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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that US president Donald Trump’s call for Ukraine and Russia to stop at the current frontlines was “a good compromise”, reports Reuters.

But Zelenskyy, who is visiting Nordic countries, said he doubted that Russian president Vladimir Putin would support it. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Zelenskyy told reporters:

[Trump] proposed ‘Stay where we stay and begin conversation’. I think that was a good compromise, but I’m not sure that Putin will support it, and I said it to the [US] president.

It comes as plans to hold a summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest have been put on hold as it was reported that Ukraine and its European allies had rallied in pushing for a ceasefire without territorial concessions from Kyiv.

There is no other deal to be taken. Either this or return to fight with full American support coupled with Arab and Islamic passivity and let-down,” said the source close to the negotiators. He said that while the deal is problematic, it contains some terms that Hamas and other Palestinian factions pushed for in their response to Trump, including deferring major issues that would alter the future of Gaza and Palestine itself. “No surrender, no disarming, no mass exile, but most of all a permanent end to the war to be announced by Trump.”

When Hamas offered its official response to Trump’s 20-point plan last Friday, the movement’s leadership took the position that it only had a mandate to enter into a deal on issues directly related to the Gaza war. But it asserted that negotiations on the bulk of Trump’s proposal—which contains sweeping terms that will impact the future governance of Gaza, including demilitarizing and disarming Gaza and the deployment of foreign troops—would require the involvement of all Palestinian factions, not just Hamas.

All of these issues, including Israel’s demand that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups surrender their weapons and Gaza be fully demilitarized, will be deferred to future negotiations. “The next round of negotiations will be very tricky but going back to genocide will not be easy, even though it’s probable,” said the source close to the Palestinian negotiators. The internal calculus among the lead negotiators, he said, was “the cost-benefit analysis would favor accepting it. The next negotiations must be conducted in a very smart way.”

The fellowship has attracted 16 scholars and journalists from several mainstream publications to serve as mentors, including The Atlantic, Spectrum News, The Spectator, Ynet, Times of Israel, and two journalists at The New York Times: Jodi Rudoren, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times, who now oversees newsletters for the paper, including The Morning and DealBook; and Sharon Otterman, who covers education, health, and religion in the New York City area for the Times and who has closely covered the Palestine solidarity campus protests at Columbia and other universities.

The New York Times handbook of “values and practices” for its journalists states they “should take care to ensure” any public engagements—including giving speeches, participating on panels, teaching classes and presenting at conferences—do not “create an actual or apparent conflict of interest, or undermine public trust in The Times’s independence.”

In response to an inquiry from Drop Site about whether having staffed reporters mentoring for a program whose founder has said it exists to help Israel win an “information war” represented a conflict with the Times’ standards, spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement: “It’s ridiculous to suggest participation as a mentor in this fellowship is anything other than helping to build the reporting skills necessary for the next generation of independent journalists.”

Other fellowship mentors include CNN’s Van Jones, who recently issued an apology after drawing intense criticism for comments he made on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday making light of images of dead Palestinian children and saying they were part of an Iran and Qatar disinformation campaign; and Michael Powell, a staff writer at the Atlantic and a former national reporter at The New York Times, whose recent articles include “The Double Standard in the Human-Rights World,” that criticizes groups like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for becoming “stridently critical of Israel.”

In a congressional hearing in July of last year, a research scholar on antisemitism named Charles Asher Small shared an explosive finding: Funding from the government of Qatar had fueled a 300% spike in antisemitism on university campuses in the United States. Members of Congress responded with rapt interest. “I want everybody to hear this. So universities that took money from Qatar had a 300% increase in antisemitism [compared to] other universities?” said Iowa Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra.9

The statistic about Qatari funding for antisemitism became the highlight of Small’s testimony to Congress. But this precise statistic was never actually recorded in his study.

Small repeated the same claim in a Senate hearing in March of this year. But when contacted for comment about the figure, ISGAP could not point Drop Site to any specific report or finding. One ISGAP study published in 2023 did report that, from 2015-2020, universities that received money from “Middle Eastern” donors had a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to those that do not. But this report is also disputed—and there is no data in it specifically linking Qatari funding to a rise in antisemitic incidents.

Drop Site interviewed over a half-dozen former employees and scholars of ISGAP, many of whom explained that the organization has strayed from the mission of academic study of antisemitism into a hyper-fixation on Qatari funding of U.S. institutions—while ISGAP itself has accepted foreign funding from Israel.

A court in South Korea has acquitted a woman convicted six decades ago for biting off part of a man’s tongue during an alleged sexual assault, after she challenged the ruling, inspired by the country’s #MeToo movement.

Choi Mal-ja was 19 in 1964 when she was attacked by a 21-year-old man in the southern town of Gimhae. He pinned her to the ground and repeatedly forced his tongue into her mouth, at one point blocking her nose to stop her from breathing, according to court records.

Choi managed to break free by biting off 1.5cm of his tongue.

In one of South Korea’s most contentious rulings on sexual violence, the aggressor received only six months in prison, suspended for two years, for trespassing and intimidation – but not attempted rape.

Choi, now 79, was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and handed a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. That decision was overturned on Wednesday by the Busan district court which ruled her actions constituted “justifiable self-defence” under South Korean law.

Construction work has intensified on a major new structure at a facility linked to Israel’s long-suspected atomic weapons programme, according to satellite images analysed by experts.

They say it could be a new reactor or a facility to assemble nuclear arms — but secrecy shrouding the programme makes it difficult to know for sure.

The work at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona will renew questions about Israel’s widely believed status as the Mideast’s only nuclear-armed state.

It could also draw international criticism, especially since it comes after Israel and the United States bombed nuclear sites across Iran in June over their fears that Tehran could use its enrichment facilities to pursue an atomic weapon.

GAZA CITY—Umm Issa Abu Daf sat on the floor of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza City holding her feverish infant son, Adham. All around her, mothers sat on chairs or on thin mattresses in the hallways, trying to tend to their sick children, many of whom were visibly malnourished or suffering from skin conditions covering their faces and bodies.

“The circumstances are difficult, but I have no choice. There's nowhere else but this hospital to get him his treatment,” Umm Issa told Drop Site. Al-Rantisi is the only pediatric hospital in Gaza still functioning as other medical facilities have come under attack by the Israeli military and forced to shut down. Yet children and babies are unable to get proper treatment at Al-Rantisi due to massive overcrowding, severe shortages of medical supplies, and a widening famine as a result of the Israeli blockade.

“We’re also worried about the germs and microbes here as kids are very sensitive. They easily get fevers and get sick. But all praise be to God, what else can we do? I’m supposed to be on a hospital bed, and my child should be in a safe, clean place, getting proper treatment. But here I am, on the floor, with no place to sit,” Umm Issa said. “The children are deprived of everything. No diapers, no formula, no proper treatment. Even food, if I want to feed them anything, there’s nothing. I can barely manage.”

Children are particularly vulnerable to Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza, which reached a tipping point this summer with Palestinians dying of hunger every day. A total of 361 Palestinians have died of hunger since the start of the war, 130 of them children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. At least 185 of those starvation deaths have come in August alone. Some 43,000 children under five are now suffering from malnutrition, according to the health ministry, as Israel has severely restricted the amount of food and aid allowed into the enclave.

Major news organizations, most prominently the New York Times, have promoted the idea of systematic sexual violence at opportune moments to justify Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The first major salacious headlines and assertions emerged in late 2023, when Israel was campaigning to restart its killing during a brief ceasefire. The latest effort to revive this narrative follows the same pattern as its predecessors—and, indeed, is more overtly political, with the report spending less airtime on the well-being of women than on reasons we should roll back what is left of international law.

The UN, however, has stated multiple times that it does not have evidence of systematic sexual abuse by Hamas or any other militant group on October 7, 2023. A top United Nations official issued a statement last week that stands in direct contradiction to the new Israeli report.

Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, affirmed in her statement this week that though the UN had not found “systematic” sexual violence: "It is my understanding that neither the Commission nor any other independent human rights mechanism established that sexual or gender-based violence was committed against Israelis on or since the 7th of October as a systematic tool of war or as a tool of genocide," Alsalem wrote in the statement, first reported by NBC News.

In a move that is highly unusual, the Dinah Project report is now hosted on the UN’s website among its own reports on sexual violence and global conflict. Drop Site News asked Patten why she was hosting the report, but she did not respond. The UN fact-finding mission led by Patten and so dearly held by the Dinah Project, at times, directly contradicts what the Dinah Project argues.

“It was a terrifying sight,” al-Batniji told Drop Site News. “The Americans were spraying pepper gas at us; it burns and affects the nervous system of the human body. You just can't handle it. You’re under pressure. The people are all pushed together and all trampling on each other. There is no air and you feel shortness of breath—everyone wants to go get their food.”

At least 21 people were killed in the incident, according to the Gaza health ministry, and 15 of them died from suffocation due to the gas and the stampede at the site—what the ministry now calls “death traps”—while six others were shot on the road leading to it. Among those killed was al-Batniji’s 22-year-old cousin, Wael. “As soon as he arrived, he fell and was trampled on by everyone.”

“Those behind me started to step forward and push each other. People threw each other onto the fence. The Americans refused to open the gate and left it closed,” Musa al-Quwaider, 23, told Drop Site. “The suffocating people were left lying on the ground, and no one came to them. They didn’t acknowledge them.”

“All the people were pressing all on top of each other to the point that there were children in front of me. [There was] maybe a 14- or 15-year-old boy saying to me, ‘Uncle, please save me,’” Mohammed al-Nams, 28, said, adding that GHF guards nearby refused to open the gate despite the crush of people. “I was surrounded for about 15 to 20 minutes, and we couldn’t catch our breath.”

Of the 31 nations that attended the historic summit, only Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa committed to implementing the measures fully.

According to the summit's final statement, the measures include implementing an arms embargo on weapons to Israel, preventing ships carrying weapons to Israel from docking at ports, reviewing public contracts that support the Israeli occupation of Palestine, fulfilling obligations to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law, and backing prosecutions of Israeli war criminals at national and international levels.

Although the sites where GHF distributes aid are monitored by cameras from all angles, it did not publish any video or photo evidence to support its claim that Hamas members threw hand grenades at its staff, a local journalist told Mondoweiss. Had the story been true, the journalist said, such footage would have been widely broadcast.

Mondoweiss spoke with several journalists at the scene, some of whom shared what they witnessed on the condition of anonymity. One said that the incident was originally a fight between an aid-seeker and one of the local Palestinian workers employed by the GHF through private companies like al-Khuzundar or armed groups associated with Israeli-backed gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab.

“Employees of the GHF intervened to break up the fight by using pepper spray,” the journalist said. “When the situation escalated, armed employees of the organization threw stun grenades to disperse the crowd. However, the aid seekers picked up the grenade and threw it back at the American staff — their grenade was returned to them.”

An official in the Gaza government’s security apparatus also told Mondoweiss that no confirmed or credible information from independent sources had been recorded to support the claim of Palestinians initiating the throwing of grenades at aid distribution centers. “These allegations — especially those circulated by the U.S. State Department — lack evidence from the ground and rely on biased narratives from the Israeli occupation, aimed at justifying continued killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians,” the security source said.

On July 2, the Associated Press released an exposé containing short videos which appeared to show American mercenaries associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opening fire on aid-seekers in Gaza during an incident in southern Gaza this May. The footage was supplied by a former employee of UG Solutions, a firm charged with securing GHF distribution sites.

In an apparent attempt to control the damage from the AP investigation, UG Solutions has distributed a pair of videos comprising over seven minutes of footage to the press.

The newly released footage offers an unprecedented glimpse of the disturbing interactions between the starving population of Gaza and well-armed, clearly unprepared Americans hired to provide security for GHF’s chaotic aid operations.

Filmed by one of its own employee, the recordings were seemingly distributed in an effort to show UG Solutions’ agents have not fired live bullets on unarmed crowds of Palestinians. According to a UG Solutions statement, the videos “not only clarify what happened, but provide critical context, which contradicts that [sic] AP’s reporting and shows that the accusations are unfounded.”

Palestinian negotiators from Hamas have proposed a handful of amendments to a U.S.-promoted framework for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire agreement. According to a response that Hamas submitted to the U.S. and Israel and regional mediators from Qatar and Egypt, the Islamic resistance movement hopes the potential agreement will lead to an end to Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza that has lasted for 22 months. Obtained by Drop Site, the document is dated from July 4, when Hamas submitted its formal response to what President Donald Trump called the “final proposal.”

In its revisions to the Trump-backed draft, Hamas proposed stronger language in the framework to ensure that the initial 60-day truce be extended indefinitely—under a U.S. guarantee—until an agreement is reached on definitively ending Israel’s war against Gaza. It also wants Egypt and Qatar listed not only as mediators, but as guarantors of the agreement along with the U.S. “The mediators-guarantors guarantee the continuation of serious negotiations [on a permanent ceasefire] for an extended period until the two parties reach agreement, and the continuation of the [ceasefire and flow of aid] agreed upon in this framework,” Hamas’s draft asserted.

The original language contained more vague language and clauses, such as “if necessary,” and only placed the role of ensuring that negotiations continue on Egypt and Qatar, not the U.S. Hamas’s terms would make clear that the U.S. is responsible for Israel holding its fire during the 60-day initial truce and during subsequent negotiations for a long-term ceasefire.

Two men linked to Pakistan’s major opposition party have been held without charge for more than seven months in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), after being detained by the UAE allegedly at the behest of the reigning Pakistani military. Muhammad Junaid Jahangir and Syed Salman Raza disappeared in the UAE, where both lived and worked, in late September 2024. Both men were once part of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s digital media team, helping run social media accounts supporting his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Two men linked to Pakistan’s major opposition party have been held without charge for more than seven months in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), after being detained by the UAE allegedly at the behest of the reigning Pakistani military. Muhammad Junaid Jahangir and Syed Salman Raza disappeared in the UAE, where both lived and worked, in late September 2024. Both men were once part of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s digital media team, helping run social media accounts supporting his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

“There have been threats of abduction against PTI activists abroad and it is well known that Pakistani military intelligence cooperates closely with the UAE,” said Azhar Mashwani, a PTI social media activist who knew the two detained men and has himself been previously arrested for his political activism. “They have been arrested and there is no legal remedy for them. No lawyer can access them, and no consular support or other basic information has been provided. Their families tried to hire a lawyer but were told that this is a national security issue and no one will handle their case.”

Hamas has submitted a new proposal for a Gaza ceasefire that the group says “aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal [of Israeli forces] from the Gaza Strip, and ensure the flow of aid to our people and our families in the Gaza Strip.” The thirteen point document, obtained by Drop Site, represents Hamas’s official response to an Israeli proposal for a 60-day temporary truce circulated Thursday by President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.

Among the terms Hamas wants included in any deal are a guarantee that as long as Palestinian resistance forces hold their fire, negotiations for a complete end to the genocide will continue beyond a 60-day initial truce and that this would be guaranteed by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar. “The United States and President Trump are committed to working diligently to ensure the continuation of negotiations until a final agreement is reached,” the document says.

Hamas also wants the immediate resumption of aid deliveries in accordance with the protocols established in the original January ceasefire deal, as well as guarantees that the flow of aid—distributed primarily by the UN and Red Crescent—will not be shut off by Israel as long as negotiations continue. The mediators “will ensure that negotiations continue until a permanent ceasefire agreement is reached, along with the ongoing cessation of hostilities and the entry of humanitarian aid,” the document says.

Under Hamas’s framework, Trump would announce the ceasefire deal and state that he is committed to preserving the ceasefire until a final resolution is reached. Witkoff, according to the proposal, would travel to the region to chair the negotiations. Hamas dropped a term, contained in an earlier agreement, that would have seen Witkoff personally shake hands with Hamas’s lead negotiator Khalil Al Hayya, as well as one that said Trump would thank all parties, including Hamas, for their work in achieving a deal.

“The proposed deal from the Israelis through Witkoff is extremely difficult to accept,” said a senior Hamas official to Drop Site. “There is no talk about the [ceasefire] deal from January 19. There is no talk about a return to the situation before March 2” when Israel abandoned the original ceasefire. The Hamas official said that there is no guarantee Israel would even respect the 60-day truce after its ten captives are returned in the first week of the deal. “They might launch the war again,” he said. “There are no guarantees to a permanent ceasefire, no guarantees for a permanent withdrawal.”

On Thursday, a senior Palestinian resistance figure told Drop Site that Hamas is still debating the language in the draft. He pointed out that the assurances about Trump’s commitment to a long-term ceasefire are not enforceable and that Israel repeatedly violates ceasefire agreements, including the January deal that Trump pushed through before his inauguration. "Releasing half [of the living Israeli captives] within a week and then putting your hopes in Trump is not very reassuring,” he told Drop Site.

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told Drop Site earlier this month that the group had received a direct commitment from Witkoff that two days after the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the Trump administration would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. Witkoff, according to Naim, also promised that Trump would make a public call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for negotiations aimed at achieving a “permanent ceasefire.”

“He did nothing of this,” Naim said. “They didn't violate the deal. They threw it in the trash.”

“There are a lot of reservations on this paper as a framework. There are a lot of loopholes. There are a lot of ambiguities,” a Palestinian source close to the negotiating team told Drop Site. “Israel will never agree to end the war under this framework. The number of aid trucks are not mentioned. There are no specifics about where the Israeli forces will withdraw to. All of these are problems which will probably impede this. Witkoff tried to accommodate Israel much more than what was in the earlier paper. It’s going to take some time before a deal gets approved by the movement.”

When the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo appeared in US and international media in 1972, it shocked the world. The image showed a young Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked, screaming in agony, her body burned by napalm dropped by the US-backed South Vietnamese army. The photo captured the raw, inescapable truth of war, and it forced people, especially in the United States, to confront the human cost of their government’s actions in Vietnam. It became a catalyst, a turning point, a symbol of a war that had lost its moral justification.

Now, more than 50 years later, the world is again seeing images of children burned alive. But this time, the response is different. This time, the images don’t seem to pierce through power in the same way. The pain in Gaza is undeniable, the evidence overwhelming. But the accountability is missing.

Just on Monday, footage emerged from Gaza after an Israeli airstrike hit the Fahmi al-Jirjawi school in Gaza City. The school was sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinian families, many sleeping in makeshift tents in the courtyard and classrooms. At least 36 people were killed in the bombing, according to Al Jazeera, and many of them (nearly half) were children. Dozens more were critically wounded, with bodies burned beyond recognition.

One clip in particular shook many. It showed a 5-year-old child, Ward Jalal al-Sheikh Khalil, trying to escape a burning classroom, her tiny silhouette surrounded by flames. The 11-second video, shot from a distance, spread quickly on Telegram and other platforms. You could barely see her form against the fire. Somehow, Ward survived. But her mother and at least five of her siblings were killed. Her father is in critical condition.

Today, scenes like Ward’s are not rare; they are daily. In Gaza, there are dozens of “Napalm Girl” moments each day, and they don’t come filtered through distant photo wires or delayed coverage. They come live. This genocide is being live-streamed by Palestinian journalists and by ordinary people who refuse to let their suffering go unseen. Burned children, screaming fathers, headless infants – these images are not just real, they are relentless.

Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear: His decision to allow a minuscule amount of aid to enter Gaza is a tactical one aimed at quieting international condemnation of Israel’s forced starvation of Gaza and to clear the path of a final solution imposed on the Palestinians of Gaza.

"We're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu vowed Monday in a video released by his office announcing that Israel would begin delivering “minimal humanitarian aid: food and medicine only.” "Our best friends in the world—senators I know as strong supporters of Israel—have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge," he said. “They come to me and say, ‘We’ll give you all the help you need to win the war… but we can’t be receiving pictures of famine,’”

Netanyahu’s coalitional ally Bezalel Smotrich endorsed Netanyahu’s move. Smotrich said the aid scheme would allow “our friends in the world to continue to provide us with an international umbrella of protection against the Security Council and the Hague Tribunal, and for us to continue to fight, God willing, until victory.”

GAZA CITY—On Wednesday, the Israeli military warned it would attack parts of Gaza City “with great force” and issued new displacement orders targeting several areas in the central and western neighborhoods of the city. Thousands of displaced families in Gaza City began fleeing their shelters in the evening in a state of panic and chaos.

The displacement orders came several hours after Israel committed yet another horrific massacre, bombing five homes in Jabaliya, killing more than 50 Palestinains, including 22 children and 18 women. Israel is on a rampage of bombardment across Gaza—at least 77 killed on Wednesday, over 100 today. On Tuesday, Israel bombed two hospitals in one day, while the third month of a total blockade has left everyone in Gaza hungry and thirsty. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, are facing starvation.

The orders also include the area where al-Shifa hospital—the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip—is located. Hundreds of wounded and sick patients are getting treatment and seeking shelter in the hospital.

The scenes of mass displacement on Wednesday were like a slow-moving human flood flowing through destroyed streets. The roar of warplanes combined with the buzzing drones overhead. Men carried what little belongings they could: torn sleeping mats, dusty blankets, and tattered bags. Women walked behind them, carrying or followed by children. Some of the children were walking barefoot, and others dragged their school bags filled with clothes and a few bottles of water. Families headed north, toward the neighborhoods of Al-Nasr and Sheikh Radwan, which were already densely packed and struggling to accommodate people displaced from other areas.

The video evidence has already proven that Israel's original claim that the ambulances and fire engines were “advancing suspiciously” – whatever that is supposed to mean – was utterly untrue.

Israel's other implausible claim, that several of the emergency crew were really Hamas fighters in disguise, has been thoroughly debunked too. The biographies of those murdered by Israel show they have long been emergency workers. Israel has been relying on this kneejerk excuse every time it gets caught lying about its latest atrocity.

So how on earth is the Guardian still writing a headline like this:

The “evidence” cited by the Guardian is a reference to the Haaretz report of Israeli soldiers firing for three and a half minutes on the convoy.

The Guardian’s wording falsely suggests two things. First, that the Israeli military's account of the killings still has enough credibility that it needs contradicting. And second, that Haaretz’s latest evidence only “appears to contradict” an account that has already been so repeatedly contradicted that it cannot be entertained as true on any level whatsoever.

The Guardian’s phrasing is also utterly subservient to Israel. The Israeli military framed its internal investigation as if its aim was to determine whether soldiers fired “indiscriminately” or not – so that it can then claim to have concluded that they did not fire indiscriminately. -

A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets early on Wednesday, killing nine people in wave of attacks that targeted civilian infrastructure in east, south and central Ukraine, officials said.

The full scale of the attacks, which kept Kyiv and the eastern half of Ukraine awake for several hours overnight, was not immediately known.

The strikes came as both Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy have signalled that they would be willing to negotiate a pact that would ban striking civilian infrastructure.

The US will abandon its efforts “within days” to broker a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine unless there are clear signs a settlement can be reached, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said, as Kyiv says it has signed a memorandum with the US over a controversial minerals deal.

Speaking in Paris on Friday after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, Rubio said Donald Trump was still interested in a deal. But he added that the US president had many other priorities around the world and was willing to move on unless there were signs of progress.