A estimated $1.05 billion Mega Millions jackpot will again be up for grabs, giving lottery players a chance to snap an unlucky streak that has stretched on for months

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Ukraine has achieved the “functional defeat” of Vladimir Putin’s prized Black Sea fleet with intensified attacks in recent weeks, a UK defence minister has suggested – but warned that Western allies are running out of ammunition to help Kyiv repel Russia’s invasion. Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum from the Polish capital on Tuesday, James Heappey said the kneecapping of the major Russian naval force – including the recent strike on its Crimean headquarters – was “every bit as important” as Ukraine’s gains in Kharkiv last year. While “nobody can pretend otherwise” that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has progressed slowly, the UK’s armed forces minister told delegates it was “simply wrong” to suggest there has been no progress at all – with gains “every single day” after breaching Russia’s “enormous defensive belt and minefield”. But comparing Kyiv’s relatively minor gains to those achieved last year “diminishes the importance of what has happened in the Black Sea over the last couple of weeks, where a Russian submarine and a Russian ship have been put out of action, and the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet has been put out of action too”, he said. “The functional defeat of the Black Sea fleet – and I would argue that is what it is because it has been forced to disperse to ports from which it cannot have an effect on Ukraine – is an enormous credit. And [it is] every bit as important – every bit as much progress – as what was happening in the Kharkiv Oblast last year.” The Black Sea fleet, of huge symbolic value to Russia, has been an increasing target of Ukrainian drone attacks in recent weeks. Throughout the war, the fleet has been used to launch missile attacks on Ukraine and to threaten Kyiv’s vital shipped grain exports. With Russia finally pulling out of a UN-brokered grain deal in July, Kyiv has since sought to establish a new corridor hugging the coastline, through which two Marshall Islands and Cameroon-flagged vessels were said to be the latest ships to sail to the port of Odesa on Tuesday. And the UK’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that the Black Sea fleet was “[struggling] to deal with concurrent threats”, with Russia resorting to using air power to “project force” over the area as fleet activities relocate from under-fire Sevastopol to Novorssiysk, some 322km (200 miles) east. But Mr Heappey and Nato’s most senior military official, Admiral Rob Bauer, were among those to warn that Kyiv’s allies are running out of ammunition, with the latter lamenting that “the bottom of the barrel is now visible” and urging nations to “ramp up production in a much higher tempo”. “We need large volumes,” the admiral said. “The just-in-time, just-enough economy we built together in 30 years in our liberal economies is fine for a lot of things – but not the armed forces when there is a war ongoing.” Also warning that Western stockpiles are “looking a bit thin”, Mr Heappey said: “If it’s not the time when there is a war in Europe to spend 2 per cent on defence, then when is?” Underscoring such warnings, US president Joe Biden – who is struggling to pass a package of aid for Ukraine through Congress – convened a phone call of G7 and Nato leaders on Tuesday in which he expressed determination to secure the funding, with Rishi Sunak also vowing to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes”. The comments came as Ukraine’s airforce claimed to have destroyed 29 of 31 drones launched by Russia and one cruise missile, most of them targeting the regions of Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk in the south and east, in an overnight barrage of attacks lasting three hours. With counteroffensive operations continuing in Zaporizhzhia and near Bakhmut, president Volodymyr Zelensky also visited troops and commanders in the northeast near Kupiansk, where the Ukrainian military says Russian forces have also been staging attacks. Meanwhile, a report alleged that hundreds of drunk, insubordinate and mutinous Russian soldiers have been pressed into penal units known as “Storm-Z” squads and sent to the frontlines as punishment for their behaviour. “If the commandants catch anyone with the smell of alcohol on their breath, then they immediately send them to the Storm squads,” one soldier told a Reuters investigation, which cited 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in such units. Read More ‘Keep an eye on Crimea’: Ukraine’s costly battlefield gains ‘prelude battle to retake peninsula’ How Ukraine’s forces have surged back against Russia Putin’s ‘punishment battalions’ full of convicts and drunk recruits: ‘They’re just meat’ Elon Musk’s mockery of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky ‘unhelpful’

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Since I moved to France two years ago, I’ve learned not to be in a hurry on market day. Everyone wants a chat. This is never more apparent than on the cheese stalls of our village market on Tuesdays and in the nearby town of Pezenas on Saturdays. We discuss what I bought last week, the merits of the new season cheeses, and I sometimes come away with a mini jar of jam or mildly spicy piment d’espelette jelly, a “free” gift for spending a ludicrous amount because if you put something in front of me I haven’t tried before I will not be able to resist. The French love of cheese is legendary. General de Gaulle is supposed once to have said, “How can you govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” Skip forward a few decades, and the consternation over Nicolas Sarkozy’s flashy Rolex habit was as nothing to the outrage when it was revealed he planned to nix the cheese course from state lunches. Was a president who neither ate cheese nor drank wine (he believed it slowed you down) really worthy of the highest office in France? So imagine the reaction when it was announced that “meddlesome” Brussels, in a quest to make all food packaging recyclable by 2030, was voting on a ruling that would get rid of the classic and much loved round wooden boxes camembert has been packaged in since the 19th century. The ruling next week would also affect Mont d’Or cheese and the crates oysters are sold in, but let’s focus on camembert for now. There’s only so much smelling salts to go round. Guillaume Poitrinal, chair of the French Heritage Foundation, said on X/Twitter: “The wooden box – low carbon, light, biodegradable, tough, made in France – is better for the planet than plastic from Saudi oil, transformed in China with coal-fired electricity, and which will end up in the ocean.” But while in some quarters the camembert crisis of 2023 has been presented as an opportunity to give Brussels a kicking, it’s inevitably more complicated than that. An article in Le Monde suggests this is a red herring, a battle inflamed by the biggest producers of industrial camembert to protect their corner of the market. French customers bought more than 45,000 tonnes of camembert last year, with only 6,000 tonnes being artisanal camembert meriting the protected designation of origin label. At the moment, all camemberts are sold in the famous wooden boxes, making the artisanal and mass-market cheeses indistinguishable to most. If this legislation passes, only the protected-origin cheese will be allowed to retain the traditional boxes. The rest will be forced into some lesser, biodegradable plastic outfit, visually marking them out as a second-rank product. But shall we, while we’re here, put a word in for second best? In a world where there is as much snobbery about cheese as there is about wine, some wags have commented that the boxes taste better than the mass-produced cheese. Forgive them their snobbery, it’s all they have to make them feel alive. Of course, if you love cheese you won’t want to deprive yourself of a beautiful artisanal camembert, made in the way it has been made for centuries, offering whiffs of hay, mushrooms and the milkmaid’s apron. Who cares if it costs as much as the dinner that preceded it? But few of us could, without blinking, fill up a party cheeseboard with these precious rounds just to watch Fred from over the road hoovering them up unthinkingly between sloshing down cheap red and boring on about low-traffic neighbourhoods and parking. And removing everyday camembert from its wooden box would deprive us all of that cold-weather favourite, indulgent and delicious far in excess of its cost or difficulty. I speak of the glory that is a whole camembert baked in its box, served with small potatoes, cornichons, and perhaps a bit of ham? I know in my career as a food writer, few recipes are more crowd-pleasing than something that goes big on the melted cheese. If I were ever in any doubt, I recently shared a recipe in my weekly recipe newsletter for dauphinoise potatoes with a whole (mass-market) camembert baked in the middle. Essentially, I sent potatoes to do the wooden box’s job. The crowd went wild. Then, the Queen herself, Nigella Lawson, cooked it and shared a picture of it on her Instagram. Within hours, I had hundreds more followers hunting me down for the recipe. So I am very grateful for the little cheese in the wooden box and I hope it will never change. I know I share that feeling with the majority of French people, and if I’ve learned anything at all about my new countrymen and women, ruling or no ruling, I doubt camembert (or Mont d’Or, or oysters) will be sporting new outfits anytime soon. Plus ca change. Debora Robertson’s Lickedspoon online newsletter is published weekly; she also posts on Instagram, @lickedspoon Read More Woman defends her $7,000 cheese board Will an adaptogen a day keep the doctor away this winter? David Beckham spotted with Bollywood stars at Sonam Kapoor’s private party in Mumbai Will an adaptogen a day keep the doctor away this winter? 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The number of catalytic converter theft claims dropped in the first half of this year, the first time that’s happened since 2019, according to data from insurance company State Farm