Prime Minister Keir Starmer is welcoming around 50 leaders from across Europe at the fourth European Political Community summit. The prime minister says he wants to rebuild the UK's relationship with European allies during the meeting at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Leaders will discuss shared challenges such as the war in Ukraine and illegal migration. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also attending. PM Starmer tell the Ukrainian leader “we will stand with you for as long as it takes” and reminds fellow leaders that the threat from Russia extends right across the European continent and into the UK. “So let’s use this moment to do more for Ukraine,” Starmer said. He says "many have seen attacks on our own democracy" including "military planes entering our airspace and ships patrolling our coast". He says it is time for all of Europe to do more and "stand together" to "guard Europe's frontiers" - BBC

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Members of the European Parliament are voting by secret ballot now to decide whether to give a second term to Ursula von der Leyen as the head of the European Commission. Fall short, and it’s over for her Commission ambitions and EU leaders will have to come up with an alternative. She made her pitch in a speech directly to MEPs on Thursday morning as she aims to secure the 361 votes she needs for a majority in the 720-seat Parliament. Setting out her priorities for the next five years, she promised to focus on making the EU economy more competitive and vowed to stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. Von der Leyen also won cheers and a long round of applause for slamming Hungary’s Viktor Orbán for what she called his “appeasement mission” to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month. - Politico

Grieving relatives of the 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine ten years ago were assured that justice will be served. Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said at a memorial event here in Amsterdam yesterday: all of the passengers aboard MH17 put their trust in the safety of civil aviation. Yet that very system let them down. He vowed that Australia and the Netherlands will continue the pursuit for justice in the European Court of Human Rights and in the council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

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Police clashed Thursday with student protesters attempting to impose a “complete shutdown” in Bangladesh’s capital, following days of violent confrontations during demonstrations over a system of allocating government jobs. Students have been demonstrating for weeks against a quota system for government jobs they say favors allies of the ruling party, but the protests have escalated since violence broke out between protesters, police and pro-government student activists on the campus of Dhaka University on Monday. Six people were killed on Tuesday, leading the government to ask universities across the country to close and police to raid the main opposition party’s headquarters. As violence continued to take place on Thursday, Bangladesh’s Law Minister Anisul Huq said in the afternoon that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked him to sit with the protesters for a dialogue, and he was ready to sit down on Thursday if protesters were willing. - AP

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Former Moldovan journalist Natalia Morari on July 18 said she would run as an independent candidate in Moldova's presidential election in October. Morari, who studied in Moscow, came to public attention when she was banned from entering Russia after publishing a series of reports in 2007 that purported to detail the use of secret funds by the Kremlin to bribe political parties. Morari, 40, was fired from her last job at Moldovan television TV8 in 2021 after it was revealed that she had been in a relationship with fugitive tycoon Veaceslav Platon when she interviewed him in prison - RFE/RL

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