A massive accounting error by the US Defense Department could allow an extra $3bn in American-made weapons to be delivered to Ukraine’s defence forces in the coming months. Two senior American officials told Reuters on Thursday that the Pentagon had overestimated the value of ammunition, missiles and other military materiel that has already been sent to Kyiv, leaving a $3bn deficit between what was believed to have been delivered and what was actually delivered to arm Ukrainian forces in their fight against Russian invaders. “We’ve discovered inconsistencies in how we value the equipment that we’ve given,” said one of the officials, who added that Congress will soon be officially notified of the bookkeeping screw-up. One defence official also said it’s still possible that the amount by which the US has overvalued the aid packages it has already delivered could grow beyond the current $3bn estimate. The Pentagon officials who spoke to Reuters said the overvaluation was introduced into the process for assigning values to weapons being shipped to Ukraine when the Defense Department erroneously calculated totals using the estimated cost to replace the weapons that were being provided from existing US stockpiles. Instead, the Pentagon should have assigned monetary values based on the original cost of the weapons, minus value subtracted to account for depreciation in the years between the original purchase date and when they were taken out of the US inventory to be sent to Ukraine. The updated — and presumably lower — value of the defence aid packages that have already been provided to the Ukrainian government could give the Biden administration more time before it must ask Congress to authorise additional aid for Kyiv. To date, the Ukrainian government has benefited from approximately $21bn in American defence aid, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, Javelin anti-tank weapons and two Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries. Read More Ukraine war – live: Putin launches day-long barrage on Bakhmut but Kyiv ‘repels all’ Ukraine repels Russian forces in Bakhmut after overnight strikes on Kyiv

Yemeni artist Alaa Rubil uses the shell-pocked buildings of his hometown as canvas, painting images of death and despair to shine a light on the...

The search for an Australian army helicopter that crashed at sea killing four people during a military exercise with the United States has found human remains but not the black box crucial to explaining the tragedy

Check out the latest Taylor Swift updates of the day

America's top diplomat on Friday insisted that a strong Ukraine in control of its own territory was a prerequisite for talks with Russia, warning against a "Potemkin"...

Cher is venturing into the world of ice cream by creating her own unique range

Portugal’s Antonio Costa, who unexpectedly resigned as prime minister on Tuesday amid a probe into possible government corruption,

President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed "brave" Ukraine on the 500th day of Russia's invasion on Saturday, as the war's toll mounted with six deaths...

Monique Worrell said, 'I am your duly elected State Attorney for the 9th judicial circuit, and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that'

There is not much information about McCaslin’s other family members or if she had a husband

Scientists are hoping to receive a message from aliens imminently, after waiting for 30 years. But the chances are slim: the message was sent to a star that does not appear to have any planets, and there will only be an hour to hear the message. It is 40 years since Japanese astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi composed a message intended to show what humans are like and how life works on Earth, and send it into the cosmos. They did so using a telescope at Stanford University and sent a message to Altair, a star 16.7 light years away that could potentially have life around it. Decades on, a team led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo will use a large Japanese telescope to try and see if anything is sending back a reply to our message. Astronomers believe that it is conceivable a reply would come around now, given the distance to the star and the time that has elapsed. They will listen for messages coming from the star on 22 August. That date was chosen because of its significance in Japan’s Tanabata star festival, which symbolically celebrates the meeting of two deities Orihime and Hikoboshi, the latter of which is represented by Altair. Narusawa is hopeful that aliens are out there somewhere and that the message could have really been sent towards alien life around the distant star. “A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” he told Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.” The original message was sent on 15 August, 1983, as part of a collaboration with a Japanese weekly comic anthology. But the attempt to contact aliens never seemed entirely serious, and so any scientists involved are unlikely to be disappointed. In 2008, when the email was unearthed, Hirabayashi admitted that the pair had been drunk when they came up with the idea of sending the message, according to Gizmodo at the time. “I believe in aliens, but they are very difficult to find,” he said then. He also noted that he had received an array of messages from schoolchildren about the message, which had made sending it worth it. Read More Exact number of people needed for a Mars colony found – and it’s less than you think Strange hidden ‘structures’ hundreds of metres deep discovered on dark side of moon Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into moon in failed mission

Katy Perry had noted that their relationship was severely strained by Russell Brand's 'very controlling' attitude