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

Navarro ends Krejcikova’s Wimbledon defence while Andreeva marches on

The defending champion, Barbora Krejcikova, exited No 1 Court to rousing applause after struggling through injuries in her 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 loss against the No 10 seed, Emma Navarro. It is only the third time the women’s singles defending champion has lost in the third round in the Open era, after Venus Williams in 2006 and Petra Kvitova in 2015.“It was tough conditions,” said Navarro. “She was dealing with some injury timeouts. It definitely was tough to find my rhythm

England v India: second men’s cricket Test, day four – as it happened

16th over: England 72-3 (target 608; Pope 24, Brook 15) Deep has changed ends for the final over of the day. Frankly, after that ball to dismiss Root, he can do what he likes.He almost does precisely that when Harry Brook, the wicket India would really like to take before the close, clips just wide of the diving midwicket and away for four. Brook helps himself to four more, a freebie to fine leg.That’s the end of a pretty harrowing day for England, who are being pulverised by India