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LONDON — Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson is facing further potential police investigations into the "Partygate" scandal, after a government ministry handed two police forces material about alleged Covid lockdown breaches it emerged on Tuesday.

London's Metropolitan Police confirmed it was "assessing" new information it has received over the last week related to "potential breaches" of the coronavirus rules in Downing Street between June 2020 and May 2021.

Meanwhile The Times, which broke the story, said Thames Valley Police was also analysing new evidence related to possible rule-breaking at Chequers, the prime minister's country estate of outside London.

Multiple sources told the newspaper that the alleged breaches involved Johnson's family as well as his friends. A source close to the former leader denied this to the paper.

Johnson, 58, was ousted as prime minister last summer following a revolt within his ruling party after being dogged for months by the accusations of lockdown breaches and other scandals.

He repeatedly denied in parliament, and elsewhere, that he or his staff had breached his own pandemic era restrictions by holding boozy gatherings in Downing Street.

But the Met issued fines to dozens of aides after a criminal probe, and Johnson became the first serving UK prime minister found to have broken the law, over one of the gatherings.

The ex-leader is currently being investigated by a parliamentary committee over whether he lied to MPs about “Partygate”, in a process that could ultimately trigger his removal as a lawmaker.

The spectre of new police probes follows the Cabinet Office, which supports prime ministers and ensures the effective running of government, passing the two forces new “information”.

It “came to light” as the ministry prepares for a public inquiry into the country’s pandemic response.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said the material was identified “as part of the normal disclosure review of potentially relevant documents being undertaken by the legal team for inquiry witnesses”.

“In-line with obligations in the Civil Service Code, this material has been passed to the relevant authorities and it is now a matter for them,” the spokesperson added.

A spokesman for Johnson said: “Some abbreviated entries in Mr Johnson’s official diary were queried by the Cabinet Office during preparation for the Covid inquiry.”

ATHENS — Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday he was seeking a new vote as soon as on June 25 in order to obtain a ruling majority, a day after his party won national elections that failed to produce a single-party government.

The conservative New Democracy Party of Mitsotakis trounced its rivals in Sunday's vote, with a 20-point lead over its nearest contender, Syriza, led by leftist Alexis Tsipras.

Voters handed the conservatives their best result since 2007, crediting the party with bringing economic stability back to a nation once known as an EU laggard.

"Shock and awe", headlined left-wing daily Efsyn on Monday, summing up the feeling shared by both New Democracy and Syriza voters, while pro-government Proto Thema noted that the double-digit margin was the widest seen since 1974.

The "political earthquake" hailed by Mitsotakis sent the Athens stock market to its highest in almost a decade.

But the win fell five seats short of an outright majority, leaving Mitsotakis with the option of either seeking a coalition or calling a new vote.

The 55-year-old Harvard graduate on Monday declined power sharing, telling President Katerina Sakallaropoulou, who handed him the mandate to form a government, that it was not possible to form a coalition under the current parliamentary line-up.

Greece should head for new elections “as soon as possible,” he said.

Following Mitsotakis’ rejection, Greece will continue going through the motions required under the constitution — with the president then handing similar mandates to Syriza and then third-placed socialist party Pasok-Kinal.

The bids are also doomed to failure, given Sunday’s result.

Hours after the vote, Tsipras, too, had set the stage for a new vote, saying the next battle will be “critical and final”.

A senior judge will eventually be named interim prime minister and call for new elections.

Economic stability 

In power over the last four years, former McKinsey consultant Mitsotakis steered the country through the pandemic which devastated Greece’s vital tourism industry.

On his watch, the erstwhile EU economic headache has enjoyed a post-COVID revival, booking growth of 5.9 per cent in 2022.

With unemployment and inflation falling, and growth this year projected at twice that of the European Union average, Greece’s outlook was a far cry from the throes of the crippling debt crisis a decade ago.

Mitsotakis’ term however was blighted by a wiretapping scandal as well as a train crash that claimed 57 lives in February.

The government initially blamed the accident, Greece’s worst-ever rail disaster, on human error, even though the country’s notoriously poor rail network has suffered from years of under-investment.

Nevertheless, neither the accident nor the wiretapping scandal appeared to have dented support for his conservatives — who scored a far bigger win than that predicted by opinion polls ahead of the vote.

Despite the massive protests that broke out in the aftermath of the rail crash, the transport minister at the time, Kostas Karamanlis, was reelected on Sunday.

In contrast, Tsipras’ Syriza finished second even in his ancestral village in Arta, northwestern Greece.

Turn the tide 

Under a new electoral law that comes into play in the next ballot, the winner can obtain a bonus of up to 50 seats. Based on Sunday’s showing and that calculation, New Democracy is virtually assured of a victory.

The left will likely seek to turn the tide by campaigning on cost-of-living problems which occupy many voters’ minds.

But the centre-left vote remains splintered between Syriza and the socialist party Pasok-Kinal led by 44-year-old Nikos Androulakis — a stumbling block for either party in the face of a consolidated right.

Tsipras is unlikely to face an immediate challenge for his Syriza leadership role.

But he is up against a tight deadline to recalibrate his approach ahead of the next polls.

His former maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis fared worse. His anti-austerity MeRA25 party failed to cross the 3 per cent threshold to make it to parliament.

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Bakhmut was "not occupied" by Moscow, while the head of Russia's Wagner group insisted his fighters had taken control of the eastern city "to the last centimetre".

Kyiv's military said it was hanging on to a small part of the city and said its troops were advancing on its flanks.

Bakhmut, a salt-mining town that once had a population of 70,000 people, has been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting in Moscow's more than year-long Ukraine offensive.

A day earlier, Wagner and Moscow's regular army claimed to have fully captured Bakhmut, with Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating them on the alleged conquest.

But speaking at the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Zelensky denied Russia's claims.

"Bakhmut is not occupied by Russia today," he said during a press conference.

"I cannot share with you the tactical views of our military. The most difficult thing would be if there was some tactical mistake in Bakhmut and our people were surrounded."

Sitting next to US President Joe Biden, Zelensky suggested it would be a pyrrhic victory for Moscow.

"You have to understand there is nothing" there in Bakhmut, he said on the sidelines of the summit in Japan.

Zelensky compared the "absolute total destruction" in Bakhmut to the devastation in Hiroshima when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city in 1945.

"There is absolutely nothing alive [there]."

The Ukrainian army on Sunday said it retained an "insignificant" part of the city and that soldiers were advancing in from the city's outer limits.

"We continue to advance on the flanks in the suburbs of Bakhmut," said Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces.

But Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Wagner whose fighters have spearheaded Russia’s advance on Bakhmut, insisted that there were no Ukrainian troops there.

“There is not a single Ukrainian soldier in Bakhmut as we have stopped taking prisoners,” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a post on Telegram.

“There are a huge number of corpses of Ukrainian soldiers.”

Prigozhin said that Zelensky was either not telling the truth or “like many of our own military leaders, simply does not know what is happening on the ground, this is a possibility.”

On Saturday, he had announced that his fighters had taken full control of Bakhmut.

Prigozhin said Wagner would hand over control of Bakhmut to the regular Russian army by May 25.

The loss of Bakhmut would be hugely symbolic for the Ukrainians, who had held on for months,  ignoring US advice behind the scenes to focus elsewhere.

But some analysts have said Ukraine has inflicted heavy losses on Russia in Bakhmut and forced it to commit large resources, potentially weakening its defences in other parts of the front line.

The fall of Bakhmut, where both Moscow and Kyiv are believed to have suffered huge losses, would allow Moscow to bring home a key victory after a series of humiliating defeats.

It would also come before a major counteroffensive that Kyiv has been preparing for months.

Zelensky himself has warned that the city’s loss would open the way for Russian troops to capture more of the Donbas region.

Putin congratulates Wagner, army 

The Russian army released a statement several hours after Prigozhin on Saturday.

“The liberation of the city of Artemovsk was completed,” it said, using the Soviet-era name of Bakhmut.

The Kremlin later congratulated both Wagner and the Russian army, who have been at increasing loggerheads during Moscow’s offensive.

“Vladimir Putin congratulated the assault units of Wagner as well as all servicemen of units of the Russian armed forces who provided them with the necessary support and flank cover, on the completion of the operation to liberate” the city, TASS news agency quoted a Kremlin statement as saying.

Prigozhin had claimed Bakhmut fell to his mercenaries in a video posted on Telegram against a backdrop of ruins.

“Today on May 20, around midday, Bakhmut was taken in its entirety,” Prigozhin said.

Artillery fire could be heard in the background of Prigozhin’s video.

It was not possible for AFP to verify these claims.

The two camps are now awaiting the Ukraine counteroffensive, but Zelensky said recently his army needs more time before launching the assault.

FAENZA, Italy — The toll from floods that have devastated Italy's Emilia Romagna region rose to 14 on Friday, amid calls for the government to revive an abandoned project to mitigate the impact of natural disasters.

Authorities in Ravenna ordered the immediate evacuation of two small towns and issued an "extremely urgent" call for residents to reduce their movements to a minimum in the region, which was still subject to a red weather alert.

The latest victim to be found was a man recovered from a flooded house in Faenza, a picturesque city usually surrounded by green pastures and vineyards which was left largely underwater after the fierce downpour earlier this week.

Nearly half of the 15,000 people evacuated from their homes across the region spent the night in local refuge centres set up in gyms or hotels. Others received hot meals from mobile kitchens deployed in several cities.

Locals in Faenza shovelled mud out of their homes, piling sodden mattresses, clothes and furniture together in mountains of waste.

"I lost everything except for these pyjamas," said Fred Osazuwa, 58, as he surveyed the mess left of his home.

"But me and my family, we are alive. I thank God."

The mayor of nearby Casola Valsenio, Giorgio Sagrini, told SkyTG24: "Landslides have cut us off from the rest of the world."

"There are families stuck in their houses," he said.

The town of Lugo was one of several reporting that food and water supplies were "running low".

"We know you are tired, scared and worried," the council said to its residents in a Facebook post.

"The emergency is not over... As much as possible, stay calm and be patient," it said.

'Disastrous situation' 

In Ravenna, rain was still falling and mayor Massimo Isola described a "disastrous situation" in hamlets up in the hills surrounding the city.

As rescue workers searched for people still cut off by the waters, details emerged of the final moments of some of those who died.

One, 75-year-old Giovanni Pavani, refused to leave his house on Tuesday, telling his neighbour Marina Giocometti he had put sandbags along the windows and would be fine, according to the Corriere della Sera daily.

He was on the phone to her when waters began rushing in. “I’m cold, so cold. The furniture’s floating around the house,” Giocometti said he told her.

She advised him to stand on the table and said she would call the emergency services but the line suddenly cut out, she said.

The rescue of a three-year-old boy from his mother’s arms, as she stood outside her house in water up to her chest, calling for help, went viral on Wednesday.

The mother, Fabiana, 36, told Corriere she would “never forget” the selflessness of the man, a Serbian cook called Dorde, who swam to her and took the boy, hoisting him onto his shoulder, before swimming him to safety.

“I told my son it was a game and he had to climb as high as possible up whoever picked him up,” she said.

The downpour, which saw half a year’s rain fall in just 36 hours, caused billions of euros (dollars) worth of damage.

The flooding caused the cancellation of Sunday’s Formula One Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola.

On Friday, Formula One said it was donating 1 million euros ($1.1 million) to relief operations, matching a pledge made by Ferrari the previous day.

The disaster has prompted questions nationally as to why more is not being done to mitigate the effects of climate change.

According to the Legambiente environmental association, 6.8 million Italians live in flood risk areas.

In 2014, then prime minister Matteo Renzi set up a task force called Italia Sicura (Safe Italy), entrusted with flood and landslide prevention.

But it was scrapped in 2018 by Giuseppe Conte, head of a coalition government uniting the populist Five Star Movement and right-wing League, and replaced with a project that failed to get off the ground.

MOSCOW/ WASHINGTON — The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group on Saturday claimed the complete capture of the east Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, scene of the longest and bloodiest battle in Moscow's offensive.

"Today on May 20, around mid-day, Bakhmut was taken in its entirety," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video posted on Telegram, with fighters behind him holding the Russian flag surrounded by ruins.

 US President Joe Biden told G-7 leaders that Washington will support providing advanced warplanes including F-16s to Ukraine and will back efforts to train Kyiv's pilots, a senior White House official said on Friday.

The US move signals a major breakthrough for Kyiv, which has repeatedly, and until recently unsuccessfully, pushed its Western supporters to agree to provide high-tech jets as it fights to fend off Russia's invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is set to meet Biden during the G-7 summit in Japan, hailed the move as a "historic decision", adding that he looked forward to "discussing the practical implementation" of the plan in Hiroshima.

Biden said the United States "will support a joint effort with our allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s, to further strengthen and improve the capabilities of the Ukrainian Air Force", according to the official.

"As the training takes place over the coming months, our coalition of countries participating in this effort will decide when to actually provide jets, how many we will provide, and who will provide them."

The UK, Belgium, and The Netherlands welcomed the decision.

"The UK will work together with the USA and The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark to get Ukraine the combat air capability it needs," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted, adding: "We stand united."

Denmark's acting defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen said it "will now be able to move forward for a collective contribution to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s".

Zelensky's chief of staff said the Ukrainian president and Biden would discuss a series of topics when they meet in Japan, including the international fighter jet coalition, thanks to which Kyiv "will very soon have everything it needs to protect our skies, our cities and our citizens".

Momentum has been building for providing high-tech warplanes to Ukraine, but US support is key, as it legally has to approve the reexport of US equipment purchased by allies, including F-16 jets.

Earlier this week, Sunak and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte pledged to build an “international coalition” to provide fighter jet support for Ukraine, a move Zelensky described as “very positive”.

Sunak said on Monday that the UK was preparing to open a flight school to train Ukrainian pilots, and French President Emmanuel Macron also offered to do so but ruled out sending warplanes to Kyiv.

Previously, US opposition to providing advanced jets centered around the long timeline and high price, with officials saying there were more cost-effective means to boost Kyiv’s air defenses.

Last month, top US military officer General Mark Milley argued that ground-based defenses were a better option.

“The task is to control the airspace,” he told journalists in Germany.

“The fastest way to do that for Ukraine is through air defense.”

But F-16s appear likely to join the list of other advanced systems such as Western tanks and long-range weaponry that Ukraine’s supporters have agreed to provide after initial reluctance.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said ahead of the White House official’s comment that F-16s are “very expensive and aren’t going to radically change the balance of power”.

But he also noted that they have “psychological significance” due to Zelensky’s repeated requests.

The United States has spearheaded the push for international support for Ukraine, quickly forging a coalition to back Kyiv after Russia invaded in February 2022 and coordinating aid from dozens of countries.

Total international military assistance for Kyiv is in the tens of billions of dollars, with the United States the lead donor.

In addition to hundreds of tanks and other armoured vehicles, assistance for Kyiv has included air defence systems, precision rocket launchers, artillery pieces, and a wide variety of ammunition.

The United States has also trained 11 Ukrainian battalions, some 6,100 troops, in combined arms operations and 4,000 on individual systems.

More than two dozen other countries are also involved in the training effort, which has provided instruction to more than 52,000 Ukrainian troops so far.