The Colorado General Assembly will meet in a special session to address soaring home values and the consequent spikes in property taxes

Russian forces have fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and shelled the eastern Donetsk region killing at least six people and damaging dozens of homes Moscow has recently stepped up aerial strikes in their nearly 16-month war. Kyiv’s armed forces, meanwhile, have reported limited gains in the early stages of a counteroffensive to take back the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine's territory that is under Russian control. The grinding Ukrainian advance is pressing slowly ahead, Ukraine's deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said. Western analysts and military officials say the effort to dislodge entrenched, powerfully armed and large numbers of Russian troops could take years. Ukrainian troops have advanced 200m to 500m (650ft to 1,600ft) at various sections of the front line around the Donetsk city of Bakhmut and 300m to 350m (980ft to 1,150ft) in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ms Maliar claimed. Ukrainian forces have managed to make gains despite the Russian edge in artillery and air power, she said. Ukrainian forces can expect to make slow progress in what will be a "hugely difficult" fight as the counteroffensive gains traction, according to a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence. "Intense fighting is now ongoing in nearly all sectors of the front," the official said "This is much more than probing. These are full-scale movements of armor and heavy equipment into the Russian security zone." The official described the Ukrainian attacks as methodical and said that, broadly speaking, "Russian forces have put up a good defense." In Odesa, three food warehouse employees were killed in a strike that also damaged homes, shops and cafes in the city's downtown, the regional administration said on Facebook. An additional 13 people were injured. Search teams were looking for possible survivors under the rubble of the warehouse, it said. The attack on the port city, launched from the Black Sea, was the second in a week and involved four Kalibr cruise missiles, three of which were intercepted by air defenses, the administration said. In eastern Ukraine, Donetsk province governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote on Telegram that at least three people died after shelling destroyed seven homes and damaged dozens more in the cities of Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka. Ten towns and villages along the front line in Donetsk were struck as Kyiv's troops slowly advance, according to Ukraine's presidential office. A missile hit the Ukrainian-controlled city of Kramatorsk, where Kyiv's forces are headquartered, killing two civilians and wounding two others while damaging 29 homes, the presidential office said. Russian shelling of Kostiantynivka killed one civilian, with 57 houses damaged, it added. Andriy Kovalov, a spokesperson for the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces, said the Russian military increased missile and aerial strikes as Kyiv's forces intensify attacks along the war's 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line and claim some modest gains at the beginning of their counteroffensive. In a briefing, he said strikes on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kirovohrad regions, in addition to the Odesa region, involved Kh-22 cruise missiles, sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles, and Iranian-made Shahed drones. Nine were intercepted. Mr Kovalov said Ukrainian forces had made advances in several sections and fighting was continuing in or near at least two Donetsk province communities. The UK's Defense MInistry, which has regularly issued updates on the conflict, wrote on Twitter that southern Ukraine "has often been more permissible for Russian air operations" compared with other parts of the front. Separately, the mayor of the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown, said the death toll from a Russian strike that hit an apartment building a day earlier had risen to 12. Ukrainian authorities continued to rescue people from the flooded areas of southern Ukraine's partially Russian-occupied Kherson region following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam last week. A total of 28 settlements on the Ukrainian-held western bank of the Dnieper River remain under water, and nearly 2,800 people have been taken to safety so far, the presidential office said, adding that the rescue effort was taking place under relentless Russian shelling. A visit by Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Wednesday was postponed for security reasons. He met with Mr Zelensky on Tuesday to discuss the perils facing the nuclear plant, which grew more serious after the Kakhovka Dam burst last week. The plant has been in the crossfire repeatedly since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022 and seized the facility shortly after. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe faces "a relatively dangerous situation," the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog told journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday. The Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Kherson region came under artillery fire 57 times over the past 24 hours, the presidential office said. Rumors swirled Wednesday about a relative and close associate of the Kremlin-backed, strongman leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. The reports said that MP Adam Delimkhanov had been wounded in Ukraine. After Russian state TV reported that the lawmaker had been wounded and Ukrainian Telegram channels suggested that he had been killed, Mr Kadyrov published a photo showing Mr Delimkhanov. In a photo caption, Mr Kadyrov said that Mr Delimkhanov was "alive and well" — adding that he knew this "from the very beginning," despite earlier requesting Ukrainian intelligence to provide information on what positions were hit so that he could locate his "dear brother." Associated Press Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary FIFA official Fatma Samoura leaving after 7 years as pioneering woman in soccer In blow to Russian LGBTQ+ community, lawmakers weigh a bill banning gender transitioning procedures Recruiting criminals for Putin’s forces backed by Russian parliament – live

Russia is formally seeking to rejoin the United Nations' Human Rights Council, nearly 18 months after it was suspended from the body following its invasion of Ukraine.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says inflation remains too high and that bringing it down to the Fed’s target level will likely require a slower-growing economy and job market

Lyricists opted for altering a few verses from the songs ‘Kiss the Girl’ and ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ to resonate with the modern audience

Thousands gathered by the beaches of Normandy on Tuesday to remember those who died fighting for freedom in World War II, ceremonies that had renewed meaning as speakers, including US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, pointed to parallels with Ukraine's war against Russia.

A former Connecticut state representative is set to be sentenced for stealing more than $1.2 million from the city of West Haven and using a chunk of it to fuel his gambling addiction

By Tyler Clifford NEW YORK (Reuters) -A smoky yellow haze generated by hundreds of Canadian wildfires hovered over a large

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday’s meeting between him, other Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden had produced no forward progress on an agreement to stave off what economists say would be a catastrophic default on America’s sovereign debt. Mr McCarty, who has kept the House in recess for the last two weeks and for a majority of the days since he and Mr Biden last met on 1 February, told reporters outside the White House that Mr Biden and both Republican and Democratic leaders had merely reiterated the positions they held when the House Speaker and the President met 97 days before. “Nothing has changed since then ... everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn't see any new movement,” he said. The California Republican’s last meeting came just a few weeks after he eked out enough votes to claim the Speaker’s gavel with support from extremist and white nationalist members of the House Republican Conference, many of whom demanded that he use the need to lift the government’s century-old statutory debt ceiling as leverage to force Mr Biden to roll back much of the legislative record he and Democrats accomplished over the prior two years. Since that February meeting, the White House and the House of Representatives have remained far apart on what is needed before legislation allowing the US to resume issuing new debt instruments can reach Mr Biden’s desk for his signature. For his part, the president’s view has remained consistent since the beginning of the year. Mr Biden has repeatedly said that Congress should pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase and negotiate on spending cuts desired for next fiscal year when Congress begins work on a budget. Mr McCarthy characterised Mr Biden’s insistence that the Congress lift the debt ceiling on its’ own and address the spending cuts Republicans covet during the regular budgeting process as intransigent even though Republicans have not introduced a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. He also accused Senate Majority Leader Check Schumer of trying to stymie negotiations so Congress would be left without a choice but to pass the “clean” debt ceiling increase desired by Democrats and Mr Biden. “Chuck's whole idea before was to take us to the brink and someone's going to have to break right. I don't want to play politics with this. I think this is too important,” said the Speaker, who suggested the only reason Mr Biden had called a meeting was because the GOP-led House had passed a bill to raise the debt limit while enacting drastic cuts to government programmes favoured by Democrats. That legislation, which passed the House with a bare majority of GOP votes last month, would provide just a year’s worth of relief coupled with spending provisions that slash non-defence spending by as much as 20 per cent. Among the programmes on the chopping block: President Joe Biden’s student debt relief initiative, as well as funding for new IRS personnel. The plan would also add new work requirements for adults on Medicaid, cap the growth of the federal government, and impose 2022 limits on discretionary spending. The White House said in response to the bill’s passage that Republicans were attempting to “strip away health care services for veterans, cut access to Meals on Wheels, eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans and ship manufacturing jobs overseas”. While the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, thus far Mr McConnell and Senate Republicans have backed up Mr McCarthy’s demand for Mr Biden to sign off on GOP-endorsed austerity measures in exchange for Republican votes to allow the US to continue paying its’ debts. Prominent GOP figures frequently claim that raising the statutory debt limit to enable the US to continue meeting financial obligations — a practice that was once routine under presidents of both parties and met no objections when it was done under Mr Biden’s predecessor — is akin to authorising new spending. That claim, however, is not how the debt limit works. Raising the debt limit does not increase or decrease the amount of money that is spent on programmes that have already been authorised by Congress and have had funds allocated to them in appropriations legislation. Experts say a failure to raise the debt limit would force the government to default on its debt and precipitate a worldwide financial crisis. The last time the US flirted with that disastrous outcome was 2011, when Republicans controlled the House and Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House. Mr Biden, then the vice president under Barack Obama, led the negotiations with congressional leaders that headed off a default, but not before the US had its credit rating decreased for the first time in history. That 2011 dispute ended with Republicans suffering a drop in their approval ratings and facing accusations of endangering the US economy for political reasons. It also came along with an unprecedented downgrade in America’s credit rating. Those same charges are being raised again now by the White House and the president’s allies in Congress, who are holding firm on Mr Biden’s call for a clean debt limit boost. Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that unless Congress acts, the US will by 1 June cease having the legal ability to issue debt instruments that allow the government to pay for spending already authorized and incurred. Despite attempts by reporters to get Mr McCarthy to guarantee that the US would not default, the House Speaker repeatedly refused to make such a promise.

Provides an overview of the Marshall Islands, including key dates about this Pacific island nation.

Vladimir Putin has been accused by a Ukranian official of threatening civilian boats in the Black Sea in the aftermath of Russia’s withdrawal from the UN-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of grain. The official accused the Russian president on Friday of deploying “the methods of terrorists” and said ships heading to Ukrainian seaports could be considered military targets. “Russian warships are threatening civilians in the Black Sea, violating all norms of international maritime law,” Andriy Yermak, head of Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. In a separate statement, Ukraine‘s border guard service said it had intercepted a warning communicated by Russia to a civilian vessel passing near a Ukrainian port on Thursday. It did not identify the name of the ship or the port, but said: “The aggressor’s warships continue to behave brazenly and audaciously in the waters of the Black Sea, violating all the norms of international maritime law”. Russia did not immediately respond to Yermak’s comments or to the border guard service’s statement. Mr Putin is meeting with African heads of state on Friday. Read More Even Putin admits Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia’s forces – but progress will be slow Putin promises grain aid to Africa despite withdrawing from Ukraine deal Ukrainian fencer disqualified from world championships for refusing handshake with Russian opponent Russian defence minister meets Kim Jong-un during visit to arms exhibition in North Korea

The Net Zero Insurance Alliance, which has been rocked by claims of antitrust violations by US Republicans, is