内容摘要：The author won the prestigious £10,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening.

The author won the prestigious £10,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening.

Merz did not refer to the Taurus during his press conference with the Ukrainian leader, and German newspaper Spiegel said later that the systems being developed by Ukraine were not as sophisticated as Taurus but had the advantage of being easier to operate.Germany's defence ministry said in a statement that Berlin would finance the production of long-range weapons systems in Ukraine and that the "first of these systems could be deployed in the Ukrainian armed forces in just a few weeks".

The Kremlin has warned that any decision to end range restrictions on the missiles that Ukraine can use would be a quite dangerous change in policy that would harm efforts to reach a political deal.However, Merz has since emphasised that a decision on lifting range restrictions was taken by Western allies months ago.The new chancellor is seeking to cut a far more assertive figure on support for Ukraine than his predecessor, Olaf Scholz.

So far, he is succeeding.There may be many questions about the detail of Merz's missile co-operation plan but his willingness to make big announcements that might antagonise the Kremlin stands in stark contrast to the cautious tone of the last government.

During his press conference with Zelensky, Merz promised Ukraine continued support for as long as necessary, warning Moscow that its refusal to take part in further peace talks would have "real consequences".

Zelensky has called for talks aimed at reaching a settlement on the war to involve three leaders - "Trump-Putin-me" - although he added he was ready for any format.Almost everyone who arrives by small boat claims asylum - they made up a third of all asylum applications over the past 12 months. Another large group of claimants were people already in the UK who had overstayed their visas.

The asylum process determines whether a person can remain in the UK because they have a "well-founded fear of persecution" in their home country.Since 2020, the government has been increasingly reliant on hotels, partly because the supply of other types of asylum accommodation has not kept up with the numbers arriving in small boats.

But using asylum hotels is expensive -As of 20 May, 12,748 people had arrived in the UK in small boats - up by nearly a third compared with this time last year.