Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable opponent, collapsed and died yesterday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade jail term, the Russian prison service said.

Britain, the United States and Canada remain “deeply concerned” about foreign information manipulation and other actions aimed at undermining democracies and human rights globally, the three Western countries said in a joint statement.

Britain’s ruling Conservatives lost two more parliamentary seats to Labour in by-elections yesterday, highlighting the mountain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak must climb to win a general election due this year.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died yesterday at the Arctic prison colony where he was serving a 19-year-term, is the latest critic to fall foul of President Vladimir Putin.

Humanitarian chiefs said yesterday they had run out of words to describe the horrors unfolding in Gaza, stressing that states and especially Israel could not “offload” responsibility for the carnage onto aid workers.

A Ukrainian rocket attack on the Russian city of Belgorod killed at least six people and wounded over a dozen others yesterday, officials said.

A large fire broke out at Sweden’s largest amusement park in Gothenburg yesterday, engulfing a newly built water park in flames, authorities said, with a dozen people sustaining minor injuries.

Russia launched drone attacks overnight on Kyiv and southern Ukraine, injuring at least one civilian and damaging a gas pipeline and residential buildings in the river and sea port of Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s military said yesterday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone yesterday and both rejected what they called US interference in the affairs of other countries, the Kremlin said.

Europe’s CERN laboratory revealed more details Monday about its plans for a huge new particle accelerator that would dwarf the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), ramping up efforts to uncover the underlying secrets of the universe.

Water scarcity could affect three billion more people than previously expected by mid-century, with increased pollution rendering river sources “unsafe” for humans and wildlife, researchers warned yesterday.

Canada on Sunday announced a two-year extension to a ban on foreign ownership of Canadian housing, saying the step was aimed at addressing worries about Canadians being priced out of housing markets in cities and towns across the country.

Chile began an official two-day mourning period yesterday for the 112 so far killed in the South American country’s deadliest wildfires in recent history, while authorities continued to battle blazes fanned by high temperatures and strong winds.

Britain’s King Charles has been diagnosed with a form of cancer and the 75-year-old will postpone public-facing duties while he undergoes treatment, Buckingham Palace said yesterday.   

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko yesterday set a world record for total time spent in space, surpassing his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, Russia’s space corporation said.

Russia said yesterday that Ukraine killed at least 28 people, including nine women and a child, when its armed forces struck a bakery and restaurant in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine with Western-supplied rockets.

The world needs to urgently start investing trillions of dollars in the green transition, the United Nations climate chief said yesterday, warning that finance was the “make-or-break” factor in the battle to curb global heating.

Hackers have used the notorious Pegasus spyware to break into the phones of dozens of journalists and activists in Jordan over the past four years, according to the findings of an investigation released yesterday.

Pioneering groups of humans braved icy conditions to settle in northern Europe more than 45,000 years ago, a “huge surprise” that means they could have lived there alongside Neanderthals, scientists said Wednesday.

Northern Ireland yesterday moved a step closer to ending a near two-year political deadlock after the main pro-UK party finally endorsed a deal with London aimed at reopening the region’s assembly.