President Joe Biden got briefly marooned while announcing a plan to invest $40 billion in infrastructure for Pacific islands – then skipped over the acronym for the new program he was touting after botching the name during delivery.

Biden announced the Pacific Islands Initiative at the start of a White House summit for Pacific island nations.

‘We call it the P … PI … anyway, doesn’t matter what we call it, but that’s what it is,’ he said.

Then he riffed, ‘I was going to get back to acronyms and I’m … not doing that,’ he joked, earning some laughs from participants in the East Room of the White House.

Biden, 80, has spoken of the arduous task of overcoming a speech impediment during his youth, although his stumbles have been gaining increasing attention amid voter concerns about his age. Last week, he mentioned the name of the black caucus instead of the hispanic caucus at an event, and bumped into the Brazilian flag at an event at the UN, amid polls showing him essentially tied with Donald Trump. 

Then at Monday’s meeting, Biden got to touting some of what those investments, with congressional buy-in, would be – at a time the U.S. is courting nations large and small in the region amid China‘s muscle-flexing.

He said they included digital connectivity, global infrastructure investment, and micro-finance, along with sustainable fisheries and efforts to grapple with climate change and rising sea levels. 

‘I want you to know I hear you.. we hear your warnings of the rising seas,’ he said.

‘We hear your calls reassurance that you never never never will lose your statehood, or membership the UN as result of climate crisis,’ Biden said. Smaller nations represent and influential block at the UN.

At the top of his remarks, Biden thanked the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, who he said brought an ‘incredible gift.’

It was a small piece of an A20 aircraft.

Biden then told a story, saying that ‘during World War II my … uncle was in the Army Air Corps’ having flown many missions across the Pacific. He ‘flew many missions in that A20,’ Biden said.

‘In 1944 during one of those missions his plane crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea,’ Biden said. ‘My uncle’s remains were never recovered, never found.’

He said Gen. Douglas MacArthur sent a condolence letter. ‘He died serving in a crusade from which a better world for all will come,’ the general wrote. 

Biden apologized for having to cancel a planned trip to Papua New Guinea earlier this year amid talks over averting a debt limit default. 

According to the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which put out a call for proposals, the program Biden mentioned is called the Pacific Island Strategic Infrastructure Initiative. 

Biden hosted Pacific island leaders for a second White House summit on Monday, part of a three-day U.S. charm offensive to block further Chinese inroads into a strategic region Washington has long considered its own backyard.

Ahead of a White House welcome for the leaders, Biden announced U.S. diplomatic recognition of two more Pacific islands nations, the Cook Islands and Niue. The U.S. will also promise new money for infrastructure for the region, including to improve internet connectivity via undersea cables, and honor regional leaders at an NFL game.

Biden held an inaugural summit with the islanders at the White House a year ago and was due to meet them again in Papua New Guinea in May. That plan was scrapped when a U.S. debt- ceiling crisis forced Biden to cut short an Asia trip.

At last year’s summit with 14 Pacific island nations, Biden’s administration pledged to help islanders fend off China’s ‘economic coercion’ and a joint declaration resolved to strengthen their partnership, saying they shared a vision for a region where ‘democracy will be able to flourish.’

The White House said this year it would focus on priorities including climate change, economic growth, sustainable development, public health and countering illegal fishing.

In announcing recognition of the Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign and independent states, Biden said the move would ‘enable us to expand the scope of this enduring partnership as we seek to tackle the challenges that matter most to our peoples’ lives.’

He said the U.S. had a long history of cooperation with the Cook Islands, dating back to World War Two, when the U.S. military built airport runways in one if the chain’s atolls. He said Niue played ‘a critical and constructive role in the Pacific,’ including by supporting sustainable development, security, and marine protection and ocean conservation.

In Baltimore on Sunday, Pacific island leaders visited a Coast Guard cutter in the harbor and were briefed on combating illegal fishing by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, an official said.

They also attended Sunday’s National Football League game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts. Dozens of NFL players are of Pacific Islander heritage.

SOME SKIP SUMMIT

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who has deepened his country’s ties with China, will skip the summit. A senior Biden administration official said the U.S. was ‘disappointed’ by Sogavare’s decision.

Washington appears to have made no progress on offers of substantial infrastructure funding and expanded aid to the Solomons. Sogavare visited China in July, announcing a policing agreement with Beijing that builds on a security pact signed last year.

The White House in 2022 said the U.S. would invest more than $810 million in expanded programs to aid the Pacific islands.

Meg Keen, director of Pacific Island Programs at Australia’s Lowy Institute, said that while the U.S. had opened new embassies and USAID offices in the region since last year’s summit, Congress had yet to approve the funds.

She added that Pacific island countries ‘welcome the U.S. re-engagement with the region, but don’t want geopolitical tussles to result in an escalation of militarization.’

Vanuatu Prime Minister Sato Kilman will also not attend the summit, his office told Reuters.

Kilman was elected by lawmakers two weeks ago to replace Ishmael Kalsakau, who lost a no-confidence vote for actions including signing a security pact with U.S. ally Australia.

The U.S. is still negotiating to open an embassy in Vanuatu, but has not significantly increased its engagement with the nation, which counts China as its largest external creditor. China last month sent police experts to Vanuatu and signed a policing agreement.

A senior Biden administration official said the U.S. was on track to open the Vanuatu embassy by early next year and that other Vanuatu officials would attend the summit.

Fiji has welcomed the stronger U.S. regional presence as making the Pacific ‘more secure,’ but Kiribati, one of the most remote Pacific island states, 2,500 miles (4,000 km) southwest of Hawaii, said this year it plans to upgrade a former World War Two airstrip with Chinese assistance.

Washington renewed agreements this year with Palau and Micronesia that give it exclusive military access to strategic parts of the Pacific, but has yet to do so with the Marshall Islands, which wants more money to deal with the legacy of massive U.S. nuclear testing in the 1940s and 50s.

A Biden administration official said it was confident of concluding a deal with the Marshall Islands.

Fears of a fresh Covid resurgence were today heightened after the discovery of a new variant thought to be the ‘real deal’.

Scientists have already called for the return of face masks because of the spin-off strain — yet to be officially named but dubbed BA.6.

Others, however, warned it is far too early to panic and argued that pandemic-era restrictions won’t be needed.

Covid hospitalisation rates are already starting to shoot up, sparking concern that the UK is on the brink of being hit by another wave. 

The increase in infections follows the arrival of another variant, nicknamed Eris. It already makes up one in seven new Covid cases in Britain, health chiefs say. 

Experts have speculated the bad weather and the ‘Barbenheimer effect’ – referring to the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer – might have also contributed to the rise in infections, as well as waning immunity. 

Booster vaccines will be offered to over-65s and the vulnerable later this year. 

There are no signs the newly discovered variant, which is different to Eris, known scientifically as EG.5.1, poses any more of a danger than others, including its ancestor Omicron. 

Virus trackers say it has already been spotted in Denmark and Israel, suggesting it has started to circulate. 

Experts believe the variant has over 30 mutations in its spike protein, the part of the virus that latches onto human cells and causes an infection. 

However, it still remains unclear if it will succeed in spreading efficiently or if it will just fizzle out like many other heavily mutated variants.

Dr Trisha Greenhalgh, an internationally-renowned expert in primary care, based at the University of Oxford, tweeted that ‘it looks like it’s once again time to MASK UP’.

The professor, who is also a member of Independent SAGE, a group of academics that called for No10 to adopt an Australian-style Covid elimination strategy early on in the pandemic, acknowledged that she understood ‘little of the detail’, however.

Meanwhile, Professor Christina Pagel, a mathematician from University College London who sits on Independent SAGE, said: ‘To everyone else — very very early days but this coronavirus variant (now in 2 countries) has a LOT of new mutations that makes it v different to previous Omicron strains.’

It is ‘potentially more able to cause a big wave’, she added. 

The strain was originally highlighted by online Covid variant tracker Ryan Hisner, who tweeted ‘this is the real deal’. 

He wrote: ‘Two more sequences of this 2nd-generation BA.2 lineage just showed up in Denmark. 

‘This is the real deal. There are slight differences between the three sequences, but they are nearly identical.’  

Professor Stephen Griffin, an infectious disease expert at the University of Leeds, told MailOnline the variant ‘represents a far greater change in the genetic makeup of the virus’ and is ‘reminiscent of the first emergence’ of Omicron in late 2021.

He added: ‘It is too early to tell whether this “jump” in evolution will lead to a virus “fit” enough to dominate in the same way as BA.1 and BA.2 and other variants of concern once did, but there are a number of mutations that may cause concern if it does start to spread. 

‘These types of changes typically take a long time to become established in concert, but the source of these new viruses is not immediately clear. 

‘Of course, our limited surveillance now makes this job much harder.’

He said: ‘Ultimately, whether or not humans declare that a public health emergency is over, the virus will carry on its course, regardless. 

‘The best way to future proof against this is a combined vaccine and mitigation-based approach. Worryingly, in the UK, we are currently winding both of these aspects down.’

Experts also told MailOnline the emergence of a new variant ‘is not surprising’ and repeated calls cautioning it was too early to panic. 

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, said: ‘With a soup of different Omicron variants virus continuing to infect people around the world, the emergence of a more infectious variant is not surprising. 

‘Not much known about this variant. We will continue to see new variants popping up as the virus continues to spread and adapt. 

‘This might all be manageable as long as these are all variants on the Omicron background, as many people have already been exposed to infection with different Omicron variants and the vaccine booster is likely to have been adapted to cover the Omicron family.’ 

He added: ‘The biggest worry is that a Covid variant from a different background — delta or completely new lineage — will re-emerge as a new variant and this could really be problematic.’

Meanwhile, Professor Paul Hunter, a respected infectious disease specialist at the University of East Anglia told MailOnline: ‘If it is BA.6 that means it probably isn’t that different from what as gone before and so unlikely to be an important threat but time will tell.’ 

He added: ‘Since Omicron the balance of evidence is that masking no longer is associated with much if any reduced infection rates either in hospitals, schools or the community. 

‘Masking may still have value in reducing the severity of infection in particularly vulnerable people.’

It comes as the UKHSA declared EG.5.1, dubbed Eris, a new Covid variant earlier this month, with World Health Organization (WHO) chiefs last week listing it a ‘variant of interest’. 

It has now been recorded in 51 countries, the UN health agency confirmed.

It has quickly become dominant in America, accounting for one in five infections, while in Japan it is estimated to account for up to 46 per cent of all cases. 

However, in a risk evaluation last week the WHO concluded: ‘Collectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating Omicron descendent lineages.’  

The Government has insisted it will never revert back to pandemic-era measures unless a doomsday variant emerges.

Experts say fluctuations in case numbers will happen forevermore. 

Professor Hunter told MailOnline that while it is necessary to monitor EG.5, ‘it will likely not drive up hospitalisations much’. 

He added: ‘EG.5 will have played only a minor role in the recent wave we have seen in July. 

‘But we may see cases rising a bit more over coming weeks because of this variant. There is no indication that we need to change our practices at present.’ 

Meanwhile Professor Young told MailOnline: ‘The boosters should be a good match for this and any newer variants – assuming that this will be the available vaccine in the UK. 

‘However, the delay in vaccinating the most vulnerable until October and the current increase in infections stresses the immediate need for additional public health and social measures. 

‘This is particularly important before children return to school, students start back at university and folk return to work after their summer holidays.’

He added: ‘Encouraging the wearing of facemasks in crowded and poorly ventilated spaces, and improving ventilation in indoor spaces are simple measures which we know are effective at limiting the spread of the virus. 

‘Some public health messaging emphasising the value of these measures in protecting the population from widespread infection and in helping the NHS through what will be another challenging winter would be welcome.’

NHS hospital data also shows daily Covid admissions in England have increased by a third in a week, rising from 171 on July 28, to 229 on August 4, the latest figures available. 

Hospitalizations had been freefalling nationally since March, from a peak of almost 1,200. 

The beginning of July however, saw these numbers begin an uptick, rising slightly. 

But, current admission levels are nowhere near levels seen earlier in the pandemic, when a high of 4,100 admissions were logged per day. 

And, as time has worn on, fewer and fewer admissions are directly down to the virus. Instead, many patients are just coincidentally ill. 

Ebanie Bridges is savaged by fans who call Aussie boxing champion a ‘clout chaser’ after she glammed up for the ‘worst PR disaster in history’ with UFC bad boy Conor McGregor

• Bridges and McGregor spark frenzy at boxing event
• Bridges criticised for ‘chasing clout’ with McGregor
• Some fans believed Bridges is dating McGregor

By Daily Mail Australia

Published: 02:44 EDT, 14 August 2023 | Updated: 02:44 EDT, 14 August 2023

NRL makes huge call on the future of State of Origin as non-rugby league state wins right to host showpiece for two more years

• NRL powerbrokers aim to expand the code’s reach 
• 60,000 fans expected at interstate Origins 
• Interstate teams on radar for NRL expansion 

By Ric Chapman For Daily Mail Australia

Updated: 02:16 EDT, 6 August 2023

Sister Wives is set to return for another season later this month – but fans have slammed its renewal and claimed that there is little point in continuing the show now that Kody Brown has split from three of his four wives.

The hit TLC show, which first aired in 2010, centers on the 54-year-old and his polyamorous family.

But, in recent years, Meri, Janelle and Christine have all parted ways from Kody – leaving Robyn as his only wife.

As a result, many feel that the series has lost its initial premise as calls grow for TLC to ‘put the show out of its misery.’

TLC took to Instagram to announce the premiere date for Season 18 with a moody image of Kody and his four wives all scowling toward the camera under an overlay of broken glass.

The caption read: ‘#SisterWives returns with a new season you can’t miss on Sunday, August 20th at 10/9c.’ 

But fans were quick to rush to the comments to express their dismay over the show’s return. 

‘There are no Sister Wives left…. Just cancel the show,’ one wrote.

‘For the love of God. PUT THE SHOW OUTTA IT’S MISERY!’ another exclaimed.

A third added: ‘Why Is This Show Still Airing? There’s No More SisterWives! I Don’t Want To See The Kody/Robyn Show!’

Alongside the promo image, TLC posted a mini trailer on Twitter which also revealed the premiere date.

‘The end was just the beginning. A can’t miss season of #SisterWives premieres Sunday Aug 20 at 10/9c,’ the tweet read.

But this post too was swamped with fans slamming the show’s return. 

‘Oh god, how much more can they squeeze out of this lemon. Let it go already. These people deserve what they got. I’m embarrassed I wasted time watching their train wreck,’ one tweeted.

Another pitched the idea of having a spinoff with Kody’s ex-wives, Meri, Janelle and Christine. 

They wrote: ‘Giving Kody and Robyn, two huge narcissists, a platform to continue to spew their hatred is not a good look anymore. Dump those two and do a spin-off of the other three women living their best lives without Kotex and Goblyn.’ 

Backlash aside, the trailer did deliver on the drama promised in the tweet.

It kicks off with Christine – who was the first sister wife to walk away – declaring, ‘I left Kody because I could see he had favorites.’

Meri struggled last season after Kody had claimed he didn’t feel like they were married and echoes the sentiment in the trailer, stating, ‘I’ve heard him refer to us as friends.’ 

The most explosive part of the clip comes when Kody and Janelle sit down for a very heated discussion. 

‘You have cheated me out of my family,’ Kody says pointedly to Janelle.

‘You are now pushing me out the door,’ she responds, which sends Kody into a rage as he shouts: ‘That’s an exaggeration and a lie.’ 

‘I think you’re manipulating,’ Janelle then states, which sends Kody out the door.

‘You stay and talk,’ Janelle yells as he walks away, adding, ‘f**k you.’

TLC teased the drama for this upcoming season a few weeks ago with its first full-length trailer.

It begins with Kody having a chat with Janelle who asks, ‘Do you really want to have a plural family? Sometimes I can’t tell.’

Kody adds in confession, ‘I’m in this bad place with Janelle and Christine’s gone, don’t even know what to do with Meri.’

Meri tells Kody, ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m walking away, because, sorry, I still have hope.’ 

Kody reveals in confession, ‘In my head, I’m wondering why she still lives in Flagstaff,’ while Janelle tells Christine, ‘I’m growing, and I need something different. Like I don’t want to be married anymore,’ which stuns Christine.

Meanwhile, Meri tells Robyn, ‘There’s no question, Robyn, he’s done with me,’ while Robyn adds in confession, ‘Kody’s gonna do what Kody’s gonna do.’

Garrison Brown, one of Kody’s sons with Janelle, tells Robyn, ‘You know what, Robyn, have him. We’re all grown adults that don’t need a father figure anymore.’

Christine is catching up with Kody over dinner, as she jokes, ‘If you can’t look back with a sense of humor, what a waste.’

Kody says in confession, ‘Well, I’m not laughing. I’m not laughing here. I haven’t been laughing with her leaving.’

Janelle adds in confession, ‘This is not the happy-go-lucky Kody Brown that I used to know,’ while we see one of their fights go down.

‘What partnership do we have?’ Kody angrily asks, as Janelle responds, ‘This is not only me, Kody. Don’t you dare point your finger at me.’ 

Later, Meri tells Kody outside at a picnic table, ‘I just want to let you know I’m not gonna be around. It’s not what I want.’ 

While Kody seems stoic about the news, Robyn looks like she’s about to burst into tears.

‘I wanted to sit on a porch with my Sister Wives, with our kids and our grandkids,’ Robyn tearfully says before putting her head into her hands.

Kody even seems on the verge of breaking down in tears, stating, ‘Everything is changing,’ while Meri adds, ‘There has been a lot of, dare I say, drama.’

Janelle adds, ‘Everybody is angry,’ while Christine adds, ‘Everybody is angry, right?’

Kody claims in confession, ‘I worked so hard to do what was right, and when you lose that, well, I should just be the devil I think I am now.’

The trailer cuts to yet another fight between Kody and Janelle, who tells Kody to ‘shut your f***ing mouth and let me talk to you for a minute,’ which prompts him to get up and leave the house, and appears to be the last straw for Janelle as he storms out of the house, as the trailer comes to an end.

The dramatic season comes not long after Kody’s split from his three wives.

Christine revealed she had ‘made the difficult decision to leave’ in a statement posted to her Instagram account in November 2021.

‘After more than 25 years together, Kody and I have grown apart and I have made the difficult decision to leave. We will continue to be a strong presence in each other’s lives as we parent our beautiful children and support our wonderful family. 

A little over a year later, Janelle revealed she and Kody had separated during a supertease clip for the special Sister Wives: One on One. 

‘I think if we both really sat down, we’d look at each other say, ‘Really?” said Janelle in the clip. ‘We’ve been separated for several months.’

Kody told host Sukanya Krishnan, ‘Yes, we are separated.’ 

He added: ‘Janelle has made it pretty clear to me that she’s enjoying her life without me.’ 

A few days later, Meri confirmed that she and Kody were also no longer together in another teaser for the One on One special. 

They released an official statement in January.

‘After more than a decade of working on our relationship in our own unique ways, we have made the decision to permanently terminate our marriage relationship,’ a statement posted to their Instagram accounts read. 

Meri and Kody divorced in 2014 so he could legally marry his fourth wife, Robyn, and the couple are still together.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘I’m not easily offended but come on!’ Furious parents call for Roy Chubby Brown gig to be cancelled after the controversial comedian was booked to perform at family hotel hosting young children

By Elizabeth Haigh

Published: 06:04 EDT, 28 June 2023 | Updated: 09:59 EDT, 28 June 2023

Warning to Android users over glitch which sees their phone accidentally ‘silent call’ 999

• UK police forces have received more than 1,000 silent calls over the last month
• Police chiefs claim a new SOS Android feature is the cause of accidental calls
• Google is aware of the issue and it will be addressed shortly, reports say

By Lauren Haughey

Updated: 12:31 EDT, 24 June 2023

Texas Senator Ted Cruz and dozens of other Republicans have backed tech workers who want the Supreme Court to scrap a visa scheme that lets some 200,000 foreigners compete against them for US jobs.

Cruz is one of five senators and 31 congressmen who have filed papers backing the case, which lawyers for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (Washtech) say is a powerful endorsement.

In their briefs, they say the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lets tens of thousands of foreign students stay in the US for years after their course has ended, competing with US citizens and driving down wages.

‘President Biden’s DHS is circumventing the law Congress has established regarding non-immigration visas, and it’s hurting American workers,’ Cruz said.

‘This is a broken visa program that needs to be fixed.’

Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Katie Britt of Alabama also signed the papers, which were filed by America First Legal, a campaign group headed by former Trump Administration advisor Stephen Miller.

In those files, the senators point to research showing how Disney, AT&T, Walmart, and other big US firms have used the scheme to ‘use low wage foreigners to displace American workers.’

Washtech wants the court to tear up an Obama-era expansion of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) scheme that lets foreign student visa holders work in the US for a year after graduating.

Defenders of the DHS program say it lets migrants get real-world work experience in their field of study, while letting US tech firms bag fresh talent. Without it, they would simply study in a more welcoming country, they say.

The case highlights two key concerns of conservatives — that Americans are losing jobs to foreigners, and that federal government agencies exceed their powers by making rules that should be passed by Congress.

Washtech’s lawyer, John Miano, from the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute, said the ‘case has attracted an unusual amount of interest’ from some of America’s best-known politicians.

This visa program ‘strips from Congress the power to set terms for non-immigrant visas’ and therefore ‘naturally attracted the attention of members of Congress,’ Miano told DailyMail.com.

Miano says DHS officials agreed to expand the scheme at a private dinner with representatives of the tech sector because other foreign worker programs, such as the H-1B, were capped. 

Washtech, a union of some 300 West Coast tech workers, last month filed its appeal to the Supreme Court after a lower court in February kicked out its previous request.

The top US judicial body is expected to decide whether to hear the case within weeks.

The court only hears about 5 percent of the thousands of cases it is asked to review each year.

The case is being assessed by one of the court’s most conservative configurations in generations, and comes amid a wave of layoffs by Meta, Microsoft, and many other major US technology firms.

The OPT has existed in some form since 1947.

Washtech challenged it after it was tweaked by the Obama administration in 2016, by letting students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields get work permits for up to two years beyond the typical one-year period.

The original lawsuit says federal immigration law only lets international students remain in the US while they are enrolled in school.

David North, a fellow of the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank, says it incentivizes hiring migrants because an OPT tax break makes them about 8 percent cheaper than American workers.

The union is pitted against DHS, which oversees the OPT program. The department did not answer our request for comment.

Major business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have intervened in the case to defend the OPT scheme.

They say it helps companies address a lack of qualified US workers.

Wolfsdorf Rosenthal, an immigration law firm, says the OPT scheme buys some time for foreigners who study in the US to find an employer, when otherwise they would have to leave.

‘If we don’t retain international students in the US after they complete their courses of study, they’ll take their skills elsewhere and go to work for our competitors,’ the firm said in a statement.

The US would then lose out to Australia, Canada, China, and India, which have post-graduate work programs, they added.

The number of OPT participants has risen from about 30,000 in the early 2000s to more than 200,000 in recent years, though numbers dipped in the pandemic, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report. 

Kyiv renewed its plea for operational silence around the long-awaited counter-offensive against Russian forces with a clip of heavily-armed soldiers pressing their fingers to their lips.

The sleekly-produced footage features masked front-line troops gesturing for silence amid the distant rumble of artillery and gunfire.

It ends with images of soaring F-16 fighter jets – long coveted by Kyiv as it seeks to boost its air defence against Russian missiles and drones.

Authorities in recent days have cracked down on citizens sharing images or footage of air defence systems shooting down Russian missiles.

‘Plans love silence. There will be no announcement of the start,’ the ministry said in a video posted to official Telegram channels, apparently referring to the counter-offensive.

Anticipation has mounted around what is expected to be a broad attack by Ukrainian forces to retake Russian-occupied territory in the east and south.

It comes after months of clashes around the devastated city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in what had become the war’s longest and bloodiest battle. 

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly discouraged public speculation over the counter-offensive operation, saying it could help the enemy.

Kyiv’s Western allies in recent months have provided weapons, armour and ammunition for the counter-offensive, which military experts have said could prove difficult against dug-in Russian forces.

In an interview published on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was prepared for the operation but avoided making any predictions.

‘We strongly believe that we will succeed,’ Zelensky told the Wall Street Journal.

‘To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different,’ he said. 

‘But we are going to do it, and we are ready.’

Kyiv hopes a counter-offensive to reclaim territory will change the dynamics of the war that has raged since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour 15 months ago.

Zelensky said last month Ukraine needed to wait for more Western armoured vehicles to arrive before launching the counter-offensive. 

He has been on a diplomatic push to maintain Western support, seeking more military aid and weapons, which is key for Ukraine to succeed in its plans.

Russia holds swathes of Ukrainian territory in the east, south and southeast.

A long spell of dry weather in some parts of Ukraine has driven anticipation that the counter-offensive might be imminent. 

Over several weeks, Ukraine has increased its strikes on Russian ammunition depots and logistical routes.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s military said in a daily report that Mariinka in the Donetsk region in the east was the focus of fighting. 

Ukrainian forces repelled all 14 Russian troops’ attacks there, the report said.

Other senior officials, including Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, have similarly sought to tamp down expectations.

In some cases, however, the military has also fed the anticipation. Social media outreach by Kyiv has often been intended to intimidate the Kremlin.

Last week, it posted a flashy video depicting troops preparing for battle and reciting a rousing blessing, which was later aired as a recruiting clip.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has said that Russia is targeting key cities and ‘decision-making centres’ in order to prevent Ukraine’s counter-offensive. 

Volodymyr Havrylov said that Ukraine had faced repeated volleys of ballistic missiles in May, especially in urban centres including the capital, Kyiv.

‘Their primary goal is to stop our counter-offensive and target decision-making centres,’ Havrylov said at Asia’s top security conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

For Russia ‘it was a huge surprise to find that the effectiveness of (their ballistic missiles) was almost zero against modern air defence systems, which we received from our partners,’ he added.

Dr Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the president’s office and his chief foreign affairs adviser, has said that Ukraine’s counter-offensive has not yet started because Kyiv still lacks the weapons and ammunition to drive out the Russians and take back the country.

Zhovkva said the military required more reinforcements to start the operation, which was originally billed as a spring offensive but will now take place in summer.

‘I’m not a military man,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘I’m working on the diplomatic front and my task is more weapons, more support, more ammunition. But if you want to start a successful counter-offensive you need everything at your disposal, including artillery, armoured vehicles and tanks, so probably we don’t have enough.’

Zhovka believes that Russia is attempting to keep Ukraine from attacking by bombing Kyiv, which has experienced 24 attacks in the past month, with more than 400 Iranian Shaheed drones and 114 cruise missiles involved, costing $1.7 billion, according to estimates from the Kyiv Post.

Zhovka spoke out against the European Union for allowing Russia to keep profiting from its energy resources, meaning that it can buy more missiles while draining Ukraine’s defensive weapon stocks. 

Zhovka said: ‘Sorry, but the European countries are still too slow and not doing enough with sanctions. Russia can still earn a huge amount of money trading its energy resources including gas, earning dollars and euros, and every euro and dollar is spent on producing more missiles and artillery to kill more Ukrainians.’

Kyiv’s armed forces said on Sunday that clashes are continuing around the city of Bakhmut and Moscow is still suffering ‘significant losses’ despite a relative easing of combat operations in recent days. 

Russia claimed late last month to have captured Bakhmut following the protracted battle that has seen heavy casualties on both sides, but Ukraine says its forces still retain a small foothold and denies that Moscow is in full control of the city.

Ukraine’s top military command said in its daily report on Sunday that Russian forces had carried out two unsuccessful operations around Bakhmut and launched a number of air strikes and artillery shelling on nearby villages.

It said some 23 combat clashes had taken place over the past 24 hours in the Donetsk region, where Bakhmut is located, and in neighbouring Luhansk. Russia claims to have annexed both regions from Ukraine, along with three others, including Crimea.

‘The enemy continues to suffer significant losses in the Bakhmut direction,’ the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday after visiting troops in the area. 

‘Defence forces continue to fight. We will win.’

Meanwhile, Zelensky has said that Russia’s war, now in its 16th month, has killed at least 500 Ukrainian children.

He provided the number hours after rescue workers found the body of a two-year-old girl who died near the city of Dnipro in one of the latest Russian strikes.

The president said in a statement that ‘Russian weapons and hatred, which continue to take and destroy the lives of Ukrainian children every day’, killed the hundreds who had perished since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, 2022.

‘Many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history,’ he said.

Zelensky said it was impossible to establish the exact number of children who were casualties due to the ongoing hostilities and because some areas are under Russian occupation.

Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven’t, but my wife, Clare, woke me earlier this week, convinced there were ghosts in our bedroom.

‘I can see them moving around at the end of the bed,’ she told me. ‘They don’t have faces and they don’t look threatening, but they are definitely there.’

At this point she turned the lights on and insisted that we get out of bed and have a look behind the curtains, and then under the bed. Reassured that the ghosts had gone, she went back to bed and swiftly fell asleep.

In fact, I didn’t find this particularly odd because it happens quite frequently. I don’t for a moment believe in ghosts, and nor, when she is fully awake, does Clare.

But what she experienced isn’t a conventional nightmare, nor is it a sign that she’s going crazy. Instead, it’s caused by something called sleep paralysis.

Experiencing sleep paralysis, with or without the ghosts, is surprisingly common. 

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 20 per cent of us experience something like this on a fairly regular basis. 

And though most people, like Clare, just think, ‘That’s weird’ and then go back to sleep, many find it genuinely terrifying.

So what is going on? Sleep paralysis occurs during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is when we have our most intense dreams and nightmares.

While we are in REM sleep, our limbs become temporarily paralysed to prevent us thrashing around and hurting ourselves or others; you continue to breathe, and your eyes flicker from side to side, but you can’t move.

Most of us are completely unaware that this is happening, because we’re asleep, but sometimes your brain wakes you up while you are still in the grip of REM dreams, and that can be disturbing.

Different cultures have different explanations for these intensely vivid experiences.

A 2015 study in Italy, for example, found that 38 per cent of people who reported experiencing sleep paralysis believed a supernatural being called the Pandafeche — a cat-like creature — was to blame.

According to local folklore, the best way to prevent a Pandafeche attack is to have a pile of sand by the bed to throw in its eyes.

Brazilians, on the other hand, are more likely to blame sleep paralysis on a demon called Pisadeira, a witch-like creature with sharp fingernails that walks on people’s stomachs when they are sleeping on their backs.

That myth, at least, has something to it because you are much more likely to experience sleep paralysis when you sleep on your back. 

You’re also more likely to experience it if you’re a shift worker or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (both of which disrupt sleep) — or if you have a family history of sleep paralysis.

None of this applies in Clare’s case. Though it is more likely to happen when she is stressed, and there is some suggestion that sleep paralysis may be stress-related.

As for why people see ghosts, or demons, Professor Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, has a theory: he suggests that when you wake up and realise that you are paralysed, your brain jumps to the most obvious conclusion — i.e. that there is some supernatural agent involved. 

In a state of heightened alertness your brain also interprets any shadowy shapes you can see as demons or ghost-like creatures.

According to Professor Jalal, who himself suffers from sleep paralysis, the reason that these demons are normally faceless is because creating a mental image of a shadowy creature requires far less brain power than creating something more distinctive.

And when you are still halfway between REM sleep and full wakefulness, your brain is much more concerned with getting you out of harm’s way than paying close attention to what this mysterious shadowy threat really looks like.

So what can you do?

If you are having regular ghostly visitations then avoid eating a big meal or drinking alcohol a couple of hours before going to bed, as these disrupt sleep.

You can also reduce your likelihood of sleeping on your back by sewing a tennis ball into your pyjamas, or by wearing a device round your neck that detects when you are on your back and gives you a little shock to force you to change positions.

If it is more serious, you might want to consider cognitive behavioural therapy — this aims to change behaviour patterns, replacing negative thinking with more positive ideas.

This was the basis of a study led by Professor Jalal, where patients who said they frequently suffered from disturbing sleep paralysis were asked to practise doing three simple things.

First, they were asked to remind themselves, when properly awake, that what they’d experienced is common, benign and temporary — and that these sorts of hallucinations are a typical by-product of dreaming

Second, rather than focus on feelings of fear, they were asked to try to concentrate on positive feelings, such as thinking of a loved one, or offering a short prayer to God.

And finally, they practised muscle relaxation exercises, which can involve relaxing each set of muscles, one after the other, for 15 minutes a day, for two days a week.

Impressively, after eight weeks of doing this, the patients experienced a dramatic reduction in the number and severity of their attacks, as reported in the journal Frontiers in Neurology in 2020.

Professor Jalal says that if bigger studies support these findings, then this sort of treatment could be delivered to patients via a smartphone app.

I look forward to that. In the meantime, I will continue humouring Clare when she jumps out of bed and starts looking for ghosts.

People with type 2 diabetes who exercised in the afternoon had greater reductions in their blood sugar levels than those who exercised in the morning, according to a recent study published in the journal Diabetes Care. 

They also had a greater chance of being able to come off their diabetes medications.

While it’s not clear why there’s a difference, it seems like a simple tweak with a real impact.

If you’re a mouth breather, you might want to do something about it: as I discovered while researching for my latest Just One Thing podcast series, mouth breathing can be bad news for your teeth.

This is because it reduces saliva flow, which is key to clearing harmful bacteria in your mouth. Mouth breathers are more likely to need fillings and have inflamed gums.

Plus, it changes how facial muscles move and the forces they apply to your jaw: if a child mouth-breathes, it can alter the shape of their face.

By contrast, nose breathing comes with health benefits. For instance, the hairs in your nose act as a filter, removing dust, pollen and other particles. 

The nose itself helps warm and moisturise the air, which improves oxygen uptake in your lungs.

And nose breathing triggers the release of nitric oxide gas in your sinuses, which kills bacteria. 

When the nitric oxide reaches your lungs, your blood vessels expand, again boosting oxygen uptake.

Nose breathing can affect how well we lay down memories, too. In a study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 2018, volunteers were asked to inhale 12 scents, then breathe through their noses or their mouths for an hour.

In a later test, the nose breathers were better at remembering the scents (scans show that nose breathing while doing a memory test activates the brain more).

Some people are mouth breathers as a result of sinusitis, adenoids or hay fever, which needs treating. But if it’s just a habit, doing yoga — which trains you to breathe through your nose — may help.