Read the daily news to learn English

What is the Muslim Brotherhood – explained in 30 seconds

The Muslim Brotherhood is a pan-Islamist organisation that was founded in Egypt in 1928 as an Islamic political movement to counter the spread of secular and nationalist ideas. It swiftly spread through Muslim countries, becoming a major player but often operating in secret. Its founder, Egyptian schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, believed that reviving Islamic principles in society could enable the Muslim world to resist Western colonialism. The Muslim Brotherhood is now outlawed as a terrorist group in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More recently, Jordan banned it in April 2025. It is popular in Jordan, and had continued to operate there even though the country’s top court in 2020 ruled to dissolve the group. Authorities have turned a blind eye to its activities in the past. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned since 2013, after the overthrow of its leader and then-president Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in a military coup led by then military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi has led Egypt since then, forging a key alliance with Washington in the process. In May 2025, president Emmanuel Macron of France ordered his government to draw up proposals to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the spread of political Islam in that country. In November, the US president, Donald Trump, began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organisations and specially-designated global terrorists, a move would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements.

Ukraine makes significant changes to US ‘peace plan’, sources say

Ukraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” to end the conflict, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned on Monday that no deal could be reached quickly. Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week, sources indicated, amid a flurry of calls between Kyiv and Washington. Ukraine is pressing for Europe to be involved in the talks. The original 28-point US-Russian plan was drawn up last month by Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, and Trump’s representative Steve Witkoff. It calls on Ukraine to withdraw from cities it controls in the eastern Donbas region, limit the size of its army, and not join Nato. During negotiations on Sunday in Switzerland – led by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak – the plan was substantially revised. It now includes only 19 points. Kyiv and its European partners say the existing frontline has to be the starting point for territorial discussions. On Monday, Zelenskyy said: “As of now, after Geneva, there are fewer points, no longer 28, and many correct elements have been incorporated into this framework,” adding that sensitive issues were to be discussed with Trump. They say there can be no recognition of land seized by Russia militarily, and that Kyiv should make its own decisions on whether to join the EU and Nato – something the Kremlin wants to veto or impose conditions on. Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told the Financial Times such issues had been “placed in brackets” for Trump and Zelenskyy to decide upon later. Rubio hailed Sunday’s talks as “very very positive”. Writing on Truth Social on Monday, Trump, who days earlier had accused Ukraine’s leadership of having “zero gratitude”, also struck a positive tone. “Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” he wrote. Ukraine’s delegation briefed Zelenskyy about the talks on Monday after returning to Kyiv from Geneva. They described the latest version of the plan as more realistic. Separately, Zelenskyy spoke to the US vice-president, JD Vance, and urged him to involve European countries in the process. Vance reportedly agreed. But in the clearest sign yet the original 28-point plan – widely seen as favourable to Moscow – still falls short of several key Kremlin demands, Putin’s top foreign policy aide on Monday said Moscow would seek to “rework” parts of it. “We were given some sort of draft … which will require further reworking,” said Yuri Ushakov, adding that “many provisions” of the plan appeared acceptable to Russia, but others would “require the most detailed discussions and review between the parties”. Underscoring the Kremlin’s hardline stance, Ushakov said Moscow would reject a European counter-proposal from the weekend, which, according to a copy seen by Reuters, changes the meaning and significance of key points concerning Nato membership and territory. “The European plan, at first glance … is completely unconstructive and does not work for us,” he said. The UK and EU were blind-sided last week when the original plan was leaked to US media. The army secretary, Dan Driscoll – Vance’s friend and university classmate – was sent to Kyiv with a military delegation to brief Zelenskyy on its contents. Since then, European governments have sought to revise the document, which appears to have originally been written in Russian. EU leaders attending an EU-Africa summit in Angola welcomed a degree of progress, but said far more work remained to be done and insisted Europe must be fully involved and Russia must be present if talks were to advance substantively. The European Council president, António Costa, praised “a new momentum”, saying after talks on the sidelines of the summit that while issues remained, “the direction is positive”. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, also called the “refined peace framework” agreed in Switzerland “a solid basis for moving forward”, but added: “Work remains to be done.” Von der Leyen said the core principles the EU would always insist on were that “Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty must be respected – only Ukraine, as a sovereign country, can make decisions regarding its armed forces”. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said both Europe and Russia must be fully involved. “The next step must be: Russia must come to the table,” Merz said, while Europeans must be able to give their consent to “issues that affect European interests and sovereignty”. Talks would be a “long-lasting process” and Merz said he did not expect a breakthrough this week. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the talks were delicate because “nobody wants to put off the Americans and President Trump from having the US on our side in this process”. Tusk also stressed that any peace settlement needed to “strengthen, not weaken, our security” and must not “favour the aggressor”. Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said Russia “must be forced to the negotiating table” to see “aggression … never pays”. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said there was more work to do but progress was being made. A group of countries supporting Ukraine – the coalition of the willing – would discuss the issue in a video call on Tuesday, he said. The chairs of the parliamentary foreign affairs committees of 20 European countries, including France, Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK, issued a rare joint statement saying just and lasting peace would not be achieved by “yielding to the aggressor” but must be “grounded in international law and fully respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty”. On Monday, the White House pushed back against criticism, including from within the Republican party, that Trump is favouring Russia. “The idea that the US is not engaging with both sides equally in this war to bring it to an end is a complete and total fallacy,” the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters. Zelenskyy is at his most vulnerable since the start of the war, after a corruption scandal led to two of his ministers being dismissed while Russia makes battlefield gains. Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, was hit by what officials said was a massive drone attack that killed four people on Sunday. With smoke rising from the rubble, one man was seen crouched and holding the hand of a dead person. “There was a family, there were children,” Ihor Klymenko, Red Cross commander of the emergency response team in Kharkiv, told Reuters. “I can’t tell you how, but the children are alive, thank God, the man is alive. The woman died, unfortunately.” Across the border, Russian air defences downed Ukrainian drones en route to Moscow, forcing three airports serving the capital to pause flights. A reported Ukrainian drone strike on Sunday knocked power out for thousands of residents near Moscow, a rare reversal of Russian attacks on energy targets that regularly cause power blackouts for millions of Ukrainians.

Nauru president floats returning NZYQ refugees to home countries

Nauru may seek to return refugees from the NZYQ cohort to their home countries, the Nauruan president has said in a new translation of a February interview that has been the subject of months-long controversy. David Adeang’s interview erroneously claimed those being sent to Nauru were not refugees and said Nauru may seek to return them to their countries of origin where possible. Guardian Australia has confirmed members of the NZYQ group have had refugee protection claims recognised by Australia. It is understood some of the men already transferred to Nauru are among those who are refugees. The Guardian has previously reported a partial transcript, which was corroborated by the full transcript read into Hansard by senators David Pocock and David Shoebridge late on Monday. The translation read into Hansard was not the Australian government’s document, but an independently sourced and verified translation obtained by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). The Australian government has consistently resisted disclosure of its translation of the interview, including winning a non-publication order over its document in the federal court. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Responding to a Senate order to produce the official translation, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, wrote that its publication would “prejudice Australia’s international relations … and our broader standing in the Pacific”. At least five members of the NZYQ cohort have been forcibly removed to Nauru and are being held at a regional processing centre on the Pacific island. Australian is legally obliged to protect refugees under the refugees convention, and cannot return them to their home country where they face a “well-founded fear of being persecuted”. Even if that return is made through a third country – such as Nauru – it is unlawful, known in international law as “chain refoulement”. Nauru is also a party to the convention. Adeang granted the interview in February, speaking in Nauruan to a government staff member, and explaining the new agreement Nauru had signed with Australia to accept members of the NZYQ cohort. The deal will see Australia pay Nauru up to $2.5bn over three decades. Adeang said those removed to Nauru by Australia would stay on the island for 30 years. “Unless of course, we, your government, find a way for them to move around, for example; they get to go home,” he said, according to the ASRC translation released on Monday. “The problem now is, Australia cannot return them home, these people are what you would refer to as stateless. “Their homelands do not want them and they do not have a way to go home. And if over time we find a way to return them home then of course they will not reach the 30 years, but the visa we are providing them to start is 30 years.” The Guardian understands none of the men sent to Nauru under the new agreement so far are stateless. Adeang repeatedly said – incorrectly – that members of the NZYQ cohort were not refugees. “To clarify, these people are not refugees. They are regular people but their background or their history is that they have been to jail. “These days, they are free to roam around Australia and while they are no longer under penalties but they are not of that place and despite Australia’s preference to send them home, they are unable to.” The NZYQ cohort is a group of 354 non-citizens released from indefinite immigration detention in Australia after a high court ruling in late 2023. Their visas had been cancelled on “character grounds”, most as a result of a criminal conviction. Most have completed a jail term but cannot be returned to their home countries because they face persecution there. Some have lived in Australia for decades and have Australian-citizen partners and children. Shoebridge told the Senate Adeang’s claim that the NZYQ cohort were not refugees was “plainly wrong”. “Did the government tell them that? Did … our government mislead the Nauruan government? Do they adhere to what the Nauruan president said about these people not being refugees? None of them refugees? “And they’re probably also embarrassed by the fact that President Adeang has made it very clear he wants these people to return from the country they came from. We know that they have fled from persecution by and large.” Ogy Simic, head of advocacy at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said on Monday night the Australian government’s secrecy around its offshore program was “deeply alarming”. He said the secrecy and cover-ups eroded public trust, and abuse and corruption thrived in the opacity of the offshore regime. “The transcript reveals for the first time that Nauru plans to send people back to their countries of origin ‘if they find a way’, even though these are people Australia has not removed to their country of origin because they are refugees. This means the Australian government has effectively outsourced refoulement – paying another country to do what Australia legally cannot.” He said the Adeang interview – the release of which was resisted by the government – exposed a dangerous loophole. “Australia claims to be upholding international law while quietly paying for people to be returned to danger via third-party deals.” The legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, said the government had tried to hide “nearly every detail” of its agreement with Nauru. “Now we learn that the Nauruan government may not have any intention of holding up its end of this lamentable deal.” She said the forced removals to Nauru must be stopped, because the government could not guarantee people’s safety. “Our government is tearing people away from their lives, families and communities in Australia and exiling them to a place where they are clearly not welcome. Our government has known all along that it might be sending people to their deaths – through denial of the medical care they need to survive, or by forcing them back to the countries they fled as refugees.” The Guardian has sought comment from the Department of Home Affairs and the Nauruan government.

Grizzly bear that attacked children and teachers in Canada still eludes searchers

Conservation officers in British Columbia are still searching for a female grizzly bear and her two cubs, four days after the sow attacked a group of schoolchildren and their teachers in an “exceedingly rare” encounter that has shaken the remote Canadian community. Eleven people, some as young as nine years old, were injured on Thursday when the bear emerged from the forest near 4 Mile, a Nuxalk community near the town Bella Coola and attacked a school group on a lunch break alongside a walking trail. Three teachers fought the bear off: one emptied two cans of bear spray that appeared to have little effect, another jumped on the bear, pummeling it with punches. A third hit the grizzly repeatedly with her crutches before it finally fled back into the woods. Three children were taken to a hospital following the incident, including two with critical injuries. An adult was also flown to a hospital in Vancouver. Seven others were treated in the community. The province’s environment minister, Tamara Davidson, said the teachers “took great risk” when they intervened to protect children. “They were well prepared, and they were the true heroes.” Conservation officers say that given the size of the group, the attack was largely unprecedented in the region. But it has sent ripples of worry throughout 4 Mile, and put the outdoors-oriented residents on lockdown as officers search for the aggressive bear. Over the weekend, the province’s conservation service said it had scoured a large, cordoned-off area of the Bella Coola River valley for the female bear and her two cubs, but the rocky and densely forested landscape has offered up few clues. “This is, speaking from experience, probably the most dangerous thing that conservation officers do, especially dealing with family units with sows,” Sgt Jeff Tyre of the Conservation Officer Service, or COS, at a news conference Sunday. If possible, teams will live-trap bears and collect DNA samples to identify the likely attackers. But, as Tyre said: “The bears don’t necessarily cooperate.” The teams, working amid in freezing temperatures and under threat of snow, are also racing against the biological clocks of bears, who will soon begin hibernating as the deep cold sets in. Grizzly bears have coexisted alongside the Nuxalk nation for generations. But the area, dubbed the “gateway to the Great Bear Rainforest” in tourism campaigns, has seen increased numbers of grizzly bears in recent years that residents say have disrupted a delicate balance. Nuxalk leadership say both human action, such as logging, and the effects of climate change, including forest fires and droughts, have disrupted key food sources and displaced bears. Residents have reported seeing bears more commonly in their yards and experienced occasional break-ins. Tanyss Munro, who lives with her husband in the Bella Coola valley, told CityNews that she returned home last month to find their front door smashed in. Inside their house, the kitchen was destroyed and their fridge had been dragged to the yard. A metal trailer in their yard was also destroyed. “[The bears] had ripped off, and folded in half, the steel-clad door and gone in there and just demolished that,” she said. “They wrecked the furnace. We had just had it filled up with propane. And that was all gone… and just everything was smashed,” she said. The BC Wildlife Federation (BCWF) warned that Thursday’s attack, which conservation officers called “atypical”, reflects a broader trend in the province. The group, which advocates for hunters, said a decision to ban trophy hunting of grizzly bears in 2017 – a decision the group said was made “due to popular opinion, with no scientific rationale” – was partly to blame. “In the 10 years preceding the ban, calls to the [conservation officers] concerning grizzly conflicts ranged from 300 to 500 a year, peaking between April and November,” the group said. “Since the ban, calls about grizzly bears doubled, to nearly 1,000 a year.” But the group’s call to revive the trophy hunt has created fissures in the hunting community, reflecting the controversial nature of the hunt. “The idea of hunting to manage bears, it’s an old way of thinking that we really need to change and examine. And First Nations communities, like the Nuxalk nation have shown there is a different approach. They don’t manage wildlife because it’s not something to manage. They’re stewards,’ said Nicholas Scapillati, head of the non-profit Grizzly Bear Foundation. Many of the more isolated First Nations communities in the region have bear education programs that reflect a more holistic way of interacting with grizzlies. “As we see a change in food sources and forest fires, things are fluctuating. Bears are on the move and moving around in different ways. And so we need to think differently than how we have for centuries in this province,” said Scapillati. “First Nations communities have been leaders in this area. And so not only do they need support for us now in this time with this rare attack, but they also need support on the plans they’ve shown us are needed to do what they’ve long known is possible: coexistence with bears.”

Surprise envoy pushing Ukraine ‘peace’ plan belies Vance influence on US policy

The US army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration’s newest proposal to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but his ties to JD Vance have put a close ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president on the frontlines of Donald Trump’s latest push to end the war. Before his trip to Kyiv last week, Driscoll was not known for his role as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts at selling the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent. His close ties to Vance, with whom he studied at Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis. It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more “respect” – now Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to cut a quick deal that local officials have described as a “capitulation”. After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump’s top advisers – including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance. Vance has been a vocal booster of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Vance’s early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia – while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow – were unsuccessful, and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early speeches in which he accused them of “running from their voters” – who Vance said had anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump’s own constituency. But the new peace deal published last week closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration while the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands. In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the war from restarting. “Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote. “There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand.” “Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart people living in the real world.” It was also Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with bringing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States. That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm footing. Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv. But his initial response to the deal was lukewarm: “Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend before the conference. “And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.” In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration. “Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.” Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”

US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to end operations in territory

A controversial and secretive private company backed by the US and Israel that distributed food in Gaza has announced the end of its operations in the devastated territory. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which had four food distribution sites that became flashpoints of chaos and deadly violence between May and October, said in a statement that it would shut down permanently, having “successfully completed its emergency mission”. International aid organisations refused to work with the GHF, which was launched as famine loomed in Gaza after the total blockade on all supplies imposed by Israel in March. The opaque company was considered by Israeli and US officials as an alternative to the United Nations, which the countries accused of failing to distribute aid efficiently and criticised over the looting in the territory. Israel also accused Hamas of systematically diverting aid from the needy to fund its political, social and military operations. Throughout the war, the UN led a massive humanitarian effort with other aid groups, distributing food, medicine, fuel and other supplies at more than 400 centres around Gaza despite massive logistical obstacles and tight restrictions imposed by Israel. In August, a UN-mandated expert panel alleged that under the GHF aid was “exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas”. More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking aid from GHF sites were killed or injured by Israeli military forces which guarded the approaches to the company’s distribution sites in central and southern Gaza, according to witnesses interviewed by the Guardian, medical records and videos posted to social media. Between 25 May and 19 June, the Red Cross clinic in the southern city of Rafah saw 1,874 “weapon-wounded patients”, with the vast majority reporting they were wounded trying to access aid from GHF sites. The Israeli military said it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger. The GHF denied any violence in the aid sites themselves but acknowledged the potential dangers people faced when travelling to them on foot. Contractors working at the sites, backed by video accounts, said the US security guards fired live ammunition and stun grenades as desperate Palestinians scrambled for food. John Acree, a former senior official at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said that GHF would transfer its work to the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), the new centre set up by the US in Israel to oversee the ceasefire and aid delivery in Gaza. “GHF has been in talks with CMCC and international organisations now for weeks about the way forward and it’s clear they will be adopting and expanding the model GHF piloted,” he said. The GHF had closed its distribution sites after the US-brokered ceasefire took effect in Gaza last month. All were in the part of Gaza that is under Israel’s control and so were inaccessible to Palestinians. In its statement, the GHF said it had delivered more than 187m meals directly to civilians living in Gaza, which it called “a record humanitarian operation that ensured food aid reached Palestinian families safely and without diversion to Hamas or other entities”. Acree said: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion … We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.” Acree’s predecessor resigned, saying it was “not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”. The US state department thanked GHF for its humanitarian work and its contribution to reaching a ceasefire in Gaza. Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the US state department, wrote on X: “GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire. We thank them for all that they provided to Gazans.” A spokesperson for Hamas said the GHF should be held accountable for the harm it caused to Palestinians. “We call upon all international human rights organisations to ensure that it does not escape accountability after causing the death and injury of thousands of Gazans and covering up the starvation policy practised by the [Israeli] government,” Hazem Qassem wrote on his Telegram channel.

Court ruling to remove children of UK-Australian couple living in woods divides Italy

The decision by an Italian court to remove three children being brought up in the woods from their British-Australian parents has sparked a fierce debate in the country over alternative lifestyles. Nathan Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol, and his wife, Catherine Birmingham, a former horse-riding teacher from Melbourne, bought a dilapidated property in a wooded area in Palmoli, in the central Italian region of Abruzzo, in 2021. The aim was to raise their three children – Utopia Rose, eight, and six-year-old twins Galorian and Bluebell – as close to nature as possible. They grew their own food, generated electricity via solar power and extracted their water from a well. Meanwhile, the children, surrounded by horses, donkeys and chickens, were homeschooled. Weekly trips to San Salvo, a town on the Adriatic coast with a population of 20,000, exposed them to the outside world. But the idyllic life came under scrutiny from local social services in September last year when the entire family was hospitalised after eating poisonous mushrooms picked from the woods. The authorities investigated further and found the family’s dwelling to be “dilapidated, in terrible hygienic conditions and lacking the necessary utilities”, a court document showed. Last week, the judge of a juvenile court in L’Aquila upheld a prosecutor’s claims that the children were suffering from “serious and harmful violations” of their rights owing to living off-grid, and ordered their removal. They were taken away by police on Thursday afternoon and taken to a church-run facility. Their mother is with them, although both parents have limited access to their children, according to their lawyer, Giovanni Angelucci. In its ruling, the juvenile court noted that “the family unit lives in housing hardship” and has “no social interaction, no fixed income”, while the home “has no toilet facilities” and “the children do not attend school”. As they awaited the court’s decision, Trevallion and Birmingham gave several interviews to the press, generating support from thousands who signed an online petition calling for the family to be kept together. Trevallion described the children’s removal as “a great heartbreak” that had caused them “shock”. “It was the worst night of my life,” he told the local news site, Il Centro, the day after the children were taken away, adding that in the care facility they were made to sleep in a separate room to their mother. “This is the hardest thing,” he added. “It’s a terrible situation.” He told La Repubblica: “We live outside of the system … this is what they’re accusing us of. They are ruining the life of a happy family.” Trevallion declined to speak further on Monday and Birmingham could not be reached for comment. Angelucci said the couple would appeal against the removal of their children, claiming that the judge’s report contained “falsehoods”, especially related to their schooling. The couple met while travelling in Bali and contemplated raising their family in Spain before settling in Italy. Trevallion told La Repubblica they would like to stay in the country but were also ready to move to Australia. The case has generated political controversy and a backlash against the juvenile court’s top judge, Cecilia Angrisano. Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, expressed “alarm” over the children being taken into care and instructed her justice minister, Carlo Nordio, to assess whether there were grounds to send inspectors. The deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, compared the case to a kidnapping. Italian magistrates often come under attack by Meloni’s government, and the ANM union on Monday warned against the “exploitation” of the case, saying the court’s decision was based on factors including the children’s safety, sanitary conditions and education. Chiara Saraceno, a well known Italian sociologist, said: “It is very difficult to understand what is happening there. But there is nothing wrong with wanting to provide an alternative education. The problem is how isolated these children were and how hygienic their [living] conditions were.” However, Saraceno questioned the focus of the social services on this particular case, when “so many impoverished children live in houses”. “In these cases, you have to wonder: where are the social workers?”

Disarray over leaked US-Russia peace plan is ideal scenario for Putin

The Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn’t needed to. The 28-point US-Russia peace proposal, leaked to the media last week, has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray, creating precisely the conditions Vladimir Putin has long sought: a negotiating table sharply tilted in the Russian president’s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally hanging over its head. Since Donald Trump’s return to power, both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, have worked relentlessly to convince the US they are not the side resisting peace. For his part, the US president has oscillated wildly – blasting one side or the other with angry posts and threats. After the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, which by most accounts left the US president dissatisfied, he briefly appeared to side more openly with Kyiv, accusing Russia of blocking peace. Significant US sanctions on Russian oil followed. But last week’s peace plan – largely drafted in Florida by the US property developer Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund – has upended that dynamic. While the exact inception of the plan – and Trump’s precise role in it – remains unclear, the US president is embracing it. On Sunday, he returned to portraying Ukraine as the obstacle to ending the war. The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform complaining that Kyiv’s leadership had “EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS”. Moscow, meanwhile, has remained strikingly quiet. For days, the foreign ministry feigned ignorance, insisting it knew nothing of any peace initiative, before Putin himself said late on Friday that the proposals “could form the basis of a final peace settlement”. The structure of the US negotiation process works to Russia’s advantage. Washington wants Kyiv to approve the plan before a US delegation travels to Moscow to finalise terms. The Kremlin believes any move by Zelenskyy to accept something close to the 28-point draft would trigger political turmoil in Ukraine – an outcome Moscow would welcome. And Putin knows Ukraine cannot simply abandon the talks: it remains reliant on US-supplied weapons and intelligence and could face a catastrophic winter if its central ally walked away. Even if Kyiv were to support the plan, Russian insiders and analysts expect Putin to demand further concessions. “The plan may be 70% acceptable, but the rest is something Putin will not agree to,” said Anton Barbashin, a visiting researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “He will certainly say: Yes, let’s work on this – here are my amendments.” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the current proposal – which she described as clumsily drafted – leaves too much room for interpretation, making it the sort of document Putin would never sign. The proposal’s vague wording on Ukraine’s neutrality and Nato’s future expansion, she said, would demand concrete “documents, timelines and commitments – none of which appear in the draft”. According to Stanovaya, Putin is unlikely to retreat from his main goal of subjugating Ukraine and will instead push for a revised version of the current plan that more fully reflects Russia’s interests. But if diplomacy stalls, she said Putin would see “no problem with continuing the war” as the Kremlin believes Ukraine’s position will worsen over time – especially if Trump follows through on threats to halt US military aid. On Friday Putin stopped short of confirming he would sign the deal, in part, Stanovaya believes, because he is waiting to see how the apparent disagreements inside the US administration over the plan unfold. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Saturday stressed that the US “authored” the peace plan, after a Republican senator asserted that Rubio had distanced himself from the proposal and called it a Russian initiative. “The Kremlin is watching to see which faction inside the US administration prevails. It’s far too early for Moscow to celebrate,” Stanovaya said. Ukraine’s hope, as in past rounds of diplomacy, is that with its European allies it can reshape the proposal into something acceptable for Kyiv and persuade Trump to back that version. On Monday, the US and Ukraine produced a 19-point peace plan that is markedly more favourable to Kyiv, but deferred the most politically sensitive questions for later. Moscow is almost certain to reject the counter-proposal, returning the process to square one. With events moving quickly, Putin is likely to take a back seat for the moment, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst close to the Kremlin. Lukyanov said Russia would maintain military pressure “at its current level” until Ukraine accepted the original 28-point plan, after which Moscow would be ready to move to detailed discussions. “The ball is on the other side,” Lukyanov added.