内容摘要：Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Samy Magdy contributed from Cairo.

Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Samy Magdy contributed from Cairo.

with Ukraine is going well, as well as potentially embarrass him in front of his illustrious guests.Security is expected to be tight for Friday’s centerpiece parade.

, including China’s President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arrived on Wednesday.to coincide with the celebrations in Moscow. In March, the United States proposed a 30-day truce in the war, which Ukraine accepted, but the Kremlin has held out for ceasefireVice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the U.S. appreciated Ukraine’s willingness for a ceasefire, but the U.S. is trying to move beyond that. “What the Russians have said is ‘a 30-day ceasefire is not in our strategic interests.’ So we’ve tried to move beyond the obsession with the 30-day ceasefire and more on the, what would a long-term settlement look like?” he said.

Vance said that the next steps are to have the Russians and Ukrainians directly negotiating.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last weekend that his country cannot provide security assurances to foreign officials planning to visit the Moscow events. Russia could stage provocations and later attempt to blame Ukraine, he said.

“Our position is very simple: we cannot take responsibility for what happens on the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said. “They are the ones providing your security, and we will not be offering any guarantees.”

Zelenskyy said that he had instructed Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry to advise foreign delegations against visiting Russia during this period.By land area, New Zealand is about the size of the United Kingdom, but it has a human population 13 times smaller than the U.K. That means there’s plenty of room for sheep.

For close to 150 years, the sheep industry was the backbone of New Zealand’s economy and numbers boomed — peaking in 1982 when there were more than 70 million sheep and just 3.2 million people. Before “Lord of the Rings” broughtto the country, images of green fields filled with placid sheep against backdrops of snow-capped mountains dominated the country’s marketing abroad.

But over years of decline for global wool prices since — and despite recent rallies — the national flock has steadily diminished. Now dairy holds the biggest share of New Zealand’s agriculture and horticulture-dominant export market.In 2023, Stats NZ, a government agency, said New Zealand in 2022 dipped below five sheep per person for the first time. The national flock had lost a million more sheep in Tuesday’s figures, which recorded livestock numbers as of June 2024.