Smoke rises after an airstrike in Lviv, Ukraine, on Saturday. (Image: REUTERS/Vladyslav Sodel)
Vladimir Putin should no longer be the leader of Russia, said United States President Joe Biden on Saturday during his visit to Poland. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden announced at the very end of his address delivered to a crowd at Royal Castle in capital Warsaw.
He had called the Russian president a “butcher” while meeting Ukrainian war refugees earlier in the day. He also issued a stern warning to Putin: “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory.”
Lviv, meanwhile, was hit by rockets on the outskirts, said the city’s mayor, describing it as the first attacks within city limits since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Here are the top 10 highlights of the conflict, which has now entered its second month:
Formula One: Smoke billowed near Jeddah’s F1 track as drivers took part in practice runs, with Red Bull’s world champion Max Verstappen saying he could smell the blaze as he drove.
Formula 1: There was a huge fire near the Jeddah F1 track.
Yemeni rebels attacked a Saudi Aramco oil facility setting off a huge fire visible from Jeddah’s Formula One track as part of a wave of attacks on Friday. “We did several attacks with drones and ballistic missiles,” the Iran-backed Huthi rebels said in a statement, including an “Aramco installation in Jeddah (and) vital installations in Riyadh”.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed rebels confirmed the attack, which comes ahead of the seventh anniversary of its military intervention in the brutal civil war in Yemen.
Smoke billowed near Jeddah’s F1 track as drivers took part in practice runs, with Red Bull’s world champion Max Verstappen saying he could smell the blaze as he drove.
“I can smell burning… is it my car?” the Dutchman asked over team radio.
North Korea’s first ICBM test in five years was a missile capable of flying farther with a larger payload than earlier ones. But, experts say the weapon is unlikely to move the needle on any negotiations with the US.
An image of the ‘Hwasong-17’ provided by North Korean state media
North Korea continues to advance its military technology in the face of international pressure and sanctions that have been unable to deter Pyongyang’s development of more capable and deadly weaponry.
North Korea has carried out more than a dozen weapons tests in the first three months of 2022, but an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test on Thursday appears to be a new milestone.
What has been called the “monster missile” by analysts, the “Hwasong-17” is the largest ICBM Pyongyang has ever tested.
“If launched on a normal trajectory, it would range the entirety of the continental United States with some range to spare,” Ankit Panda, an Asia-Pacific security expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told DW.
North Korea has not tested an ICBM since 2017, and leader Kim Jong Un said in April 2018 that Pyongyang “no longer needed” to test long-range missiles and nuclear weapons before two summits with former US President Donald Trump.
Now, five years later, Kim has personally observed an ICBM launch, with accompanying propaganda broadcast in state media lauding a “new strategic weapon … confirming the modernity of our strategic force.”
Pyongyang said the Hwasong-17 launch will “clearly show the might of our strategic force to the whole world once again,” while warning that North Korea was “fully ready” to “contain any military attempts by US imperialists.”
North Korea is banned from testing ICBMs, and the US has already announced sanctions in response to the tests.
However, as has been seen with past failures at “denuclearization,” the Kim regime’s actions show that it considers military deterrence as more important to its survival opposed to any damage sanctions could cause.
“Every test yields useful data for the North Koreans on improving the credibility of their nuclear deterrent,” Panda said.
What do we know about Hwasong-17?
The Hwasong-17 was first revealed at a military parade in October 2020, although this week was the first time it was test fired, according to 38 North, a US-based think tank.
An ICBM is a guided missile designed to deliver nuclear warheads at a range of between 5,500 to 16,000 kilometers (3,400 to 9,900 miles), although they can also deliver other payloads. ICBMs are also much faster and have a greater range than other types of ballistic missiles.
North Korean media reported Hwasong-17 flew to an altitude of over 6,200 kilometers for 67 minutes at a range of 1,090 kilometers before hitting a target in the sea. Japan and South Korea also reported similar data. 38 North said the missile is estimated to be 2.5 meters in diameter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin.MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely be forced to bring his failing monthlong war against Ukraine to a halt, a retired US general and Russia specialist told Insider — a scenario that may happen within weeks after Russian forces have sustained heavy losses and subjected Ukraine’s cities to indiscriminate attacks.
Retired US Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan said he believed this to be the “most likely scenario” to play out, as Putin has already “failed to accomplish” his “main military goals” in Ukraine — a lightning strike to seize Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and other big cities and remove their elected leaders — and Russia’s economy continues to be decimated by sweeping Western sanctions over its war with the Eastern European country.
“Putin will have to halt his war in Ukraine sooner or later and probably in a matter of weeks,” Ryan, who served as the defense attaché to Russia for the US, among numerous other roles, told Insider on Thursday.
“The reason is not because he wants to halt his military operation but because he has no choice,” Ryan, 67, said. “He has basically reached the capacity of what his military can do for him in Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s armed forces, aided by civilians, have been greatly outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops since Russia launched its attack in late February, but Ukrainians have managed to put up a fierce resistance, which has resulted in a mounting Russian death toll and an essentially stalled invasion.
Leaders from NATO, the G7 and the EU convened in Brussels to find ways of supporting Ukraine without pushing the West into an all-out war with Russia. A new US-European energy deal aims to isolate Moscow.
G7 leaders called on Russia to end the war in Ukraine
Helicopters patrolled the skies and security was beefed up in Brussels as leaders of the NATO, the G7 and European Union held consecutive summits in the Belgian capital to address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The high-stake talks ended with new pledges aiming to isolate Russia further but stopped short of a direct military response to the war in Ukraine.
NATO leaders agreed to activate its chemical and nuclear defense units in light of a potential chemical attack by Russian forces in Ukraine and committed to bolstering the alliance’s eastern flank.
G7 leaders agreed to block financial transactions involving the Russian central bank’s international reserves of gold and ramp up humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
A new transatlantic energy pact, signed by the leaders of the European Union and the US, marked a more robust initiative by the West to isolate the Kremlin for its actions in Ukraine.
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In an effort to reduce the EU’s dependence on Russian energy — the bloc imports 41% of its gas from Russia — the US agreed to increase liquid natural gas (LNG) exports to the EU by 15 billion cubic meters this year.
After announcing the deal, US President Joe Biden highlighted how Russian President Vladimir Putin uses energy to “coerce and manipulate his neighbors.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, welcomed the deal and said it was important for Europe to shift away from Russia and toward energy suppliers that are “trustworthy, friendly and reliable.”
She also urged Western allies to remain vigilant while imposing sanctions on Russia.
“Now all our efforts should be on enforcing these sanctions and preventing circumvention and evasion,” she said following the EU summit.
Teen dies after falling from Orlando FreeFall ride
A 14-year-old boy from Missouri died after falling from a 430-foot tall thrill ride at an amusement park here in the US state of Florida on Thursday night, authorities said on Friday.
The deceased has been identified as Tyre Sampson (14), a resident of St. Louis, Missouri. Sampson was on a vacation and had visited the city along with a friend’s family. The incident happened at Icon Park here at around 11 pm (local time) when Sampson fell during the descent of 430-foot tall Orlando FreeFall ride, described by its owners as the world’s tallest free-standing drop tower ride, media reported.
Following the incident, the boy was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
A video of the incident has gone viral on social media. In the video supposedly captured by a bystander, the boy can be seen falling as the ride plummets to the ground. Witnesses can be heard screaming. Meanwhile, the Icon Park staff confirmed that the boy was strapped in properly.
During a press conference, Orange County Sheriff John Mina told media persons that the incident was a “terrible tragedy” and that an investigation is ongoing to ascertain whether it was an accident or not. Police said that the ride’s safety is also being investigated by the authorities.
Activists condemn Wildlife Services, a division of the USDA, which says deaths necessary to protect farmers and public health
The 2021 toll shows the killings span a Noah’s Ark of species. About 64,000 coyotes were killed. Photograph: Rory Merry/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock
An obscure division of the US government had a busy – and ruthless – year in 2021, killing more than 1.75 million animals across the country, at a rate of about 200 creatures every hour.
The latest annual toll of Wildlife Services, a department within the US Department of Agriculture, has further stoked the fury of conservation groups that have decried the killings as cruel and pointless. Wildlife Services maintains the slaughter is necessary to protect agricultural output, threatened species and human health.
The 2021 toll shows the killings span a Noah’s Ark of species, including alligators, armadillos, doves, owls, otters, porcupines, snakes and turtles. European starlings alone accounted for more than 1m of the animals killed. A single moose was shot, along with a solitary antelope and, accidentally, a bald eagle.
Wildlife Services targets certain invasive species that it considers a threat to ecosystems, such as feral hogs and a type of giant swamp rodent called nutria, but it also, controversially, kills vast numbers of America’s native species.
Last year, 404,538 native animals were killed by the agency, a compendium of snuffed out life that included 324 gray wolves, 64,131 coyotes, 433 black bears, 200 mountain lions, 605 bobcats, 3,014 foxes and 24,687 beavers.
Plenty of animals are killed unintentionally, too, with 2,746 unfortunate creatures, including bears, foxes and dogs, exterminated by accident last year. This is partly down to the methods used by Wildlife Services, which deploys leg hold traps, snares and poisons to target animals. The agency uses a variety of other approaches too, such as rounding up and gassing geese or shooting coyotes from helicopters or aircraft.
“It’s stomach-turning to see this barbaric federal program wiping out hundreds of thousands of native animals,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Killing carnivores like wolves and coyotes to supposedly benefit the livestock industry just leads to more conflicts and more killing. This is a truly vicious cycle, and we’ll continue to demand change from Wildlife Services.”
Last year’s death toll was, in fact, fairly low by the standards of recent years. In both 2008 and 2010, Wildlife Services killed 5 million animals, and as recently as 2019 it killed around 1.3m native animals, a total much higher than last year. Wildlife Services, which has a mission to “resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist”, often acts at the behest of ranchers, state agencies and airports to eradicate animals considered to be damaging to the environment, economic activity or public safety.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) walks near what state media said was a new inter-continental ballistic missile STR KCNA VIA KNS/AFP
Seoul (AFP) – Leather jacket, sunglasses and a gigantic missile: North Korean state media announced the launch of Pyongyang’s largest-ever intercontinental ballistic missile with an attempt at old school Hollywood flair on Friday.
Leader Kim Jong Un walks towards the camera, flanked by generals, as they prepare to fire the giant Hwasong-17 missile — Pyongyang’s first ICBM test since 2017.
Over suspenseful music, the camera cuts between two generals and Kim checking their watches, before, in slow motion, Kim whips off his sunglasses and gives a nod, prompting soldiers to move the enormous missile into position.
The footage — swiftly remixed into parodies on social media — also focuses on the missile itself. A dramatic countdown scene leading up to the launch shows soldiers shouting “fire!” as the button for the test is finally pressed.
Cheong Seong-chang of the Center for North Korea Studies at the Sejong Institute, said the style of the video shows Pyongyang’s increasing confidence in its military capabilities.
“They have gained confidence in their military power to the point where they feel comfortable making it into a movie and enjoying it,” he told AFP.
Pakistan’s Karachi police on Friday recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from a water tank in a hospital located in Karachi’s Shah Faisal area.
Representative Image
According to the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Korangi, Faisal Bashir, the police has confiscated a large number of weapons including anti-aircraft guns, Kalashnikov, rifles and hand grenades that were hidden in the water tank of the cardiology hospital in Shah Faisal colony of the metropolis, reported ARY News.
Bashir while addressing the local media said all the arms and ammunition that are recovered have been sent for forensics and the investigation into the matter is underway. “Further investigation into the matter is underway,” he said.
Rescuers search the crash site in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. Photo: Xinhua
More than 10km (6.2 miles) from where China Eastern Airlines flight 5735 crashed, a farmer has found what he suspects to be a piece of aircraft debris, indicating the vast expanse of hilly terrain the search team must cover as they look for answers to why the plane plunged from the sky.
Huang Jianyi said he found the piece of metal as he was weeding his paddy fields in the village of Siwang on Tuesday, a day after the Boeing 737-800 carrying 132 people crashed into a hillside in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
“I saw a piece of metal. It was white,” said Huang, who is about 80 and lives alone.
He held his arms wide and raised his palm to explain its dimensions to reporters walking with him on Thursday night.
Monica Chatman, a former Tesla employee, says she was subjected to racist slurs and assigned the most arduous tasks because of her race. (Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
A single mother was excited to land a job at Tesla. About three years in, she was fired, she said, after complaining that Black workers were frequently called the N-word on the assembly line.
A former refinery worker couldn’t wait to get into green energy. She said she soon found herself and other Black workers assigned to the most arduous tasks in a corner of the factory co-workers called “the plantation.”
An Army veteran was promoted to a fleet manager job. He said he was fired after he complained that his boss called him and two Black co-workers “monkeys.”
In interviews with The Times, three Black former employees described how jobs at the pioneering automaker devolved into personal nightmares due to a pattern of rampant racism and harassment at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., factory.
Their accounts expand on allegations in a Feb. 9 lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing on behalf of more than 4,000 current and former Black workers at the world’s most valuable car company — the largest racial discrimination suit ever brought by the state by number of workers affected.
The three former employees describe a workplace where racist slurs in English and Spanish were often aimed at Black employees by co-workers and supervisors, as alleged in the lawsuit. They say Tesla segregated Black workers into separate areas, gave them the hardest tasks and routinely denied them promotions.
And they allege that when they informed the company about racist treatment, their complaints went ignored or they were fired.
Tesla disputed the former employees’ accounts, stating that the three workers did not complain to the company about racism and that any discipline they received was the result of their own workplace behavior.
“Race plays no role in any of Tesla’s work assignments, promotions, pay or discipline,” attorneys for the company said in a statement. “Tesla prohibits discrimination, in any form.”
A leaked document has revealed that China and the Solomon Islands are close to signing a security agreement that could open the door to Chinese troops and naval warships flowing into a Pacific Island nation that played a pivotal role in World War II.
The agreement, kept secret until now, was shared online Thursday night by opponents of the deal and verified as legitimate by the Australian government. Though it is marked as a draft and cites a need for “social order” as a justification for sending Chinese forces, it has set off alarms throughout the Pacific, where concerns about China’s intentions have been growing for years.
“This is deeply problematic for the United States and a real cause of concern for our allies and partners,” Charles Edel, the inaugural Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on Friday.
“The establishment of a base in the Solomon Islands by a strategic adversary would significantly degrade Australia and New Zealand’s security, increase the chances of local corruption and heighten the chances of resource exploitation.”
It is not clear which side initiated the agreement, but if signed, the deal would give Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare of the Solomon Islands the ability to call on China for protection of his own government while granting China a base of operations between the United States and Australia that could be used to block shipping traffic across the South Pacific.
Five months ago, protesters unhappy with Beijing’s secretive influence attacked the prime minister’s residence, burned businesses in the capital’s Chinatown and left three people dead. Now the worst-case scenario some Solomon Islanders envision would be a breakdown of democracy before or during next year’s election, with more unrest and the threat of China moving in to maintain the status quo.
The leaked document states that “Solomon Islands may, according to its own needs, request China to send police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands to assist in maintaining social order, protecting people’s lives and property.”
In recent weeks, Roman Abramovich has been looking at houses on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, sources told Bloomberg.Shaun Botterill/Getty Images, Captured Blinks Photography/Getty Images
Sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is looking for a house in Dubai, according to a report by Bloomberg.
This comes after one of Abramovich’s private jets landed in the city earlier this month, according to flight-tracking sites.
The tycoon, who owns Chelsea Football Club and whom Bloomberg estimates is worth about $13.5 billion, has close ties to the Kremlin. His name was included among those sanctioned by the UK on March 10 and the EU on March 15.
Abramovich is believed to have an extensive property portfolio. He’s previously been linked to properties in New York, France, and London, each worth millions of dollars. He also has at least two superyachts, multiple private jets, a helicopter, and a number of luxury cars.
And Abramovich is considering adding another property to the list, according to Bloomberg’s report. In recent weeks he’d been looking at houses on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, people familiar with the matter told the publication.
In a major development in Indo-China relations amid the border stand-off, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, in his hour-long meeting with National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, on Friday promised “early and complete disengagement” as the “present situation was not in mutual interest”, top sources told CNN-News18.
Sources quoted above told CNN-News18 that the NSA wanted disengagement and it was promised that the process will be completed soon. “They agreed that restoration of peace and tranquility will help build mutual trust and create enabling environment for progress in relations,” said the source.
The meeting was fruitful, people familiar with the developments told CNN-News18.
Currently, thousands of troops remain deployed along India’s remote border with China in the Himalayan snow deserts of Ladakh, where hand-to-hand fighting broke out in June 2020. At least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed during a clash in Ladakh’s Galwan valley – the first deadly encounter between the nuclear-armed neighbours in decades.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses French lawmakers via video lin, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 23, 2022. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS
Ukraine’s leader called for solidarity on Thursday, a month since Russia’s invasion began, warning he would see who sells out at summits in Europe where bolstering sanctions and NATO is planned but restrictions on energy could prove divisive.
U.S. President Joe Biden has arrived in Brussels for meetings of the alliance, G7 and European Union over a conflict that began on Feb. 24 and has caused more than 3.6 million refugees to flee the country.
Biden’s visit could also shine light on a dispute with European allies, some of whom are heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas, over whether to impose further energy sanctions.
The issue has been a “substantial” topic and the subject of “intense back and forth” in recent days, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. The United States has already banned imports of Russian oil.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said Moscow planned to switch gas sales made to “unfriendly” countries to roubles, causing European gas prices to soar on concerns the move would exacerbate the region’s energy crunch.
As the humanitarian toll from the conflict continues to rise, driving a quarter of Ukraine’s population of 44 million from their homes, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on people around the world to take to the streets and demand the war end.
“Come from your offices, your homes, your schools and universities, come in the name of peace, come with Ukrainian symbols to support Ukraine, to support freedom, to support life,” he said in a video address.
The United States planned to announce more sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs on Thursday, and officials would have more to say on Friday about European energy issues, Sullivan said.
Ahead of his meeting with Biden, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would boost its forces in Eastern Europe by deploying four new battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia.
Zelenskiy said on Thursday he expected “serious steps” from Western allies.
He repeated his call for a no-fly zone and complained that the West had not provided Ukraine with planes, modern anti-missile systems, tanks or anti-ship weapons.
“At these three summits we will see who is our friend, who is our partner and who sold us out and betrayed us,” he said in a video address released early on Thursday.
Oksana Baulina, who previously also worked for Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption group, “died under fire in Kyiv” while “filming the destruction” caused by Russian shelling, The Insider said on its website.
File photo of Oksana Baulina, the chief of video operations at the foundation run by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in Moscow, Russia.(AP)
A Russian journalist for the investigative news outlet The Insider was killed when Russian troops shelled a residential neighbourhood in the Ukrainian capital, the outlet said Wednesday, the latest reporter to die in war.
Oksana Baulina, who previously also worked for Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption group, “died under fire in Kyiv” while “filming the destruction” caused by Russian shelling, The Insider said on its website.
Another civilian was killed alongside Baulina in the strike and two other people were wounded, it added.
Baulina had worked for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation until it was declared an extremist organization last year.
That prompted her to leave the country and continue reporting on corruption in Russia for The Insider, the news outlet said. After Russia invaded Ukraine a month ago, Baulina filed several reports from Kyiv and Lviv in western Ukraine for the outlet.
“The Insider expresses its deepest condolences to Oksana’s family and friends,” it said.
Baulina’s colleagues took to social media to mourn her loss.
James O’Keefe meets with supporters during the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 28, 2020 in National Harbor, Md. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
A group that has singled out journalists and Democrats in undercover operations contends that prosecutors misled a federal court and sought unwarranted gag orders during a federal investigation of the group’s ties to the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley.
In November, the FBI conducted predawn raids at the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and the homes of two other individuals who worked with the group. The agents acted with warrants that allowed them to seize phones and computers to search for evidence of trafficking in interstate property.
The raids generated controversy in some circles because Project Veritas identifies itself as a news organization and the use of search warrants against journalists and news outlets is extremely rare due to Justice Department policies and a federal law passed in 1980 to limit such investigative steps.
After the raids, U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres agreed to a request by the group to put in place a special master to review the information on the seized devices to ensure that prosecutors did not get access to emails, text messages and other records that might be subject to attorney-client privilege or other legal protections.
However, in a letter Tuesday to a federal judge overseeing aspects of the probe, Project Veritas’ attorneys said they recently learned that that for nearly a year before last November’s raids prosecutors used gag orders to keep quiet other steps taken in the diary probe, including grand jury subpoenas and court-ordered seizures of all of the emails O’Keefe and several colleagues kept in particular accounts over a three-month span in 2020.
Prosecutors obtained warrants to seize all emails from an account belonging to one unnamed person the group’s lawyers called a “Project Veritas journalist” during a period spanning more than a year from 2020 to 2021, the letter says.
In some or all of the cases, prosecutors obtained non-disclosure orders — often called gag orders — prohibiting disclosure of the fact of the searches to the users of the accounts. The letter to Torres complains that even as lawyers for Project Veritas and prosecutors were laying out their respective views about a special master to address the information seized in the November FBI raids, prosecutors had similar and perhaps identical information from the group from the earlier warrants, did not reveal that fact and continued to renew the gag orders related to those searches.
THE sickening luxury enjoyed by Vladimir Putin on board his £500million superyacht is today revealed by The Sun — including tasteless gold loo roll holders.
Mad Vlad, whose forces are bombing women and children in Ukraine, spared no expense on the six-deck Scheherazade.
Vladimir Putin’s superyacht Scheherazade’s official cost could be close to $1billionCredit: Tom van OossanenThe superyacht features tasteless gold toilet roll holdersA grand piano and swish sofas can be seen in the lounge
Pressure is mounting on Italy, where the yacht is anchored, to seize and sell it to benefit Ukrainians.
An ex-crew member said: “Russian people paid for it. Putin needs his head flushing down that golden throne.”
The Scheherazade’s official cost when finished two years ago was £500million — but insiders say it could be closer to £750million.
Pictures obtained by The Sun show six decks of obscene luxury and sickening excess.
Six teenage girls were killed when the vehicle they were in collided with a semi-truck in Oklahoma on Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
The six unidentified teenage girls were killed in the tragic accident.
The deadly crash occurred about 12:30 p.m. in the rural town of Tishomingo, 45 miles north of the Texas border, according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
The identities of the victims or additional details on the collision were not immediately available, according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
The girls collided with a semi-truck around 12:30 p.m. Johnston County Oklahoma Sheriff
2021 seems to be Vincent van Gogh’s year. There are at least five different traveling interactive exhibits in nearly 40 U.S. cities where people flock to literally immerse themselves in his words and works. Some attribute this current van Gogh craze to a scene in the Netflix show “Emily in Paris” which takes place in a “Starry Night” light show. Others think that people are simply looking for new experiences after a year of pandemic isolation.
From famed pieces like “The Starry Night” and “Cafe Terrace at Night” to a litany of self-portraits (some of which include depictions of his famously self-maimed ear), van Gogh’s portfolio is overwhelming in its brilliance. It’s astonishing to think that he sold only a few paintings in his lifetime, and for small sums of money, yet in 2017 his painting “Laboureur Dans Un Champ” sold for over $81 million.
So, how did this now-iconic painter escape mainstream attention during his lifetime?
For starters, van Gogh was famously eccentric, which didn’t translate well into his “day job” as an art dealer. “We get the impression that Vincent did not excel at sales. He was a failure as an art dealer at Goupil [a fine art dealer]. It is said Vincent was fired from Goupil for not being sufficiently cordial to clients,” says Nadine Granoff, director of research for Van Gogh Experts, a van Gogh authentication and appraisal company, in an email interview. This could have burned bridges and turned potential buyers off to his own works in the short term. “He probably seemed a bit eccentric in the world of commerce,” she adds.
It’s also possible that van Gogh simply didn’t live long enough to see all his hard work pay off. He died in 1890 two days after he shot himself in the chest with a revolver at the age of 37 (although some later accounts postulate he was murdered). Thus ended a life plagued with epileptic seizures and debilitating psychotic episodes. As the Van Gogh Museum website notes, at the time of his death, “he was uncertain about the future and felt that he had failed, as a man and as an artist. Even though he was, in fact, starting to get recognition for his work.”
Moscow: A Russian court on Tuesday found jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny guilty of additional charges and extended his sentence to nine years in a higher security prison as Moscow seeks to wipe out remaining pockets of dissent. The sentencing came on the 27th day of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in pro-Western Ukraine, with thousands killed and some 10 million displaced.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
Following the verdict, President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal domestic critic who has been behind bars for more than a year said the Russian leader was afraid of the truth. “Putin is afraid of the truth, I have always said this. Fighting censorship, relaying the truth to the people of Russia always remained our priority,” the 45-year-old opposition politician said in a post on Instagram after the sentencing.
With his trademark sense of humour, Navalny took the extension of his jail time on new charges of embezzlement and contempt of court in stride, joking that his “space flight is being extended — my ship has gotten caught in a time loop.” He also urged Russians to resist “these war criminals”. He stood trial inside his penal colony in the town of Pokrov outside Moscow.
“Navalny committed fraud — the theft of property by an organised group,” judge Margarita Kotova said, according to an AFP reporter present at the hearing. The judge also found Navalny guilty of the less severe charge of contempt of court. Navalny will serve his new sentence in a strict-regime penal colony, which will place him in much harsher conditions.
His lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, were detained by police following the verdict but were later freed. Navalny’s defence team said the new sentence replaces the one he is currently serving, meaning that he will not be freed for another eight years, instead of a year and a half.
– ‘People are afraid’ –
Last year the opposition leader was sentenced to two and a half years for violating parole for old fraud charges while recovering from a poison attack with Novichok nerve agent that he blames on the Kremlin. Navalny will also have to pay a fine of 1.2 million rubles ($11,500) and upon his release he will have to abide by various restrictions on his movement and activities for a further 1.5 years.
He appeared for Tuesday’s hearing in the makeshift court wearing his black prison uniform, with journalists watching via a video link. He listened closely as judge Kotova read out the verdict, sometimes smiling. Navalny has denied the charges against him, saying they were punishment for challenging 69-year-old Putin.
Russia’s security policy dictates that the country would only use nuclear weapons if its very existence were threatened, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN in an interview on Tuesday.
The comment, nearly four weeks after Russia sent its forces into Ukraine, came amid Western concern that the conflict there could escalate into a nuclear war.
Peskov made the comment in an English-language interview when asked whether he was confident President Vladimir Putin would not use nuclear weapons.
The Caribbean nation is hosting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for two days – however, the plans have angered some who say they are still waiting for an apology and slavery reparations.
The Duchess of Cambridge at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been accused of benefitting from the “blood, tears and sweat” of slaves as they arrived in Jamaica to be met by a protest calling for reparations from the British monarchy.
William and Kate will celebrate the culture and history of the island where there have been calls from politicians in recent years for Jamaica to drop the Queen as head of state and become a republic, and for a formal acknowledgement of slavery.
Anti-colonial sentiment has been growing across the Caribbean against the background of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has inspired many around the globe to campaign for equality.
Protesters gathered outside the British High Commission in Kingston, with one placard held by a little girl reading: “Kings, Queens and Princesses and Princes belong in fairytales not in Jamaica!”
A royal source said the duke was aware of the protests and was expected to acknowledge the issue of slavery in a speech on Wednesday night during a dinner hosted by the Governor General of Jamaica.
Opal Adisa, a retired professor in her 60s, is a gender specialist and human rights advocate who works with Advocates Network, a coalition of Jamaican politicians, business leaders, doctors and musicians, and was taking part in the protest.
She said: “Kate and William are beneficiaries, so they are, in fact, complicit because they are positioned to benefit specifically from our ancestors, and we’re not benefitting from our ancestors.
Canada’s ruling Liberal Party and opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) have reached a surprise agreement that aims to keep the minority government in power until 2025, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.
Governments with a minority of seats in parliament, like the one Trudeau now leads, tend to last an average of about two years, but this rare written agreement could permit it to go the entire four-year term after last year’s election.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, speaks about affordable housing during election campaign stop at Sinclair Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada August 26, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon VanRaes/File Photo
“What this means is that during this uncertain time, the government can function with predictability and stability, present and implement budgets, and get things done for Canadians,” Trudeau said.
After the election six months ago, New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh ruled out a deal with the Liberals, saying he was willing to support Trudeau only on a case-by-case basis.
On Tuesday, the two parties published a list of priorities they had agreed upon.
The Liberals said they would back a national dental-care program for low-income Canadians and move forward on a national prescription-drug coverage program, both cornerstone campaign pledges for the NDP.
The Liberals and New Democrats also said they would develop a plan to phase out financing for the fossil fuel sector, starting in 2022.
Trudeau, who has been in power since 2015, will have more than three years to deliver on his main campaign promises, like fighting climate change or addressing a national housing shortage.
US president Joe Biden’s description of India’s response to Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine as “shaky” received pushback from Indian analysts, some of whom have been pointing out that the US and its European allies continue energy purchases from Russia (by one account, up to $600 million per day), while bearing down on India.
A woman attends a rally organised by the Ukrainian diaspora in Krakow, Poland, on Tuesday asking Nato to intervene in the Russia-Ukraine war. (Photo credit: Getty images)
Others pointed to lack of US concern over China’s ingress into India.
“Here’s the paradox: At a time when India confronts China’s border aggression, including its threat of a full-scale war, Biden won’t open his mouth on that aggression. Yet an insensitive Biden calls “shaky” India’s response to a distant war he helped provoke with a forward policy,” tweeted Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs commentator.
Some others agree with the Russian version of the unfolding events — that it is the US and Nato provocation that caused Moscow to respond. “Uncalled for remark on India by Biden. US policy toward Russia has been teetering on shaky foundations since the end of Cold War and & now the structure is collapsing. Why should India pay for US folly in drawing Ukraine into Nato. US sanctions are hurting us and we should support them?” asked Kanwal Sibal, former India foreign secretary.
Some US experts hold similar views but they have largely been shut out of the American discourse replete with calls for stronger action against Russia. Among the critics are political scientist John Mearsheimer, who foresaw current developments as far back as 2015 (his talk on the subject has 22 million views on YouTube). “The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this (Nato expansion into Ukraine) as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand,” Mearsheimer said in a New Yorker interview earlier this month.
The West has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian individuals and entities after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, prompting an exodus of luxury yachts from Europe.
Authorities in Gibraltar have seized a superyacht linked to the owner of Russia’s biggest steel pipe manufacturer.
Footage showed the Axioma, believed to belong to Dmitrievich Pumpyansky, owner of steel group TMK, moored at Gibraltar and flying a Maltese flag.
Refinitiv shipping data showed the Axioma spent the past three weeks crossing the Atlantic
The West has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian individuals and entities after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, sparking an exodus of luxury yachts from Europe.
Steel group owner linked to superyacht
Refinitiv data shows the 72m vessel is owned by a British Virgin Islands holding company called Pyrene investments, with an article published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as part of the Panama Papers naming Mr Pumpyansky as a beneficiary of the holding.
Forbes and specialist publication Superyacht Fan also list him as the owner of the Axioma.
The Gibraltar government said the Axioma arrived in port after asking permission to enter and “was confirmed to be the subject of an arrest action by a leading international bank in the Supreme Court of Gibraltar”.
The US and NATO believe that Belarus could “soon” join Russia in its war against Ukraine, US and NATO officials tell CNN, and that the country is already taking steps to do so.
It is increasingly “likely” that Belarus will enter the conflict, a NATO military official said on Monday. “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin needs support. Anything would help,” the official explained.
A Belarusian opposition source said that Belarusian combat units are ready to go into Ukraine as soon as in the next few days, with thousands of forces prepared to deploy. In this source’s view, this would have less of an impact militarily than it will geopolitically, given the implications of another country joining the war.
A senior NATO intelligence official said separately that the alliance assesses that the Belarusian government “is preparing the environment to justify a Belarusian offensive against Ukraine.”
Russia has launched its attack on Ukraine in part from Belarus’ territory, and thousands of Russian troops amassed in Belarus ahead of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine last month, which the two countries had claimed was for training exercises. US and European sanctions in response to the war have targeted both Russian and Belarusian officials, including Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
At least 117 children have been killed so far in Russia’s war on Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has told Italian lawmakers.
“But 117 will not be the final number,” he warned in a video link to both chambers of parliament in Rome. “They keep killing,” he said according to the Italian translation.
According to the office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 925 civilians have been confirmed killed in Ukraine, including 75 children. It has warned this is likely an underestimate.
Zelensky called on Italy to freeze Russian assets and confiscate luxury goods such as yachts, arguing that this was necessary to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin. “You only need to stop one person so that millions can survive.”
The top U.S. securities regulator on Tuesday urged a federal judge not to let Elon Musk escape an agreement requiring that his Twitter use be monitored, which the Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) chief executive considers part of a campaign of harassment.
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation with legendary game designer Todd Howard (not pictured) at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
In a filing in the federal court in Manhattan, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Musk had not met his “high burden” to set aside a 2018 consent decree requiring that Tesla lawyers approve tweets and other public statements that could be material to his electric car company.
It’s not enough that Musk found compliance “less convenient than he had hoped,” or wished the SEC would stop investigating Tesla’s disclosure procedures.
“When it comes to civil settlements, a deal is a deal, absent far more compelling circumstances than are here presented,” the SEC said.
The regulatory agency also urged U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who oversees the decree, to reject Musk’s bid to quash a subpoena requesting records concerning his Twitter poll last November over whether to sell 10% of his Tesla stock.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Legal experts have said Musk is unlikely to have the decree set aside.
Earlier on Tuesday, Musk danced and joked with fans as he oversaw the opening of Tesla’s first European factory, located near Berlin, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in attendance.
Intense Russian air strikes are turning besieged Mariupol into the “ashes of a dead land”, the city council said on Tuesday, as the United States and Europe planned more sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
People, who are fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, walk out of the train from Kramatorsk, at the train station in Lviv, Ukraine March 22, 2022. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
Street fighting and bombardments raged in Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said, a day after it rejected an ultimatum from Russia to surrender. Hundreds of thousands are believed to be trapped inside buildings, with no access to food, water, power or heat.
Russian forces and Russian-backed separatist units had taken about half of the port city, normally home to around 400,000 people, Russia’s RIA news agency said, citing a separatist leader.
Street fighting was taking place in the city, and both civilians and Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian fire, said regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
“There is nothing left there,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to Italy’s parliament.
Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told CNN the city was under a full blockade and had received no humanitarian aid.
“The city is under continuous bombing, from 50 bombs to 100 bombs Russian aircraft drops each day… A lot of death, a lot of crying, a lot of awful war crimes,” Orlov said.
Mariupol has become the focus of the war that erupted on Feb. 24 when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his troops over the border on what he calls a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine and replace its pro-Western leadership.
It lies on the Sea of Azov and its capture would allow Russia to link areas in the east held by pro-Russian separatists with the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Putin’s 27-day long incursion into Ukraine has forced more than 3.5 million to flee, brought the unprecedented isolation of Russia’s economy, and raised fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.
Western nations plan to heap more economic pressure on the Kremlin.
U.S. President Joe Biden will join allies in applying additional sanctions and tightening existing ones during his trip to Europe this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.
The trip will also include an announcement on joint action to enhance energy security in Europe, which is highly reliant on Russian gas, and Biden will show solidarity with Ukraine’s neighbour, Poland, with a visit to Warsaw.
While Australian PM Scott Morrison called for holding Russia to account for its Ukraine offensive in the virtual summit with PM Narendra Modi, Australia also expressed understanding of India’s position on Ukraine, as foreign secretary Harsh Shringla said after the meeting.
However, even as Modi and Morrison expressed serious concern over the conflict and the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, they agreed that that the conflict in Europe should not divert the Quad countries’ focus from the Indo-Pacific with Morrison underlining the need to ensure what is happening in Ukraine never occurs in the Indo-Pacific.
Modi briefed his counterpart about the situation at LAC and reiterated there cannot be normalisation of ties with China till peace and tranquillity along the border is restored. Morrison also spoke against Chinese activities in South China Sea. Shringla said a significant outcome of the summit was to institutionalise an annual bilateral summit mechanism. India had annual summits only with Russia and Japan till now.
While the 2 countries signed several agreements including one for co-investment in Australian critical mineral projects, an area Australia is looking to compete with China in, a joint statement by the 2 sides was still awaited till late in the night. Australia is looking to increase its investments in India by Rs 1500 crore with the fresh agreements.
While Modi didn’t mention Ukraine in his opening remarks, Morrison brought up Russia’s “unlawful invasion’’ saying the tragic loss of life underlies the importance of holding Russia to account. “But cooperation between like-minded liberal democracies is key to an open and inclusive and resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific, and I welcome your leadership within the Quad to keeping us focused on those important issues,’’ he said. While Japan had publicly said after the summit with India on Saturday that PM Fumio Kishida asked Modi to take up with President Vladimir Putin the need to main a “free and open international order’’, there was no such pronouncement by the Australians after the summit.
All 132 passengers and crew on board an China Eastern Airlines flight were feared dead on Monday after the plane crashed into a mountain in southern China.
Rescuers prepare to head out to the plane crash site. Photo: Xinhua
There had been no official confirmation of any casualties seven hours after the crash, raising concerns that there was little chance of finding survivors.
Rescue work swung into operation after the Boeing 737-800 went down near Wuzhou in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, state broadcaster CCTV reported, adding that more than 600 firefighters were being sent to the scene to help local emergency services.
Flight MU5735, which was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, disappeared en route to Guangzhou after taking off from Kunming in Yunnan province at 1.10pm. After failing to arrive as scheduled at 2.52pm it was marked “out of reach” on Guangzhou airport’s app.
According to VariFlight, a Chinese civil aviation data provider, the plane had been flying at almost 8,900 metres (29,200 feet) before slowing down and losing height at 2.19pm. Three minutes later, when its height was recorded at around 1,300 metres, it disappeared from the radar.
Ukraine said on Monday it would not obey ultimatums from Russia after Moscow demanded it stop defending besieged Mariupol, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are suffering through Russian bombardments laying waste to their city.
Mariupol has become a focal point of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, but attacks were also reported to have intensified on the country’s second city Kharkiv on Monday.
The conflict has driven almost a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people from their homes, and Germany predicted the refugee number could reach as high as 10 million in coming weeks.
Europe said Russia was using refugees as a tool and that it was prepared to take more action on top of existing sanctions to isolate Russia from global finances and trade.
Russia’s military had ordered residents of Mariupol to surrender by 5 a.m. local time on Monday, saying those who did so could leave, while those who stayed would be handed to tribunals run by Moscow-backed separatists.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government responded that it would never bow to ultimatums and said cities such as the capital Kyiv, Mariupol and Kharkiv would always defy occupation.
“There can be no question of any surrender” in Mariupol, said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
Russia’s invasion, now in its fourth week, has largely stalled, failing to capture any major city, but causing massive destruction to residential areas.
Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov that was home to 400,000 people, has run short of food, medicine, power and water. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said its “heroic defenders” had helped thwart Russia elsewhere.
A part of Mariupol now held by Russian forces, reached by Reuters on Sunday, was an eerie wasteland. Several bodies lay by the road, wrapped in blankets. Windows were blasted out and walls were charred black. People who came out of basements sat on benches amid the debris, bundled up in coats.
Some, though, are managing to escape.
A total of 8,057 people were safely evacuated on Monday through seven humanitarian corridors from towns and cities under fire, said Vereshchuk. Among those brought to safety were 3,007 residents of Mariupol.
U.S.-RUSSIA WAR OF WORDS
Russia calls the war, the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two, a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from “Nazis”.
The aircraft are registered in offshore jurisdictions like the Isle of Man and Bermuda that are attempting to make it harder for the oligarchs to keep flying.
Photo: https://www.forbes.com
More than three weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries are tightening sanctions on Russian oligarchs and billionaires. The latest salvo came on Wednesday, when the British crown dependency of the Isle of Man announced that it had deregistered 18 Russian aircraft since March 3. Forbes found that nine of those aircraft—including Alisher Usmanov’s $350 million Airbus private jet and four helicopters owned by Roman Abramovich—are owned by sanctioned Russian billionaires.
By scouring aircraft registries and publicly available data, Forbes identified at least 12 jets and seven helicopters linked to eight sanctioned Russian billionaires. The aircraft are registered in Aruba, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man and Luxembourg, all of which have implemented EU or U.K. sanctions. Collectively, the 19 aircraft are worth at least $1.2 billion. Spokespersons for the aircraft registries and authorities in Bermuda, Luxembourg and the Isle of Man told Forbes that they are taking action against aircraft owned by sanctioned individuals.
On March 12, Bermuda announced that its aircraft registry had suspended certificates of airworthiness for 740 “Russian operated aircraft,” meaning they can no longer fly. At least one sanctioned billionaire, Viktor Rashnikov, owns a Gulfstream jet registered in Bermuda. A spokesperson for the Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority told Forbes that the authority “will conduct an investigation” to determine if Rashnikov owns the aircraft.
On March 18, the U.S. Commerce Department identified Abramovich’s Gulfstream G650 jet—registered in Luxembourg and last seen in Moscow on March 15—as one of 100 aircraft that were in “apparent violation of U.S. export controls.” The press release explains that “any person anywhere—including within Russia—risks violating” the export controls by providing “any form of service” to the aircraft, meaning it’s effectively grounded.
Abramovich is the most exposed to the new measures, with two jets registered in Aruba and another two in Luxembourg, in addition to the four helicopters deregistered in the Isle of Man. Aruba’s Minister of Transport, Ursell Arends, reportedly told local media that at least 10 aircraft registered in Aruba belong to sanctioned Russians and the government will take action against them “if necessary.” Forbes identified six of the 10, including an Airbus A319 jet owned by Viktor Vekselberg. A spokesperson for Vekselberg declined to comment, and representatives for the other billionaires mentioned in this article did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
High-net-worth individuals often own aircraft through offshore holding companies to mask their ownership. “Many owners use offshore entities and special purpose companies to make it difficult to find the “real” user of the aircraft,” said Phil Seymour, president of aviation data firm IBA.
US President Joe Biden said Monday that India was an exception among Washington’s allies with its “shaky” response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden lauded the US-led alliance, including NATO, the European Union and key Asian partners, for its united front against President Vladimir Putin.
This includes unprecedented sanctions aimed at crippling Russia’s currency, international trade and access to high-tech goods.
However, unlike fellow members of the Quad group — Australia, Japan and the United States — India continues to purchase Russian oil and has refused to join votes condemning Moscow at the United Nations.
Addressing a meeting of US business leaders in Washington, Biden said there had been “a united front throughout NATO and in the Pacific.”
“The Quad is, with the possible exception of India being somewhat shaky on some of this, but Japan has been extremely strong — so has Australia — in terms of dealing with Putin’s aggression.”
Biden said that Putin was “counting on being able to split NATO” and instead, “NATO has never been stronger, more united, in its entire history than it is today.”
Indian oil refiners have reportedly continued to purchase discounted Russian oil, even as the West seeks to isolate Moscow.
An Indian government official said last week that the world’s third-biggest consumer of crude relies on imports for almost 85 percent of its needs, with Russia supplying a “marginal” less than one percent of this.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are pursuing their own interests, analysts say, as the US urges a united front against Russia’s Putin.
A Ukrainian service member walks in a destroyed village on the front line in the east Kyiv region of Ukraine on March 21, 2022 [File: Gleb Garanich/Reuters]With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominating discussions around the world, the Biden administration has been promoting global unity against what it calls Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war of choice”.
But despite those efforts, the conflict has highlighted cracks in some of the United States’ most prominent alliances in the Middle East, notably with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.
The latest manifestation of this apparent rift came last week when the UAE hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad despite repeated warnings from Washington against normalising ties with the government in Damascus. It was Assad’s first visit to an Arab country since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, and it came weeks after the Syrian president expressed full support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Assad coming to the UAE, shortly after the Gulf Arab country voted to abstain from a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine last month, tells us that the Emiratis are very serious about asserting their autonomy from the United States,” said Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington, DC-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
Abu Dhabi’s abstention last month from the US-backed United Nations Security Council proposal on Ukraine was followed by anonymously-sourced media reports alleging that Saudi and Emirati leaders rebuffed calls from US President Joe Biden. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia is in talks with China to ditch the US dollar in favour of the yuan to conduct oil transactions with Beijing.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia appear to be sending a message to the US, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Al Jazeera: “‘We’re going to act upon our interests and not what you think our interests are.’”
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson pledged Monday to decide cases “without fear or favor” if the Senate confirms her historic nomination as the first Black woman on the high court.
Jackson, 51, thanked God and professed love for “our country and the Constitution” in a 12-minute statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee at the end of her first day of confirmation hearings, nearly four hours almost entirely consumed by remarks from the panel’s 22 members.
Republicans promised pointed questions over the coming two days, with a special focus on her record on criminal matters. Democrats were full of praise for President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee.
With her family sitting behind her, her husband in socks bearing George Washington’s likeness, Jackson stressed that she has been independent, deciding cases “from a neutral posture” in her nine years as a judge, and that she is ever mindful of the importance of that role.
“I have dedicated my career to ensuring that the words engraved on the front of the Supreme Court building — equal justice under law — are a reality and not just an ideal,” she declared.
Barring a significant misstep, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins intend to wrap up her confirmation before Easter. She would be the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, as well as the first Black woman on the high court.
Jackson’s sternest Republican critics as well as her Democratic defenders all acknowledged the historic, barrier-breaking nature of her presence. There were frequent reminders that no Black woman had been nominated to the high court before her and repeated references to another unique aspect of her nomination: Jackson is the first former public defender nominated to be a justice.
“It’s not easy being the first. Often, you have to be the best, in some ways the bravest,” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee chairman, said in support.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., spoke of the “joy” in the room and acknowledged her family’s pride as Jackson’s parents beamed behind her. Booker repeated a story Jackson has frequently told about a letter her youngest daughter wrote to President Barack Obama several years ago touting her mother’s experience.
More than 9,800 Russian troops have been killed and more than 16,000 wounded since the invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, according to a report published and then deleted by a pro-Kremlin tabloid, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Journal foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov tweeted a screenshot of the article, which began by citing Ukrainian reports of Russian casualties claiming that over 14,000 Russian troops have been killed.
The article in Komsomolskaya Pravda, one of Russia’s most widely read newspapers,also cites Ukrainian claims that, as of Sunday, Russia had lost 96 aircraft and 118 helicopters.
“The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation refutes the information,” the article continues. “According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation lost 9,861 [soldiers] killed” and “16,153 … injured.”
Switzerland must freeze the accounts of Russian oligarchs in the country and confiscate their assets, the Polish prime minister said on Monday during a visit to Warsaw by Swiss President Ignazio Cassis.
In a bid to force a Russian military withdrawal from Ukraine, Western countries have imposed numerous sanctions, including freezing the Russian central bank’s assets.
“They must be frozen, the assets of Russian oligarchs in Switzerland must be confiscated and I called on the president to see to it that Switzerland approaches this topic decisively,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.
Cassis said Switzerland had adopted European Union sanctions against hundreds of people, including many oligarchs.
“They cannot dispose of their assets. If they own companies in Switzerland, be it in the commodities sector or elsewhere, these companies are also concerned by the measures. There have already been bankruptcies,” he said.
Ukrainian citizens will “have to speak up and respond to this or that form of compromise”, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.
Any compromises agreed with Russia to end its invasion will need to be voted on in a referendum, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
Issues of concern could include security guarantees offered in lieu of NATO membership, and areas occupied by Russian forces, such as Crimea.
Ukrainian citizens will “have to speak up and respond to this or that form of compromise”, Mr Zelenskyy said.
Potential compromises “will be the subject of our talks and understanding between Ukraine and Russia”, he said in comments published by Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.
‘No talk of any surrender’ across Ukraine’s major cities
Russia has continued to bombard the devastated Mariupol and intensified its attacks on Kyiv, while also targeting another port city – Odesa – for the first time.
But Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said there would be “no talk of any surrender” or of “laying down of arms”.
Residents refused Moscow’s offer of “safe passage” out of Mariupol after a deadline of 5am was set.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced a 40-hour curfew. It began at 8pm local time on Monday night and runs until 7am on Wednesday, as the city faces “more shelling”.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces are also holding on to the eastern city of Kharkiv after five civilians died in Russian shelling on Saturday – including a nine-year-old boy, said regional police.
Sky correspondent John Sparks travelled with the Ukrainian military to the front line on the outskirts of the city and described the “air filled with the deep-sounding boom of tank and artillery fire”.
Russia called on Ukrainian forces in Mariupol to lay down their arms, saying a ‘terrible humanitarian catastrophe’ was unfolding as it said defenders who did so were guaranteed safe passage out of the city and humanitarian corridors would be opened from it at 10am Moscow time (7am GMT) on Monday.
However, Ukraine rejected the offer as Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said no and called on Russian forces to stop ‘wasting time on eight pages of letters’ and ‘just open the corridor’.
She told news outlet Ukrainian Pravda: ‘There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this.’
Residents were given until 5am Monday to respond to the offer, which included them raising a white flag – Russia didn’t say what action it would take if the offer was rejected.
Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said forces would allow two corridors out of Mariupol – one heading east toward Russia or another, west, to other areas of Ukraine.
Fighting continued inside the besieged city on Sunday, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said, without elaborating, as claims today came that thousands from the port city are being taken for forced labour into remote parts of Russia.
The Mariupol City Council said in a statement: ‘The occupiers are forcing people to leave Ukrain
New York City hasn’t always been called the Big Apple. (For that matter, it hasn’t always been New York City either. What’s up, New Amsterdam?) But it does seem like a weird nickname for a metropolis that’s not particularly known for its orchards. So where did that nickname come from?
Place Your Bets!
In the 1920s, there was a reporter for the New York Morning Telegraph who covered horse racing, named John Fitz Gerald (sometimes spelled FitzGerald), as Barry Popik, Gerald Cohen and others have since noted. While there were several famous tracks in New York City, some of the best race horses came from the New Orleans area. Fitz Gerald heard stable hands referring to the races in New York, and their prestige and prize money, as the big apple of horse racing. Fitz Gerald found the term apt and started using it regularly in his columns on racing.
“We need to stop telling the Russians what we won’t do,” Cheney said.
Rep. Liz Cheney speaks during a Jan. 6 select committee meeting on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday agreed with Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the use of chemical weapons should be a “red line” for NATO to intervene in Ukraine.
“I think that we in the West, the United States and NATO — we need to stop telling the Russians what we won’t do,” Cheney (R-Wyo.) said. “We need to be very clear that we are considering all options, that the use of chemical weapons is certainly something that would alter our calculations.”
Russian forces have bombed schools, hospitals and other civilian centers within the four weeks of their assault on Ukraine. Now, global leaders are concerned Russia is about to employ the use of chemical weapons.
“I’ve only heard it. I can’t confirm it. But I can say it is disturbing,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addresses a meeting of the United Nations Security Council at U.N. headquarters on Friday. | Jason DeCrow/AP Photo
Saying she found the reports “disturbing,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Sunday the Biden administration has yet to confirm reports that Russia is seizing Ukrainian citizens and shipping them into Russia.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, “I’ve only heard it. I can’t confirm it. But I can say it is disturbing.”
“It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps, so this is something that we need to verify. Russia should not be moving Ukrainian citizens against their will into Russia.”
CNN reported that several thousand residents of Ukrainian city Mariupol have been taken by Russian forces. On Saturday, more than 4,100 people, including 1,172 children, were evacuated from the city, which endured deathly strikes on a maternity ward and theater, among other attacks.
More than 2.6 million people have fled Ukraine as of March 15, according to POLITICO.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group fired missiles and drones at Saudi energy and water desalination facilities, causing a temporary drop in output at a refinery but no casualties, the Saudi energy ministry and state media said on Sunday.
Drone strikes hit a petroleum products distribution terminal in the southern Jizan region, a natural gas plant and the Yasref refinery in the Red Sea port of Yanbu, the ministry said in a statement.
“The assault on Yasref facilities has led to a temporary reduction in the refinery’s production, which will be compensated for from the inventory,” it said, referring to Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco (2222.SE) and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec).
Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told a call about the firm’s earnings there was no impact from the attacks on its supply to customers.
The Saudi-led military coalition that has been battling the Houthis in Yemen for seven years said the assaults on Saturday night and Sunday morning had also targeted a water desalination plant in Al-Shaqeeq, a power station in Dhahran al Janub and a gas facility in Khamis Mushait.
Later on Sunday, another Aramco distribution plant was attacked in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, leading to a fire in one of the tanks, according to the Saudi-led coalition. The fire was controlled and did not result in any casualties, it said.
Russian and Ukrainian forces fought for the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Sunday, where residents are trapped with little food, water and power, while Ukraine’s president appealed to Israel for help in pushing back Russia’s assault.
Local residents gather in a street during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 20, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
In the capital, Kyiv, shellfire hit several homes and a shopping centre in the Podil district late on Sunday, killing at least one person, the city’s mayor said.
In his latest appeal for help from abroad, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed the Israeli parliament by video link and questioned Israel’s reluctance to sell its Iron Dome missile defence system to Ukraine.
“Everybody knows that your missile defence systems are the best… and that you can definitely help our people, save the lives of Ukrainians, of Ukrainian Jews,” said Zelenskiy, who is of Jewish heritage.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has held numerous calls with both Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to end the conflict.
Mariupol has suffered some of the heaviest bombardments since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Many of its 400,000 residents remain trapped with little if any food, water and power.
Burying his neighbours in a makeshift grave by the roadside, a man who identified himself as Andrei said they had died not by shelling but of ailments, stress and cold after weeks without access to medical help.
The comment came during a speech in which the Pakistan Prime Minister listed his government’s achievements as he faces the opposition’s no-confidence motion against him. The vote will take place on March 25.
North Korea appeared to have fired a short-range multiple rocket launcher on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, amid heightened military tensions on the peninsula after a spate of larger missile launches by the nuclear-armed North.
While they garner much less attention than the massive intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), North Korea has displayed several new types of multiple launch rocket systems in recent years, adding to an already large arsenal of artillery and rockets ideal for potentially striking targets in the South.
“This morning there was firing in North Korea which is assumed to be multiple rocket launcher shots, and our military was monitoring the related situation and maintaining a readiness posture,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, without elaborating.
North Korea’s military fired four shots around 7:20 a.m. (2220 GMT on Saturday) for about an hour toward its west coast from an unidentified location in South Pyongan Province, Yonhap news agency reported.
Actress and model Liz Hurley penned an emotional note regretting that she won’t be able to attend ex-fiance Shane Warne’s funeral in Australia.
English model and actress Elizabeth Hurley has penned an emotional note saying that her heart aches as she would not be able to attend the funeral of her former fiance, legendary Australian cricketer Shane Warne, who passed away following a suspected heart attack in a Thai island resort.
Hurley shared a string of throwback photographs with Warne on Instagram. The pictures are from Sri Lanka, where they celebrated their engagement.
“My heart aches that I can’t be in Australia tomorrow for Shane’s funeral. I was filming last night and, with the time jump, physically can’t get there. These pictures were taken in Sri Lanka to celebrate our engagement – we had all our children with us and it was the happiest time,” she wrote alongside the images.
Hurley shared that it still has not sunk in that Warne’s no more.
China has fully militarised at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby, a top US military commander said on Sunday.
US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C Aquilino said the hostile actions were in stark contrast to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s past assurances that Beijing would not transform the artificial islands in contested waters into military bases. The efforts were part of China’s flexing its military muscle, he said.
“I think over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military build-up since World War II by the PRC,” Aquilino told Associated Press in an interview, using the initials of China’s formal name. “They have advanced all their capabilities and that build-up of weaponisation is destabilising to the region.”
There were no immediate comments from Chinese officials. Beijing maintains its military profile is purely defensive, arranged to protect what it says are its sovereign rights.
It is the second day in a row that Russia says it has used the Kinzhal missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
Damage caused to a building hit by a missile in Kyiv, as Russia says it launched a second hypersonic missile strike near Mykolaiv. Pic: Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Russia says it has launched a hypersonic missile attack on Ukraine for the second consecutive day, amid claims that thousands of people trapped in a besieged city have been “forcibly deported” to Russian territory.
The weapon – known as Kinzhal, meaning dagger – hit a Ukrainian fuel depot near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, a Russian defence ministry official said.
It is the second day in a row that Russia says it has used the missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
Service members of pro-Russian troops drive an armoured vehicle in Mariupol
In separate attacks, an art school where 400 people were taking refuge in Mariupol was destroyed and authorities in Kharkiv said at least five civilians – including a nine-year-old boy – had been killed by Russian shelling.
People are feared trapped under the rubble of the school building in Mariupol, the city’s council said, but there was no immediate information on the number of casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the siege of Mariupol – where hundreds of thousands of people are trapped and facing relentless bombardment – is “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”.
It is the second day in a row that Russia says it has used the Kinzhal missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
Damage caused to a building hit by a missile in Kyiv, as Russia says it launched a second hypersonic missile strike near Mykolaiv. Pic: Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Russia says it has launched a hypersonic missile attack on Ukraine for the second consecutive day, amid claims that thousands of people trapped in a besieged city have been “forcibly deported” to Russian territory.
The weapon – known as Kinzhal, meaning dagger – hit a Ukrainian fuel depot near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, a Russian defence ministry official said.
It is the second day in a row that Russia says it has used the missile, which is capable of striking targets 1,250 miles away at a speed 10 times the speed of sound.
In separate attacks, an art school where 400 people were taking refuge in Mariupol was destroyed and authorities in Kharkiv said at least five civilians – including a nine-year-old boy – had been killed by Russian shelling.
People are feared trapped under the rubble of the school building in Mariupol, the city’s council said, but there was no immediate information on the number of casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the siege of Mariupol – where hundreds of thousands of people are trapped and facing relentless bombardment – is “a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come”.
(Reuters) – Russia’s space agency on Saturday dismissed Western media reports suggesting Russian cosmonauts joining the International Space Station (ISS) had chosen to wear yellow suits with a blue trim in support of Ukraine.
Photo: https://www.aljazeera.com/
“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’s press service said on its Telegram channel.
“The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colours of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from … To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”
Roscosmos Director-General Dmitry Rogozin was more acerbic, saying on his personal Telegram channel that Russian cosmonauts had no sympathy for Ukrainian nationalists.
In a live-streamed news conference from the ISS on Friday, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, the mission commander, was asked about the suits.
“Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour,” he said. “The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That’s why we had to wear yellow flight suits.”
As Western agents are trying to analyse Putin’s mind through his recent appearances, they find that Putin is ‘trapped in a closed world of his own making’, where he is the single decision maker and he is absolutely insulated from other points of view.
Western spies believe Putin’s self concept does not allow failure or weakness.(AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a nuclear war evacuation drill amid the escalating tension with Ukraine, several UK media reports citing Telegram channels claimed. As the Russia-Ukraine war is going on side by side with the negotiation, Moscow has claimed to have used its advanced hypersonic missile on Ukraine. With all indications that Putin might be inching towards a nuclear war, the report of a nuclear evacuation drill has shocked Kremlin officials, Daily Mail, Mirror UK reported.
According to the claims, senior political figures of the Kremlin have been warned by Putin himself that they will participate in evacuation drills in preparation for a nuclear war. Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, who now has a security role, along with the speakers of the two houses of parliament – Vyacheslav Volodin and Valentina Matviyenko – are the three who have been told about the nuclear war, reports say.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett expressed delight over his first scheduled official visit to India on April 2 this year at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, an Israeli government press release informed on Saturday.
“I am delighted to pay my first official visit to India at the invitation of my friend, Prime Minister Modi, and together we will continue leading the way for our countries’ relations,” Prime Minister Bennett said.
The purpose of the visit is to advance and strengthen the strategic alliance between the countries, and to expand bilateral ties. In addition, the leaders will discuss the strengthening of cooperation in a variety of areas, including innovation, economy, research and development, agriculture and more,” the Press release by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Israel informed.
The Israeli PM will meet Prime Minister Modi and other senior government officials, as well as visit the Jewish community in the country.
This visit will reaffirm the important connection between the countries and the leaders and will mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of relations between Israel and India, the press release further said.
The leaders first met on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last October, at which Prime Minister Modi invited Prime Minister Bennett to pay an official visit to the country.
An off-duty police officer knelt on a 12-year-old girl’s neck while restraining her after a lunchtime fight at a school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, surveillance footage released by the school district shows.
The footage shows the off-duty officer kneeling on a girl’s neck.
Kenosha Unified School District released redacted footage Friday that shows Shawn Guetschow trying to break up a March 4 fight, before he tussles with the child and kneels on her neck for about a minute and a half.
The clip shows two students – one in black and the other in gray – shoving each other at the lunchroom of Lincoln Middle School, before Guetschow and another staffer sprint over and pull the students apart while they trade blows.
Geutshow, a Kenosha officer who worked as a security officer at the school, then pulls the girl in the white down, pushes her head against the floor and holds his knee on her neck before he handcuffs her and walks her out of the cafeteria, video shows.
Jerrel Perez, the girl’s father, has called for criminal charges against Guetschow for using the neck restraint that was banned for Wisconsin law enforcement officers last year.
Finland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year in a row, according to an annual report, with fellow Nordic countries also continuing to rank highly.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 10th World Happiness Report, published Friday, found that Finland’s score was “significantly ahead” of other countries in the top 10.
Photo: https://www.theguardian.com
Denmark remained in second place, followed by Iceland, while Sweden and Norway occupied the seventh and eighth spots on the list, respectively.
The rankings are based on how the 146 countries on the list scored in the Gallup World Poll between 2019 and 2021. The scoring covers factors such as gross domestic product per capita and social support, as well as how a country’s citizens gauge their freedom to make life choices and generosity.
In fact, the report noted a global upsurge in benevolence in 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
John Helliwell, a professor at the University of British Columbia who helped edit the report, said there had been a “remarkable worldwide growth” in the three acts of kindness measured by the Gallup World Poll: helping strangers, volunteering and donations. People were doing all three nearly 25% more than before the pandemic, he pointed out.
Indeed, although this data was collected prior to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the crisis has seen many people from neighboring countries eager to help Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.
The report also highlighted that Nordic countries tended to demonstrate higher levels of personal and institutional trust, and were generally better at handling the coronavirus pandemic. For instance, there were 27 deaths per 100,000 people from Covid-19 in Nordic countries in 2020 and 2021, compared to 80 in the rest of Western Europe.
Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate arrived in Belize on Saturday for a weeklong Caribbean tour that was marred by a local protest before it even began amid growing scrutiny of the British Empire’s colonial ties to the region.
Britain’s Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge receive an official welcome on the first day of their tour of the Caribbean, at Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport, Belize City, Belize, March 19, 2022. REUTERS/Toby Melville/Pool
The arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge coincides with the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 70th year on the throne, and comes nearly four months after Barbados voted to become a republic, cutting ties with the monarchy but remaining part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.
Three miniature cannons fired a salute to the couple as their plane landed in Belize City before a military band played the national anthems of Belize and Britain at a welcoming ceremony that kept the media throng at a distance.
William inspected a guard of honor as the band played local creole song “Ding Ding Wala,” then drove off with his wife to meet Prime Minister John Briceno.
Afterwards, Briceno told Reuters the duke and duchess were “excited to be here in Belize as we are delighted to have them,” adding: “We wish them a fruitful and memorable visit.”
The couple are due to stay in Belize, formerly British Honduras, until Tuesday morning. On the eve of their departure, an event planned for Sunday was scrapped when a few dozen villagers staged a protest.
Residents of Indian Creek, an indigenous Maya village in southern Belize, said they were upset that the royal couple’s helicopter had been granted permission to land on a local soccer field without prior consultation.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, at least 186 people who have been sentenced to death in the US were later exonerated as a result of improper convictions, 100 of whom were Black.
South Carolina is officially using the firing squad as a method of execution. File pic
South Carolina has brought back the firing squad as a method of execution, making it one of the few US states where it is lawful to carry out a death sentence in that manner.
According to the state Department of Corrections, it will be possible for inmates on death row to choose to be shot among three execution options.
They will be allowed to decide whether to die by lethal injection, death by a firing squad of three men with rifles, or the electric chair.
The US – alongside the likes of Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – is one of the few countries that still permits capital punishment. It and Japan are the only G7 countries to do so.
Many states in the US do not permit capital punishment.
South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah are the four states in the US that allow firing squad executions.
Three inmates in Utah have been executed by firing squad since 1977, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
Australia has imposed an immediate ban on exports of alumina and aluminum ores, including bauxite, to Russia, the government said on Sunday as part of its ongoing sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia relies on Australia for nearly 20 percent of its alumina needs,” the Australian government said in a joint statement from several ministries, including the prime minister’s office. It added that the move will limit Russia’s capacity to produce aluminium, which is a critical export for Russia.
“The Government will work closely with exporters and peak bodies that will be affected by the ban to find new and expand existing markets,” the statement said.
Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO.L) owns an 80% stake in Queensland Alumina Ltd (QAL) in a joint venture with Russia’s Rusal International PJSC (RUAL.MM), the world’s second-largest aluminum producer.
Last week, Australia imposed sanctions on two Russian businessmen with links to its mining industry, one of them being billionaire Oleg Deripaska who holds stakes in QAL.
SRINAGAR: Security forces have taken a “decisive control” over Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in J&K following the abrogation of Article 370 two-and-a-half-years ago, Union home minister Amit Shah said at the CRPF’s 83rd Raising Day main function in Jammu on Saturday, held for the first time outside Delhi.
“After the abrogation of Article 370, the security forces have successfully controlled terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,” Shah said and called it the biggest spinoff of the repeal of the constitutional instrument that gave J&K some special but contentious privileges. Praising the CRPF, he said “I am sure we will be able to restore peace” in the next few years.
The situation in J&K has seen a “drastic change” since Narendra Modi took over as PM in 2014, he said. And on the PM’s watch, the dream and vision of ideologues Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Pandit Prem Nath Dogra— Ek Pradhan, Ek Vidhaan, Ek Nishan— have come true in J&K, Shah said. “Today, it’s the best tribute to the soul of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee that there is one flag, one Constitution and one leader across India,” he said.
The weapon – known as Kinzhal, meaning dagger – destroyed an underground warehouse storing missiles and aircraft ammunition in the west of Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry says.
Russia says it has unleashed its latest hypersonic missile on Ukraine for the first time since its full-scale invasion.
The weapon – known as Kinzhal, meaning dagger – destroyed an underground warehouse storing missiles and aircraft ammunition in the west of Ukraine, a Russian defence ministry official said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned Russian forces are blockading his country’s largest cities in an attempt to wear the population into submission.
The UK Ministry of Defence said Vladimir Putin’s troops have been forced to change tactics due to the “ferocity of Ukrainian resistance” and Russia is now pursuing a “strategy of attrition”.
It is likely to involve the “indiscriminate use of firepower” and result in increased civilian casualties, the MoD added.
• Boris Johnson claims Mr Putin is in “a total panic” about a revolution in Moscow, which is why he is trying “so brutally to snuff out the flame of freedom in Ukraine”
• Fighting has reached the city centre in besieged Mariupol, while an estimated 1,300 people remain trapped under rubble following an airstrike on a theatre
• UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warns Russia could be using peace talks as a “smokescreen” to allow the Kremlin to regroup troops for a fresh offensive
• Attempts are being made today to evacuate people along 10 humanitarian corridors, including one from Mariupol, Ukraine says
• The Home Office says 8,600 visas have been granted under the family scheme for Ukrainians fleeing the war
• Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station wearing bright yellow and blue – the colours of the Ukrainian flag
The death toll from a migrant shipwreck off Tunisia on Friday has risen to 20 people, most of them Syrians, as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, a civil protection official told Reuters on Saturday, the latest migrant ship disaster off Tunisia.
He said the coastguard recovered eight bodies on Saturday, after finding 12 on Friday. A search was still under way.
In recent months, several people have drowned off the Tunisian coast, with an increase in the frequency of attempted crossings to Europe from Tunisia and Libya towards Italy.
The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill banning race-based discrimination on hair, specifically textures or styles associated with a particular race or national origin such as dreadlocks, afros and braids.
The bill is known as the Crown Act, standing for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. It was co-sponsored by the progressive Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, among others, who cited research showing that Black students were significantly more likely to face school detention, often for dress code violations based on their hair.
‘Wear your crown, because change is coming’: Virginia joins states banning hair discrimination
Read more
“I want my two girls to grow up in a world where they know they will not be discriminated against because of their hair or the way they look,” Omar said in a press release on Friday after the vote.
“Natural Black hair is often deemed ‘unprofessional’ simply because it does not conform to white beauty standards,” representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, a co-sponsor, said. “Discrimination against Black hair is discrimination against Black people.”
Cold Response 2022 aims to test how Norway would manage allied reinforcements on its soil in the event that NATO’s mutual defence clause were triggered.
Photo: https://247newsaroundtheworld.com/
A US military plane with four people onboard crashed in northern Norway while taking part in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) drills, reported local media on Friday.
According to regional emergency services, the US Osprey aircraft lost contact with ground support at 6.26 pm local time south of Bodo, northern Norway, due to bad weather.
The 4-person crew was participating in the Cold Response military exercises involving over 30,000 people from NATO and partner countries.
Meanwhile, the US Marine Corps called it a “mishap” involving the MV-22B Osprey plane and said that Norwegian civil authorities are leading the search and rescue operations.
The rescue team was searching for the crashed aircraft from the air and managed to see some signs of the plane but the weather was too bad for the to land.
Rescue teams and police are heading to the area, as per latest reports.
Firms with higher export revenues also caught the fancy of investors as depreciation of rupee would boost support topline.
Shares of companies with minimum dependence on crude derivatives have managed to hold up in the midst of the market turmoil, as boiling oil prices battered the overall market sentiment. Firms with higher export revenues also caught the fancy of investors as depreciation of rupee would boost support topline.
Analysts expect less impact on consumer-facing stocks due to increase in oil prices and overall earrings for the Nifty50.
For instance, Cipla, which generates nearly 60% of its revenue from other nations has topped among the Nifty100 members with a 15.4% surge. Cigarette maker ITC features third in the league table with 12.3% gains. In FY21, the cigarette business contributed 42.7% of its revenue and another 23.2% came from branded packaged food products, Bloomberg data shows.
Analysts expect less impact on consumer-facing stocks due to increase in oil prices and overall earrings for the Nifty50. “The impact of higher crude prices on earnings for consumer-facing stocks may not be too harsh and their lower contribution to aggregate earnings may get counterbalanced by higher earnings in global commodities and IT sectors, if crude oil prices were to remain around current levels for a limited period,” wrote Kotak Institutional Equities in a report.
Supply shortfall due to sanction on Russia have benefited Indian metal stocks in a big way. While Tata Steel surged 11.1%, shares of Jindal Steel & Power and JSW Steel have climbed 15.4% and 6.6%, respectively. The current shortfall is over and above the earlier disruption in the sector due to reduction in shipment by large exporters like China and Japan. Both China and Japan have been trying to reduce their exports in a bid to bring down their carbon footprint. China exports about 60 million to 120 million tonne a year, whereas Japan and Korea had exports of about 30 million tonne a year.
Devastating loss of life and growing uncertainty have the world very much on edge, but there is a bit of good news for humanity: Benevolence is surging globally.
That’s one of the key findings of the World Happiness Report, a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network that draws on global survey data from people in about 150 countries.
Marking its 10th anniversary, the report looks at happiness around the world — the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale and everything in between, plus the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness.
And with two years of Covid-19 pandemic data on the books, the report has uncovered something unexpected.
“The big surprise was that globally, in an uncoordinated way, there have been very large increases in all the three forms of benevolence that are asked about in the Gallup World Poll,” John Helliwell, one of the report’s three founding editors, told CNN Travel.
Donating to charity, helping a stranger and volunteering are all up, “especially the help to strangers in 2021, relative to either before the pandemic or 2020, by a very large amount in all regions of the world,” said Helliwell, who is a professor emeritus at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.
The global average of the three measures jumped by about 25% in 2021 compared with pre-pandemic levels, the report says.
And benevolence is certainly top of mind as the world responds to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But before getting into how that increasingly global conflict may impact happiness, let’s look at countries where the feeling was abundant in 2021.
World’s happiest nation is Nordic
For the fifth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, according to World Happiness Report rankings based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll.
The Nordic country and its neighbors Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support in times of trouble, low corruption and high social trust, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
Denmark comes in at No. 2 in this year’s rankings, followed by Iceland at No. 3. Sweden and Norway are seventh and eighth, respectively.
Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg take places 4 through 6, with Israel coming in at No. 9 and New Zealand rounding out the top 10.
Canada (No. 15), the United States (No. 16) and the United Kingdom (No. 17) all made it into the top 20.
Brazilian judge says messaging platform popular with President Jair Bolsonaro has failed to comply with judicial orders.
The decision comes as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gears up to seek re-election in October elections amid slumping popularity [File: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters]A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has ordered the shutdown of popular messaging application Telegram in the country, effectively banning one of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro‘s favourite communication channels ahead of elections later this year.
In a decision published on Friday, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered the app blocked immediately across the South American nation, citing Telegram’s failure to comply with orders from Brazilian authorities and remove messages found to contain disinformation.
The decision comes as Bolsonaro gears up to seek re-election in October, counting on Telegram to rally his base amid slumping public support and criticism over his government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. The president has more than 1 million followers on the platform.
“Telegram’s disrespect for Brazilian law and repeated failure to comply with countless court decisions … is completely incompatible with the rule of law,” Moraes wrote in his decision.
In a perfect world, everyone would have food and shelter, and a true utopian society would be devoid of sexism, racism and other forms of oppression. But for most of the world’s population, this perfect society isn’t possible. Communism is one proposed solution to these problems.
Most people know what communism is at its most basic level. Simply put, communism is the idea that everyone in a given society receives equal shares of the benefits derived from labor. Communism is designed to allow the poor to rise up and attain financial and social status equal to that of the middle-class landowners. In order for everyone to achieve this equality, all means of production must be controlled by the state. In other words, no one can own his or her own business or produce his or her own goods because the state owns everything. Wealth is redistributed so that the members of the upper class are brought down to the same financial and social level as the middle class.
Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, which hosted the World Cup final in 2018, was packed for the rally, with patriot songs, and crowds waving Russian flags and shouting: “Russia! Russia! Russia!”
Russian military cadets and officers were among the crowds. Pic: AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed the country’s “special operation” in Ukraine at a rally marking the anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium, which hosted the World Cup final in 2018, was packed for the rally, with patriot songs, and crowds waving Russian flags and shouting: “Russia! Russia! Russia!”
Images and video from the stadium showed a sea of red, blue and white flags and banners, with one reading: “For Putin!”
Thousands at rally cheer on president
Mr Putin gave a speech from a stage at the venue – after discussing Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine with his security council on Friday, RIA news agency cited the Kremlin as saying.
He told the cheering thousands “we will implement all our plans”, insisting that the “main purpose” of the invasion of Ukraine is to “save people from suffering and genocide”.
The UK health security agency said that the daily Covid-19 cases in England could be growing each day as the estimated range of the country’s Covid reproduction “R” number is between 1.1 and 1.4.
Employees spray disinfectant as part of preventative measures against Covid-19 at the Pyongyang Children’s Department Store in Pyongyang.(AFP)
China reported its first Covid-19 deaths since January 2021 as the highly contagious omicron variant continued to spread across the country, the first epicentre of the pandemic. The two deaths were both reported in Jilin on Friday, according to the National Health Commission said in a statement.
The global deaths related to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) plunged by a fifth despite the continued resurgence of the pandemic this week. The average number of daily infections globally increased by 12% over the week to 1.8 million as Western counties see a rebound, according to an AFP tally. Covid cases in France increased by 35% this week, while Italy and Britain were up 42% each.
Citing a rise in Covid cases, a World Health Organization spokesperson on Friday said that the end of the pandemic was a long way off. Days after Bloomberg reported that WHO was discussing how and when to call an end to the global Covid-19 crisis, the UN health agency said that the pandemic was “far from over”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden spoke on Friday for about two hours in a virtual meeting called to address the conflict in Ukraine, with Xi appealing for negotiations to bring the crisis to a halt and Biden stressing that consequences await Beijing for any support it provides to Moscow.
“The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see,” Xi said, according to a government readout. “Events once again show that state-to-state relations cannot go to the stage of confrontation, conflict and confrontation are not in the interests of anyone.”
“As permanent members of the UN Security Council and the world’s two largest economies, we must not only lead the development of China-US relations on the right track, but also shoulder our due international responsibilities and make efforts for world peace and tranquillity,” the readout said.
Calling the exchange “constructive”, Beijing said the two sides agreed “to follow up in a timely manner, take practical actions, strive for the return of China-US relations to the track of stable development, and make their own efforts to properly resolve the Ukraine crisis”.
The Chinese government account added that the US and Nato “should also conduct dialogue with Russia to solve the crux of the Ukraine crisis”.
Russia said its forces were “tightening the noose” around the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol on Friday and concern grew over mass civilian casualties as the United States again warned China against aiding Moscow in its invasion.
A Ukrainian service member checks cartridges for a machine gun at a position on the front line in the north Kyiv region, Ukraine March 18, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
Russia’s advance in Ukraine has largely stalled, and its troops, frustrated by fierce Ukrainian resistance, have blasted residential areas to rubble. On Friday, missiles landed near Lviv, a western city where thousands have fled for refuge.
In Mariupol, the scene of heavy bombardment, officials estimated 80% of the city’s homes had been damaged and that 1,000 people may still be trapped in makeshift bomb shelters beneath a destroyed theatre.
Nearly 5,000 Ukrainians were evacuated from Mariupol on Friday, officials said, and residents reported seeing dead bodies along the roadside as they fled the city.
“We were careful and didn’t want the children to see the bodies, so we tried to shield their eyes,” said Nick Osychenko, the CEO of a Mariupol TV station who fled the city with six members of his family.
“We were nervous the whole journey. It was frightening, just frightening.”
Ukraine said it had rescued 130 people from the basement of a Mariupol theatre that was flattened by Russian strikes two days ago. Russia denied hitting the theatre and says it does not target civilians.
China is the one big power that has yet to condemn Russia’s assault, and Washington fears Beijing may be considering giving Moscow financial and military support, something that both Russia and China deny.
Naveen was killed in Kharkiv city on March 1 when he had come out of bunker in search of food. (News18/Special Arrangement)
The family of Karnataka student Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagoudar, who died in war-torn Ukraine, has decided to donate his body to a medical college in the state.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has announced that the body of Naveen would reach Bengaluru International airport early on Monday.
Shekarappa, the student’s father, on Friday said that he was saddened as the process of bringing back the body of his son from Ukraine was delayed. “Now, the sadness has gone away after learning that we will be able to see his body for the last time,” he said.
The body is reaching the Chalageri village on Monday, he said. After performing the final rites, the family has decided to donate the body to the SS Medical College of Davanagere, he added. The decision has been taken to enable the medical college students with their studies, he said.
The pair, who worked alternate weeks on the company’s cross-Channel routes out of Dover to share childcare of their son, are now considering their response being dismissed without notice on Thursday morning.
A couple dismissed by P&O after 31 years of combined service have described how they were marched off a ship “like criminals” when the company summarily sacked more than 800 workers.
The pair, who worked alternate weeks on the company’s cross-Channel routes out of Dover to share childcare of their son, are now considering their response to redundancy terms served without notice on Thursday morning.
Speaking to Sky News anonymously because the couple fear repercussions from P&O’s lawyers for commenting, the male partner said: “The way they came on board and locked us out of everything literally made us feel like criminals.
Protesters outside the P&O building at the Port of Hull, East Yorkshire
“Once we then got the announcement [of redundancy] everyone was devastated, and we were just told ‘go to your cabin, get your belongings and get off the ship, take an envelope on your way off’, and that was it.”
He said the dismissal left them unclear how they will pay their mortgage or support their son.
“Yesterday morning I woke up to a job, absolutely normal, this morning we’re completely unemployed.
“We’re both together, we’ve got a mortgage, a child at home, we just bought a house last year and have just done it up.”
The war in Syria has caused the deaths of more than 350,000 people and forced millions of people to flee their homes.
Assad (left) meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE prime minister and ruler of Dubai
President Bashar Al Assad has travelled to the United Arab Emirates, his first visit to an Arab country since the outbreak of Syria’s brutal civil war in 2011.
More than 350,000 people have died in over a decade of fighting in Syria, according to the UN, with millions of people forced to flee their homes, their lives changed forever.
Large parts of the country have been destroyed, and swathes of ancient and prosperous cities like Aleppo – one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world – reduced to ruins.
Syria was expelled from the 22-member Arab League and boycotted by its neighbours following the outbreak of war, but the new visit appears to signal a shift in approach.
US state department spokesperson Ned Price said he was “profoundly disappointed and troubled by this apparent attempt to legitimise Bashar Al Assad”.
In a statement posted on its social media pages, the presidency office says Assad met Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and the ruler of Dubai, on Friday.
About 24 lawmakers from Imran Khan’s own party are ready to part ways.
Karachi:
Nearly two dozen disgruntled lawmakers from Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ruling party have openly threatened to vote against him on the no-confidence motion tabled in Parliament by the Opposition, in a fresh blow to the embattled premier struggling to cling to power.
Around 100 lawmakers from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) submitted a no-confidence motion before the National Assembly Secretariat on March 8, alleging that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf government led by Khan was responsible for the economic crisis and the spiralling inflation in the country.
The National Assembly session for the move is expected to be convened on March 21 and the voting is likely to be held on March 28.
After the no-trust move was submitted by the joint opposition, some of the partners in the government began to dither but the real shocker for Khan came on Thursday when it emerged that about 24 lawmakers from his own party were ready to part ways to join the push to topple his government.
Raja Riaz, one of the lawmakers, told Geo News that Khan had failed to control inflation while another lawmaker Noor Alam Khan told Samaa News that his multiple grievances were not addressed by the government.
Elon Musk’s technology allows people access to access the internet, bypassing the network outages in the country – the tech billionaire has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to ‘single combat’
Elon Musk was thanked for supplying the country with Starlink satellites (Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Elon Musk’s Starlink app, which allows people access to a satellite-based internet service, has become the most-downloaded app in Ukraine, no doubt much to Vladamir Putin ‘s dismay.
The SpaceX CEO, 50, gave Ukraine access to the satellite-internet system Starlink, comprised of some 2,000 satellites designed to bring web access to under-served areas of the world.
It allows residents to bypass any internet outages, reports of which been rising across Ukraine since Russia invaded three weeks ago.
Figures show that Elon’s Starlink app has been downloaded almost 100,000 times in Ukraine, with global downloads more than tripling in the last couple of weeks.
The billionaire has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “single combat”, with the “stakes” being Ukraine, the Daily Star reports.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ( Image: Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
With Mr Putin’s name written in Russian and Ukraine written in Ukrainian, the Tesla chief executive tweeted: “I hereby challenge (Vladimir Putin) to single combat.
The Chinese authorities have placed Lhasa under tight control died of severe burns.
Tsewang Norbu died in the People’s Hospital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Tibet’s capital of Lhasa in the first weekend of March 2022, reliable sources have informed the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT).
Judging by the current security measures to conceal his death and past state practices toward Tibetan political activists, it is likely that his body was not returned to his family and instead secretly cremated.
Apparently, to ensure that Tsewang’s death is not leaked to the outside world, security is beefed up in the hospital as well as throughout Lhasa, residents of the city have been placed under tight control, reported ICT.
Arnold Schwarzenegger shared a post in which he reaches out to the people of Russia to tell them about the ‘terrible’ things happening in Ukraine.
In the nine minute clip, Schwarzenegger talks about the humanitarian crisis, said the Kremlin was lying to the Russian people and calls on Putin to end the war.
The speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin made on Wednesday bore the hallmarks of unapologetic authoritarianism, Russia experts and observers said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin giving a speech via videoconference on Wednesday. (Russian Presidential Press Service via AP)
“We are well post-1934,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international relations at the New School in New York City, referencing the year when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin began his murderous purge. Putin is an unabashed admirer of Stalin and has worked — successfully, in Russia — to rehabilitate his image, which suffered for years after a posthumous denunciation in 1956 by Khrushcheva’s great-grandfather Nikita Khrushchev, then the Soviet leader.
In his unsettling remarks, Putin lashed out at “national traitors” he blamed for undermining the war he launched against Ukraine.
“Putin really wants to take Russia back to Stalin days,” Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, wrote on Twitter. “He has always emulated Stalin, and this speech is definitely angrier and stronger than previous speeches.”
President Biden said on Wednesday that Putin is a “war criminal,” and the rhetoric the Russian leader used was strikingly similar to the language that authoritarians have deployed to demonize, persecute and kill ethnic minorities and political opposition groups.
As Russian troops appeared to stall in their advance on Ukrainian cities, the United States voiced concern on Thursday that China might assist Moscow with military equipment as the war entered its fourth week.
Ukraine’s capital Kyiv came under renewed Russian shelling as rescuers in the besieged port of Mariupol dug survivors from the rubble of bombed buildings. Officials from the two countries met again for peace talks but said their positions remained far apart.
Western sources and Ukrainian officials said Russia’s assault has faltered since its troops invaded on Feb. 24, further dashing Moscow’s expectations of a swift victory and the removal of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government.
Despite battleground setbacks and punitive sanctions by the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little sign of relenting. His government says it is counting on China to help Russia withstand blows to its economy.
The United States, which this week announced $800 million in new military aid to Kyiv, is concerned that Beijing is “considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
President Joe Biden will make clear to China’s President Xi Jiping in a call Friday that Beijing “will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia’s aggression, and we will not hesitate to impose costs,” Blinken told reporters.
China has refused to condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine or call it an invasion. It says it recognises Ukraine’s sovereignty but that Russia has legitimate security concerns that should be addressed.
A woman with a child evacuates from a residential building damaged by shelling, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine, in this handout picture released March 16, 2022. Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
While the United States says it wants to avoid direct confrontation with Russia, Chinese military aid to Moscow would pit Washington and Beijing — the world’s two biggest powers — on opposite sides of the largest assault on a European state since World War Two.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taking daughter Gabriella to see family when she was arrested and sentenced to five years jail, spending four years in Evin Prison and one under house arrest.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has landed back in the UK six years after being arrested in Iran.
Her flight, that also carried Anoosheh Ashoori, touched down at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire shortly after 1am on Thursday morning.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe departed the plane first, followed by Mr Ashoori, before the pair walked down the steps away from the aircraft together.
The British-Iranian mother waved at cameras as she walked into a reception building at the Oxfordshire airport, while Mr Ashoori, who was carrying a magazine, gave a salute.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be reunited with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and daughter Gabriella, who will welcome her home inside a reception building at the airport.
The British-Iranian mum-of-one was accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she denied.
The family’s lawyer Hojjat Kermani said she had been freed alongside Anoosheh Ashoori, following talks between London and Tehran over a £400million debt between the UK and Iranian governments.
A source close to their families has now claimed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori had left Iran this morning.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taking the couple’s daughter Gabriella to see her family when she was arrested and sentenced to five years in jail, spending four years in Evin Prison and one under house arrest.
Nazanin told independent investigators she was threatened with execution and the torture of her family.
She also said she was chained and blindfolded in prison – and suffered sensory and sleep deprivation.
And she said she was interrogated for nine hours at a time in solitary and bombarded with bright lights and blaring TVs.
Her husband Richard says Nazanin, who spent a week in a psychiatric hospital chained to the bed in 2018, was even left suicidal.
It was a notable shift for the president and the first time he has labeled his Russian counterpart’s actions in Ukraine in such a way.
President Joe Biden speaks on Ukraine on March 16, 2022, in Washington. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Wednesday called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”
It was a notable shift for Biden and the first time he has labeled his Russian counterpart’s actions in Ukraine in such a way. The president, who has skirted questions on whether Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine and often refers to ongoing investigations, didn’t mince his words on Wednesday.
“I think he is a war criminal,” Biden told reporters.
The comment followed Biden’s announcement earlier on Wednesday that the U.S. would send an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. His commitment to more aid, which brings the total to $1 billion allocated to the country this week, came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an emotional address to Congress. Zelenskyy pleaded with the U.S. and its NATO allies to do more to help his country, whether by enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine or sending jets to aid in its war against Russia.
Biden, during Wednesday’s speech, addressed the nature of the “difficult battle” Ukrainians have faced in the three weeks since Russia launched its assault. The Ukrainian death toll has continued to climb as Russian bombing expands toward the country’s west. More than 700 civilians have been killed the past few weeks, according to the United Nations, and dozens of children have been confirmed dead as of March 15, though these numbers are difficult to track and are likely considerably higher.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi may visit India soon, a first high profile visit from China since border stand-off in Galwan Valley in Ladakh.
However, it is learnt that Wang’s visit to India is being worked out.
Meanwhile, neither the Chinese embassy in Delhi nor the Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed the proposed visit formally.
This will be the first high profile and physical meeting between the leaders of both countries after Galwan clash and the beginning of the border stand-off that started in May 2020.
The key objective of Wang’s visit is to restart physical engagement and also invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for BRICS meet to be hosted by Beijing later this year.
It is pertinent to mention that India-China stand-off at border is still continuing as multiple rounds of military and diplomatic discussions did not reap results. India has called for complete disengagement in eastern Ladakh at all friction points.
Earlier, the 15th round of Corps Commander level talks between India and China was held at the Chushul-Moldo border meeting point on the Indian side on March 11, 2022.
The International Court of Justice ordered Russia to immediately suspend its military action in Ukraine. Although the ICJ’s verdicts are binding, whether Moscow will abide is in question.
The decision by the ICJ, also known as the ‘World Court,’ will be read out in The Hague’s Peace Palace
The UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled Wednesday on an urgent request by Ukraine for Russia to halt its invasion.
The 13-2 verdict called for the Russian Federation to immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on February 24. Only Russian and Chinese judges dissented, according to reports.
The ruling is the first such verdict handed by an international court since the war in Ukraine began.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the news on Twitter, saying that “Ukraine gained a complete victory in its case against Russia at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ ordered to immediately stop the invasion. The order is binding under international law. Russia must comply immediately. Ignoring the order will isolate Russia even further.”
What is the case?
Kyiv accuses Moscow of illegally trying to justify the war by falsely claiming genocide in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych sought to get the ICJ to order Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations.”
“Russia must be stopped, and the court has a role to play,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told the court, which is based in The Hague.
Russia boycotted the ICJ’s hearings earlier this month.
In a written filing, Moscow argued that the court “did not have jurisdiction” because Ukraine’s request fell outside of the scope of the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention upon which it based its case.
Russia went on to say “it was acting in self-defense” to justify its invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine said the Genocide Convention, which both countries have signed, does not allow an invasion to prevent a genocide. There is no evidence of Ukraine committing or planning attacks that could be deemed crimes against humanity.
The Switchblade is a small, light drone that can loiter in the air for up to 30 minutes before being directed to its target by an operator on the ground, dozens of miles away.
Rep. Michael McCaul speaks during a Republican news conference ahead of the State of the Union on March 1. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
The U.S. will send 100 Switchblade drones to Ukraine as part of the Biden administration’s new $800 million weapons package, Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told POLITICO.
The inclusion of the “tactical” drones, which crash into their targets, represents a new phase of weaponry being sent to Ukraine by the U.S., which so far has shipped mostly anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. An administration official confirmed McCaul’s account that the U.S. is sending the Switchblade.
The Switchblade is a small, light drone that can loiter in the air for up to 30 minutes before being directed to its target by an operator on the ground, dozens of miles away. The drone is launched from a tube, like a mortar shell. Its real-time GPS guidance allows a service member in the field to fly it until the moment it crashes and explodes into whatever the target might be.
The weapon was first fielded in Afghanistan by U.S. special operations forces, but quickly was picked up by the Army and Marine Corps, who saw value in the light, accurate munition that can help thwart ambushes or take out vehicles.
McCaul also said that the U.S. was “working with allies” to send more S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine. The country has had the S-300 for years, so troops should require little-to-no training on how to operate the Soviet-era anti-aircraft equipment. CNN reported that Slovakia had preliminarily agreed to transfer their S-300s to Ukraine.
The revelations come shortly after President Joe Biden announced the new $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, which also includes 800 more Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 anti-armor Javelins, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons and 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems. The AT-4 is a lightweight recoilless rifle already used by American special operations forces.
“The United States and our allies and partners are fully committed to surging weapons of assistance to the Ukrainians, and more will be coming as we source additional stocks of equipment that we’re ready to transfer,” Biden said.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a virtual speech to members of Congress, imploring the president and lawmakers to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine and provide his country with more materiel.
Ukrainian president receives standing ovation as he urges US to send more military aid and impose further sanctions
Joe Biden has denounced Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, delivering his sharpest rebuke yet of the Russian leader just hours after the Ukrainian president pleaded with Congress to provide more aid to his country.
“I think he is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin on Wednesday.
Members of Congress in the auditorium in Washington. Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock
The president’s comment marked a distinct rhetorical shift for the White House, which had deflected previous questions about whether Putin should be considered a war criminal for the Russian military’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
“There is a process, and we have stood up a process internally – an internal team – to assess and look at and evaluate evidence of what we’re seeing happen on the ground,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said earlier this month.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Biden’s comments were “unacceptable and unforgivable rhetoric”, according to Russia’s state-ownedTass news agency.
Biden’s comments came hours after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, delivered an impassioned virtual address to the US Congress. From the besieged capital of Ukraine, Zelenskiy pleaded with lawmakers to do more to protect his nation against the brutal Russian invasion, in an emotional appeal that invoked the painful memories of Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorists attacks and echoed Martin Luther King’s call for a more peaceful future.
The remarks to members of both chambers of Congress came on day 21 of the battle for Ukraine’s survival that Zelenskiy cast as the frontline of a global fight to protect democratic values.
A powerful magnitude 7.3 earthquake jolted Japan’s northeast coast off Fukushima late on Wednesday, leaving two dead and 94 injured and reviving memories of a quake and tsunami that crippled the same region just over a decade earlier.
A police officer tries to control traffics on the street during an electric stoppage at the area after an earthquake in Tokyo, Japan March 17, 2022. REUTERS/Issei Kato
There were some reports of fire, the government said. The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said on Thursday morning that there had been two confirmed deaths and 94 injured, including four seriously.
The quake was felt in Tokyo, some 275 kilometres (170 miles) away, where the shaking of buildings was long and pronounced. Hundreds of thousands of homes in the capital were plunged into darkness for an hour or more, although power was fully restored by the early hours of Thursday morning.
Authorities cancelled an earlier tsunami warning.
Just before midnight, the quake hit off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 60 kilometres, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It sparked memories of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, a week after that disaster’s 11th anniversary.
There were no abnormalities at nuclear power plants, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters. The 2011 disaster triggered a meltdown at the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima, an incident Japan is still coming to grips with.
Japan: The earthquake struck at 8:06 PM at a depth of 81 km from the surface
Tokyo:
Two people were killed and dozens injured in a powerful overnight earthquake that rattled large parts of east Japan and prompted a tsunami warning, authorities said Thursday.
Residents and officials in the country’s northeast were still trying to assess the damage early on Thursday, after the 7.4-magnitude quake that hit shortly before midnight.
A tsunami warning for waves of up to a metre in parts of northeast Japan was lifted in the early hours of Thursday, after authorities recorded water levels up to 30cm higher than usual in some areas.
Multiple smaller jolts continued to hit the region throughout the night and morning on Thursday.
Initial reports of damage appeared relatively minor, in a country with tough building codes intended to protect against devastation from frequent earthquakes, and officials said there were no abnormalities at nuclear plants.
“We’re doing our best to assess the extent of the damage,” government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters overnight.
“Major aftershocks often happen a couple of days after the first quake, so please stay away from any collapsed buildings… and other high-risk places,” he added.
Two people were killed in the quake, one in the Fukushima region and a second in neighbouring Miyagi, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, with over 90 people injured across several regions.
The quake struck at a depth of 60 kilometres (37 miles) off the Fukushima coast and was preceded minutes earlier by another strong 6.1-magnitude shake in the same area, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.
The night-time shaking came just days after Japan marked the 11th anniversary of a massive quake that triggered a deadly tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.
President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” Wednesday, a rhetorical leap that came as civilian deaths mount in Ukraine.
It was the harshest condemnation of Putin’s actions from any US official since the war in Ukraine began three weeks ago. Previously, Biden had stopped short of labeling atrocities being documented on the ground in Ukraine as “war crimes,” citing ongoing international and US investigations.
But on Wednesday, speaking with reporters at an unrelated event, Biden affixed the designation on the Russian leader.
“I think he is a war criminal,” the President said after remarks at the White House.
The shift from the administration’s previous stance came after an emotional address to Congress from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who aired a video showing Ukrainians suffering amid Russia’s onslaught. Zelensky asked American lawmakers and Biden for more help defending itself, including a no-fly zone and fighter jets.
Biden responded in his own address a few hours later, laying out new American military assistance to Ukraine — including anti-aircraft and anti-armor systems, weapons and drones — but stopping short of acceding to Zelensky’s requests.
Still, Biden acknowledged the horrors transpiring on the ground.
“We saw reports that Russian forces were holding hundreds of doctors and patients hostage in the largest hospital in Mariupol,” Biden said. “These are atrocities. They’re an outrage to the world. And the world is united in our support for Ukraine and our determination to make Putin pay a very heavy price.”
It wasn’t until a few hours after that that Biden responded to a question about Putin being a war criminal. Biden initially said “no,” but immediately returned to a group of reporters to clarify what had been asked. When asked again whether Putin was a war criminal, he answered in the affirmative.
Officials, including Biden, had previously avoided saying war crimes were being committed in Ukraine, citing ongoing investigations into whether that term could be used. Other world leaders have not been as circumspect, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said last week war crimes were being committed. The International Criminal Court at the Hague has also opened an investigation into war crimes. And the US Senate unanimously asked for an international investigation into war crimes on Tuesday. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said last week that actions committed by Russia against the Ukrainian people “constitute war crimes,” marking the first time a senior US official directly accused Moscow of war crimes since last month’s attack on Ukraine began.
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said Russian troops “shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread” on Wednesday in the decimated northeast Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. The embassy did not cite what evidence it had of the attack in a statement posted on its official Twitter account.
“Such horrific attacks must stop,” the Embassy said in the tweet, adding that the U.S. government was “considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.”
Today, Russian forces shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread in Chernihiv. Such horrific attacks must stop. We are considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine.
With each day, the cost in human lives and suffering of Russia’s war on Ukraine rises. The United Nations human rights office has registered about 600 civilian deaths, but the U.N. acknowledges the real toll is certain to be far higher. Ukrainian officials say thousands have been killed — more than 2,000 in the besieged southern city of Mariupol alone.
There was little information on the alleged attack on civilians lining up for food in Chernihiv, but video posted to social media showed the purported aftermath, with a number of bodies on the ground.
One of those to post the video was Oleksandr Merezhko, deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, and chair of its Foreign Affairs Committee.
In Chernigiv Russians have killed more than ten people who were standing in line to buy some bread. pic.twitter.com/sy2yGN1BAw
“Russians have killed more than ten people who were standing in line to buy some bread,” he said in his tweet.
The alleged attack came a day after Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said a Russian artillery strike had hit a university and open-air market in Chernihiv on Monday, killing 10. It was one of many strikes to hit the city over the last three weeks.
The governor of the region said Wednesday that electricity had been cut to Chernihiv city and some surrounding towns and villages, but the Reuters news agency quoted Governor Viacheslav Chaus as saying Ukraine’s armed forces were dealing “powerful blows on the Russian enemy every hour.”
The US embassy in Kyiv says it is “considering all available options to ensure accountability for any atrocity crimes in Ukraine”.
People are buried under rubble after a theatre in Mariupol – where hundreds of people are reported to have been sheltering – was bombed by Russian forces, local officials have said.
The city council said the number of casualties was not yet known, but Sky News has verified footage from the attack as showing the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre.
A satellite image shows the theatre before the attack – with the word ‘children’ written in Russian in giant letters at both ends of the building. (pic Maxar)
A statement from Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said: “The bomb strike demolished the central part of the theatre building, causing large numbers of people to be buried under the debris.
“The assessment of the exact number of persons affected is currently impossible due to ongoing shelling.
“By delivering a purposeful bomb attack to the place of mass gathering of civilians Russia has committed another war crime.”
A satellite image taken by Maxar Technologies shows the theatre on 14 March before the attack.
Spelt out on the ground is the Russian word for “children”, which shows how it was clearly identified for days that people were sheltering in it.
However, the RIA news agency, reported Russia’s Defence Ministry has denied it carried out the attack, instead
accusing the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia, of blowing it up.
It did not give evidence to back up the claim.
Earlier, Russian forces shot and killed 10 people queuing for bread in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, the US embassy in Kyiv has said.
Another British-Iranian man, Morad Tahbaz, has been released from an Iranian prison on “furlough” but Tehran would not allow him to fly back with the other two detainees.
British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are on their way home to the UK after years in Iranian prisons.
Confirming the news to MPs on Wednesday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the House of Commons: “They are on their way home. They will land in the UK later today, and they will be reunited with their families.”
It was later revealed the pair had already touched down in Oman, from where they were expected to board a flight to the UK.
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, tweeted a picture of Mrs Zaghari Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori arriving in his country, posting: “Soon they will be with their loved ones at home.”
Nazanin and Anoosheh have arrived safely in Oman. Sincere thanks for the hard work and good faith in Tehran and London that made this possible. Soon they will be with their loved ones at home. We hope this result will bring further progress in the dialogue between the parties. pic.twitter.com/u5qDQ4sgHC
— Badr Albusaidi – بدر البوسعيدي (@badralbusaidi) March 16, 2022
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker from Hampstead, northwest London, had been detained since her arrest in 2016 on charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she denies.
Retired civil engineer Mr Ashoori, 67, was arrested in Iran in 2017 while visiting his mother, and was jailed for 10 years on spying charges.
Ms Truss said another British-Iranian, who also has American citizenship, Morad Tahbaz has been released from prison in Iran on furlough and the UK government would continue to work to secure his “long overdue” permanent release.
The environmental conservationist, from Hammersmith, West London, was arrested in 2018 accused of espionage after using cameras to track endangered species.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged American lawmakers to do more to protect his country from Russia’s invasion in an address to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday and pleaded with President Joe Biden to be the world’s “leader of peace.”
“Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people,” Zelenskiy said in a virtual address before showing graphic video of death and destruction in his country that ended with an appeal to “close the sky over Ukraine.”
The words “close the sky over Ukraine” are displayed on the screen as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks to senators and members of the House of Representatives gathered in the Capitol Visitor Center Congressional Auditorium, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 16, 2022. J. Scott Applewhite/Pool via REUTERS
Zelenskiy continued his push for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and asked for aircraft and defensive systems to respond to the invasion launched by Russian last month that has unleashed a wave of refugees. He also called for more economic sanctions against Russia.
Ukraine is facing terror that Europe had not experienced since World War Two and the nation’s destiny is being decided, Zelenskiy said through an interpreter.
“Is this a lot to ask for – to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people? Is this too much?” Zelenskiy asked in remarks from Kyiv, a capital city attacked every day that he said “doesn’t give up.”
Zelenskiy closed with a direct plea in English to Biden: “I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”
He received standing ovations before and after his remarks.
Zelenskiy invoked American history, asking the lawmakers to remember the 1941 Japanese bombing of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech in Washington.
“I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say: I have a need. I need to protect our sky,” Zelenskiy said.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers said after the speech that they were ready to do more for Ukraine quickly by clamping down on Russia, providing more military aid including aircraft and tightening global human rights law. But they again rejected a no-fly zone, saying there was too great a risk of wider war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Biden and NATO also have opposed establishing a no-fly zone. The White House has not supported a proposal to help transfer Russian-made MiG warplanes into Ukraine, although that idea has some support in Congress – especially among opposition Republicans.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine is grateful to the United States for its overwhelming support and to Biden “for his personal involvement, for his sincere commitment to the defense of Ukraine and democracy all over the world.”
The United States on Tuesday (local time) said India would not be violating US sanctions by purchasing discounted Russian oil but added that such a move would put the world’s largest democracy on the “wrong side of history”.
Asked about the reports of India considering a Russian offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at discount prices a week after the US banned all Russian energy imports, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Joe Biden administration’s message would be for countries to abide by US sanctions.
“I don’t believe this would be violating that, but also think about where you want to stand,” Psaki said. “When the history books are written at this moment in time, support for Russia – the Russian leadership – is support for an invasion that obviously is having a devastating impact”.
India has not condemned the invasion of Ukraine and has abstained from voting at the United Nations calling out Russia’s aggression. US officials have said in recent weeks they would like India to distance itself from Russia as much as possible, while also recognizing its heavy reliance on Moscow for everything from arms and ammunition to missiles and fighter jets.
North Korea fired an “unknown projectile” on Wednesday which appeared to fail immediately after launch, South Korea’s military said after Japanese media reported a suspected missile launch by the nuclear-armed North.
The launch comes after the United States and South Korea warned that North Korea may be preparing to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at full range for the first time since 2017.
The projectile was fired from an airfield outside the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement.
“It is presumed that it failed immediately after launch,” the statement said.
A source at Japan’s Ministry of Defence called the projectile a potential ballistic missile, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.
The airfield has been the site of several recent launches, including on Feb. 27 and March 5. North Korea said those tests were for developing components of a reconnaissance satellite and did not identify what rocket it used, but Seoul and Washington said they were tests of a new ICBM system.
Reclusive North Korea has fired missiles at an unprecedented frequency this year, conducting its ninth weapons test on March 5, drawing condemnation from the United States, South Korea and Japan.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier led military exercises in the Yellow Sea, and air defence artillery at Osan air base in South Korea intensified drills in response to the increased North Korean missile activity, U.S. forces in Asia said on Tuesday.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich jetted into Moscow on Tuesday as the Spanish government seized more assets belonging to Russia’s rich and the EU banned exports of caviar and luxury goods.
Abramovich landed in Moscow early on Tuesday after taking off from Istanbul in his private jet, according to FLIGHTRADAR24 data. A source familiar with the matter said he was not in Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin.
It was the second trip a jet linked to the oligarch has made between the Turkish city of Istanbul and the Russian capital in the past three days, the FLIGHTRADAR24 data showed. On Monday, he was spotted in the VIP lounge at Tel Aviv airport before the jet took off for Istanbul.
Abramovich was among several Russian billionaires added on Tuesday to an EU blacklist that already includes dozens of wealthy Russians. World governments are seeking to isolate Putin and his allies over the invasion of Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special operation.”
The latest sanctions follow three rounds of punitive measures which included freezing of assets of the Russian central bank, exclusion from the SWIFT banking system of some Russian and Belarusian banks, and the asset freeze of oligarchs and top politicians, including Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
