Poland threatens Putin with arrest if he flies through its airspace on way to Hungary – as it happened

Moscow’s rejection of an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine appears to have put a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in jeopardy, diplomats said on Tuesday, after a preparatory meeting between the top US and Russian diplomats was postponed, Reuters reports.

Trump, who last week spoke by phone to Putin and met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he aims to hold a summit with the Russian leader in the Hungarian capital Budapest within two weeks in a push to end the war.

But summit preparations have hit a snag, with the sides postponing a preparatory meeting between US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, expected to take place in Budapest on Thursday.

Neither side has publicly abandoned plans for Trump to meet Putin, and efforts to organise a summit in Hungary still appear to be under way. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was in Washington on Tuesday, where he posted on Facebook: “We have some serious days ahead”.

But two senior European diplomats said the postponement of the Rubio-Lavrov meeting was a sign the Americans could be reluctant to go ahead with a Trump-Putin summit unless Moscow yields from its demands.

“I guess the Russians wanted too much and it became evident for the Americans that there will be no deal for Trump in Budapest,” one said to Reuters.

The Russians “haven’t at all changed their position, and are not agreeing to ‘stop where they are’,” said the second diplomat. “And I assume Lavrov gave the same spiel, and Rubio was like: ‘See you later’.”

The board of Italy’s Leonardo held a crucial meeting on Tuesday to review a tentative deal to forge a new European satellite manufacturer with its existing partner Thales and rival Airbus, people familiar with the matter said to Reuters.

Barring a last-minute setback, the three companies are expected to announce as early as Wednesday that they intend to press ahead with plans to pool loss-making activities into a new venture to fend off competitors led by Elon Musk, two of the people said.

However, after more than a year of tricky talks over the balance of power, valuations, anti-trust issues and most recently a political crisis in France, there is no guarantee of an immediate sign-off and timing is not confirmed, they warned.

None of the companies agreed to comment.

Reuters reported on Monday that the three companies had agreed the framework of a deal, subject to board and regulatory approvals, with further detailed steps to be implemented later.

Helena Horton is an environment reporter for the Guardian

Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.

The country was until this month one of the only places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.

Scientists have predicted for some time that mosquitoes could establish themselves in Iceland as there are plentiful breeding habitats such as marshes and ponds. Many species will be unable to survive the harsh climate, however.

But Iceland is warming, at four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere. Glaciers have been collapsing and fish from warmer, southern climes such as mackerel have been found in the country’s waters.

As the planet warms, more species of mosquito have been found across the globe. In the UK, eggs of the Egyptian mosquito (Aedes aegypti) were found this year, and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) has been discovered in Kent. These are invasive species that can spread tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus.

You can read the full piece from Helena Horton here: Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country

Here are some of the latests photos coming through to us over the wires:

French police on Tuesday stepped up the hunt for thieves who stole priceless royal jewels from the Louvre museum, as scrutiny mounted over security at the country’s cultural institutions, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Sunday’s audacious daylight robbery – which lasted just seven minutes – was the latest in a string of thefts from French museums in recent months, and has left authorities scrambling to increase protection measures.

In a separate case, a prosecutor said on Tuesday that a Chinese woman had been charged over taking part in the theft of more than $1m worth of gold nuggets from another Paris museum last month.

Scores of investigators were still looking for Sunday’s culprits, working on the theory that it was an organised crime group that clambered up a ladder on a truck to break into the museum, then dropped a diamond-studded crown as they fled.

Detectives were scouring video camera footage from around the Louvre as well as of main highways out of Paris for signs of the four robbers, who escaped on scooters.

Italy is set to suffer a further drop in the number of births this year to a new historical low, aggravating the country’s demographic crisis, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Tuesday.

Last year recorded just 370,000 new births, the lowest figure since Italy’s unification in 1861, and the 16th year in a row in which the figure declined.

In the first seven months of 2025 the negative trend continued, with just under 198,000 newborns, down 6.3% from the same period of 2024, ISTAT said in a statement.

A Ukrainian citizen allegedly working for Russian intelligence services as part of a sabotage campaign was detained in Poland, while two others were arrested in Romania, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the individuals acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence services were allegedly preparing acts of sabotage involving the sending of shipments containing explosives and incendiary materials to Ukraine, which were intended to spontaneously combust or explode during transport, AP reported.

The goal was to intimidate populations and destabilize EU countries supporting Ukraine, Polish prosecutors said, adding that two more Ukrainian citizens suspected of taking part in the same plot were detained in Romania.

Romanian authorities said Tuesday that two Ukrainians, aged 21 and 24, acting on behalf of Russian intelligence, deposited two parcels containing improvised explosive devices at an international courier company in Bucharest. Specialists from Romanian intelligence defused the devices, and the pair were placed under preventative arrest for 30 days.

The Ukrainian in Poland was one of eight individuals detained by authorities in recent days on suspicion of preparing acts of sabotage across the country, a spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office said.

AI chatbots are “unreliable and clearly biased” when offering voting advice, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has said, warning of a threat to democracy eight days before national elections.

The four chatbots tested by the AP “often end up with the same two parties, regardless of the user’s question or command”, the authority said in a report ahead of the 29 October election.

In more than half of the cases, the chatbot suggested either the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of Geert Wilders or the leftwing GroenLinks-PvdA led by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.

Some parties, such as the centre-right CDA, “are almost never mentioned, even when the user’s input exactly matches the positions of one of these parties”, the report said.

The deputy head of the AP, Monique Verdier, said that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, “as a voting aid, they consistently fail”. Voters were being pushed towards a party that did not necessarily align with their political views, she added.

“This directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of free and fair elections,” said Verdier. “We therefore warn against using AI chatbots for voting advice, as their operation is unclear and difficult to verify.”

You can read the full story here: Don’t use AI to tell you how to vote in election, says Dutch watchdog

Russia said on Tuesday its conditions for peace in Ukraine remained unchanged since the August summit between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters he was surprised by an “unscrupulous” CNN report which said that the anticipated meeting between him and US secretary of state Marco Rubio had been put on hold for the time being and that unidentified US officials felt that Russia still had a “maximalist stance”.

“I want to officially confirm: Russia has not changed its position compared to the understandings that were reached during the Alaska summit,” Lavrov told reporters, adding that he had told Rubio precisely that.

Lavrov said that the place and the timing of the next Trump-Putin summit was less important than the substance of implementing the understandings reached in Anchorage, Alaska.

The Kremlin said there was no clear date, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying:

Listen, we have an understanding of the presidents, but we cannot postpone what has not been finalised.

Neither President Trump nor President Putin gave exact dates.

A court in Slovakia on Tuesday convicted the man in last year’s attempted assassination of the country’s populist prime minister Robert Fico of a terror attack and sentenced him to 21 years in prison, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

The shooting and the trial have shaken this small, EU and Nato-member country where Fico has long been a divisive figure, criticised for straying from Slovakia’s pro-western path and aligning it closer to Russia.

Juraj Cintula opened fire on Fico on 15 May 2024, as the prime minister greeted supporters after a government meeting in the town of Handlová, about 140km north-east of the capital of Bratislava.

Cintula, 72, was arrested immediately after the attack and ordered to remain behind bars. When questioned by investigators, he rejected the accusation of being a “terrorist.”
Fico was shot in the abdomen and was taken from Handlová to a hospital in nearby city of Banská Bystrica. He underwent a five-hour surgery, followed by another two-hour surgery two days later. He has since recovered.

Cintula has claimed his motive for the shooting was that he disagreed with government policies. He refused to testify before the Specialized Criminal Court in Banská Bystrica, but confirmed that what he had told investigators about his motive remains true.

Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, based in Paris

Perhaps France’s most fabled jail, La Santé – where the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a five-year jail term for criminal conspiracy to raise campaign funds from Libya – is the last remaining prison inside the Paris city limits.

Located in the southern Montparnasse district of the capital, it opened in 1867 and was the scene of at least 40 executions, the last in 1972. Partially closed for renovation in 2014, the prison reopened five years later and houses more than 1,100 inmates.

Famous former detainees include the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel, the civil servant and Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, the businessman and politician Bernard Tapie, the 70s terrorist Carlos the Jackal, and model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.

Prominent or at-risk prisoners are generally held in the jail’s QB4 ward for “vulnerable people” – the so-called “VIP quarters” – in single cells, not the usual three-person units, and kept alone during outdoor activities for security reasons.

Located on the first floor, the ward has 19 identical cells and a dedicated exercise yard so inmates are not obliged to mingle with other prisoners – although they remain subject to whistles, jeers and smartphone photos from nearby cells.

You can read the full piece from Jon Henley here: What can Sarkozy expect in La Santé prison and what has he taken with him?

A tornado tore through districts north of Paris on Monday, toppling three construction cranes and killing one person and critically injuring four others, authorities said.

The town of Ermont, about 13 miles (20km) north-east of Paris, was worst hit by the sudden twister that caused damage across 10 districts overall.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it was unclear when a summit between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin on seeking an end to the war in Ukraine would take place, and that no dates had been mentioned by anyone, Reuters reports.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the Ukraine war, the deadliest in Europe since the second world war, though he has said that finding peace has been harder than reaching a ceasefire in Gaza or ending a conflict between India and Pakistan.

After speaking to Putin on 16 October, Trump said US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov would meet this week before a possible summit in Budapest within two weeks.

French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said any negotiations regarding Ukraine’s territory must be handled only by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Macron told reporters when asked about a planned meeting between US president Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss and end to the war in Ukraine:

No one else can do this. Therefore, it is up to Ukraine to decide for itself and its territory

Deborah Cole is a Berlin correspondent for the Guardian

Critics have accused Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of adopting “dangerous” rhetoric on immigration, after he championed “very large scale” expulsions of people from cities – and claimed that anyone with daughters would agree with him.

Merz, who took office in May with a pledge to beat back the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, on Monday chastised a reporter who asked if he wished to revise his hardline remarks on migration from last week in light of widespread criticism, or apologise for them.

“I don’t know if you have children, and daughters among them,” Merz said to the journalist. “Ask your daughters, I suspect you’ll get a pretty loud and clear answer. I have nothing to take back; to the contrary I stress: we have to change something.”

The left-leaning opposition accused Merz of taking a page from extremist parties, whose claims that women and girls are being targeted by migrants with sexual violence has become a global far-right rallying cry.

You can read the full piece from Deborah Cole here: ‘Ask your daughters’: Merz defends his call for large-scale deportations

The cable that snapped and caused a Lisbon funicular railcar to hurtle down a hill in September, killing 16 people, was not certified for use in passenger transport, according to a preliminary report that also pointed to maintenance flaws, Reuters reports.

Portugal’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations (GPIAAF) said in the report late on Monday it was still impossible to say whether the use of an inadequate cable had caused the crash, as other factors were also at play.

GPIAAF’s final report is due by next September. The yellow tram-like carriage, which carries people up and down a steep hillside in the Portuguese capital, hit a building after leaving the track on 3 September.

The office said the maintenance procedures, designed by Carris, have not been updated for many years and “the use of cables that did not comply with the specifications and usage restrictions was due to several accumulated failures in the process of acquiring, accepting, and using them by Carris”.

Carris’ internal control mechanisms “were not sufficient or adequate to prevent and detect such failures.”

“There is evidence that maintenance tasks recorded as completed do not always correspond to the tasks actually performed,” it said.

Carris said in a statement “it is not possible at this stage to say whether the nonconformities in the use of the cable are relevant to the accident or not”.

Sarkozy’s lawyer Christophe Ingrain said the ex-president will remain in prison for at least three weeks to a month, after confirming a request had been immediately filed for his release, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

The Paris appeals court in theory has two months to decide whether to free him pending an appeals trial, but the delay is usually shorter.

Sarkozy has faced a flurry of legal woes since losing his re-election bid in 2012.

He has been convicted in two separate trials. In one, he served a sentence for graft under house arrest while wearing an electronic ankle tag, which was removed after several months in May, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

In the so-called “Libyan case”, prosecutors said his aides, acting in Sarkozy’s name, struck a deal with the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.

Investigators believe that in return, Gaddafi was promised help to restore his international image after Tripoli was blamed for the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.

The court convicted him of criminal conspiracy over the plan.

The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Sarkozy became president in 2007, pledging to shake things up with pro-business reforms that would reinvigorate France’s stagnant economy and elevate the country to the top table of global players, Reuters reports.

Those efforts were quickly upended by the 2008-2009 economic crisis, and voters gave him little credit for raising the retirement age to 62 from 60 and loosening rules requiring a maximum 35-hour work week.

The sentencing of Nicolas Sarkozy reflected a shift in France’s approach to white-collar crime. In the 1990s and 2000s, many convicted politicians avoided prison altogether, Reuters reports.

Despite his legal troubles, Sarkozy’s political influence has proved resilient as French society has shifted to the right.

President Emmanuel Macron, who had warm relations with Sarkozy and Bruni, said on Monday he had met Sarkozy ahead of his incarceration. Justice minister Gérald Darmanin said he would visit him in prison.

That angered left-wing politicians who said Macron and Darmanin were breaching judicial independence.

A lawyer for Nicolas Sarkozy said a motion had been filed for his release moments after the former French president entered jail, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Attorney Christophe Ingrain told reporters:

A request has been filed for Nicolas Sarkozy’s release.

Presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino said during sentencing that the offences were of “exceptional gravity”, and therefore ordered Sarkozy to be jailed even if he filed an appeal.

Nicolas Sarkozy had already been stripped of France’s highest distinction, his Legion of Honour, after his conviction for corruption was confirmed last year.

Six out of 10 people in France believe the prison sentence to be “fair”, according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted by pollster Elabe, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

But Sarkozy still enjoys support on the French right and has on occasion had private meetings with president Emmanuel Macron.

Macron welcomed Sarkozy to the Élysée Palace on Friday, a government source said, a decision the French president defended on Monday.

Macron said:

It was normal, on a human level, for me to receive one of my predecessors in this context.

Below are the latest photographs from Paris this morning coming through over the wires:

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent.

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has entered a prison in Paris, after a court sentenced him to five years for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Sarkozy, the rightwing president of France between 2007 and 2012, is the first former head of an EU country to serve time in prison, and the first French postwar leader to be jailed.

Sarkozy, who has appealed against his conviction, had sought to avoid being photographed at the gates of La Santé prison in the south of Paris. Instead, he organised a highly stage-managed departure from his home in the west of Paris where he walked on foot with his wife, the singer Carla Bruni, to greet crowds gathered to in the street outside his home.

First his children, led by Giulia, his 14-year-old daughter with Bruni, slowly walked from his home to greet well-wishers. Louis Sarkozy, one of Sarkozy’s sons, who is preparing to run for mayor in Menton on the French Riviera next spring, had called for supporters to demonstrate in the street. Some shouted “Nicolas! Nicolas!” At the same time, Sarkozy’s social media account published a message in which he said: “I am innocent”, and his imprisonment was a “judicial scandal”.

Sarkozy was found guilty last month of criminal conspiracy over a scheme to seek funding from the regime of Gaddafi for his victorious 2007 French presidential election campaign.

You can read the full piece from Angelique Chrisafis here: Nicolas Sarkozy enters prison to begin five-year sentence over campaign funds

Shortly after he stepped into a car to head to La Santé, Nicolas Sarkozy published a long message on X in which he claimed to be a victim of revenge and hatred.

He said:

As I prepare to step outside the walls of La Santé prison, my thoughts go out to the French people of all walks of life and opinions.

I want to tell them with my unwavering strength that it’s not a former President of the Republic being locked up this morning, it’s an innocent man.

I will continue to denounce this judicial scandal, this ordeal I’ve endured for over 10 years. This is a case of illegal financing without any funding!

A long-term judicial investigation launched on the basis of a document whose falsity has now been proven. I’m not asking for any advantage, any favor.

I’m not to be pitied, because my voice carries. I’m not to be pitied because my wife and children are by my side, and my friends are countless.

But this morning, I feel a deep sorrow for France, which finds itself humiliated by the expression of a vengeance that has taken hatred to an unprecedented level.

I have no doubt. The truth will triumph. But the price to pay will have been crushing.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyers said the former president will be held in solitary confinement, where he will be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

His lawyer Christophe Ingrain said on BFM TV that incarceration “strengthens his determination, it strengthens his rage to prove that he is innocent.”

Ingrain said Sarkozy is planning to write a book about his prison experience.

Jean-Michel Darrois, another of Sarkozy’s lawyers, said on Tuesday that the former president got himself “mentally prepared” to be held in solitary confinement, where he would be kept away from all other prisoners for security reasons.

Darrois said on France Info news broadcaster.

First, he packed a bag with a few sweaters because it’s cold in prison, and earplugs because it’s very noisy.

Isolation like what he’s going to go through is painful, but he got himself prepared.

Sarkozy told La Tribune Dimanche newspaper:

I’m not afraid of prison. I’ll hold my head high, including in front of the doors of La Santé.

I’ll fight till the end.

The paper said Sarkozy has his prison bag ready with clothes and the 10 family photos he is allowed to bring.

Dozens of supporters stood outside Nicolas Sarkozy’s home from early Tuesday, some holding up framed portraits of him, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

They sang the French national anthem, as neighbours looked on from their balconies.

“Nicolas, Nicolas! Free Nicolas,” shouted a crowd who gathered in the road outside to show their support.

Flora Amanou, 41, said she had closely followed both of Sarkozy’s presidential campaigns:

This is truly a sad day for France and for democracy. This trial is based on nothing.