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A third of Kyiv is without heating after a Russian drone and missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital cut off power supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack. “The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.

The intense overnight strikes lasted 10 hours and killed one person and wounded two dozen others. They came as the Ukrainian leader headed to Florida for a face-to-face meeting on Sunday with Donald Trump, who has proposed a plan to end nearly four years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands.

Zelenskyy stopped in Canada, where he met the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who announced an additional $2.5bn (£1.85bn) of economic aid for Ukraine.

Carney condemned the “barbaric” overnight attack on Kyiv. He said: “We have the conditions, the possibility, for the just and lasting peace,” adding this requires a “willing Russia”.

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Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot.

That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles.

Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said.

“It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas.

Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions.

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Somali officials and the African Union on Saturday blasted Israel for recognizing Somaliland as an independent state and allegedly undermining Somalia’s sovereignty.

“The federal government of Somalia warns that illegitimate actions of this nature seriously undermine regional peace and stability, exacerbate political and security tensions in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the Middle East and the wider region,” Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre’s office posted on social platform X, alongside a video statement.

Barre’s office called the recognition a “deliberate attack” on Somalia’s autonomy.

“Somalia makes it clear that it will not permit the establishment of any foreign military bases or arrangements on its territory that will throw Somalia into proxy conflicts or import regional and international hostilities into this region,” an official said in the video.

African Union Commission Chair  also rejected Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “with deep concern” and cited the Constitutive Act of the African Union in calling for Somali unity.

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Jaber al-Attar, a 51-year-old doctor living in northern Gaza, was elated when the news arrived of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, bringing an end to two years of relentless bombardment.

But just four weeks after it was announced, he received a phone call on his way to work at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat to say that his daughter, Maysaa, had been killed by Israeli drone fire as she sheltered in a tent.

“There is absolutely no safety; there is no hope for us to have any security,” he tells The Independent from the same tent in the Al-Atatra area of Beit Lahia, where he is living after being displaced. “I spent my life in hardship and misery.”

Jaber’s daughter is one of at least 410 Palestinians to be killed since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

During a victory lap speech in the Knesset, US president Donald Trump had promised “peace for all eternity”. But for Gazans, the nightmare has not ended: it is a ceasefire in name only.

In addition to the more than 400 Palestinians who have been killed, the health ministry says that 1,134 have been injured by Israeli shelling and gunfire. At least three Israeli troops have also been killed by Palestinian militants, while two people were killed on Friday in what police called a "rolling terror attack" in northern Israel.

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President Donald Trump on Friday cast himself as the ultimate arbiter of any peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, in an exclusive conversation with POLITICO.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet with Trump in Florida on Sunday and told reporters he’s bringing with him a new 20-point plan for peace. The framework includes a proposed demilitarized zone and the meeting is expected to focus on U.S. security guarantees.

But in an interview, Trump appeared lukewarm to Zelenskyy’s latest overture and in no rush to endorse the Ukrainian president’s proposal.

“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump said. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”

The president’s comments underscore the degree to which Ukraine’s fate rests on convincing Trump that it is conceding enough to satisfy a president who, at times, has appeared inclined to lean toward Russia if it means an end to the war. Russia has moved very little from its maximalist position and has not reacted to the latest proposal. The U.S., meanwhile, has pushed Zelenskyy to move off his original demands and Trump has often seemed to lose patience with the haggling.

Still, Trump believed he could have a productive meeting this weekend.

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Israel is working to gain as much independence as possible in its weapons production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday, in a development he said was the result of the lessons learned during the past two years of war on multiple fronts.

“I approved, along with the defense minister and finance minister, a sum of NIS 350 billion [$108 billion] over the next decade to build an independent Israeli munitions industry,” Netanyahu said in an address at a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots.

The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to “reduce our dependence on all players, including friends,” after allies including the US, UK, and Germany all imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Still, he noted, many countries around the world, including Germany, “want to buy from us more and more systems.”

The premier has long been calling for Israel to develop its own self-reliant military industry, and in January 2024 announced that the government would invest in a “multi-year plan to free Israel from dependence on external purchases.”

TVNL Comment:  Why has the US given billions of dollars to Israel every single year?  It's a rhetorical question. It's also insane.

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