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Play puts spotlight on Kenya’s crisis of gender-based violence

There are audible gasps in the auditorium in Nairobi as a husband launches a volley of blows and slaps on his wife and pushes her to the floor. “I wish I could spare you this,” the wife tells the audience. “My husband beat me up as if we were in a bar fight. Except, in a bar someone fights back.” The scene comes from Free Me, an autobiographical play by Gathoni Kimuyu, a Kenyan theatre and TV producer who lived through an abusive marriage. The success of the production, which was first performed in November and returned this month for a rerun, reflects a public outcry over gender-based violence (GBV) in Kenya, where already high rates of femicide and abuse have risen further in recent years. This month, hundreds of women marched in Nairobi to protest against violence against women and to call on the government to declare GBV a national crisis. In January 2025, after a series of marches across the country in 2024 and the supporting online campaigns #StopKillingUs, #EndFemicideKe and #TotalShutDownKe, the government formed a technical working group to identify trends, hotspots and causes of GBV and femicide. It released a report citing a mix of factors behind GBV, including social and cultural factors such as patriarchal structures and gender inequality. The document made recommendations such as amending the law to define and codify femicide as a distinct offence from murder and for the president to declare GBV a national crisis. The government has yet to implement the recommendations, and GBV cases continue to make headlines. “When we look at the numbers in Kenya right now, cases of femicide, sexual abuse, physical abuse – any type of abuse against women – are very high,” said Kimuyu, who is also the producer and head of marketing for the play. “And the numbers just keep rising and rising.” She added: “One of the reasons why we’re restaging this show is because of how important it is to the conversations that we’re having now and for the change that we’re looking for as women and as a country.” Popularly known as Queen Gathoni, the 41-year-old writer-producer has worked on some of Kenya’s defining TV and theatre productions, including the children’s TV drama Machachari and the historical play series Too Early for Birds. *** Free Me covers her life from her teenage years living with her family in Nairobi’s eastern outskirts in the early 2000s to the present day. It tells her story in different stages of her life, played by different actors: the mischievous 16-year-old who is full of life; the 21-year-old who gets married and starts being abused; the 25-year-old who gives birth and leaves the marriage; and the 30-year-old who picks herself up and starts rebuilding. Mugambi Nthiga, the show’s director and co-writer, said: “This is a play about gender-based violence about someone who lived [through it], but it’s being staged in a reality where there’s more than one woman every day who is not so lucky [and] who doesn’t get to have the same kind of ending that this play does.” He added: “This is not just a story. This is someone’s true story. And it’s a story of someone who’s able to get out of it.” Renee Gichuki, who plays the Kimuyu character at the age of 16, said the play was timely because Kimuyu’s experience was not an isolated story and because GBV “has become a crisis”. “The person standing next to you has experienced it or knows someone who has experienced it,” she said. “We are educating and we are shedding light to both parties to know what can be done differently.” Tobit Tom, who plays the husband, said acting out the role “comes with a lot of heaviness” for him as a man, but he understood that men were the main perpetrators of GBV and he had to show that GBV “is happening and we have to talk about it and address it with seriousness”. Wambui Njeri, a 24-year-old businesswoman, said after watching the show that it humanised the victims and showed that the perpetrator could be anybody. “This makes it very clear that it’s your everyday woman, it’s your everyday man,” she said. Sitting next to her, her friend Patrick Muchiri, 40, a communications practitioner, said: “As men we really need to do better … Yes, we are the head of families and the head of societies. But that doesn’t translate to belittling or looking down or causing violence or harm.” *** In the show, Kimuyu’s character stays with her husband for two years despite the abuse. After she finally tells him she’s leaving him, his character draws derisive laughs from the audience when he says: “You are never going to find anyone who loves you like I love you.” The laughs turn to cheers when she replies: “Your love is exactly the kind of love I’m walking away from. For ever.” Kimuyu hopes the play encourages victims to speak out and not be ashamed, and reframes the conversation about women’s safety to stop blaming women and to hold abusers responsible. She said she chose to tell her own experience rather than create fiction to make people connect with the story more. “There’s nothing that resonates harder for people than a story about someone they know,” she said. “To see someone survive and actually be on this side makes people believe that it’s possible.”

North Korea’s ‘exponential’ nuclear program: why Kim Jong-un is racing to expand his arsenal

At a ruling Workers’ party meeting that concluded this week, Kim Jong-un declared that steadily expanding North Korea’s nuclear forces was the “most correct and unique way” to cope with an increasingly unstable world, citing what he described as growing threats from the US and its allies. The remarks were just the latest in a recent stream of commentary from North Korea’s leadership that has seen Kim pledge to equip warships with nuclear missiles, double weapons grade production and expand the country’s nuclear arsenal at “an exponential rate”. North Korea often makes exaggerated claims about the strength of their defence capabilities, but behind the heightened rhetoric, analysts say the question is no longer whether North Korea has nuclear weapons, but why it appears to need so many. “It is a force so large and so dispersed that no single strike could eliminate it, and [appears] increasingly difficult to dismantle through diplomacy,” says Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, who believes North Korea is using the spread of its arsenal to protect against intervention of the kind seen in Iran. “We don’t know where all of them are. We don’t know what they might do. And their threats are deliberately vague.” The recent US-led strikes on Iran reinforced a lesson North Korea has long since absorbed: states that stop short of a fully operational nuclear arsenal invite attack rather than deterrence. “A country that remains at the threshold level is drawing a big fat target on its back”, says Ward. Designed to survive a first strike, North Korea’s arsenal spans rail and road-mobile launchers, hardened underground facilities and an expanding submarine fleet. This year North Korea began test-firing nuclear-capable cruise missiles from a new 5,000-tonne destroyer, and on Wednesday Kim pledged that the country would build another two warships every year for the next five years. Analysts say Pyongyang believes it needs a much larger arsenal to match the scale and complexity of the forces aligned against it. “It faces the US nuclear umbrella, combined US-South Korean forces and trilateral cooperation with Japan,” said Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification. “It goes beyond minimum deterrence.” Nuclear weapons are now also embedded in the country’s constitution. A revision earlier this year gave Kim constitutional command over nuclear forces and the power to delegate launch authority to a separate command, a move analysts interpret as a safeguard against a decapitation strike. Lee Ho Ryung, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA), says Pyongyang was seeking to cement the idea that denuclearisation no longer applied to North Korea and to build a level of capability that would force Washington to take it seriously. “Their point is that this is not something that can be reduced through negotiations right now”, she says. Officially, denuclearisation remains Seoul’s stated objective when it comes to dealing with the North. South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, has made it a central plank of his government’s policy. In May, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reaffirmed what the White House described as a “shared goal” of denuclearising North Korea. But when Xi travelled to Pyongyang, Chinese readouts made no mention of it. North Korea’s deepening military ties with Russia and its strengthened relationship with China have further insulated Pyongyang from the kind of external pressure that once made negotiations conceivable. The three states, despite their differences, share an interest in checking American power. KIDA’s Lee Ho Ryung says Washington and Seoul would continue to uphold denuclearisation as their formal objective, but in practice the focus was likely to shift towards arms control – limiting and gradually reducing the arsenal rather than eliminating it. “In the end,” she says, “there may be no other path.”

Ukraine war briefing: Crimea locks down as Putin acknowledges ‘huge stream’ of Ukrainian drones

Ukraine said its forces struck a railway bridge, a power plant and other infrastructure targets in Crimea. Ukraine’s special forces said their units, working with the resistance movement in Crimea, destroyed a rail bridge over the North Crimean canal near the village of Rozdolne. The military described the bridge as a key logistics route used to supply Russian forces in southern Ukraine and said drones began hitting the structure late Sunday to Monday, collapsing part of it. A second strike on Tuesday targeted railway repair equipment deployed at the bridge and its remaining sections. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol in Crimea, announced “enforced temporary measures” including the closure of public transport at 10pm, and of large shops and cafes at 8pm, with street lighting also dimmed. Petrol stations had a day earlier been banned from selling fuel to non-government users. Riding mopeds and motorbikes at night was banned last week – the noise said to hinder defences against drones, with an official claiming “children taking night-time rides” have been lured into the treachery by Kyiv. Ukraine’s defence ministry said drones struck an oil storage depot at the Kerch thermal power plant in eastern Crimea, an electrical substation in the west, and a liquefied natural gas distribution station in Simferopol, the peninsula’s second-biggest city. Parts of Crimea were without power on Tuesday, the area’s energy supplier said, seeking to blame “technical malfunctions”. Vladimir Putin made his first comments about Ukraine’s strikes disabling Russian strategic infrastructure. Ukrainian drones “coming in a huge stream” were meant to “destabilise” society, disrupting energy supplies and tourism, said the Russian president. He railed that “the entire west” was working for Kyiv. Putin ⁠called on the Russian government to take additional measures to offset the consequences from the strikes – continuing his approach of distancing himself from addressing the impact of his war at home. Russia’s deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, told Putin on Tuesday that officials were considering suspending diesel fuel exports to protect the country’s motorists, adding to ongoing bans on the export of jet fuel and gasoline, according to the Tass news agency. Novak said scheduled maintenance at refineries had been postponed. “We are using reserves that were not previously tapped, and are also encouraging increased supplies of additional volumes to the domestic market.” Restrictions on fuel sales have come in across several regions of Russia. Crimea’s ministry of sport on Tuesday cancelled all sporting events, competitions, and training sessions for children through 1 September. It described the measures as “aimed solely at ensuring the safety of our children, athletes, and anyone who is involved with sport”. On Monday, Sergei Aksyonov, the governor, said that for security reasons all summer camps in the region had stopped accepting children and new bookings until 1 September. Moscow is complaining that the US has failed to deliver on “understandings” reached between Putin and Donald Trump at a summit in Alaska last August. After Trump began trying last year to end the war in Ukraine, ⁠and blamed Zelenskyy for failing to reach a deal, the Kremlin repeatedly expressed gratitude for the US president’s efforts and spoke of “the spirit of Anchorage” – shorthand, analysts say, for Russia’s contention that ‌Trump agrees Ukraine should hand over the whole of its Donbas region in return for peace. On Tuesday, though, Sergei Lavrov suggested the Alaska summit may have been a US “ploy to ‌buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime”. The Russian foreign minister’s deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, accused the US of departing from the “fundamental understandings” reached in Alaska. Vladimir Putin said Russia would enter negotiations if they were based on the Anchorage discussions and the “Istanbul agreements” – also known as the “Istanbul communique”, a set of maximalist Russian demands for Ukraine’s capitulation that were put forward in Turkey in 2022, and which Kyiv never published or signed. Oleg Ignatov, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Russia wanted the US side to resume diplomacy to help Russia end the war on its own terms. “There’s no structured diplomatic process, there’s no deal on the table, there’s actually nothing,” Ignatov said. “The Russians are very disappointed about this, they really want the Americans to engage.” Russian strikes killed nine people across Ukraine on Tuesday. In Kryvyi Rig, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town, “two men aged 25 and 34 and a 54-year-old woman were killed”, said the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor, Oleksandr Ganzha. Separate Russian attacks on the region killed three others, while strikes on the southern regions of Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson killed one person each, regional authorities said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit after one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war, writes Jakub Krupa. The EU warned on Tuesday that only Russia, “the aggressor in Ukraine”, would benefit from worsening relations between the two neighbours.

Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry finds

Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an ⁠independent UN inquiry has found. The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children. A previous report by the commission in September found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Netanyahu is separately wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes. The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s “libellous sham”. Israel has fought hard against allegations of genocide, while receiving critical diplomatic support from its allies, including the US and the UK. A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide. Genocide, which became a crime after the second world war and the Holocaust, is considered the most serious international crime. The convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide defines it as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The UN commission said in its report, released on Tuesday, that Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the ‌war, including after a ceasefire came into effect ‌in October 2025. It said this was a key element in establishing genocidal intent by Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, ‌in Gaza. “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair, in a statement accompanying the report. Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with widespread effects in densely populated residential areas, despite mounting child casualties, the commission said. “This indicates that ‌such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional,” it said. It added that it believed children were targeted collectively because the Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed groups. Muralidhar said that by targeting children, Israel was undermining the capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future. Conditions Israel imposed on Gaza, including widespread attacks, repeated displacement, and starvation caused by its blockade of aid, food and medicine, severely harmed children’s health and development, resulting in preventable deaths and trauma, the report said. The inquiry also found that attacks ⁠on healthcare and reproductive facilities affected newborns’ survival and the reported increase in miscarriages, and that nearly all children in Gaza were reported to be in need of psychological support. Israel’s rebuttal accused Hamas of systematically diverting humanitarian aid and fuel for hospitals. Hamas has rejected such accusations, while Israel has been accused of blocking aid and fuel from reaching Gaza. The report focused not only on Gaza but also the occupied West Bank, which Israel continues to control despite the international court of justice declaring its occupation unlawful. In the ‌West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the commission found a sharp increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian children, and documented evidence of torture, including sexual and gender-based violence, during mass arrests and detention. It said Palestinian children, especially boys, were subjected to systemic mistreatment in detention, including forced stripping, beatings and food deprivation. The commission concluded that the treatment constituted the crimes against humanity of torture and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury. Reuters contributed to this report

Rubio insists strait of Hormuz will be toll-free as he arrives for Gulf meeting

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said no country, including Iran, would be allowed to charge tolls for shipping in the strait of Hormuz as he sought to reassure US allies in the Gulf that Washington would take a firm line in peace negotiations with Tehran. Rubio is to meet Gulf allies on Tuesday and Wednesday in an attempt to reassure them that the US remains committed to their security and the 60-day ceasefire deal struck with Iran last week will not embolden Tehran. Arriving in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Rubio said the US would provide for freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz and that no country would be allowed to charge a toll there, which Iran has said it has a right to do. “It’s an international waterway,” Rubio said. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here.” That was just one of a number of potential fault lines in the shaky new US ceasefire deal, as concerns have grown that the release of Iran’s frozen assets would be reinvested into its military. And while Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Iran had agreed to allow international inspectors back into the country to monitor its nuclear programme, Iran directly denied that an agreement had been struck. Rubio also nodded to the potential spoiler role that Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon could play in the agreement, saying that Iranian proxies must also respect the ceasefire but that the issue would be addressed “at the appropriate time in these negotiations”. The US last week signed a ceasefire agreement with Iran that established a 60-day period of toll-free passage through the strait, after which Iran and Oman would discuss the “future administration and maritime services in the strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the strait of Hormuz”. Observers took that to mean that Iran was not directly precluded from charging fees or services for transport through the strait of Hormuz. Rubio, however, indicated that he believed Iran would accept the terms of toll-free passage through the waterway. “I don’t think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard,” he said on Monday. “I think all the countries in this region would agree with us.” The Gulf is divided over the deal. While Qatar has played a central role in mediating the agreement, some countries – notably the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain – are fearful it hands Iran substantial sums that may be ploughed into its military. The mood among Gulf states remains one of anger with Iran. The US allies want absolute clarity that tolls will not be charged in the strait of Hormuz, and also want any final agreement to also address limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles programme. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Tuesday that Iran’s ballistic missiles programme would “never” be part of a future agreement. “If we did not have our missiles, which are for our self-defence, Israel and America would have ploughed through Iran the way they did Gaza,” he said. Donald Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday that the unfrozen assets would be under US control and used to buy food and medical supplies from the US. In his first trip to the region since the US and Israel started the war on 28 February, Rubio will visit the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain, the state department said. He is also likely to meet officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council regional body. All three countries, which house large US military bases, have been hit by Iranian missiles, but the US has declined to detail the scale of the impacts. Severe penalties have been imposed on those using social media to reveal the damage. Trump last week disclosed that the UAE played an active part in mounting counterattacks against Iran, and the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran believed the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan all helped the US attack Iran. “We will definitely not abandon this issue. We will both document and demand,” Baghaei said. “The US military presence in the region has shown what consequences and harm it has brought to the region and its countries. We hope that the countries of the region have learned from the experience of the past few months and years.” The long-term Iranian aim is to persuade the Gulf states to eject the US from the region. In what is still a fluid debate inside Iran and the Gulf, some Iranian voices are calling for a rapprochement with the region, perhaps by forming an alliance with a powerful new grouping of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, flew to Pakistan on Tuesday in his first overseas visit since the war ended. There have also been signs that the UAE – the Gulf state with the closest economic ties with Iran – is also looking to defuse the crisis in relations with Iran. In the short term, Iran is expecting roughly $6bn (£4.54bn) of its assets locked in Qatar due to US sanctions to be unfrozen, with another $6bn to be given by Doha as a repayable loan. Over the next two months Iran can also expect to receive at least $8bn of income since the US Treasury’s decision on Monday to issue a sanctions waiver on Iranian oil exports. The treasury’s waiver document details that the payments can be made in dollars. Some internal Iranian estimates claim the income from unhindered oil sales – principally to China – could rise to more than $30bn over a year. Iran has long been evading US sanctions by covertly trading with China but at heavily discounted prices. The shipping monitors Kepler said 36 ships passed through the strait of Hormuz on Monday, the highest traffic volume since 1 March. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has said he was working with Oman on a long-term agreement to manage the strait. Ghalibaf met the Sultan of Oman on Monday in Muscat. Tehran and Washington had clashed on Monday over whether – as Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, have claimed – unfrozen Iranian assets could only be used to buy US agricultural produce such as soya beans. Iran’s central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, said the memorandum of understanding did not obligate Iran to spend unfrozen assets on US goods, and purchase decisions would be made on the basis of quality and price. Iran also disputed claims that Rafael Grossi, the director general of the UN nuclear inspectorate, had been given an Iranian green light to prepare to return to Iran to inspect the damaged nuclear sites. Iran also said further work was needed on the establishment of a mechanism to monitor the proposed Lebanon ceasefire. The MOU states that the US, Iran and “their allies in the current war” declare the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” – a formulation that clearly gives the impression of trying to bind Israel to an end to operations against Hezbollah. This could complicate the US-backed Israel-Lebanon ceasefire reached in early June, which stated that any cessation of hostilities must be agreed directly between Israel and Lebanon, and not through a separate track.

Forty people drown in France; Met Office warns UK temperatures could reach 39C – as it happened

France has seen its hottest day since records began, according to the country’s weather agency, with temperatures reaching 44.3C in Pissos. Other areas also reached unprecedented highs, including 42.1C in Bordeaux, Météo-France said. The Eiffel Tower closed early on Tuesday due to the heatwave. The UK Met Office said temperatures could reach a maximum of 39C on Thursday, most likely for somewhere in London or the South East, with higher temperatures “possible”. Hundreds of schools across the south of England and Wales are expected to close or vary their hours this week, in an effort to combat the extreme heat and conditions labelled as dangerous by education unions. School leaders said they had warned parents about potential closures on Wednesday and Thursday, with many opting to end the day early to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat. 50 years after the summer heatwave of 1976, scientists in the UK’s Met Office have developed what they call a “plausible 2056 scenario,” which forecasts the impact of similar heat events on the future. Based on 2.5C of global heating, temperatures in England could hit 45C, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would face 41C, 38C and 30C respectively. In that scenario, a prolonged heatwave could continue across a fortnight, including nine days in a row where temperatures would be above 40C. Nearly all of Spain was under a heat alert on Tuesday, with parts of the south and north of the country placed on the highest warning level. National weather agency AEMET issued red alerts – a warning for “extraordinary danger” – for areas around the southern city of Cordoba, the northern city of Bilbao and parts of the northern region of Cantabria. London is “cooking”, according to the head of the United Nations. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, referenced Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities in a major address at London Climate Action Week as the capital swelters in a severe heatwave. Speaking at the event on Tuesday, Guterres said: “Crisis brings clarity and here in London – the city of Dickens – it is clear that our world is facing a ‘tale of two crises’.”

Canadian police warn of possible copycat attacks after deadly shootout in Montreal

Police in Canada are warning of possible copycat attacks after three people died in a shootout in Montreal and the assailant’s lengthy manifesto, which called for “a new bloodletting”, was posted online by a far-right outlet. The document contains many of the hallmark grievances of the “involuntary celibacy” – or “incel” – movement in addition racist and misogynistic conspiracy theories. Fear gripped Quebec’s largest city on Monday after a man dressed in military camouflage and carrying a long gun was spotted moving around the Côte-des-Neige neighborhood. Shooting broke out and when police arrived, nearly 30 shots were heard. The shootout killed one officer and the gunman. Video from witnesses appears to show the police accidentally killing a civilian during the firefight. Another injured officer suffered critical injuries but is expected to survive. Investigators from Quebec’s police watchdog, the bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI) areinvestigating the deaths. After the shooting, Canada’s federal police sent a bulletin to police agencies across the country warning the gunman’s manifesto was “allegedly encouraging citizens to shoot police officers”. The alert called on police to “exercise extreme caution and remain highly vigilant”. The 104-page document, which was later posted in full by Rebel News, does not specifically mention targeting police, but blames feminism, liberalism and capitalism to explain the “situation of terrible loneliness, isolation, and social degradation” he believes men currently face. The document also lists what the shooter claims are “valid potential class A targets”, including large investment banks, powerful politicians, “influential Zionists”, corporate executives in private healthcare, companies involved in environmental destruction, plastic surgeons and cryptocurrency speculators. The manifesto also mentions targeting “the headquarters of international pornography companies”. It ends with the words: “Be unflinching, go forth, and KILL THEM ALL!” Montreal police identified the slain officer as Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, who had been with the force since 2021. The civilian, Michel Mizrahi, was identified as an Israeli citizen by Israel’s consulate in Montreal. Footage from witnesses, viewed by the Guardian, showed an officer appearing to accidentally shoot Mizrahi. Quebec’s domestic security minister, Ian Lafrenière, said “there have been some rumors, there has been some information stating that the civilian was shot by a police officer. This is not the kind of information that we can share at this moment,” adding the watchdog was investigating. The fatal shooting marks the third time a Canadian police officer has been killed while on duty this month. Two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were also shot and wounded on Monday in the province of Saskatchewan during a property dispute. In recent years, Canada has witnessed a string of attacks apparently inspired by extreme misogyinst incel ideology. In 2018, the driver of a van killed 10 and injured more than a dozen others in Toronto. The perpetrator of a 2020 machete attack at a Toronto spa in which one woman was killed and another seriously injured was also motivated by the ideology and the case marked the first incel-related incident in Canada to be deemed an act of terrorism by the courts. The country is also still grappling with the fallout of the 1989 attack on Montreal’s Polytechnique engineering school, where a young man walked into building with a semiautomatic rifle, killing 14 women and injuring 14 others (including four men). He then killed himself. Christine Fréchette, Quebec’s premier, told reporters she was “deeply shocked and saddened” by Monday’s attack and ordered the Quebec flag to fly at half mast. Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, said that he was “horrified” when he learned of the shooting. “My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones, the first responders, and the entire community of Côte‑des‑Neiges,” he said in a statement posted to social media. The city’s mayor, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, said she extended her “deepest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of the police officer who died in the line of duty”.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy to skip postwar conference amid tensions with Poland

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit after one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war. Ukraine’s president had been expected to co-host the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which begins in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk on Thursday, but the Ukrainian delegation will instead be led by the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. The annual conference, which in previous years took place in Rome, Berlin and London, seeks to bring together partners and businesses that could help with rebuilding Ukraine after the war. Zelenskyy’s decision not to attend follows weeks of tensions with Poland over his decision last month to name a military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” the UPA. The partisan formation is seen in Ukraine as a symbol of heroic resistance against the Soviet forces in the fight for Ukrainian independence. In Poland, however, the UPA is notorious for killing up to 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 45, in an attempt to ensure the territory did not become part of postwar Poland. The area has changed hands numerous times and now lies in Ukraine, after it suffered Soviet and then German Nazi occupation. In 2016, the Polish parliament unanimously adopted a motion calling the killings a “genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists”. Polish underground forces went on to kill 10,000 Ukrainians in reprisals, historians say. The episode remains one of the most painful and unresolved issues in bilateral relations between the countries. Zelenskyy’s decision sparked anger in Poland and accusations of historical insensitivity, dampening hopes of a breakthrough after last year’s agreement on exhumations, in which Ukraine agreed to first steps that could ultimately allow Polish families to bury their massacred relatives. The conservative President Karol Nawrocki – a former head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance – said he was “outraged” by Zelenskyy’s decision to name the unit after UPA, suggesting Zelenskyy could be stripped of Poland’s highest civilian honour, the Order of the White Eagle, which was conferred on him in 2023. After weeks of frantic behind-the-scenes discussions between Warsaw and Kyiv, no compromise was found on the naming issue, with both sides trading blame for lack of progress. On Friday, Nawrocki confirmed he would be revoking the order from Zelenskyy. “Ultimately, the position of the Ukrainian side did not change. History should not be an obstacle to the future, but a good future can only be built on truth,” he said. “If anyone wants to be proud of the murderers of women and children, they cannot be surprised by the reaction,” Nawrocki’s chief foreign policy adviser, Marcin Przydacz, said. A poll for the Polish media showed that a majority of Poles supported the move. Over the weekend, Zelenskyy sent the award back by post and hit back at Nawrocki, alleging he sought to exploit rising anti-Ukrainian sentiments ahead of next year’s parliamentary election in Poland, drawing parallels with Hungary’s ousted prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “Our service members choose a ‌heroic name for their unit themselves, and as president and supreme commander-in-chief, I must support them,” he said. Zelenskyy also warned that the dispute would weaken Polish-Ukrainian relations at a time of rising tensions with Russia. “Without Ukraine, no one will be able to defend Poland. It is simply impossible,” he said. In a rare sign of unity across the political divide in Ukraine, his predecessors, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, also sent their Polish honours back, as did several senior Ukrainian officials. Zelenskyy’s snub will be embarrassing for Poland’s pro-European prime minister, Donald Tusk, who will be the main host of the conference in his home town of Gdańsk and who has repeatedly urged both presidents to de-escalate. Tusk previously warned that an escalation between the two presidents would be “a strategic mistake that will cost both sides”. Speaking before the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk said he was “very well aware” of the anti-Ukrainian sentiment, which he said was sometimes “justified”, but accused politicians in both countries of “stoking tensions rather than building solidarity and accord between Ukraine and Poland”. “But keeping in mind the strategic security and interests of Poland … I will not lend a hand in any way to stoking these tensions,” he said. Poland has been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since the full-scale invasion in 2022, becoming home to more than a million Ukrainians who fled in the first months of the war. It also remains a strategic logistics hub for deliveries to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the EU warned on Tuesday that only Russia would benefit from worsening relations between the two neighbours, saying it hoped the conference – which will be attended by the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen – would still prove a success. “There’s only one happy observer in this type of situation, and that’s the aggressor in Ukraine, and so we shouldn’t be playing into their hands,” EU spokesperson Paula Pinho said.