Washington

Day 617 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges of racketeering and a string of election crimes after a sprawling, two-year probe into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden in the US state of Georgia.

Donald Trump's political operation entered the second half of the year in a strained financial position with its bank account drained by tens of millions of dollars that were directed toward defending the former president from mounting legal challenges as he seeks the White House again.

At a moment of growing legal peril, Donald Trump ramped up his calls for his GOP rivals to drop out of the 2024 presidential race as he threatened to primary Republican members of Congress who fail to focus on investigating Democratic President Joe Biden and urged them to halt Ukrainian military aid until the White House cooperates with their investigations into Biden and his family.

The first European Summer School on Artificial Intelligence (ESSAI) opened in Ljubljana on 24 July, featuring courses and lectures by 60 world-renowned experts. The event aims to acquaint young researchers with the latest advances in the field and stimulate AI development in Slovenia.

Amazon has said it will invest $120 million to build a satellite construction facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, as part of its plans to launch a space internet service to rival SpaceX's Starlink.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it "continued to retaliate" for Ukraine's attack on buildings in Crimea, targeting targets in the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolaev.
On the other hand, Washington strongly condemned the Russian attacks, pointing out that Moscow plans to target civilian ships as well.

The Russians threatened

According to the Pentagon, the Chinese balloon, which was shot down by the US military over US territorial waters in early February, did not gather intelligence, DPA reported.

Threatened by possible shortages of lithium for electric car batteries, automakers are racing to lock in supplies of the once-obscure "white gold" in a politically and environmentally fraught competition from China to Nevada to Chile.

The deadline that the US and the EU set for Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti expires today, and Washington's special envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, said that if Kurti does not accept three conditions for calming the situation in the north of Kosovo, then it means that he does not want cooperation with the EU and the US and that it cannot go without consequences.