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Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has called for “a stop to the fighting right now” in Gaza – but stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Speaking on a visit to the Falkland Islands, he said the violence should pause “straight away” after a member of Benjamin Netanyahu‘s war cabinet threatened to invade the city of Rafah unless hostages held by Hamas are freed by Ramadan.

The UK government has not supported calls for an immediate ceasefire, instead backing a “sustainable” cessation of hostilities.

But international pressure has mounted on Israel as they appear to plan a ground offensive in Rafah, where around 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s military offensive.

Lord Cameron said: “We are calling for a stop to the fighting right now, we think that what we need is a pause in the fighting and the hostages to come out and aid to go in. That should happen straight away.

“Then what we need to do is turn that pause into a permanent, sustainable ceasefire.

“Lots of things will have to happen in order for that to be the case and for fighting not to resume.

“We are going to have to see Hamas leaders leave Gaza, we are going to have to see the machinery of terrorism taken down, we are going to have to see a proper horizon for the Palestinian people, a new Palestinian government,” he added.

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“But let’s make that happen, let’s have the stop to the fighting now, have that hostage release and then build on it from here. That’s what we need to happen rather than an offensive in Rafah.”

Mr Netanyahu has brushed off international calls to halt his country’s military offensive and vowed to “finish the job”.

Read more from Sky News:
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During his visit to the Falklands, Lord Cameron also said he hoped the people living on the islands would want to stay British “forever” as he insisted a drive to improve relations with Argentina would not come at their expense.

Speaking in the capital Stanley, he played down suggestions from the Argentinian president Javier Milei that there could be a negotiation on the future of the UK overseas territory.

A quasar 500 trillion times brighter than the sun has been discovered by astronomers who say it may be the brightest and “most violent” place in the universe.

The huge black hole powering it is said to be between 17 and 19 billion times the mass of the sun and growing at the fastest rate ever seen.

Quasars are the bright cores of ‘active galaxies’ – those that have supermassive black holes consuming huge amounts of matter.

The record-breaking quasar, discovered by an Australian-led team, is swallowing the equivalent of a sun a day as it pulls in vast amounts of gas.

The rotating disc of gas around its black hole has been likened to a cosmic hurricane – which experts say emits so much energy it’s more than 500 trillion times more luminous than the sun.

“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” said lead author Christian Wolf, from the Australian National University.

It was thought to be a star when first spotted in 1980, but got reclassified as a quasar last year following observations in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert.

Astronomers now think it’s consuming the equivalent of 370 suns a year, about one a day, making it the fastest-growing black hole to date, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESA).

The quasar is known as J0529-4351 and is 12 billion light years away (a light year is 5.8 trillion miles).

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“The exciting thing about this quasar is that it was hiding in plain sight and was misclassified as a star previously,” said Yale University astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan – who was not involved in the study.

The research is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine last year has reportedly been found dead in an underground car park in Spain. 

Maxim Kuzminov’s body was found with gunshot wounds on 13 February in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain.

Spanish media reported that investigators were searching for two suspects who had fled in a vehicle that was later found burnt out in a nearby town.

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During a flight between two Russian air bases last August, Mr Kuzminov instead landed in Kharkiv, Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter as part of a secret operation.

Ukraine‘s GUR military intelligence said it had lured him into defecting.

Russian state media claimed at the time of the defection that Mr Kuzminov shot and killed two crew members on board the helicopter who were unhappy about landing in Ukraine.

Mr Kuzminov was also shot in the leg during the flight, but it was unclear by whom.

In an interview broadcast by Ukraine’s authorities at the time, Mr Kuzminov said: “I contacted representatives of Ukrainian intelligence, explained my situation, to which they offered this option: ‘Come on, we guarantee your safety, guarantee new documents, guarantee monetary compensation, a reward’.”

In a separate documentary, Mr Kuzminov accused Putin of committing “genocide” in Ukraine.

He said: “I am very offended by what is happening now [in Ukraine]. Murder, tears, blood. Just people killing each other.

“What is happening now is just genocide of the Ukrainian people, both Ukrainian and Russian.”

Officers from Russia’s GRU military intelligence outfit had previously said on Russian state television that they received the order for Mr Kuzminov’s execution.

One officer said: “We’ll find the man and punish him for betraying his brothers to the fullest extent of our country’s law.”

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Russian state media blamed Ukraine for Mr Kuzminov’s death, with TASS claiming: “Ukrainian intelligence agencies could have eliminated [Mr Kuzminov] as an inconvenient witness.”

Mr Kuzminov is believed to have been living in Spain with a Ukrainian passport under a different name. His wife and children were brought to Ukraine before he defected.

His death comes just days after Vladimir Putin’s main opponent Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony.

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Mr Kuzminov is not the first Russian dissident to be killed in Europe.

Alexander Litvinenko was killed after he was given a radioactive cup of tea in London in 2006. A public inquiry subsequently concluded that Putin had “probably” personally instructed Moscow’s federal security service, the FSB, to arrange the murder.

In 2018, two officers from the GRU allegedly tried to kill the Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.