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Russia has stockpiled missiles for winter attack on Ukraine, says Nato

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Russia has stockpiled missiles for winter attack on Ukraine, says Nato

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Russia has built up a large stockpile of missiles and intends to use them in a bid to destroy Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure in the coming months, Nato’s secretary-general has warned.

With the front line largely frozen after Ukraine’s autumn counteroffensive failed to make significant gains, Kyiv has stepped up calls for more air defence supplies from its western allies as it girds for another winter bombardment.

“Russia has amassed a large missile stockpile ahead of winter, and we see new attempts to strike Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure, trying to leave Ukraine in the dark and cold,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday.

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“We must not underestimate Russia. Russia’s economy is on a war footing,” he said following a meeting of allied foreign ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart.

The warning from the head of the US-led military alliance, which Ukraine has applied to join, comes as EU countries and US lawmakers continue to squabble over respective new financial support packages for Kyiv proposed by Brussels and the White House, raising questions on the longevity of western backing as Russia’s invasion grinds on.

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, said he saw “no sense of fatigue” among Nato members regarding support for Ukraine.

Russia is planning to spend Rbs10.8tn ($122bn) on defence next year, three times the amount allocated in 2021, the year before the invasion, and 70 per cent more than was planned for 2022, according to a bill on Russia’s budget that President Vladimir Putin signed on. The enormous sums in Russia’s record Rbs36.6tn budget for next year will take defence spending to 6 per cent of gross domestic product.

Arms manufacturers are working three shifts a day to meet the defence ministry’s orders. Several civilian factories have shifted to defence production, as well as some non-industrial sites including a bakery that now makes drones.

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Putin told arms makers in September to “raise production capacity in the shortest possible time, keep facilities as busy as possible, optimise technological cycles, and cut down production time without lowering quality”.

Russia’s intelligence agencies have also stepped up their operations to import western dual-use technology — goods that have both potential civilian and military applications — for the defence industry.

The rush for parts has forced Russia to seek ways around western sanctions and export controls by smuggling western-made technology through third countries such as Turkey, according to western officials.

Despite Putin’s orders, Russia is not putting an emphasis on quality, accepting whatever parts arms manufacturers can get their hands on to increase missile production, western officials say — even if that makes them less accurate.

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official told the Financial Times that Russia was now receiving frequent shipments of munitions from Iran and North Korea, including Iranian one-way attack drones and North Korean artillery shells and rockets.

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The artillery is arriving in quantities that will ensure Russian troops can at least continue fighting at a level consistent with the hostilities in recent months, while the drones are likely to be used along with long-range missiles in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure over the winter months.

Stoltenberg’s remarks come after Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the war on November 25, targeting Kyiv’s energy infrastructure and signalling what Ukrainian officials fear marked the start of a winter air campaign.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said his country’s air defences have had a success rate of more than 90 per cent in intercepting Russian missiles and drones in the latest wave of attacks. But he said Kyiv still needed more help from the west to get through the tough winter ahead.

“There is a clear need to develop and reinforce our mobile firing groups, as well as to get all highly effective air defence systems [from western partners],” Zelenskyy said.

Stoltenberg said Russia was “now weaker politically, militarily and economically” than before the February 2022 invasion and had “lost a substantial part of its conventional forces. Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of tanks. And more than 300,000 casualties.”

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Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Ukraine’s chief of foreign intelligence, wrote in a rare public report on the war last week that Russia’s military had been weakened but that Putin had set his economy on a war footing, significantly increasing its arms production which is likely to continue at least until 2026.

“The Kremlin believes that it has enough resources for hostilities with Ukraine at the current level for a long period,” he said. “At the same time, Moscow is convinced that Ukraine’s internal resources are allegedly ‘approaching complete exhaustion’.”

Russia’s goals in Ukraine, to gain as much territory as possible, remain unchanged, he added. Going into winter, the conflict had now fully attained the “stage of a war of attrition”, Lytvynenko said.

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Elon Musk derides Donald Trump’s tax bill as ‘a disgusting abomination’

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Elon Musk derides Donald Trump’s tax bill as ‘a disgusting abomination’

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Elon Musk has lambasted Donald Trump’s signature tax bill, calling it “a disgusting abomination”, in an outburst that threatens to destroy the relationship between the US president and his billionaire backer.

In a series of posts on his social media site X on Tuesday, Musk, who abruptly left the administration last week, hit out at what he called a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill”.

He added: “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

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Musk’s comments came just hours after Trump had criticised Republican Senator Rand Paul, a staunch fiscal conservative, for his opposition to the proposed legislation, which the president described as a “BIG GROWTH BILL” on his social media platform.

The legislation, which Trump had coined his “big, beautiful bill”, passed the House last month by one vote and is currently being considered by the Senate. It has been criticised by fiscal hawks for adding trillions to the national debt when investors are already worried about the US’s widening deficit.

Supporters of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) have also criticised the bill, claiming it would undo some of the initiative’s savings.

Asked about Musk’s latest comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.”

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Stabilizing 'operations,' the National Weather Service hires again after Trump cuts

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Stabilizing 'operations,' the National Weather Service hires again after Trump cuts

An aerial view of severe flooding in Frankfort, Kentucky, caused by days of heavy rainfall on April 7, 2025. Violent storms battering the central-eastern United States killed at least 17 people. The storms came as the National Weather Service was grappling with nearly 600 job cuts by the Trump administration. Now, the NWS has been given authorization to rehire more than 100 forecasters, radar technicians and others.

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Leandro Lozada/AFP via Getty Images

MIAMI — After public backlash and concern, the National Weather Service is beginning the process of hiring more than 100 employees to “stabilize operations” at its field offices around the country.

Following cuts ordered by the Trump administration earlier this year, the weather service lost nearly 600 positions.

Erica Grow Cei, a National Weather Service spokesperson, says the new hires will fill positions at field offices where there’s “the greatest operational need.”

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Tom Fahy, legislative director with the union that represents NWS employees, says the service will fill 126 new positions.

“The positions’ categories are meteorologist, hydrologist, physical scientist and electronic technicians,” he says. Electronic technicians are critical positions in charge of maintaining and repairing weather radar installations and other sensitive equipment. “Radar is an essential part of our national weather infrastructure,” Fahy says, “to protect the American people from severe weather and dangerous storms.

Following the job cuts, some field offices were no longer staffed around the clock. Some also cut back on weather balloon launches, critical tools in gathering data needed for local and national forecasts, according to the National Weather Service.

Mary Glackin, a former undersecretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the NWS’ parent agency, says the weather service has been temporarily assigning employees to field offices around the country to cover staff shortages.

She says the announcement of the new hires is an admission by the administration that the job cuts went too far. “We’re in the middle of a severe weather season, and I know that’s put quite a strain on the system,” she says, noting that it’s also the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season. “It’s not a good time to be understaffed.”

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Cei says the Trump administration granted the weather service an exemption to a government-wide hiring freeze and it will begin advertising for “permanent, mission-critical field positions.”

Glackin says, from her experience, filling positions at NOAA can take months. She expects it will be September at the earliest before many of the positions are filled. And she notes, after the cuts earlier this year, NWS is short several hundred positions. She says, “This is kind of putting a band-aid on a rather large wound.”

Fahy says he expects that many of the approximately 100 probationary NWS employees terminated in the Trump administration job cuts may reapply for the positions, some of which they may have already been trained and certified for.

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Uber brings back chief operating officer role as Khosrowshahi loosens grip

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Uber brings back chief operating officer role as Khosrowshahi loosens grip

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Uber has appointed its first chief operating officer since 2019, as chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi shakes up senior leadership and loosens his grip on the ride-hailing company.

Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s head of mobility, has been appointed president and chief operating officer with immediate effect, according to public filings. He will be the company’s second-in-command, responsible for overseeing the mobility and food delivery sides of the business.

Macdonald, who joined Uber in 2012 and is known by colleagues as Mac, will report directly to Khosrowshahi. He will take charge of the company’s autonomous business as well as its membership service.

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“This is a natural next step in our evolution as a company, as we drive growth by increasing engagement across our entire platform,” said Khosrowshahi. “Mac has proven himself as a highly effective leader at Uber, and I’m thrilled for him to step into this important new role.”

The reorganisation comes as Uber seeks to become a leading platform for a variety of services, including restaurant bookings and retail, while improving co-ordination across its core food and ride-hailing businesses. It also aims to become the platform of choice for autonomous vehicles.

Khosrowshahi reassured Uber employees that he was not planning to leave the business, according to an internal memo. “I recognise the change might prompt some questions about my future, so I’ll be clear: I have no plans to go anywhere anytime soon,” he wrote.

Macdonald’s promotion means Khosrowshahi will pare back some of his day-to-day responsibilities. It will mean that the Uber chief does not have to be the final decision maker on all critical business decisions, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Newly appointed heads of mobility and delivery will report to Macdonald alongside a new head of autonomous mobility and delivery. Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber’s head of delivery, also announced on Monday his departure after nearly 13 years in post.

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A former Uber executive told the Financial Times that it was unclear what Khosrowshahi could do next if he were to move on from his current post.

The Uber chief has been in post since 2017, when he replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick. Khosrowshahi joined Uber from Expedia when the ride-hailing company was mired in allegations of sexual harassment. He led Uber to its first annual operating profit in 2023 and repeated the feat last year.

“Dara is the hardest-working person on the planet. My one criticism is that he runs everything and has a lot of direct reports,” the former executive said. “No other company would give him that amount of control.”

Macdonald will relocate from Toronto to New York, where many of the company’s leadership are based, including Khosrowshahi. He will receive $5mn in stock subject to time and performance objectives.

This article has been amended to reflect that Macdonald will relocate to New York, from Toronto.

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