Read world news at Readselective.com.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has been cleared of breaking the law when she refused to follow police orders to leave a protest at a London oil conference last year.
There was applause in court as the judge acquitted her and her four co-defendants, saying there was not enough evidence against them and the order to disperse was unclear. The Swedish environmentalist has been arrested several times in the last year.
At this week’s all-hands meeting, Sundar Pichai faced the music. Plus: ByteDance’s ‘urgency’ push and a big week for Meta.
Happy Friday. I’m coming to you with fresh reporting from inside Google, where I obtained audio of CEO Sundar Pichai addressing employee concerns about layoffs, the company’s AI strategy, and more.
All of that below, plus more on the “urgency” push by ByteDance’s CEO and my notes on Meta’s big week.
Source : https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/2/24059902/google-sundar-pichai-layoffs-tgif-employee-morale
WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: A US city has become so cold that everything in sight is becoming frozen or covered in snow with locals claiming it’s all ‘too much’
A US city has seen temperatures plunge so sharply that fuel is thickening, roofs are collapsing and its homeless have been left frozen solid.
A big chill has swept across Alaska, with its state capital experiencing some of its coldest spells in years. Anchorage has been plagued by a cold snap, chilling its population just shy of 300,000 to the core, leaving residents claiming it’s “too much” to bare.
Anchorage has been setting new records, with snowfall in parts of the city surpassing 100-inches this week – the quickest it has ever reached that milestone in a calendar year. Temperatures have plummeted to lows surpassing minus 40C this year already.
From snow storms to heatwaves, catch the latest weather news here.
Homeless people in the state are facing a crisis and if they can’t locate a warming centre, Anchorage is simply uninhabitable. Kevin Dahlgren, founder of Truth on the Streets, visited the city and came across a harrowing sight.
“There is a person under there,” he wrote on X/Twitter on Tuesday, claiming that a homeless person had died due to the bitter conditions. “The blanket was near frozen solid. A block away was a coroner picking up a body. We must do better.”
Source : https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/us-news/homeless-frozen-solid-city-after-32030589
Carl Weathers, who rose to fame as Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” film franchise, has died. He was 76 years old.
Weathers died Thursday, his manager Matt Luber said. His family said the actor-turned-director died in his sleep.
“Carl was an exceptional human being who lived an extraordinary life. Through his contributions to film, television, the arts and sports, he has left an indelible mark and is recognized worldwide and across generations,” the family said in a statement.
The Louisiana-born film star was a successful football player before setting his sights on acting. He played college football at San Diego State University and signed with the Oakland Raiders in 1970 after going undrafted. He spent parts of two seasons in the NFL before playing with the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League.
Weathers retired from football in 1974 to pursue an acting career.
He became a household name for his role in the first “Rocky” film in 1976, when he played a cocky world heavyweight champion boxer determined to make headlines by giving Rocky Balboa, a washed-up underdog played by Sylvester Stallone, a shot at the title.
Source : https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/carl-weathers-dead-9861429b?reflink=integratedwebview_share
Health experts suggest sufficient rest, warm beverages and steam baths to tackle respiratory illness
As persistent cold weather and smog grip the country, a health crisis has been battering the country’s largest province with thousands of cases of pneumonia along with hundreds of fatalities.
Punjab has been witnessing dry winters, leaving children at risk of contracting pneumonia, has reported over 8,000 pneumonia cases and 300 deaths in the month of January alone.
Despite the provincial government’s measures such as the extension of school holidays, clipped classroom hours and mandated face masks, the number of cases of respiratory disease continues to surge with the Children’s Hospital in Lahore admitting hundreds of cases every day.
Despite offering free vaccination for respiratory disease at six, 10 and 14 weeks of age, the country has long grappled with the challenge of increasing vaccine uptake in a nation where misinformation is rife with some even declaring it un-Islamic.
Director of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Awan has urged parents to ensure the administration of the complete course of vaccines to children under the age of two.
However, Awan said that the available vaccines were not quite effective in the prevailing viral pneumonia. Detailing the available stocks, Dr Mukhtar clarified that there is a sufficient stock of pneumonia immunisation vaccines that could be administered to both children and adults.
“Pneumonia vaccines are not available in the local market, whereas, no one can import these vaccines in Pakistan without the prior permission of the government. The government imports immunisation vaccines from foreign countries only for children,” the EPI director said.
Premature births and stunting caused by malnutrition are also prevalent, weakening children who are then easy prey for pneumonia.
The United Nations’ highest court on Friday ruled that it will hear a case in which Kyiv has asked it to declare it did not commit genocide in eastern Ukraine, as Russia claimed as a pretext for attacking its smaller neighbour.
Ukraine brought the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On Friday, judges found the court had jurisdiction to hear just a small part of the original case. The judges threw out a request by Ukraine to rule on whether or not the Russian invasion violated the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Instead the panel of 16 judges said they will rule at a later stage on whether or not Ukraine committed genocide in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of eastern Ukraine now occupied by Russia.
“It is important that the court will decide on the issue that Ukraine is not responsible for some mythical genocide which the Russian Federation falsely alleged that Ukraine has committed,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told journalists at the ICJ.
He added that it was also important that the emergency order by the court in March 2022 — that Russia immediately halt its military operations in Ukraine — still stands.
While the court’s rulings are final and legally binding, it has no way to enforce them and some states, like Russia, have ignored them.
In hearings in September last year, lawyers for Moscow urged judges to throw out the entire case, saying Kyiv’s legal arguments were flawed and the court had no jurisdiction.
On Friday, the judges granted some of Russia’s objections but allowed Ukraine’s request for the court to rule that there was no “credible evidence that Ukraine is committing genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention” in eastern Ukraine.
The Georgia prosecutor trying former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat acknowledged on Friday having a personal relationship with another lawyer on the criminal case but denied it tainted the prosecution.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a court filing said claims that threatened to upend her office’s historic prosecution had “no merit.”
Trump and two co-defendants are seeking to disqualify Willis and dismiss the charges, alleging Willis benefited financially from an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired to help lead the investigation.
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” Willis said in the filing.
The case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces as he closes in on the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election. Trump has launched multiple challenges that could delay the start of any trial by weeks or months.
As he has before, Trump lashed out at Willis in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, saying, “THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!”
Steven Sadow, Trump’s lead defense lawyer in the case, said Willis’ filing “asks the court to turn a blind eye to her alleged personal and financial misconduct.”
Willis said her relationship with Wade did not give either prosecutor a personal or financial stake in the criminal case and said claims of a conflict of interest were based on “fantastical theories and rank speculation,” the filing said.
Biden warns retaliation for drone attack that killed three soldiers will CONTINUE after long-range bombers and drones hit Middle East
• Pentagon launched devastating military operation in the Middle East on Friday
• Two bombers flew from the U.S. to hit sites linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
• Strikes began after Biden attended dignified transfer for the three troops killed.
The U.S. has launched a devastating wave of airstrikes on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and militants in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three U.S. troops.
Multiple long-range bombers and drones hit 85 targets with 125 bombs over 30 minutes in the widespread military operation on Friday night ordered by President Joe Biden.
As explosions rang out across the Middle East the president said the payback strikes will continue ‘at times and places of our choosing’ and warned militias: ‘If you harm an American, we will respond’.
Two B-1- bombers flew from the U.S. for the mission hitting seven facilities – three and Iraq and four in Syria – linked to the IRGC and Iran-backed militias.
The targets included command and intelligence centers and warehouses where missiles and drones were stored.
Shocking footage from Al-Qaim, an Iraqi border town, showed rockets flying from a munitions factory believed to have been hit by American bombers at midnight local time.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 18 pro-Iranian fighters were killed in eastern Syria and Iraq called the strikes a ‘violation of sovereignty’.
The huge operation is the first from the U.S. striking back after Iran-backed militias’ deadly strike on the Tower 22 base near Jordan’s border with Syria and Iraq last Sunday.
Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Moffett, 23, were killed and more than 40 troops were injured in the attack that sparked further tensions in the Middle East.
An activist lawyer lodged a petition on Thursday seeking to dissolve Thailand’s Move Forward Party over its plan to amend a law protecting the monarchy from criticism, in a setback for a party that won an election on a bold agenda of liberal reform.
The petition was filed with the election commission a day after the Constitutional Court ruled the opposition Move Forward had undermined the powerful crown and national security, ordering it to cease its pursuit of changing a law that forbids insulting the monarchy.
Violations of the law are punishable by jail of up to 15 years for each perceived insult of the royal family, making it one of the world’s strictest lese majeste laws. The constitution states the king is enshrined to be held in a position of “revered worship”.
The petition was filed by Ruangkrai Leekitwattana, a lawyer and former senator with a track record of successfully pursuing legal campaigns to ban top bureaucrats and politicians, one of which led to the downfall of a prime minister in 2008.
The election commission will weigh the merits of the complaint and whether to send it to the Constitutional Court to decide on party dissolution, which could see its executives banned from politics for a decade.
Its predecessor, Future Forward, had championed similar policies and was disbanded in 2020 for violating campaign funding rules.
“The election commission must take into account (yesterday’s) case … the commission must carry out its duties and cannot remain idle,” Ruangkrai told reporters.
he first time Tim Cook experienced the Apple Vision Pro, it wasn’t called the Apple Vision Pro. It was years ago; maybe six, seven, or even eight. Before the company built Apple Park, where we’re sitting right now, at a bleached oak table in this incredible circular edifice of a building clad in miles of curved glass. It’s been raining, and the clouds are clearing over the pine trees and the rows of citrus and maple trees, and the sun is reflecting off the pond in the meadow, and it’s kind of mesmerizing. And Cook’s telling me about that time, all those years ago, in his dulcet Robertsdale, Alabama, accent, when he first saw it.
It was at Mariani 1, a nondescript low-rise building on the edge of the old Infinite Loop campus with blacked-out windows. This place is so secret, it’s known as one of Apple’s “black ops” facilities. Nearly all of the thousands of employees who work at Apple have never set foot inside one. There are multiple layers of doors that lock behind and in front of you. But Cook is the CEO and can go anywhere. So he strolls past restricted rooms where foldable iPhones and MacBooks with retractable keyboards or transparent televisions were dreamed up. Where these devices, almost all of which will never leave this building, are stored in locked Pelican cases inside locked cupboards.
This building, after all, is folklore to Apple. It’s where the iPod and the iPhone were invented. This same building, where Cook finds the industrial design team working on this thing virtually no one else knows exists. Mike Rockwell, vice president of Apple’s Vision Products Group, is there when Cook enters and sees it. It’s like a “monster,” Cook tells me. “An apparatus.” Cook’s told to take a seat, and this massive, monstrous machine is placed around his face. It’s crude, like a giant box, and it’s got screens in it, half a dozen of them layered on top of each other, and cameras sticking out like whiskers. “You weren’t really wearing it at that time,” he tells me. “It wasn’t wearable by any means of the imagination.” And it’s whirring, with big fans—a steady, deep humming sound—on both sides of his face. And this apparatus has these wires coming out of it that sinuate all over the floor and stretch into another room, where they’re connected to a supercomputer, and then buttons are pressed and lights go on and the CPU and GPU start pulsating at billions of cycles per second and…Tim Cook is on the moon!
Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/tim-cook-apple-vision-pro
THE Royal Navy is due to test fire a nuclear weapon within days.
Officials issued a warning to shipping as nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard sailed into the Atlantic this week.
It is the first time the UK has test fired a missile since a botched launch in 2016.
And it follows a drumbeat of warnings that the world is careering to World War Three.
The Sun understands the £4bn sub is scheduled to test fire an unarmed missile after completing a seven year refit in Plymouth.
The tests are the final hurdle for HMS Vanguard to re-enter service as part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent fleet.
The 30-year-old submarine was pictured sailing from Port Canavarel in Florida on Tuesday morning.
The Navy hailed the doomsday vessel as a 491ft “colossus” that can patrol undetected for months at a time.
She can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 missiles, each armed with multiple British-made warheads that are each more than 20 times more powerful than the weapons dropped in World War Two on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
The sub is expected to launch a single unarmed missile from 90km off the US east coast.
The US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency issued a warning to shipping that plotted the missile’s expected course to an impact in the mid-Atlantic.
The missile is due travel some 6,000 km before ditching into the sea between Brazil and West Africa.
The “hazardous operations” warning also plots areas much closer to the launch site where debris is expected to fall as parts of the 60-tonne missile are burnt out and discarded.
The US-made 44ft Trident missiles are designed to blast to the edge of space and track their position against the stars before re-entering the atmosphere and plummeting to earth.
Their maximum range is some 12,000km.
A Royal Navy source said its nuclear-armed submarines can each carry more explosive power than was dropped in the whole of the Second World War.
Officials routinely refuse to comment on nuclear and submarine missions.
However, the US warning remains in force from 9pm on January 30 to 4am on February 4.
HMS Vanguard left Plymouth last year after a £500 million overhaul that took three years longer than planned.
The Sun revealed that contractors who repairing HMS Vanguard bodged repairs in the reactor chamber by gluing broken bolts back together.
But the faults were detected in pre-mission checks.
In 2016 her sister sub HMS Vengeance had a Trident missile misfire after a similar refurb.
The intercontinental ballistic missile was due to fly 9,000km from near the coast of Florida to a target south east of Ascension Island.
But it veered dangerously of course and automatically self-destructed.
Former PM Theresa May was accused of covering up the malfunction ahead of a vote in parliament on renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
It was only the fifth time a Trident 2 missile had been fired this century.
Previous tests — in 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2012 — were widely publicised by the Ministry of Defence and Lockheed Martin, the weapon’s US manufacturer, as proof of the weapon’s reliability.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and First Sea Lord Admiral Ben Key visited Washington D.C. this week for talks with their US counterparts.
Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/10257553/britain-test-fire-nuke-missile-trident/
Forget barhopping or even dinner out—more early professionals prefer turning in early
So much for parties, clubs and bars. When the late hours strike on a Saturday night, the place to be for more young adults is asleep in bed.
Today’s 18-to-35-year-olds say they understand the link between sleep and health better than people once did, with many seeing the long- and short-term benefits of more shut-eye. Younger people also say they take comfort in seizing control over their bedtime routines, finding solace in saying no to even a late-night dinner.
Businesses have adjusted in turn, with bars adding matinee dance parties and other daytime events.
In 2022, those in their 20s reported getting an average of nine hours and 28 minutes of sleep, according to an analysis of American Time Use Survey data by RentCafe. That’s an 8% increase from the eight hours and 47 minutes they said they slept in 2010. Those in their 30s and 40s saw smaller increases.
Bedtimes are also creeping earlier. An analysis of over two million total Sleep Number smart bed customers found that those between 18 and 34 went to bed at 10:06 p.m. on average in January, compared with 10:18 p.m. last January.
Emma Kraft, a 19-year-old junior at the University of California Berkeley, spent her sophomore year living in a sorority house with 65 other women and still managed to clock her nine-hour minimum of shut-eye.
“For me, nothing good happens after 9 p.m.,” says Kraft, who tries to be asleep by around 9:30 every night. Far from feeling like an outsider, Kraft says she’s been bombarded with requests from friends for help shifting their own bedtimes earlier.
“All of a sudden it’s so much cooler and way more accepted to sleep early, and everyone has just adapted,” Kraft says.
Party, but make it daylight
Madelyn Sugg, 25, adopted a loose 9 p.m. bedtime after moving to Tulsa, Okla., in November. Instead of barhopping into the wee hours like she often had on weekends, Sugg says she now sees a jazz show with one group of friends at 6 p.m. every Monday and grabs drinks with another group at 5 p.m. on Thursdays.
“I was afraid of that feeling of FOMO or of feeling like I’m not succeeding at building a community, but it’s actually turned out to be an improvement in all these areas,” says Sugg, a financial operations analyst.
She says the shift is saving her hundreds of dollars a month on late-night food and drinks.
Businesses used to welcoming night owls are reporting this change of behavior, too.
Seatings between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. now make up 31% of Yelp reservations, up from 19% in 2017. The proportion of reservations between 6 p.m. and midnight have declined in tandem.
In New York City, bars are experimenting with early dance parties for those who want to get down during daylight hours. Joyface in the East Village has hosted four “matinees” since Halloween that start at 5 p.m. On New Year’s Eve, revelers counted down to 2024 at 8 p.m. The wait list that night was 200 people long, owner Jennifer Shorr says.
“We order pizza for everyone, it peaks at 8 p.m., then everyone can still be in bed by 11,” she says.
John Winkelman says he’s seen sleep swing from a long-snubbed facet of medicine to an occasionally overhyped cure-all in his 30 years in the field. The chief of the sleep disorders clinical research program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston says he’s happy to see more people taking their sleep seriously, but says there is such a thing as too seriously.
“People are getting a little bit neurotic about it,” he says.
He doesn’t see any intrinsic benefit to turning in earlier “unless you have to wake up at 3 a.m.,” but touts the benefits of a consistent bedtime and getting somewhere between seven and nine hours.
Work-from-home effect
Will and Kelsey Tjernlund say they laugh and sometimes decline if friends invite them out to an 8 p.m. dinner on a Friday.
“We’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so late,’ ” says 33-year-old Will, who runs an e-commerce consulting business from the couple’s home in Austin, Texas, and is usually in bed by 8:30.
It’s a big departure from their lifestyle before the pandemic, when 30-year-old Kelsey worked in an office downtown and got home around 7. Now, the Tjernlunds work out during their lunch breaks and fold laundry and prep dinner in the afternoons.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/early-sleep-bedtime-6ecd1d67?reflink=integratedwebview_share
Sri Lanka’s draconian law to regulate online content has come into force, in a move rights groups say is aimed at stifling freedom of speech.
The Online Safety Act gives a government commission broad powers to assess and remove “prohibited” content.
Authorities said it would help fight cybercrime, but critics say it suppresses dissent ahead of elections.
Social media had a key role in protests during an economic crisis in 2022, which ousted the then president.
The wide-ranging law prohibit “false statements about incidents in Sri Lanka”, statements with “an express intention of hurting religious feelings” and the misuse of bots, among other things.
The legislation will also make social media platforms liable for messages on their platforms.
Public Security Minister Tiran Alles, who introduced the draft legislation in parliament, said it was necessary to tackle offences associated with online fraud and statements that threaten national stability.
More than 8,000 complaints related to cybercrimes were filed last year, he noted.
A Sri Lankan pro-democracy group said on Thursday that the government’s “adamant pursuit” of the legislation was a “clear indication of its intention to silent dissent and suppress civic activism” as the country was still reeling from the consequences of its worst economic crisis.
Food prices and inflation have reached record levels since the country declared bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83bn in debt. Then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to step down and leave the country after thousands of anti-government protesters stormed into his residence.
There were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases in 2022, with more than 35 million new cases predicted by 2050.
A survey conducted by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited tobacco, alcohol, obesity and air pollution as key factors in the predicted rise.
“Over 35 million new cancer cases are predicted in 2050,” the IARC said in a statement, a 77 percent increase from the some 20 million cases diagnosed in 2022.
“Certainly the new estimates highlight the scale of cancer today and indeed the growing burden of cancer that is predicted over the next years and decades,” Freddie Bray, head of cancer surveillance at the IARC, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
There were an estimated 9.7 million cancer deaths in 2022, the IARC said in the statement alongside its biannual report based on data from 185 countries and 36 cancers.
Around one in five people develop cancer in their lifetimes, with one in nine men and one in 12 women dying from the disease, it added.
“The rapidly-growing global cancer burden reflects both population ageing and growth, as well as changes to people’s exposure to risk factors, several of which are associated with socioeconomic development. Tobacco, alcohol and obesity are key factors behind the increasing incidence of cancer, with air pollution still a key driver of environmental risk factors,” the IARC said.
Lower-income burden
The IARC also highlighted that the threat of cancer varies depending on where a patient lives.
The most-developed countries are expected to record the greatest increases in case numbers, with an additional 4.8 million new cases predicted in 2050 compared with 2022 estimates, the agency said.
But in terms of percentages, countries on the low end of the Human Development Index (HDI) – used by the United Nations as a marker of societal and economic development – will see the greatest proportional increase, up 142 percent.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/new-cancer-cases-to-soar-77-percent-by-2050-who-predicts
Another Indian student was discovered dead in the US state of Ohio’s Cincinnati on Thursday. The student has been identified as Shreyas Reddy Benigeri.
The cause of Benigeri’s death remains unknown but the third such death within a week has concerned students studying in the US as well as their parents as the incidents reflect a worrying trend.
The Consulate General of India in New York said the probe into Benigeri’s death is underway and at this stage, any foul play is not suspected.
Deeply saddened by the unfortunate demise of Mr. Shreyas Reddy Benigeri, a student of Indian origin in Ohio. Police investigation is underway. At this stage, foul play is not suspected.The Consulate continues to remain in touch with the family and is extending all possible…
“The Consulate continues to remain in touch with the family and is extending all possible assistance to them,” it added.
Earlier in January, Vivek Saini, a 25-year-old Indian student, was bludgeoned to death by a homeless man, who was arrested from the scene. The homeless drug addict smashed Saini’s face and head with a hammer after Saini refused to give him any more shelter and food after providing him amenities for several days. The incident happened at a convenience store in the US state of Georgia’s Lithonia where Saini used to work part-time. He had recently completed his MBA in the US.
The fire in Nairobi’s Embakasi neighbourhood, started just before midnight at a gas refilling company, whose building was badly damaged.
Nairobi: A fire resulting from a gas explosion in Kenya’s capital Nairobi killed two people and injured at least 165, a local newspaper said on Friday, citing police.
The fire in Nairobi’s Embakasi neighbourhood, started just before midnight at a gas refilling company, whose building was badly damaged, government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura said on social media platform X.
The 39-year-old says he will be “forever grateful” for Mercedes’ “incredible support” but now is the time for a new challenge.
F1 star Lewis Hamilton will leave Mercedes at the end of the upcoming season and join Ferrari in 2025.
“I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I’m so proud of what we have achieved together,” the 39-year-old British driver said in a statement.
“Mercedes has been part of my life since I was 13 years old.
“It’s a place where I have grown up, so making the decision to leave was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make.
“But the time is right for me to take this step and I’m excited to be taking on a new challenge.”
Ferrari confirmed on X that he would join “on a multi-year contract” in 2025 – fans seemed to approve, with 176,000 likes in the first 40 minutes.
The seven-time champion is expected to replace Carlos Sainz at the iconic Italian team.
Sainz’s contract expires at the end of 2024, while Ferrari’s other driver, Charles Leclerc, recently agreed a new long-term deal.
Team Statement
Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will be joining the team in 2025, on a multi-year contract. pic.twitter.com/moEMqUgzXH
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 1, 2024
Hamilton had previously been linked with Ferrari, but signed a two-year contract worth £100m last summer to stay at Mercedes.
The move ends an extraordinary partnership, with Hamilton winning six world titles between 2014 to 2020.
However, Mercedes have since fallen off the pace and he hasn’t won a race since 2021.
The team said Hamilton had triggered a release clause included in the deal he signed last year.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said the link-up had been the most successful team-driver partnership the sport had ever seen.
“However, we knew our partnership would come to a natural end at some point, and that day has now come,” said Wolff.
“We accept Lewis’s decision to seek a fresh challenge, and our opportunities for the future are exciting to contemplate.
“But for now, we still have one season to go, and we are focused on going racing to deliver a strong 2024.”
Hamilton said in his statement he would be “forever grateful” for Mercedes’ “incredible support” and Wolff’s friendship and leadership.
“I am 100% committed to delivering the best performance I can this season and making my last year with the Silver Arrows, one to remember,” he added.
The new season begins with the Bahrain Grand Prix on 28 February.
‘Dreams’ of being in red
Hamilton told ESPN last year he would be “lying” if he said he had “never thought about ending my career anywhere else”.
“I thought about and watched the Ferrari drivers on the screens at the track and, of course, you wonder what it would be like to be in red,” he added.
Shimla was lashed by a severe hailstorm on Wednesday night followed by intermittent rains.
Moderate to heavy snowfall continued in high hills and tribal areas of Himachal Pradesh on Thursday while the state capital received the first snowfall of the season bringing cheers to residents, tourists and farmers.
Shimla was wrapped in a thin blanket of snow on Thursday while the 5-km stretch between Kufri and Fagu was entirely covered in snow. Braving the cold, tourists and residents thronged the Mall Road and Ridge in the heart of the city to enjoy the snow.
Shimla was lashed by a severe hailstorm on Wednesday night followed by intermittent rains.
Over 566 roads, including six national highways, in the state have been closed for vehicular traffic following heavy snowfall and rain, said Public Works Department Minister Vikramaditya Singh, adding that 138 roads are expected to be opened by tonight.
STORY | Shimla receives season’s first snowfall, over 566 roads blocked in Himachal due to rain, snow
READ: https://t.co/vbMXKQpsRX
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/V0A6VdxjOr
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) February 1, 2024
Machinery in low areas have been shifted to snow-bound areas in a proactive move and calcium chloride is being sprinkled to clear roads, Singh said.
He added that the public works department has so far suffered a loss of ₹4.5 crore due to snowfall.
The vehicular traffic in the upper Shimla area beyond Dhalli came to a standstill as the roads got blocked due to heavy snow in Kufri, Fagu and Narkanda on Thursday afternoon.
Vehicular movement which was earlier halted in upper Shimla areas in Dhalli is now being regulated, Shimla SP Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi told PTI on Thursday.
He said man and machinery are at place and vehicles would be allowed once the roads are considered safe for commute.
The local MeT office has issued orange warning for heavy snow and at isolated places in five districts — Shimla, Kullu, Chamba, Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti on February 1 and yellow alert for thunderstorm and lightning on February 3 and 4.
The ongoing weather activity will reduce gradually by Thursday evening and the weather is likely to remain dry on Friday. However, more rain is likely from the evening of February 3, MeT official Sandeep Sharma said.
The forecast for heavy snowfall has brought relief to the farmers and the fruit and vegetable growers, who suffered huge crop losses due to the prolonged dry spell.
The wet spell is likely to be beneficial for the Rabi crops, a spokesperson of the agriculture department said.
“The heavy snowfall has brought cheers to the tourism and allied industry and we are pinning hope for a good season in February. The footfall is likely to increase due to snowfall during the weekends in Shimla,” said M K Seth, president of Shimla Hotel and Tourism Stakeholders Association.
The famous tourist destinations of Narkanda, Kufri, Shimla, Manali, Rohtang, Sangla, Dalhousie and Khajjiar are also receiving snowfall. Some vehicles in Manali and suburbs were damaged as uprooted trees fell on them.
Chidgaon in Shimla district recorded 75-cm deep followed by Shikari Mata receiving 60 cm snow, Kothi 50 cm, Chanshel and Kamru Nag 45 cm each, Manali 37 cm, Keylong 32 cm, Bada Bangal and Prashar Lake 30 cm, Tindi, Pangi, Jot and Nauradhar 25 cm each, Kukumseri 18.4 cm, Koksar 16.2 cm, Khadrala 16 cm and Shillaroo 15 cm.
Joshua Schulte, a software engineer from New York, passed the data to whistleblowing agency WikiLeaks in the so-called Vault 7 leak in 2017.
A former CIA employee has been jailed for 40 years over the largest leak of classified information in the agency’s history.
Joshua Schulte, a software engineer from New York, passed the data to whistleblowing agency WikiLeaks in the so-called Vault 7 leak in 2017.
Prosecutors, who had pushed for a full life term, said in a statement on Thursday, Schulte was guilty of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and possession of child sex abuse images and videos.
Schulte was sentenced in a federal court in New York.
The Vault 7 leak exposed secret hacking tools and led to a series of embarrassing revelations about the agency’s activities.
That year, WikiLeaks exposed details of how the CIA monitored foreign governments, alleged extremists and others by compromising their electronics and computer networks.
It was, prosecutors said, “the largest data breach in the history of the CIA, and his transmission of that stolen information to WikiLeaks is one of the largest unauthorised disclosures of classified information” in US history.
The US has approved plans for a series of strikes on Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq, officials have told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
The strikes will take place over a number of days, officials said, and weather conditions will likely dictate when they are launched.
It comes after a drone attack killed three US soldiers in Jordan, close to the Syrian border, on Sunday.
The US blamed an Iranian-backed militia group for that attack.
That group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, is believed to contain multiple militias that have been armed, funded and trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards force. It has said it was responsible for Sunday’s strike.
Iran, meanwhile, has denied any role in the attack which injured 41 other US troops at the military base, known as Tower 22.
US officials have said that US intelligence believes that the drone used to attack the facility was manufactured by Iran – and is similar to the drones Iran has been sending to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
At a news conference on Thursday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin defended the delayed military response, saying: “We will respond where we choose, when we choose and how we choose.”
“I think everyone recognises the challenge associated with making sure that we hold the right people accountable,” he said, adding that there is no “set formula for doing this”.
“There are ways to manage this so it doesn’t spiral out of control. And that’s been our focus throughout,” Mr Austin continued.
The officials who spoke to CBS News did not give an exact timeline on the potential strikes. They said the US military could launch them in bad weather, but preferred to have better visibility to reduce the risk of inadvertently hitting civilians.
President Joe Biden has been under mounting pressure from Republican lawmakers, including some of Washington’s most hawkish voices on Iran, to strike targets on Iranian soil.
But while the US has repeatedly pledged to respond to the drone attack, Mr Biden and other defence officials have said Washington is not seeking a wider war with Iran or an escalation of tensions in the region.
“That’s not what I’m looking for,” Mr Biden told reporters at the White House earlier this week.
The reportedly approved plans appear to keep the targeting to Iranian targets Syria and Iraq, rather than inside Iran.
India had proposed to purchase 31 MQ-9B Sky Guardian drones during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US last year.
The US has cleared the sale of MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones to India in a deal nearly worth $4 Billion. The Defence Security Cooperation Agency has delivered the required certification, notifying the US Congress of the possible sale today.
India had proposed to purchase 31 MQ-9B Sky Guardian drones during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US last year. The Biden administration’s approval is an important landmark in the government-to-government deal.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to strengthen the U.S.-Indian strategic relationship and to improve the security of a major defence partner which continues to be an important force for political stability, peace, and economic progress in the Indo-Pacific and South Asia region,” Defence Security Cooperation Agency said.
“The proposed sale will improve India’s capability to meet current and future threats by enabling unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance patrols in sea lanes of operation. India has demonstrated a commitment to modernizing its military and will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces,” the agency added.
Landmark Deal
The critical defence deal was in the works for close to six years and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s US visit marked the final go-ahead and the government-to-government $3.99 billion deal was finalized. The 31 drones will be used by the Indian Army, Navy and the Air Force.
The approval by the US agency comes at a time when media reports were circulating that the US has put the deal on hold over the alleged failed plot by an Indian national to kill India-designated Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.
The Biden administration’s sign-off indicates the deal’s progress, though the spokesperson of the US State Department, Matthew Miller, earlier, neither accepted nor denied the report and said, “Of course, Congress plays an important role in the US arms transfer process. We routinely consult with members of Congress on the foreign affairs committees before our formal notification so we can address questions that they might have, but I don’t have any comment on when that formal notification might take place,” adding that he has not seen reports appearing on this in the Indian press.
External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, in a press conference, tried to clear the air surrounding the sale of drones and said, “This particular matter relates to the US side. They have their internal processes in place and we are respectful of that. That is where I would like to leave my comment.” The Centre’s Press Information Bureau’s fact-checking unit called the report fake which claimed that the US had blocked the drone deal.
The Predators
The Indian Navy will get 15 SeaGuardian drones and the Army and the Air Force will get eight each of the land version of the drones – SkyGuardian. The MQ-9B is manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical, a private defence firm in the US, but the procurement is part of a government-to-government deal.
The proposed procurement had also figured in US Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin’s talks with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh in Delhi in November. The Defence Acquisition Council last year, accorded the Acceptance of Necessity or initial approval for the acquisition of 31 MQ-9B drones from the US under the foreign military sale route.
While the estimated family fortune is pegged at $5.7 billion by Bloomberg, the true extent of Sultan Ibrahim’s wealth is believed to be much beyond that.
New Delhi: At 65, Johor Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar is set to ascend the throne in Malaysia, bringing with him a wealth estimated at a staggering $5.7 billion and an empire that extends far beyond the boundaries of his country.
Sultan Ibrahim’s realm encompasses an array of ventures, from real estate and mining to telecommunications and palm oil. The opulent Istana Bukit Serene, his official residence, is a testament to his family’s wealth. The ruler’s collection of over 300 luxury cars, including one purportedly gifted by Adolf Hitler, is housed on the grounds, while a fleet of private jets, including a gold-and-blue Boeing 737, sits nearby. His family also owns a private army.
A Glimpse Into The Sultan’s Wealth
While the estimated family fortune is pegged at $5.7 billion by Bloomberg, the true extent of Sultan Ibrahim’s wealth is believed to be much beyond that. His holdings include a 24% stake in U Mobile, one of Malaysia’s major cell service providers, with additional investments in private and public companies totaling $588 million.
He also owns $4 billion worth of land in Singapore, including Tyersall Park, an expansive area adjacent to the Botanic Gardens.
The Sultan’s investment portfolio stands at $1.1 billion, thanks to substantial cash flow from share and real estate transactions.
The Sultan’s Global Footprint
As Sultan Ibrahim prepares to officially assume the throne today, his role, though largely ceremonial, assumes significance in Malaysia’s evolving political landscape. Unlike his predecessors, Sultan Ibrahim exhibits a unique blend of flamboyance and outspokenness.
His close ties with Singapore’s leadership and business associations with prominent Chinese developers position him to exert considerable influence on both domestic and foreign policy.
Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been jailed for 14 years, the second sentence handed to Pakistan’s former prime minister in two days.
The couple were convicted of illegally profiting from state gifts – just a week before a general election in which he is barred from standing.
Khan, who was ousted as PM by his opponents in 2022, is already serving a three-year jail term for corruption.
He has said the numerous cases against him are politically motivated.
Wednesday’s court case revolved around accusations over state gifts that he and his wife received while in office, while Tuesday’s case – for which he was sentenced to 10 years – for leaking classified state documents. It is thought the two sentences will run concurrently, although that has not been confirmed.
The court has also ordered the couple to pay a fine of about 1.5 billion rupees (£4.2m; $5.3m).
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party also said that the sentencing further bans their leader from future political work: he will be disqualified for 10 years from holding public office.
Khan’s lawyers said they would be launching an appeal to Pakistan’s High Court in both cases.
The former premier and international cricket star has been detained since last August when he was arrested, serving time mostly at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.
His wife Bushra Bibi, who had been out on remand, surrendered at the jail on Wednesday.
A government order late on Wednesday said she would be held under house arrest at her residence in Islamabad until further notice.
Bibi has typically kept a low profile during their period in office. The two married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister.
In the so-called Toshakhana (state treasury) case, both had strongly denied the accusations brought against them by Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog that they had sold or kept state gifts received in office for personal profit. Such gifts included a jewellery set from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
The PTI has described the cases against Khan as bogus, arguing the trials occurred under duress in “kangaroo courts”, where proceedings have been rushed. His lawyers have said he was not given a chance to defend himself, while reporters at the court said neither Khan nor Bibi – nor their legal team – were in the room when the sentences were handed down.
It said Wednesday’s case heralded “another sad day in our judicial system history”, alleging the judiciary was being “dismantled” and that the decision was akin to “a pre-determined process in play”. Pakistan’s judiciary maintains it is independent.
According to Dr Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific programme, the timing of the sentences could be read as the establishment ensuring “there is absolutely no way Imran Khan can make it out in time for the election”.
“He has been in prison, but do remember the first of these sentences [was] imposed on him for corruption and a higher court actually suspended the sentence because it was seen to be full of holes,” she told the BBC.
But it could also be an attempt to demoralise his supporters.
“That of course is a big gamble,” Dr Shaikh added. “It could galvanise his base and bring his supporters out in force.”
Khan himself told his followers on Tuesday to “take revenge for every injustice with your vote on February 8 while remaining peaceful” in a statement released on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Even before the latest sentences were handed down, many were already questioning the credibility of the election next Thursday given the extent to which Khan and his party have been sidelined.
Young fans of Olivia Rodrigo, Eminem and other music stars have been shown explicit lyrics on Spotify even when users have blocked explicit content.
The streaming service often shows a song’s original lyrics, which can include racial slurs and swear words, on screen when the clean ‘radio friendly’ version is played.
The BBC found the issue occurring with dozens of big songs by artists like Dua Lipa, The Weeknd, Drake and Lil Nas X.
Spotify declined to comment.
The BBC understands the company is aware of the problem and working to fix it.
Spotify introduced a system designed to deal with explicit content in 2018 after parents put pressure on the company, and explicit songs are marked with an ‘E’.
Anyone who wants to avoid hearing swearing can choose to block explicit content in their settings, and clean versions will often be offered instead.
However, the lyrics in Spotify’s database for many of these edited versions can be the same as the originals, meaning anyone looking at the lyrics will see the explicit words.
Currently more than a third of the songs in Spotify’s UK top 50 chart contain explicit lyrics. Of those, half show the explicit lyrics on screen when the clean edit is played.
The BBC found 100 more high-profile affected tracks, including some that feature in children’s film soundtracks or on child-friendly playlists. They include:
Spotify appeared to remove lyrics for a small number of songs on Wednesday after being alerted to the problem by the BBC.
The BBC has also discovered that on desktops or laptops, people can still read the lyrics of explicit versions of songs even when the tracks are blocked, simply by clicking on the track names from a search or artist profile page.
Kim Kardashian is feeling warm and fuzzy while out with her ex.
The Skims founder, 43, took daughter North West and a gaggle of friends to Nobu Malibu on Tuesday evening, where the crew was joined by Kanye West for a special (and stylish) night out.
Kardashian arrived at the celebrity hotspot with her eldest daughter, 10, and several of her friends, including cousin Penelope Disick; the “Donda” rapper showed up minutes later, sans wife Bianca Censori.
While Kanye wore a face-obscuring mask with a leather jacket, gray jeans and chunky black boots, he (accidentally?) coordinated with his ex, who was dressed in head-to-toe Prada fur.
Along with her fuzzy black maxi skirt, Kardashian wore a matching floor-length coat and buckled bra top.
While it doesn’t appear her skirt’s available to shop, Prada does sell a miniskirt version ($3,150); a coat nearly identical to the star’s, meanwhile, could be yours for $13,000.
Kim finished off her look with a sparkling silver Balenciaga purse in the shape of a high-heeled pump and, on her feet, a pair of black pointed booties.
It appears the tweens left with a slew of party favors; North and her friends all exited Nobu wearing Kanye West merch, including matching black Yeezy slides and crewneck sweaters emblazoned with the album art from his forthcoming album, “Vultures,” which includes a feature by Miss Westie herself.
After three years of complete silence and no information as to her whereabouts, the family of Aung San Suu Kyi have received their first communication from the former leader of Myanmar since she was removed from power three years ago today.
In a handwritten letter to her son Kim Aris, who lives in the UK, she says she’s generally well but is suffering from dental problems and spondylitis, a painful condition that inflames the joints of the backbone.
The letter, her son says, is the first confirmation they have received that the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner is alive.
Mr Aris says he recognised his mother’s handwriting straight away.
“I was overjoyed to actually see something in her handwriting, to know that she’s able to actually write, for starters, because I haven’t had any confirmation that she’s actually alive for all these years,” he says in an interview with Sky News.
Ms Suu Kyi is serving a 33-year prison sentence on corruption charges her supporters say were made up to keep her from power.
The military junta, which severely restricts her contact with the outside world, allowed her to receive a care package from her family and gave her permission to write what is basically a thank you letter, Mr Aris says.
He received the letter in early January this year.
“She sounded well in terms of her spirits, but she always does,” he says when asked if she gave any insight into how she was being treated.
He adds there was little detail in the letter other than a thank you for the care package because she’s aware their communications will be read and will be stopped altogether if she attempted to say more.
Suu Kyi likely in solitary confinement
Mr Aris says his family has no idea where she is being held, or if she has any knowledge of what’s happening on the outside, only that they have reason to believe she is in solitary confinement.
“I don’t know if she’s able to get much news outside of the prison, as far as I am aware she is being held apart from all the other prisoners – essentially in solitary confinement but I don’t know whether she’s in a cell or whether she’s in a room in a barracks or if they’ve built her a separate cell like they have done in the past,” he says.
“I do know that she’s never accepted any preferential treatment to the other prisoners, so if she is being held separate to the other prisoners and in similar sorts of conditions to them than I can only imagine it’s pretty dire.”
Mr Aris says his mother hasn’t seen her lawyers in over a year, and her only contact with an outside official was a visit from Thailand’s foreign minister, who met her in July last year.
Junta brutally suppressed all opposition
Exactly three years ago the military junta seized control of the country on the day a new parliament was due to be sworn in.
The coup was greeted with massive protests on the streets of the country’s cities, within days the junta deployed police and army units who brutally suppressed all opposition. The protests went on for a year, and at least 1,500 protesters were said to have been killed in that time.
Myanmar – also known as Burma – is now embroiled in a nationwide civil war, with ethnic armies and militia groups made up of civilian volunteers attacking the junta’s forces.
The Metropolitan Police is trying to track down a man seen fleeing the scene, with a police helicopter involved in the search.
Two children, their mother and three police officers are among nine people injured after a “corrosive substance” was thrown in Clapham in south London.
The fire brigade said they were called to a “chemical incident” and gave emergency care to a woman and her two children.
Three members of the public who went to help are understood to be among those hurt, as well as three police officers.
Pictures from the scene show a car with the doors open in the middle of the road and a helicopter is now involved in a manhunt to catch the person responsible.
The incident happened shortly before 7.30pm on Lessar Avenue, a street running from the south of Clapham Common.
An eyewitness, who asked to stay anonymous, told Sky News: “There was a man in a white car with two children. It looked like he tried to run over a woman. They had been fighting.
“One girl in the back had her hand on the window – you can see the mark on the car.
“He grabbed one of the two children and violently grabbed them and slammed them on the floor.
“The lady then shouted ‘My eyes! My eyes! Call the police, my eyes!’
“Then I saw him run off. It was all so traumatising.”
Another witness described how he tried to wash the chemical from the woman’s face.
“It was horrific,” he told Sky News. “First a man grabbed his kid – a girl aged two or three from a white car. He threw her onto the floor – twice! It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
“The man then threw something at the woman. She was screaming: ‘My eyes! My eyes!’
“I then ran into my house, grabbed a water bottle and threw water on her eyes. Her lips were black. Her skin looked burnt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Wednesday for the closure of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) as his forces conducted more air strikes in Gaza amid diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire and release of hostages in the enclave.
Israel has accused some UNRWA staff of involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas assault in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. Donors including the United States have paused funding pending an investigation, but aid agencies say ending UNRWA operations would wreck humanitarian efforts in devastated Gaza.
The Palestinians have accused Israel of falsifying information to tarnish UNRWA, which was set up to help refugees of the war at Israel’s founding in 1948 and to which more than half Gaza’s population look to for day-to-day assistance.
“It’s time the international community and the U.N. itself understand that UNRWA’s mission has to end,” Netanyahu told visiting U.N. delegates, according to his office.
He said UNRWA should be replaced by other aid agencies “if we are going to solve the problem of Gaza as we intend to do”.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described UNRWA as “the backbone of all humanitarian response in Gaza” and appealed to all countries to “guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s life-saving work”.
In Gaza, witnesses said Israel had stepped up air strikes on Gaza City, in the north, and bombarded parts of Khan Younis, in the south, despite what appeared to be the most serious peace initiative for months in the Israel-Hamas war.
Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that runs Gaza, is currently studying the proposal, which envisages the release of all remaining hostages seized on Oct. 7. Israel says they number around 136. Hamas has demanded an end to Israel’s offensive.
World powers hope to prevent a wider conflict, but tensions in the Middle East remain high after Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels said they would keep attacking U.S. and British warships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Palestinians.
Relations between Tehran and Washington are also tense after the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in a drone strike in Jordan that U.S. officials blame on Iran-backed militants. Washington has not yet outlined its response, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday they would respond to any U.S. threat.
DEVASTATION
Much of the densely populated Gaza Strip has been devastated by almost four months of Israeli bombardment, and most of its 2.3 million residents have been uprooted by fighting that has caused the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
Gaza health authorities said 26,900 Palestinians had been killed – including 150 over the past 24 hours – so far in the war that was triggered after Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages.
Israel’s military said its forces had killed at least 25 Palestinian militants in Gaza in the past 24 hours, and that three Israeli soldiers had been killed – taking to 224 the number of troops killed during Israel’s ground offensive.
Smoke rose above Gaza City after the latest air strikes, some of which targeted the headquarters of the Hamas-run interior ministry, Hamas-run media and residents said.
The Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza came under fire and tanks pounded areas of Khan Younis around Nasser Hospital, the largest still functioning in the south, witnesses said.
As the health system deteriorates, Palestinian medics say they have formed field medical points to help reach front lines, as treating the wounded in Khan Younis has become increasingly difficult amid street battles and artillery strikes.
“There’s a lot of injuries among the displaced who were in the industrial quarter and some schools,” said Nassim Hassan, the head of the Emergency Unit at Nasser Hospital, adding that “many of the injured left loaded on carts, tuk-tuks, cars or even on foot.”
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-pound-gaza-hamas-studies-ceasefire-proposal-2024-01-31/
Weapons plants targeted by kamikaze drones, rebellions in an oil-producing region and power outages in -30°C temperatures – Russia seems to be ruled by chaos just weeks before the presidential elections.
Apart from pushing with his war in Ukraine and keeping close relationships with allies North Korea and China, Vladimir Putin is now faced with the largest Internet meltdown ever.
People from all corners of the country were reporting issues accessing giants like Google and Yandex.
Sites with the .ru domain were unavailable for hours on Tuesday, including those of banks and news companies.
It was initially unclear if the failure was entirely domestic – or an external attack.
It came as Putin is seeking to isolate the Russian web from the West, limiting the access of his people to outside influences.
There was no advance warning of the chaos but Russia did not initially blame the widespread outage on foreign interference.
The e-mayhem lasted at least an hour and a half and covered all 11 time zones in Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific.
Cash registers linked to the country’s biggest bank Sberbank – which operates the largest payments system – failed in supermarkets.
Queues formed in stores and screens announced: ‘One of our services is not yet available’ and ‘Loyalty card discounts cannot be applied.’
’The Internet is broken,’ complained users.
The Kremlin’s own site was temporarily hit as were other Russian government sites.
Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/31/russias-internet-hit-a-gigantic-outage-theories-swirling-20199930/
Trump speculates red marks on is hand were AI: Ex-president says he didn’t see photos of his fingers and insists nothing was wrong
• DailyMail.com captured the former president leaving Trump Tower with the marks on his hand
• Trump said there was nothing wrong with his hand
Donald Trump said mysterious red marks recently spotted on his hand could have been the result of “AI”.
DailyMail.com captured the former president leaving Trump Tower with the marks on his hands two weeks ago.
At an event in Washington on Wednesday Trump was asked if he had seen the photographs, and said he had not.
He was then asked what had been wrong with his hand, and raised his right one, before a reporter clarified that they were referring to his left.
Asked what had happened to the hand the former president said: ‘Nothing. Maybe it was AI.’
At the time the red marks appeared Trump was on his way to court to watch E. Jean Carroll testify in a defamation case in New York.
That resulted in an $83 million judgment against him.
Representatives later said the red marks had resulted from paper cuts, and Trump had subsequently smeared blood across his hand.
The marks led to a flurry of speculation on social media.
Theories included that it was red ink from top secret documents.
Others speculated that, owing to the ex-president’s love of fast food, that it was ketchup.
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13030043/trump-red-marks-AI-fingers-hand.html
The captain of the “Diosa del Mar” has been detained after it capsized near the Mexican tourism hub, authorities said
Four Mexican tourists died after a boat carrying 19 people capsized late Monday near Cancún.
The captain of the “Diosa del Mar” was also detained. Authorities did not specify what type of craft the boat was.
The vessel was carrying 17 passengers and two crew members while traveling to Cancún from Isla Mujeres, when it “wrecked in the bay between Isla Mujeres and Cancún, when returning to its place of origin,” the Isla Mujeres City Council said in a press release.
“We express our solidarity with the families of the victims and with the people who were rescued,” the council said.
Most of the passengers were rescued by the Mexican navy, local police and civil defense agencies. Some were taken to hospitals.
All were Mexican citizens. Authorities were looking into whether the boat was overcrowded. The passengers had reportedly gone to a restaurant on the island and were returning to mainland Mexico when the incident occurred.
“We are analyzing the weather conditions and the boat’s capacity, whether it had the capacity to carry those 19 people,” said Raciel López, the state attorney general.
Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed in 2021 during filming of the western movie in New Mexico after a gun the actor was holding went off.
Alec Baldwin has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter over the on-set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Ms Hutchins was shot and killed during filming of the western movie Rust in New Mexico after a gun the actor was holding went off.
Baldwin made the plea as he waived his right to an arraignment after he was indicted by a grand jury on 19 January, according to court documents.
Baldwin was not present at the court.
Waiving the right to an arraignment means the defendant does not have to appear in court to enter their plea, a lawyer can do it for them.
The 30 Rock actor was allowed to remain free without posting bail under the arraignment waiver with the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe.
Baldwin was originally charged over the shooting in January 2023.
Those charges were dropped a few months later based on evidence the hammer of the revolver might have been modified, allowing it to fire without the trigger being pulled.
The new charges came after an independent forensic test concluding that Baldwin would have had to have pulled the
trigger of the revolver he was using in a rehearsal for it to fire the live round that struck Hutchins in the chest and killed her.
The finding was the same as a previous FBI test on the firearm.
Baldwin has denied pulling the trigger and said he was not responsible for the death of Hutchins.
The movie’s director, Joel Souza, was struck and wounded in the shoulder by the same bullet that killed Hutchins during production of the film on a set outside Santa Fe.
Rust’s chief weapons supervisor, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering, with her trial scheduled for February.
The US has announced a steep increase in fees for various categories of non-immigrant visas like the H-1B, L-1 and EB-5, the most popular among Indians.
The fee hike, first after 2016, will come into force from April 1.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The EB-5 programme, launched by the US government in 1990, enables high-net-worth foreign investors to obtain a US visa for themselves and their families by investing a minimum of USD 5,00,000 in a US business that helps create 10 jobs for American workers.
To come into force from April 1, the new H-1B application visa fee, which is form I-129, has been increased from USD 460 to USD 780. The H-1B registration will increase from USD 10 to USD 215, but from next year.
The fee for L-1 visas has been increased from USD 460 to USD 1,385, and that of EB-5 visas, popularly known as investors visas, has jumped from USD 3,675 to USD 11,160, according to a federal notification issued on Wednesday.
The L-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa category in the US that is designed for intracompany transferees. It allows multinational companies to transfer certain employees from their foreign offices to work in the US temporarily.
The fee adjustments, as well as changes to the forms and fee structures used by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), will result in net costs, benefits, and transfer payments, the Department of Homeland Security said in its federal notification.
For the 10-year period of analysis of the rule (FY 2024 through FY 2033), the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates the annualised net costs to the public will be USD 157,005,952, discounted at three and seven per cent.
Estimated total net costs over 10 years will be USD 1,339,292,617 discounted at three per cent and USD 1,102,744,106 discounted at seven per cent.
DHS argued that the changes in the final rule will also provide several benefits to it and applicants/petitioners seeking immigration benefits.
Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been jailed for 14 years, the second sentence handed to Pakistan’s former prime minister in two days.
The couple were convicted of illegally profiting from state gifts – just a week before a general election in which he is barred from standing.
Khan, who was ousted as PM by his opponents in 2022, is already serving a three-year jail term for corruption.
He has said the numerous cases against him are politically motivated.
Wednesday’s court case revolved around accusations over state gifts that he and his wife received while in office, while Tuesday’s case – for which he was sentenced to 10 years – for leaking classified state documents. It is thought the two sentences will run concurrently, although that has not been confirmed.
The court has also ordered the couple to pay a fine of about 1.5 billion rupees (£4.2m; $5.3m).
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party also said that the sentencing further bans their leader from future political work: he will be disqualified for 10 years from holding public office.
Khan’s lawyers said they would be launching an appeal to Pakistan’s High Court in both cases.
The former premier and international cricket star has been detained since last August when he was arrested, serving time mostly at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.
His wife Bushra Bibi, who had been out on remand, surrendered at the jail on Wednesday.
A government order late on Wednesday said she would be held under house arrest at her residence in Islamabad until further notice.
Bibi has typically kept a low profile during their period in office. The two married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister.
In the so-called Toshakhana (state treasury) case, both had strongly denied the accusations brought against them by Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog that they had sold or kept state gifts received in office for personal profit. Such gifts included a jewellery set from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
The PTI has described the cases against Khan as bogus, arguing the trials occurred under duress in “kangaroo courts”, where proceedings have been rushed. His lawyers have said he was not given a chance to defend himself, while reporters at the court said neither Khan nor Bibi – nor their legal team – were in the room when the sentences were handed down.
It said Wednesday’s case heralded “another sad day in our judicial system history”, alleging the judiciary was being “dismantled” and that the decision was akin to “a pre-determined process in play”. Pakistan’s judiciary maintains it is independent.
According to Dr Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific programme, the timing of the sentences could be read as the establishment ensuring “there is absolutely no way Imran Khan can make it out in time for the election”.
“He has been in prison, but do remember the first of these sentences [was] imposed on him for corruption and a higher court actually suspended the sentence because it was seen to be full of holes,” she told the BBC.
But it could also be an attempt to demoralise his supporters.
“That of course is a big gamble,” Dr Shaikh added. “It could galvanise his base and bring his supporters out in force.”
Khan himself told his followers on Tuesday to “take revenge for every injustice with your vote on February 8 while remaining peaceful” in a statement released on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Even before the latest sentences were handed down, many were already questioning the credibility of the election next Thursday given the extent to which Khan and his party have been sidelined.
Judges at the top U.N. court on Wednesday found that Russia violated elements of a U.N. anti-terrorism treaty, but declined to rule on allegations brought by Kyiv that Moscow was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
In the same ruling, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Russia had breached an anti-discrimination treaty by failing to support Ukrainian language education in Crimea after its 2014 annexation of the peninsula.
The court declined to rule on the downing of MH17, saying violations of funding terrorism only applied to monetary and financial support, not to supplying weapons or training as alleged by Ukraine.
Ukraine had argued that Russia supplied the missile system that shot down the aircraft, but it had not alleged financial support in that instance.
In a hearing at the court in The Hague last June, Russia dismissed Ukraine’s allegations that it funded and controlled pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as fiction and “blatant lies”.
In the case, which has taken almost seven years, Kyiv had accused Russia of equipping and funding pro-Russian forces, including rebels who shot down MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew.
In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced two Russians and a Ukrainian in absentia to life imprisonment for their role in the disaster.
U.S. officials say Beijing is preparing to set off potentially damaging cyberattacks in any future conflict, including over Taiwan
The U.S. government said it had disrupted a uniquely dangerous and potentially life-threatening Chinese hacking operation that hijacked hundreds of infected routers and used them to covertly target American and allied critical infrastructure networks.
Senior officials described the operation in unusually blunt terms as part of an evolving and increasingly worrisome campaign by Beijing to get a foothold in U.S. computer networks responsible for everything from safe drinking water to aviation traffic so it could detonate, at a moment’s notice, damaging cyberattacks during a future conflict, including over Taiwan.
Wednesday’s announcement was part of an effort by senior Biden administration officials to underscore what Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray called the “apocalyptic scenarios” animating their fears about China’s advanced and well-resourced hacking prowess. Western intelligence officials say its skill and sophistication has accelerated over the past decade. Officials have grown particularly alarmed at Beijing’s interest in infiltrating U.S. critical infrastructure networks, which they say poses an unrivaled cybersecurity challenge.
“This is a world where a major crisis halfway across the planet could well endanger the lives of Americans here at home through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, the crippling of our transportation modes—all to ensure they can incite societal panic and chaos and to deter our ability to marshal military might and civilian will,” said Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, during congressional testimony Wednesday on Chinese cyber threats.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dramatically apologized to the families of victims who were impacted by child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram after being confronted at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MI).
Hawley hammered Zuckerberg during Wednesday’s hearing, with all the major social media CEOs present. The Republican senator argued Meta had not done enough to prevent children from being exploited on their platforms, accusing the company of being more concerned with “making money.”
Following the intense questioning, Hawley then demanded the tech billionaire turn around and apologize the families of the victims sitting behind him in the committee audience.
Zuckerberg then stood up from the table and turned around to address the families directly.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” he said on Wednesday afternoon. “Nobody should have to go through what your families have suffered. This is why we have invested so much and are going to continue industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have suffered.”
Previously, Hawley pressed Zuckerberg on if Meta would offer payment or restitution for victims who were sexually exploited on their platforms.
President Biden has a significant lead over former President Donald Trump in the popular vote of a hypothetical 2024 matchup, a new national poll shows.
The Quinnipiac University survey shows Biden leading Trump 50% to 44% after the same poll had the incumbent edging out his rival, 47% to 46%, in December.
Biden’s strong numbers are driven by the support of 58% of female voters, 52% of independents and 62% of voters with college degrees.
“The gender demographic tells a story to keep an eye on,” said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy.
“Propelled by female voters in just the past few weeks, the head-to-head tie with Trump morphs into a modest lead for Biden.”
By contrast, Trump wins male voters with 53% support in that demographic, but only captures 40% of independents.
Biden still leads Trump if third-party candidates are introduced into the race.
In a five-person contest, Biden receives 39%, Trump receives 37%, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gets 14%, independent candidate Cornel West comes in at 3% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets 2%.
The 45th president leads Biden among Hispanic voters, getting 47% compared to the Democrat’s 45%. However, that’s more than offset by Biden’s advantage among black voters, were Trump has just 16% support.
The poll is a significant outlier in favor of Biden, who trails Trump 47.1% to 44.6% in the RealClearPolitics average of polling data.
Trump’s Republican rival, Nikki Haley, would defeat Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head race by five percentage points in the popular vote (47%-42%), but loses with the the inclusion of third-party candidates, according to the survey.
In the same five-way race, Biden gets 36% support, Haley only gets 29%, RFK Jr. gets 21%, West comes in at 3% and Stein gets 2%.
In the Republican race, 77% of national GOP voters and Republican leaners support Trump, while 21% support Haley.
More than three-quarters (78%) of respondents said Trump would be a better leader than Haley, while 77% said he had better policy ideas.
On the Democratic side, Biden boasts 78% support for the nomination, with self-help author Marianne Williamson on 11% and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) at 6%.
The president’s job approval rating stands at 41%, his highest in the Quinnipiac survey since June 2023, while 55% disapprove of his performance while in office.
A majority of undeclared voters said they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy (55%), foreign policy (58%), the southern border (65%) and the Israel-Hamas war (58%).
Alexandr Wang holds the distinction of being the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 25. His US$1 billion net worth is derived mainly from Scale AI, the start-up he co-founded in 2016. The tech platform is currently valued at US$7.3 billion.
But Wang isn’t the only one who’s making waves in the tech scene. His former co-founder, Lucy Guo, is also enjoying much-deserved recognition. Forbes recently named her as one of the richest self-made women under 40, ranking second after Kylie Jenner with an estimated net worth of US$440 million. Other stars on the list include Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Maria Sharapova and Huda Kattan.
Given this impressive feat, how did Guo crack the male-dominated world of tech, and what’s she like outside the workplace?
Her parents did not want her to pursue a tech career
According to a New York Post profile, Guo learned how to code when she was in second grade. While some parents might encourage their children to pursue what they love, this was not the case for Guo, whose parents are both electrical engineers. Her mum in particular dissuaded her from entering tech, since it is difficult for women to be successful in the field.
But this did not stop the 27-year-old tech whizz. Guo eventually studied computer science at Carnegie Mellon but dropped out to pursue a Thiel Fellowship, founded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. As per the fellowship’s website, it “gives US$100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom”.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, the 69-year-old former cricketer, is heading a coalition government in Pakistan. On March 8, the Opposition parties submitted a no-confidence motion before the National Assembly Secretariat, alleging that the government was responsible for the economic crisis and the spiralling inflation in the country.
In its latest intelligence update, the MoD said local counterattacks have hampered Russian attempts to reorganise its forces, amid fears Chernihiv could become the next Mariupol.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has admitted it would be “impossible” to completely force Russian forces out of Ukraine, amid fears Vladimir Putin is seeking a Korea-style split.
The head of military intelligence in Kyiv said the Kremlin wanted to split the country like “North and South Korea”, securing itself a region controlled from Moscow after failing in its bid for a complete takeover.
Speaking hours later, Mr Zelenskyy appeared to acknowledge his government would have to concede territory.
He said attempting to completely force Russia out “would lead to a Third World War”.
Mr Zelenskyy said he was seeking a “compromise” with Moscow over Donbas, the region which has been partly controlled by Russian-backed separatist groups since 2014.
It’s been suggested that the Kremlin wants to hold “referendums” in such areas to determine whether the people living there want to be part of Russia.
But Mr Zelenskyy wants Russian troops out of parts of the country they’ve occupied since last month’s full invasion, saying a deal is “only possible” if they are withdrawn.
Elon Musk said he would like to maintain his health for a longer period of time, but he’s not afraid of dying.
Haas F1 Team has confirmed that it will run only one car driven by Kevin Magnussen in the 2022 Saudi Arabian GP.
After showing brisk pace in Q1, Haas’ Mick Schumacher looked good for a Q3 appearance until his crash in Q2 with less than 5 minutes to go in the session. The high speed crash was hard enough to rip the car in two pieces, and the fact that he escaped with no injuries showed how much Formula 1 has progressed in terms of driver safety.
Mick Schumacher will miss the Saudi Arabian GP after a huge accident in qualifying.
That Mick is physically well after the crash is another reminder of the strength and safety of modern F1 cars for which we are incredibly thankful#SaudiArabianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/qhLcw0elb7
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 26, 2022
The German driver’s Haas VF-22 went over a sausage kerb at the apex of an extremely fast corner, which resulted in his car losing traction and ramming into the wall before getting dismembered. However, the crash structures in the car proved their worth absorbing most of the impact forces and keeping him unhurt. Schumacher needed help of the marshals and medical crew to get out of the car, and he was taken to the track’s medical centre where no injuries were apparent. He was then swiftly taken to King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital in Jeddah for precautionary checkups via an air ambulance.
Ukraine is willing to become neutral and compromise over the status of the eastern Donbass region as part of a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, even as another top Ukrainian official accused Russia of aiming to carve the country in two.
Zelenskiy took his message directly to Russian journalists in a video call that the Kremlin pre-emptively warned Russian media not to report, saying any agreement must be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum.
“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it,” he said, speaking in Russian.
But even as Turkey is set to host talks this week, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiming to seize the eastern part of Ukraine.
“In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the division of Korea after World War Two. Zelenskiy has urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off Russian forces.
In a call with Putin on Sunday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan agreed to hold talks this week in Istanbul and called for a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his office said. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators confirmed that in-person talks would take place.
Over the weekend, Azerbaijani forces crossed a ceasefire line in Nagorno-Karabakh, sparking skirmishes with Armenian forces.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry expressed outrage on Saturday after Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that Azerbaijani armed forces had violated the ceasefire that ended the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war by crossing the line of contact.
On Thursday, Azerbaijani forces crossed the line of contact near the village of Parukh in the de facto Republic of Artsakh, entering the village of Khramort. On Friday, a Azerbaijani Bayraktar TB2 drone carried out a strike against forces belonging to Artsakh.
The Republic of Artsakh is a de facto republic internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. In 2020, the area in which the republic sits was recaptured by Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war against Armenia.
“Four strikes were made by an unmanned aerial vehicle of the type “Bayraktar TB-2″ on the units of the armed formations of Nagorno-Karabakh in the area of the settlement of Furukh,” it added.
Women and children fleeing Ukraine are being preyed upon by traffickers in neighboring countries, charity groups have warned.
Karolina Wierzbińska, a coordinator at Homo Faber, a human rights organization based in Lublin, Poland, told The Guardian that charity workers had witnessed refugees being targeted as they arrived in the country.
“We’ve registered the first cases of [suspected] pimps preying on Ukrainian women near refugee shelter points in Lublin; accosting them, sometimes aggressively, under the guise of offering transport, work or accommodation,” Wierzbińska told The Guardian.
Teams of predators were seen “pretending to offer rides or lodging to women distressed and exhausted from their journey,” Wierzbińska told the paper.
These teams were not only made of men, as women and couples had also been seen approaching female refugees at bus stations, she said.
Wierzbińska previously told The Guardian that there had also been instances of children going missing after being sent across the border alone by desperate parents.
Charity groups fear that women could be forced into slavery or prostitution, and children could be kidnapped and sold to criminal gangs.
Police in Wrocław, Poland, said they arrested a 49-year-old man suspected of raping a 19-year-old Ukrainian woman who he offered a place to stay, France24 reported.
More than 3.7 million people are believed to have fled from Ukraine since Russia began its military invasion a month ago, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
The vast majority of these refugees, over 2 million, have fled to Poland.
Amid an eerie calm prevailing over the Bogtui village near Rampurhat town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district after eight people were killed in arson earlier this week, a team of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reached the village on Saturday and started its investigation into the violence. Unidentified people had on March 21 set 10 houses on fire in the village, killing at least eight people, including women and children. The CBI team, consisting of around 20 members, went inside the house where charred bodies of seven people were found.
The Calcutta High Court had on Friday handed over the investigation into the Birbhum killings to the CBI and set a deadline of April 7 to submit its progress report. Meanwhile, the political storm over the Birbhum killings continue to remain unabated, with the ruling TMC claiming that opposition leaders were indulging in “narrow-minded politics over dead bodies” and the BJP accusing the Mamata Banerjee-led party of trying to protect the perpetrators.
Over 50 of the federal and provincial ministers were not seen in the public space, The Express Tribune reported. Out of those missing ministers, 25 were federal and provincial advisers and special assistants, while four of them are the ministers of the state, four are advisors and 19 are the special assistants.
A MONTH AFTER Vladimir Putin plunged Europe into war, China is ready to explain why it sees no urgent need to stop Russia—its closest strategic partner—from killing Ukrainians. After fine-tuning arguments and propaganda lines for weeks, China’s Communist Party bosses and their envoys now have talking points for every audience.
The most common argument is built on deflection and anti-Americanism. This is used for Chinese domestic consumption and in public contacts with Western governments. As Chinese officials tell it, Russia is defending itself against American aggression and a long campaign of encirclement by NATO. Chinese officials think it is unfair of Western leaders to ask their government to intervene, because only American concessions to Mr Putin can bring lasting peace. Moreover, if the war is going slowly, that is because American interests profit from drawn-out agonies, Chinese diplomats charge. Spelling out the accusation, a deputy foreign minister, Le Yucheng, told a gathering at Tsinghua University that “arms dealers, bankers and oil tycoons” from a certain big country (ie, America) are making “highly immoral” fortunes out of the war, while Ukraine suffers. This hard line comes from the top. China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has given instructions that Russia is to be defended and America held responsible for Ukraine’s woes, leaving underlings to “backfill a foreign policy” around that decision, a foreign diplomat based in Beijing explains. To dramatise America’s obligations, Mr Xi reached for a Song-dynasty saying during a two-hour video call with President Joe Biden on March 18th, declaring: “He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off.”
Mr Xi’s scolding, literary tone is striking because, according to American briefings given to foreign ambassadors in Beijing, Mr Biden used the call to convey his concerns that Russia may be contemplating attacks with chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. His warnings were not a surprise to the Chinese. A few days earlier Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, shared American intelligence about Russia’s possible intentions with China’s foreign-policy chief, Yang Jiechi, during a seven-hour meeting in Rome. Mr Sullivan told Mr Yang that Chinese support for Russian aggression would have a lingering impact on bilateral ties and on Mr Xi’s legacy. Mr Yang, it is related, responded with anger and complaints about America’s support for Taiwan, the democratic island that China claims as its own. Other officials have since copied that same rhetorical pivot to Asia. Mr Le called the crisis in Ukraine and NATO enlargement a mirror for observing American alliance-building in Asia and the Pacific, a trend which if unchecked would push the region “into a pit of fire.”
Source: https://chinastrategy.org/2022/03/25/china-has-honed-its-justifications-for-taking-russias-side/
U.S. President Joe Biden said that Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” in Poland Saturday, remarks a White House official said later were meant to prepare the world’s democracies for extended conflict over Ukraine, not back regime change in Russia.
Biden’s comments on Saturday, including a statement earlier in the day calling Putin a “butcher,” were a sharp escalation of the U.S. approach to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
In a major address delivered at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Biden evoked Poland’s four decades behind the Iron Curtain in an effort to build a case that the world’s democracies must urgently confront an autocratic Russia as a threat to global security and freedom.
But a remark at the end of the speech raised the spectre of an escalation by Washington, which has avoided direct military involvement in Ukraine, and has specifically said it does not back regime change.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw after condemning Putin’s month-long war in Ukraine.
A White House official said Biden’s remarks did not represent a shift in Washington’s policy.
“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region,” the official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
Asked about Biden’s comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: “That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”
Calling the fight against Putin a “new battle for freedom,” Biden said Putin’s desire for “absolute power” was a strategic failure for Russia and a direct challenge to a European peace that has largely prevailed since World War Two.
“The West is now stronger, more united than it has ever been,” Biden said. “This battle will not be won in days or months, either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.”
The speech came after three days of meetings in Europe with the G7, European Council and NATO allies, and took place roughly at the same time as rockets rained down on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, just 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the Polish border.
Maria Avdeeva has won herself a large following on Twitter with this reporting project, providing facts and commentary in a city where half-a-million or more people have fled.
Is there another way to fight the Russian army, if you don’t dress in military fatigues or own a weapon?
The research director of a think tank called UA Experts thinks she has found a way, armed with a smartphone, a social media account and years of legal training.
Her name is Maria Avdeeva, and we began to listen to her reports in Kharkiv, the embattled Ukrainian city just 20 miles from the Russian border.
Kharkiv residents cover the monument to Shevchenko with sandbags to protect from Russian air strikes. I saw volunteers coming, offering to help protect the symbol of the Ukrainian nation, while Russian troops shelled the city. The historical moment of this war. pic.twitter.com/gQ9MlpAPVr
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 26, 2022
She posts daily updates from bombed-out buildings in and around the city centre, often as incoming shells and rockets echo around her.
“Hello, Maria Avdeeva from Kharkiv, Ukraine, 18th of March,” says one.
“I went out today to get some food and then the shelling started again, it started this morning and (it) went on and on, and I hid in this building which actually has been a business centre.”
In the video, Maria walks up the stairs in a 19th century building before revealing a devastated office with desks, chairs, and computers covered in dust and glass.
“I am just (struck) by what I see,” she says. “People were running out of here, leaving everything (behind). They didn’t anything with them, they left everything here.”
Her voice trails off with an anguished tone.
The first of the blasts hit around 4.45 pm, minutes after a public opera performance on in front of the Lviv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and featuring a singer from Kharkiv – the city that has been at the receiving end of Russian invasion – was cut short by air sirens.
Statement comes a day after a wave of drone and missile attacks hit targets across Saudi Arabia.
On Saturday, at least seven people were reported to have been killed in air raids conducted by the Saudi-led coalition on Sanaa and Hodeidah.
The Houthis said the attack by the coalition hit a power plant, a fuel supply station and the state-run social insurance office in the capital.
Later, Houthi political leader Mahdi al-Mashat announced the suspension of missile and drone attacks and all military actions for a period of three days.
“This is a sincere invitation and practical steps to rebuild trust and take all the sides from the arena of talks to the arena of acts,” al-Mashat said.
“And we are ready to turn this declaration into a final and permanent commitment in the event that Saudi Arabia commits to ending the siege and stopping its raids on Yemen once and for all,” he added.
There was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia.
Foo Fighters had been on a tour that was heading to the UK this summer, with shows scheduled in London, Birmingham, and Manchester.
The death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins is being investigated by Colombian authorities.
Hawkins, 50, had been with the rest of the band in the country’s capital, Bogota, when he died in a hotel room.
The group had been on a tour that was heading to the UK this summer, with shows scheduled in London, Birmingham, and Manchester.
When Hawkins’s death was announced by the band on social media, no cause of death was given, but the city’s health department said an ambulance had been called to the hotel for a man experiencing chest pains.
A source at the attorney general’s office, who was not authorised to speak to the press, told Reuters news agency: “We have begun an investigation to establish the cause of death of the musician, but for now we don’t have any available information to share.
“As the investigation advances, we will.”
#ATTENTION: Official statement from the Colombian Attorney General’s Office regarding the death of foreign citizen Taylor Hawkins, drummer of the band Foo Fighters. pic.twitter.com/KnjOSOE8g2
— Fiscalía Colombia (@FiscaliaCol) March 26, 2022
Source: https://news.sky.com/story/taylor-hawkins-death-of-foo-fighters-drummer-being-investigated-12575878
Chinese authorities confirmed on Saturday night that all 132 passengers and crew from China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 were killed when their aircraft crashed in southern China.
The announcement from the search and rescue command centre in Wuzhou, near the crash site, was followed by a moment of silence for the dead, state news agency Xinhua reported.
The confirmation came as investigators said an electronic device installed near the second “black box” of the aircraft had been recovered, but the data recorder itself has not been found.
Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said searchers had found the emergency locator transmitter, a device that sends a continuous radio signal in the event of a crash.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Activists condemn Wildlife Services, a division of the USDA, which says deaths necessary to protect farmers and public health
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.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/25/us-government-wildlife-services-animals-deaths
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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 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.
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.
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.
Lawyer for hidden-camera-sting producer says prosecutors misled court, improperly prolonged gag orders.
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.
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 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.
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/03/22/6-teenage-students-killed-in-oklahoma-car-crash/
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.”
Source: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/johanna-van-gogh-bonger.htm
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 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.
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.
“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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
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.
Source : https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/new-york-city-big-apple.htm
“We need to stop telling the Russians what we won’t do,” Cheney said.
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.”
A safe haven providing passage for people seeking to enter or leave Ukraine, the city of Lviv was jolted out of its lull on Saturday afternoon as at least five Russian missiles struck just east of the city, leaving five people wounded.
The first of the blasts hit around 4.45 pm, minutes after a public opera performance on in front of the Lviv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and featuring a singer from Kharkiv – the city that has been at the receiving end of Russian invasion – was cut short by air sirens.
The reaction was leisurely, with the city mostly untouched by the violence now treating these sirens as false alarms. But then came the blast. Even as some people moved to the shelters, others rallied around, with shouts of “Glory Ukraine”.
At the Ukraine Media Centre, set up in the top two floors of a three-storey bar by the government, the excitement Saturday was all about the lifting of an alcohol ban, in place in Lviv since the start of the war. The muffled bangs in quick succession in the evening caused a surprise. The severity of the attack only struck when a dark plume of smoke rose over buildings to the east, and continued to hang there for hours, visible from all around the city.
There was speculation regarding whether a telecommunication tower or an oil depot had been hit, both located just 2 km from the bar.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/world/iviv-missile-attack-people-injury-ukraine-russia-war-7837889/?utm_source=whatsapp_web&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialsharebuttons