Leaders of Russia and China snub Brics summit in sign group’s value may be waning

Russia and China are not sending their leaders to a Brics summit starting in Brazil on Sunday in what may be a sign that the group’s recent expansion has reduced its ideological value to the two founding members.China’s 72-year-old leader, Xi Jinping, has attended Brics summits for the past 12 years. No official reason has been given for sending the premier, Li Qiang, other than scheduling conflicts.Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is facing an international criminal court arrest warrant and may have decided not to travel to Rio to avoid embarrassing the summit hosts, who are signatories to the ICC statute.Mongolia has been in an acrimonious legal dispute with the ICC after it did not act on the warrant when Putin visited last year

Trump threatens 17% tariffs on food and farm produce exports from Europe

Donald Trump threatened to impose 17% tariffs on food and farm produce exports from Europe during talks in Washington this week, it has emerged.Such tariffs would hit everything from Belgian chocolate to Kerrygold butter from Ireland and olive oil from Italy, Spain and France, all big sellers in the US.First reported in the Financial Times, sources confirmed that the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was given the warning on Thursday when he met the US treasure secretary, Scott Bessent, trade representative Jamieson Greer and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.EU ambassadors were briefed on the threat on Friday.The EU remains optimistic for a high-level political agreement, but the threat gives a flavour of the US’s continued aggressive negotiating position to extract a high price out of the EU, which Trump once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade

Skirting the issue: Designer dress goes missing from Bezos-Sánchez wedding

Lauren Sánchez packed 27 designer dresses for her wedding to the billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, in Venice last week, but left with only 26 after one went missing.The couple, who are now honeymooning in Taormina, Sicily, were wed during a star-studded three-day celebration in the lagoon city.They left Venice on Sunday, but mystery over the missing dress has generated chatter in Venice, with Corriere della Sera claiming that it was stolen, possibly by someone who evaded security and gatecrashed a party on the tiny island of San Giorgio, where the couple exchanged rings, on Friday. The newspaper said the number of gatecrashers to the event was such that officers from the local unit of Italy’s anti-terrorism squad, Digos, were called to the island.The newspaper also alleged a vintage Dolce & Gabbana-designed dress, either worn by the bride or wedding guest Ivanka Trump, was torn and caught fire during another party

Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories

A decision by Elon Musk’s X social media platform to enlist artificial intelligence chatbots to draft factchecks risks increasing the promotion of “lies and conspiracy theories”, a former UK technology minister has warned.Damian Collins accused Musk’s firm of “leaving it to bots to edit the news” after X announced on Tuesday that it would allow large language models to write community notes to clarify or correct contentious posts, before users approve them for publication. The notes have previously been written by humans.X said using AI to write factchecking notes – which sit beneath some X posts – “advances the state of the art in improving information quality on the internet”.Keith Coleman, the vice-president of product at X, said humans would review AI-generated notes and the note would appear only if people with a variety of viewpoints found it useful

Wimbledon 2025: Sinner cruises through, Swiatek in action, Djokovic to come – live

As you might expect, Danielle Collins quickly went off court after that first set. She needs to regroup. Krejcikova breaks back when Navarro nets on the first break point! We are 2-2 in the deciding set. What a strange match – neither player seems able to build on their momentum.Iga Swiatek takes the first set against Danielle Collins! 6-2 and straightforward for the former world No 1

Jannik Sinner barely breaks sweat to cruise through Martínez mismatch

The key sequence, perhaps the only real piece of content in this 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 third round victory for Jannik Sinner against a semi-fit, utterly outmatched Pedro Martínez came midway through the second set on Centre Court.To that point the entire contest had felt like the tennis equivalent of watching an injured lemur being run down, idly, by a slightly bored big cat. Martínez had come into this match with an injured shoulder. Hmm. An injured shoulder against Jannik Sinner