To reach Ukrainian soil from Russia, teacher Olena Yevdokiyenko had to lug suitcases and push her mother's wheelchair for two...

By Elizabeth Howcroft LONDON BlackRock's plans for a bitcoin fund have helped push the world's largest cryptocurrency to

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Fresh searches in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have seen police dig a concentrated area of woodland near the banks of a remote reservoir in Portugal. Personnel spent a number of hours cutting back the undergrowth of a peninsula next to the water on Wednesday, before using shovels to excavate part of the area. A large section of the Barragem do Arade has been cordoned off since Tuesday morning, around 30 miles from where the three-year-old went missing in 2007. Follow our live blog for all the latest updates Sniffer dogs and rakes have been used by uniformed and plain-clothed officers over the course of two days, before specialist forest workers used strimmers and heavy machinery to cut back the landscape. It is understood the operation will continue on Thursday. The fresh searches are being carried out at the request of German investigators who believe their prime suspect, convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner, 45, kidnapped and murdered the youngster. He is currently in prison in Germany for the rape of a woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, and is suspected of further rapes and child sexual abuse committed in the area between 2000 and 2017. German authorities have not revealed what triggered the latest search operation, but prosecutor for the city of Braunschweig Christian Wolters said they were acting on the basis of “certain tips”. He told German public broadcaster NDR: “We have indications that we could find evidence there. I don’t want to say what that is exactly, and I also don’t want to say where these indications come from. “The only thing that I would clarify is that it doesn’t come from the suspect — so we don’t have a confession or anything similar now, or an indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search.” The Sun reported that investigators previously found photos and video of Brueckner at the reservoir. He has reportedly denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance. Madeleine vanished while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, after they left her and her younger twin siblings asleep in their apartment while they went out to dinner with friends. Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia previously claimed that criminal contacts had told him that Madeleine’s body was in the reservoir, and in 2008 he raised funds for unsuccessful private searches of the water. Four teams of officers from the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria are involved in the operation, along with at least 20 of their German counterparts, Portuguese news outlet SIC said. British officers from the Metropolitan Police are also present while the work is carried out so they can inform Madeleine’s parents if there are any developments. On Tuesday, search teams were seen scouring the banks – hammering away at the ground with pickaxes and combing through small rocks with rakes and spades. Around a dozen officers with sniffer dogs were also at the site, while the fire service boat took officers onto the water. Portuguese daily Expresso said that the first day ended with no significant results, and that police had collected some objects including fabrics and garments. Madeleine’s disappearance has attracted enormous media attention since she vanished, and reporters are being kept at arm’s length around a mile away from where search activity is taking place. A no-fly zone has also been imposed over the reservoir. The new searches come as the Home Office granted an extra £110,000 in funding this financial year for the Metropolitan Police to assist with finding Madeleine, down from just over £300,000 last year. The total funding given to Operation Grange has been just under £13.1 million since 2011. Read More Madeleine McCann – latest news: Key suspect visited reservoir ‘days after disappearance’ Madeleine McCann case: Timeline of the missing child’s disappearance How much has the Madeleine McCann investigation cost? Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

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Space is full of mysteries which we will never likely solve but, generally, we at least know a thing or two about craft we send out into the cosmos. Not so, when it comes to one probe which has just touched back down on Earth after 276 days in orbit. The experimental spacecraft was launched by China’s space agency, ostensibly to test the nation’s reusable space technologies. According to state media agency Xinhua News, the mission’s aim was to help with the development of “more convenient and affordable round-trip methods for the peaceful use of space in the future”. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter That all sounds pretty similar to what SpaceX and NASA are up to, except that the Chinese spacecraft and its journey have been shrouded in secrecy. No information has been released on the altitude it reached or the systems it tested. We don’t even know where it went or, indeed, what kind of spacecraft it was – not a single image has been released to the public. Commentators on Chinese social media have speculated that Beijing has been developing a spacecraft like the UAir Force's X-37B, an autonomous spaceplane that can remain in orbit for years. However, no one knows how well this is going nor, indeed, if it’s going at all. All we do know about China’s latest unidentified flying object is that it was launched from the Jiquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on August 5, 2022 and returned to the same site on 8 May, 2023. It follows an earlier mission, carried out in July last year, which saw a Chinese spacecraft fly to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and back on the same day. The country’s main space contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), hailed the success of the craft’s brief celestial jaunt at the time. It gushed: "The development of reusable space transportation technology is an important symbol of China's transition from a 'big' space-faring nation to a 'powerful' space-faring one.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A prolonged drought is shrinking livestock herds and driving beef prices to record highs in the US, even as...

Claims of vote rigging and election fraud are spreading in Spain ahead of that nation's pivotal election on Sunday

A European Union commissioner from Bulgaria has been nominated for the post of prime minister as the Balkan country struggles to end a two-year period of political instability and economic hardship

A judge has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service can keep using chemical retardant to fight wildfires, despite finding that the practice pollutes streams in western states in violation of federal law