Russia’s foreign minister says no meeting planned between Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there was no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, as Moscow said there remained “no meeting planned” between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” Trump said, showing apparent frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Putin in Alaska.

Treaty will allow PNG nationals to gain Australian citizenship by serving in defence forces and comes as the country sits at the centre of a geopolitical battle

As Papua New Guinea prepares to mark 50 years as an independent nation next month, the country will sign a defence treaty with Australia, binding it closer again to its former colonial overseer.

The treaty will allow Papua New Guinea nationals to gain Australian citizenship by serving in its defence forces, deepen defence cooperation, and give both countries’ militaries greater access to each other’s bases.

No Australian side has won in the South African city in seven Tests across 33 years but Joe Schmidt’s fitter and faster team is full of belief they can

The Wallabies didn’t just defeat the Springboks last weekend, they humiliated them. Now comes the reckoning. The bear has been poked, the Springbok spit-roasted. South Africa’s coach Rassie Erasmus has swung the axe with 10 changes to the side that coughed up a 22-0 lead and allowed 38 unanswered points inside an hour.

The widely held view is that rugby’s world order will be brutally restored in this weekend’s return Test in Cape Town. The two-time world champions will crush their impetuous rivals and resume their mantle as rugby’s No 1 team after last week’s boilover saw them slip down the rankings to No 3 below New Zealand and Ireland.

Hundreds of transcript pages unlikely to pacify those who want to know more of president’s association with Epstein

For weeks, Donald Trump has been on the defensive over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files and the extent of his own personal links to the late sex trafficker.

While Trump had promised to release files related to Epstein, his justice department announced in July there would be no more disclosures, prompting uproar among conspiracy-minded Maga adherents and many other of his supporters.

The 18-year-old is one of several prominent young Black Ferns fighting to retain the title and secure New Zealand’s seventh World Cup

Back in 2022, Braxton Sorensen-McGee was in the Eden Park crowd to watch the heart-stopping semi-final between France and New Zealand. The then 16-year-old, at the ground with her school team, remembers the moment of relief when a last-minute French penalty goal attempt drifted wide, allowing the Black Ferns to scrape through to the final of the Women’s World Cup. In another gripping contest against arch-rivals England, New Zealand went on to win the tournament.

Now, Sorensen-McGee hopes to play a decisive role in retaining the title. After a breakout 2025, the 18-year-old is the youngest member of the Black Ferns squad, who take on Spain on Monday morning (NZT) in their opening act of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, hosted by England.

Rotorua and Taupō in northern New Zealand are home to geothermal pools that can heat up to 90C

To get to the geothermal pool of the Squeeze near Taupō in New Zealand, you need to kayak across a lake and wade through a stream pinched between the narrow walls of a canyon. As she walked through the forest to get to the pool, Carmen Chan could feel the mud between her toes getting warmer.

“It was such a visceral way to be in the forest,” Chan says. The pool had a hot waterfall, the steam from which created a fogginess “like an Indiana Jones adventure” – even though the real world, golf courses and highways, was only 6km away. A decade after that first trip, the now 32-year-old Chan is still hooked. The doctor regularly goes to local hot springs to soak her feet after a long shift at Rotorua hospital.

Unprecedented deal comes after president demanded CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign over his ties to Chinese firms

The US government has taken an unprecedented 10% stake in Intel under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, according to Donald Trump and the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America.

Lutnick wrote on X: “BIG NEWS: The United States of America now owns 10% of Intel, one of our great American technology companies. Thanks to Intel CEO @LipBuTan1 for striking a deal that’s fair to Intel and fair to the American People.”

Jeffrey Kruse ousted as head of DIA, which said US strikes had set back Tehran nuclear program only a few months

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.

Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Electric atmosphere in Sunderland and at the stadium proves women’s tournament has grown up quicker than anyone ever expected

It was quiet at Sunderland station on Friday afternoon, and quiet all the way up Union and South Streets and quiet all the way along to Keel Square, where the World Cup was hidden, waiting around the corner like a surprise party. There three, four, five thousand or more were bouncing up and down while a stout lad with Spandex trousers, a sequined jacket and serious pipes was belting out the opening notes of We Will Rock You on the big stage while his band thrashed away behind him. If everywhere else around town was empty, it was because everyone was here. It was a hell of a way to start a World Cup.

“Let’s show them how we do it in the north-east!” shouted out the Mackem Mercury as he set a carnival parade off marching over the bridge towards the Stadium of Light for the kick-off.

Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are meant to convince us that truth doesn’t matter and we should blindly accept his lies

Donald Trump’s critique of the Smithsonian Institution for its focus on “how bad slavery was” might seem like a joke, except that, like so many of the ignorant, mean-spirited and flat-out racist opinions and directives issued by the White House over the last six months, it’s not even remotely funny.

What makes it even more absurd and disturbing is that the president and his minions (JD Vance, the vice-president, sits on the Smithsonian’s board) are determined to micro-manage the exhibits and wall texts on view at the 21 museums that operate under the Smithsonian’s aegis and to replace the truth about history with “unifying and constructive descriptions”. Among the proscribed images are a picture of the former NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci (one of the president’s perceived enemies) and a photo of immigrants watching fireworks through a gap in the border wall.

Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Investigators are looking into what kind of gases may have played a role at Prospect Valley Dairy in Keenesburg

An apparent accident at a dairy in a rural farming community in Colorado involving exposure to gas killed six people, including a high school student, authorities said on Thursday.

Investigators are looking into what kind of gases may have played a role in the deaths on Wednesday at Prospect Valley Dairy in Keenesburg, about 35 miles (55km) north-east of Denver. Crews recovered the bodies in a confined space at the dairy, the Southeast Weld fire protection district said.

This was Graham Potter finding out what a broken club really looks like. It is the London Stadium emptying out long before full time, patience worn thin by the latest in a long line of humiliations. It is one young fan mounting a solo pitch invasion after being driven to despair by his side’s inability to defend set pieces. It is a new £15m goalkeeper who cannot catch crosses and, as much as Potter will plead for calm, it is that the only positive for West Ham was Chelsea pretty much declaring after going 5-1 up with over half an hour to play.

Chelsea had run through at will, cutting West Ham’s execrable back five to shreds, João Pedro and Estêvão Willian playing a different sport from every individual in claret and blue. Whatever the gulf in class, though, there can be no excuse for a performance so lacking in heart and a team so incapable of doing the basics.

• England 69-7 USA

• Kildunne and Breach double up for rampant hosts

Outside chatter of a Rugby World Cup favourites tag and expectations on a team can only go so far, the Red Roses had to go out and prove it on the pitch. The host nation more than lived up to their hype as they kicked off their campaign in front of a record crowd for an opening game at a women’s World Cup with a hugely dominant display against the USA which has underlined their ambitions for the World Cup crown.

The prop Hannah Botterman and the centre Megan Jones were standouts in a good team display and the scary thought for their future opponents is that the performance was far from England’s best.

• Bradley: ‘This is the biggest decision of my life’

• Tommy Fleetwood joint leader in Tour Championship

Keegan Bradley has opened up on the intense strain associated with his upcoming and “defining” decision on whether to play for, as well as captain, the United States in the Ryder Cup.

“I am going to be really happy when this week is over,” Bradley said. “I have about had it with this whole thing. I am ready to figure out what we are doing and get a team together.”

The organisation that manages the Square Kilometre Array Observatory has denied whistleblower allegations of financial mismanagement

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It is hailed as a global endeavour to explore the hidden universe – a powerful telescope comprising more than 130,000 antennae being built in outback Western Australia.

Along with a sister telescope in South Africa, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory is a €2bn (A$3.6bn) project tasked with mapping the first billion years of the universe.

Manager of zipline facility detained for alleged religious discrimination after group of eight- to 18-year-olds turned away

The manager of a leisure park in southern France has been detained for alleged religious discrimination after a group of Israeli children were refused access.

The children, aged eight to 16, were on holiday in Spain and had made a reservation for Thursday to use the Tyrovol zipline adventure park in Porté-Puymorens, near the Spanish border in the Pyrenees mountains, the Perpignan prosecutor’s office said.

More than 40 passengers evaluated or treated at hospitals with injuries ranging from head trauma to broken arms and legs

At least five people, including a child, were killed after a tour bus carrying 51 people crashed in upstate New York on its way back from a trip to Niagra Falls on Friday.

The passengers were initially trapped in the wreckage, according to law enforcement, and then admitted to hospitals in the region where more than 40 of them were evaluated or treated with injuries ranging from head trauma to broken arms and legs.

Ex-national security adviser and Trump critic is fifth in a list of 60 to have been investigated in the last seven months

When Kash Patel, the FBI director, faced senators during his confirmation hearings on 30 January, he bristled at suggestions that his 2023 book contained an “enemies list”. The appendix to Government Gangsters, which included a list of names for around 60 people, was simply documentation of those who had “weaponized” the government, he insisted.

Seven months later, that denial appears increasingly hollow. Friday’s FBI search of the former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office, reportedly to find classified documents, marks the fifth investigation targeting people from Patel’s book.

Newly released documents from July DoJ interview show Maxwell detailed Epstein-Trump social relationship

• Ghislaine Maxwell transcript: what we know at a glance

The US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

In a post on X, Blanche said the materials were being released “in the interest of transparency”, providing links to the transcript and to audio files.

Ábrego will return home to Maryland from Tennessee for first time after wrongful deportation to El Salvador

Kilmar Ábrego García has been freed on Friday from criminal custody in Tennessee so he can rejoin his family in Maryland while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges, after a court ordered his release.

Magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, following his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.

Navy pilot Donald McPherson shot down five Japanese service members and earned Congressional Gold Medal

The second world war pilot who was believed to be the US’s last surviving “ace” – a title he earned by shooting down five enemy combatants – has died.

Donald McPherson was 103 when he died on 14 August, according to his online obituary.

‘War dashboard’ showing number of militants killed was objective in itself with no plan for how Gaza could be governed afterwards, say sources in elite Unit 8200

As Israel gears up for a new offensive in Gaza, figures from a classified database suggest the country’s political and military leadership has for two years misled their country and the world about a war that has overwhelmingly killed civilians.

In May this year, Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed, or probably killed, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found.

President plots expansion of crime crackdown as Pentagon chief says troops patrolling DC streets will be armed

Donald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.

The US president talked to reporters in the Oval Office and said: “When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess.” He added that then the administration “will help with New York”, amid the controversial and aggressive federal efforts to control leading Democratic-voting cities, each of which has a Black mayor.

Multiple fires have ignited this week with searing heat expected to last days and extend to Pacific north-west

Multiple wildfires have ignited across California as the state continues to scorch in a multi-day heatwave that is expected to last through the weekend.

The largest this week, named the Pickett fire, exploded in size on Thursday as it burned in a remote area of Napa county, and covered more than 3,200 acres (850 hectares) by Friday afternoon. Evacuation orders and warnings have been issued on Thursday for hundreds of residents around Calistoga, a small city in the region known for its wine, as firefighters faced challenging conditions, working through dangerously high temperatures and rugged terrain. The fire’s perimeter is just 5% contained.