else in the world take action to truly change these terrible circumstances, he urged.

According to Klymenko, 18 people were hurt in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, including four children.

Anastasiia Meleshchenk, a resident, reported to the Reuters news agency that her child managed to escape into the hallway after the overnight strike had entered her neighbor’s apartment.

After the previous attack, she claimed that the workers in my apartment had just finished their repairs.

Russia did not respond right away.

Later on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities reported that two people had died as a result of a Russian attack that occurred the day before in the Poltava region, eastern Ukraine.

Senior regional official Volodymyr Kohut wrote on Telegram that “sadly, doctors failed to save the lives of two people who were seriously injured as a result of an enemy attack on the training ground.”

Ukraine’s military claimed that it fired missile systems at Bryansk regional missile systems, which it claimed were preparing to attack Ukraine.

Russia promises to respond.

The attacks come after Ukraine used 117 unmanned aerial vehicles launched from containers close to the targets in a campaign known as “Spider’s Web” to attack four of Russia’s military airfields in Siberia and the far north in a strike.

Seven people were also killed when Russia accused it of bombing rail bridges in the south of the nation.

Russian military will act as and when necessary, according to Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, on Thursday.

Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, stated on Thursday that the facilities’ warplanes were infected and would be repaired.

Up to 20 warplanes were hit, according to two US officials who spoke to Reuters, and about 10 were destroyed.

Despite the two conflicting parties holding direct talks in Turkiye to end the conflict, fighting and aerial attacks have recently gotten worse and worse.

According to John Hendren, a reporter from Kyiv, the US Embassy has warned Ukrainian citizens that significant strikes are on the horizon.

United States President Donald Trump signed a presidential proclamation on Wednesday banning citizens of 12 countries from entering the US. Heightened restrictions on entering the US have been put in place for nationals of seven more countries.

The travel ban is Trump’s latest move in the immigration crackdown that he promised on the campaign trail before last year’s presidential election.

Trump said the measures would help to “protect Americans from dangerous foreign actors”.

Here is what we know about the travel ban so far:

Which countries’ citizens are fully restricted from travelling to the US?

The 12 countries whose nationals are fully restricted from travelling to the US under Trump’s travel ban are:

• Afghanistan
• Myanmar
• Chad
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Haiti
• Iran
• Libya
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen

Which countries are subject to partial restrictions?

The seven countries subject to partial restrictions are:

• Burundi
• Cuba
• Laos
• Sierra Leone
• Togo
• Turkmenistan
• Venezuela

How will Trump’s travel ban work?

Citizens from the 12 countries subject to a full ban on travel to the US will face a complete suspension of immigrant and non-immigrant visas.

Citizens from the seven countries which have been placed under partial restrictions will no longer be able to apply for immigrant visas or non-immigrant temporary visas covering permanent immigration, student visas and tourism visas including B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M and J. They will still be able to apply for some temporary visas, however.

Unlike an executive order, a presidential proclamation is not legally binding but generally signals a policy shift.

The new rules apply only to people outside the US at the time of the proclamation and who did not yet hold a valid visa at the time of the proclamation.

Are there any exceptions to the travel ban?

Yes. The new suspension and restrictions will not apply to:

• Lawful permanent residents of the US, also known as green card holders.
• Existing visa holders.
• Foreign diplomats travelling under certain non-immigrant visa categories.
• Dual nationals of the 19 countries included in the ban, if they are travelling on a passport of a country that is not subject to the ban.
• Athletes or members of an athletic team, such as coaches, people performing a support role and immediate relatives, travelling for a major sporting event such as the World Cup or Olympics.
• Immediate family immigrant visas (IR-1/CR-1, IR-2/CR-2, IR-5) “with clear and convincing evidence of identity and family relationship (eg DNA)”.
• Adoptees.
• Afghan Special immigrant visas.
• Special immigrant visas for US government employees.
• Immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran.

How many people could this affect?

A total of 363,549 people from the 19 listed countries entered the US in the fiscal year 2022 – the most recent year on record for arrivals – according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.

Some 250,234 of these people were from Venezuela, which is subject to partial restrictions only.

A further 66,563 of these people were from Haiti, which now faces a complete travel ban.

Why has Trump banned arrivals to the US from these countries?

Trump cited security threats and “foreign terrorists” as grounds for the ban.

In a video posted on Wednesday on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump said the recent attack in Boulder, Colorado “has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas”.

On June 1, police arrested a man who threw incendiary devices towards a group of people attending a rally for the release of captives taken from Israel on October 7, 2023 and held in Gaza. The FBI said it was investigating the incident as “an act of terror”.

Suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman was charged with a federal hate crime, as well as an array of state charges, according to an affidavit by the US Department of Justice. Soliman is an Egyptian national who has also lived in Kuwait. Neither of these countries is on Trump’s list of banned countries.

In a Truth Social post, Trump blamed “[former US President Joe] Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy” for allowing Soliman into the country. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said the suspect in the Boulder incident had overstayed a tourist visa, without naming Soliman.

A fact sheet published by the White House stated a specific justification for the exclusion of each country on the new travel ban list.

These justifications included that large numbers of citizens had overstayed their visas, that the countries had a poor record of cooperating with the US to receive their citizens back if they had overstayed in the US, or that the countries were affected by war.

According to the most recent figures from the US Department of Homeland Security, nationals of Chad had the highest overstay rate, at 49.5 percent of those arriving in the US on a visa. Others with high overstay rates were Equatorial Guinea (22 percent), Eritrea (20 percent) and Yemen (19.8 percent).

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order, calling on his state department to identify countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries”. He referred to this order in his video announcement of the travel ban.

When does the travel ban take effect?

The travel ban will take effect on June 9 at 12:01am EDT (04:01 GMT).

Has Trump done this before?

Yes, Trump enacted a travel ban – dubbed the “Muslim ban” as all but one of the countries on the list at that time were Muslim-majority – during his first term in 2017.

In his Wednesday Truth Social video, Trump said: “In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil.”

That earlier ban went through several revisions. It was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2018. In 2021, Biden repealed this ban, calling it “a stain on our national conscience”.

Could more countries be added to this travel ban in the future?

Yes. In his Truth Social video announcement, Trump said “the list is subject to revision based on whether material improvements are made.

“Likewise, new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world.”

How are affected countries reacting to Trump’s travel ban?

Dahir Hassan Abdi, the Somali ambassador to the US, said in a statement that Somalia is ready to work with the US. “Somalia values its longstanding relationship with the United States and stands ready to engage in dialogue to address the concerns raised,” he said.

Trump’s proclamation described Somalia as “a terrorist safe haven” and stated: “Somalia lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.”

Diosdado Cabello, Venezuelan interior minister and close aide of President Nicolas Maduro, said: “The truth is being in the United States is a big risk for anybody, not just for Venezuelans … They persecute our countrymen, our people for no reason.”

Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Istanbul for the second time in a month on June 2 to explore the possibility of a ceasefire. The talks lasted just over an hour and, once again, produced no meaningful progress. As with the May 16 negotiations, both sides claimed they had laid the groundwork for prisoner exchanges. But despite Ukraine’s offer to hold another meeting before the end of June, a deep and unbridgeable divide remains between Kyiv and Moscow.

More meetings are unlikely to change that. Russia continues to demand Kyiv’s capitulation to the full list of conditions President Vladimir Putin set at the war’s outset: Ukrainian neutrality, a government reshaped to suit Moscow’s interests, and the surrender of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Between the two rounds of talks, Putin even raised the stakes, adding a demand for a “buffer zone” in northern Ukraine.

Kyiv, meanwhile, remains resolute. It refuses to cede any territory and maintains that a full ceasefire along all fronts is a non-negotiable precondition for serious negotiations.

Still, both sides appear prepared to continue the diplomatic charade.

That’s because these talks are not truly about achieving peace or securing a lasting bilateral agreement. Neither side is genuinely negotiating with the other. Instead, both are using the forum to send messages to the United States – and to Donald Trump, in particular.

This dynamic persists despite Trump’s recent efforts to distance himself from the war he once claimed he could end within 24 hours of returning to the White House. That shift in rhetoric has been echoed by key figures in his administration. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who just six months ago represented opposite ends of the Republican spectrum on Ukraine – with Vance nearly endorsing surrender to Putin, and Rubio among the Senate’s most vocal Ukraine hawks – have both signalled that Trump’s White House is no longer interested in mediating the conflict. Reflecting that disengagement, there was no high-level prenegotiation meeting between US and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye ahead of the latest talks, unlike those held in May.

Yet despite Rubio’s apparent reversal – likely intended to align with Trump – Ukraine still enjoys broad support in the US Senate, including from senior Republicans. A bipartisan bill aimed at codifying existing sanctions on Russia and imposing new ones – thereby limiting Trump’s power to roll them back – has garnered 81 Senate co-sponsors. The bill’s authors, Senators Lindsey Graham (R–South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), recently travelled to Kyiv to reaffirm their backing. Graham has suggested the bill could move forward in the coming weeks.

Still, Ukraine knows the bill stands little chance in the House of Representatives without Trump’s blessing. Despite Trump’s enduring animosity towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv has recently adopted a more deferential posture, particularly after their disastrous February meeting in Washington. The Ukrainian government quickly signed and ratified the so-called “minerals deal” that Trump demanded last month. A subsequent meeting between the two leaders – held on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral – was notably more productive.

So far, Kyiv’s strategy of appeasement has yielded little change in Trump’s approach. While Trump has occasionally hinted at taking a tougher stance on Putin – usually in response to particularly egregious Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians – he consistently deflects when asked for specifics. For months, he has promised to reveal his plan for Ukraine “in about two weeks,” a vague assurance that remains unfulfilled. A new sanctions package reportedly prepared by his own team over a month ago still sits untouched.

Hoping that mounting battlefield violence or bipartisan pressure from the US Senate might force Trump to act, Kyiv presses on with negotiations. Just one day before the Istanbul talks, Russia launched a record-setting overnight assault on Ukraine, firing more than 430 missiles and drones. Ukraine responded forcefully: on June 1, it conducted a large-scale drone strike deep inside Russia, destroying dozens of military aircraft, including airborne command platforms and nuclear-capable bombers.

Yet these high-profile losses have done little to shift Putin’s strategy. He continues to use the negotiation process as a smokescreen, providing Trump with political cover for his inaction. Meanwhile, Russian forces are advancing, making incremental gains in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region – where they hope to establish a “buffer zone” – and pushing forward on the southwestern Donetsk front.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s ability to strike deep inside Russian territory, including potentially vulnerable targets like oil infrastructure, may have more bearing on the war’s trajectory than any outcome from the Istanbul talks. Yet neither military escalation nor stalled diplomacy seems likely to bring a swift end to the conflict.

Trump says he abhors the civilian toll of this war, even if he stops short of blaming Putin for starting it. But it is Trump’s lack of strategy – his hesitation, his mixed signals, his refusal to lead – that is prolonging the conflict, escalating its brutality and compounding its risks for global stability.

Trump’s advisers may call it “peace through strength,” but what we are witnessing is paralysis through posturing. Russia’s delegation in Istanbul was never a step towards resolution – it was a diplomatic decoy, shielding a brutal military advance. If Trump refuses to back a serious escalation in pressure on Moscow – through expanded sanctions and renewed military aid to Kyiv – he won’t just fail to end the war. He will become complicit in prolonging it. The choice before him is clear: lead with resolve, or let history record that under his watch, weakness spoke louder than peace.

A liberal group and social media users shared posts that say President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” for tax and spending would let him reschedule or eliminate elections.

“If the Senate passes the ‘one big beautiful bill’ and Trump signs it, that’s it. It becomes law,” said the viral graphic on Meta and X. “And here’s what that really means. He can delay or cancel elections – legally.” The post included a long list of other claims about what the bill would accomplish; for this fact-check, we are focusing on the elections claim.

The group Being Liberal, which calls itself “one of the oldest social media liberal political brands”, took down the graphic after we reached out for comment. The group told us it didn’t create the post and removed it because the elections claim wasn’t accurate.

The earliest reference for the graphic we found online was from an anonymous blog post on May 23.

The bill does not give Trump power to delay or cancel elections, an action that would be unconstitutional.

“The bill would not directly give the president any authority over elections,” said Eric Kashdan, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that advocates for voting rights and this year sued the Trump administration over a voter registration executive order.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Griffin Neal, told PolitiFact, “The bill obviously does not provide the President of the United States with the authority to cancel or delay elections.”

The US House passed the tax and spending bill May 22 and it now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers could make changes. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader, said he hopes the bill can be sent to Trump by July 4.

The bill includes one provision related to democracy and checks and balances; it would expand the executive branch’s power by curtailing judges’ ability to hold people in contempt of court. Provision critics said it could take away the courts’ power to restrain the federal government if it violates the Constitution or breaks the law.

We found no provision in the bill that says the president can delay or cancel an election.

In July 2020, amid the pandemic and a surge in voting by mail, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election. At the time, he was running for re-election.

But the Constitution empowers Congress to set the date by which states must choose their presidential electors, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found in 2020.

“Since 1845, Congress has required states to appoint presidential electors on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot for President,” the report said.

Congress still has that power, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor.

The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 added a new definition of “Election Day” that makes it clear that a voting extension can occur only through state law specified in advance and under tightly restricted conditions, such as a catastrophe, Foley said.

That means Election Day “cannot otherwise be cancelled or delayed” and the president plays no role in any alteration of Election Day, Foley said.

Congress can change the Election Day date by enacting a new statute, as it did with the Electoral Count Reform Act, Foley said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told PolitiFact nothing in the bill lets Trump cancel or delay elections.

“The Constitution provides that elections for Congress be held every two years and for President every four years,” Chemerinsky said. “There is no constitutional authority to cancel elections.”

Bill provision would make it harder for judges to find Trump in contempt of court

The bill includes a different provision that some experts called a threat to democracy, but not at the ballot box.

Section 70302 would make it harder for judges to find a defendant in contempt of court for ignoring a judge’s orders. Here’s how: The legislation would require plaintiffs to pay a security bond before a judge could find the defendant in contempt of court. That would mean judges could no longer waive the security bond requirement, something that frequently happens in cases against the government.

The section references a federal rule that says a court may issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order only if the plaintiff pays a security bond to cover costs and damages by any party “found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained”.

A security bond is an insurance policy to protect someone wrongfully accused of wrongdoing from financial losses during litigation, Kashdan said. The courts can require plaintiffs to pay money that the court holds until the end of the litigation

“If they win, they get their money back,” Kashdan said. “If they lose, and the person they sued had a right to do whatever it was they were prevented from doing during the lawsuit, they get to keep that money to help compensate them for any losses they experienced during the litigation.”

However, “those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunise unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review,” wrote Chemerinsky for the website Just Security, which publishes a Trump litigation tracker. “It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.”

A March White House memo that criticised organisations for suing the federal government said enforcement of the security bond rule “is critical to ensuring that taxpayers do not foot the bill for costs or damages caused by wrongly issued preliminary relief by activist judges and to achieving the effective administration of justice”.

The House bill provision raised concern among groups that have defended the judiciary’s role to provide a check on Trump’s power.

As of May 23, at least 177 court rulings have temporarily paused Trump administration actions, according to The New York Times.

Our ruling

Social media posts say the Republican tax and budget bill will let Trump “delay or cancel elections – legally”.

We found nothing in the bill that would let Trump cancel or delay elections. A provision would make it harder for judges to hold people in contempt of court, but that is not the same as cancelling elections.

Only Congress can change a presidential election’s date, not the president, and this bill doesn’t change that.