‘We’re finished’: Sri Lankans pushed to the brink by financial crisis

Thousands take to the streets to call for the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa

While thousands of angry cries and anti-government slogans filled the streets of the Sri Lankan city Colombo on Saturday, Chanda Upul stood quietly nearby, desperately pushing his wares of soft drinks and bottled water on protesters. But in his heart he was chanting along with them.

Sri Lanka has descended into its worst financial crisis since independence, with food, fuel, medicine and electricity becoming increasingly scarce, and calls for the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa – frequently referred to as Gota – to step down. And 50-year-old Upul, who lives in a poor northern suburb of the city, is among those who have been pushed to the brink of survival.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Boris Johnson makes surprise trip to Kyiv for talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy – live

The Ukrainian embassy to the UK shared a photograph of the two leaders in talks on Saturday afternoon

Here are some images from across Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

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Luhansk residents told to evacuate as Russia moves focus to east Ukraine

Governor issues warning as US says Moscow likely planning to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers in east

Residents remaining in eastern Ukraine’s embattled city of Luhansk must evacuate, the governor has said as shelling intensifies and Russia bolsters its forces.

Ukraine has been warning that Moscow is withdrawing from areas to the north of Kyiv in order to focus its offensive military operations on the country’s east. Moscow, which initially justified its invasion by claiming to need to protect Russian-speaking civilians in the self-proclaimed republics in Donbas, has confirmed the change in strategy.

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‘Firms will go bust’: Germany prepares for a future without Russian gas

Germany is bracing for supplies to be cut by Moscow in retaliation for sanctions or as part of an energy embargo

In Germany, they call it “Day X”. Businesses up and down the land are making contingency plans for what is seen as a growing likelihood that Russian gas will stop flowing into Europe’s biggest economy.

“It would be a disaster – one which would have seemed almost unthinkable just two months ago, but which right now feels like a very realistic prospect,” the owner of a hi-tech mechanical engineering company in western Germany said. The firm produces everything from battery cases for electric cars to train clutch systems.

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Unruly US airline passengers hit with record fines by FAA

Aviation authority has imposed zero-tolerance policy and says incidents have soared since 6 January Capitol attack

An American Airlines passenger who allegedly pushed a flight attendant and spat at crew members has been hit with the biggest fine ever issued by US aviation regulators, and another fine topping $75,000 (£57,500) was issued to a Delta Air Lines passenger who bit a fellow passenger after trying to hug and kiss another.

Since January 2021 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a zero-tolerance policy, the agency has proposed fines of about $7m for disruptive passengers. Two new fines issued on Friday were the highest yet.

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British-born man dies after being caught in New South Wales floods

Tony Ikin, a dog breeder, had been travelling to Royal Easter Show when his car was submerged at Cobbity

A UK-born man has died after being caught in flood water on the outskirts of Sydney.

The body of the 68-year-old was found in his van on Friday morning at Cobbity about 43 miles south-west of Sydney’s central business district, New South Wales police said in a statement.

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Kyiv’s tango partners refuse to let war slow passion for dancing

What remains of Kyiv’s tango community is looking forward to Saturday night event

Air raid sirens were near constant and Russian troops were on the outskirts of the city, but that didn’t stop some people in Kyiv from dancing.

A group of Ukrainian tango dancers wrapped up warm against the freezing weather to meet in the botanic gardens: they circled around each other to an Argentinian milonga, embracing and laughing with relief to see those around them were still alive.

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 45 of the invasion

Volodymyr Zelenskiy calls for ‘firm global response’ to Kramatorsk station attack; 10 humanitarian corridors agreed for Saturday

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has described a missile strike on a railway station in eastern Ukraine as a Russian war crime and called for a “firm global response”. At least 52 people, including five children, were killed in the missile strike on Kramatorsk train station. The US believes Russia used a short range ballistic missile on the train station. Russia has denied responsibility.

Ten humanitarian corridors have been agreed for Saturday for people from besieged regions, including the city of Mariupol, according to Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The governor of Luhansk earlier called for more evacuations, warning that shelling had increased over recent days and that more Russian troops had arrived in the region.

Russian air activity is expected to increase in the south and east of Ukraine, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which said Russian operations continue to focus on the Russian-controlled territories in Donbas, as well as Mariupol and Mykolaiv, supported by continued cruise missile launches into Ukraine by Russian naval forces.

A curfew will be in place in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa from Saturday evening until Monday evening, in response to the shelling of the train station in Kramatorsk, and the threat of a missile strike.

Two UN agencies have called for urgent action to help an estimated 1,000 seafarers stranded in Ukrainian ports and waters with dwindling supplies.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War says Ukrainian forces retain control of defensive positions in eastern and south-western Mariupol. Russian forces are continuing to attempt to redeploy units in eastern Ukraine. However, such troops are “unlikely to enable a Russian breakthrough and face poor morale”, ISW says.

Some Russian military units have experienced major losses, a senior US defence official said, and the Pentagon estimates Russia’s combat power is between 80% and 85% of pre-invasion levels.

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French presidential election could see historically low turnout, pollsters say

80% of those polled felt the campaign was ‘poor quality’, with many complaining of a lack of ideas or vision

A majority of French people feel the 2022 presidential election campaign has been poor quality and never really got off the ground, which could lead to protest votes and a historically low turnout in Sunday’s first round, pollsters and analysts have said.

An Ifop poll this month found 80% of French people felt the campaign was “poor quality”. Voters have complained of a lack of new political ideas or vision, and few solutions to their problems, after two years of the Covid pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a cost-of-living crisis.

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Two divers from UK and France found adrift off Malaysia but boy, 14, still missing

Three divers and their instructor had been unable to find their boat after surfacing

A British man and a French woman were rescued in Malaysia on Saturday three days after going missing while diving, but the Briton’s son was still missing, police said.

The trio and their instructor got into trouble on Wednesday after they surfaced from a dive near a southern island but could not find their boat.

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DeSantis takes on Disney in latest battle in the Republican culture war

Florida’s governor is unhappy that Disney has opposed his ‘don’t say gay’ bill –and is threatening to revoke its privileges

It took a single stroke of Ron DeSantis’s pen, passing Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill into law, to transform the self-proclaimed happiest place on earth into a scene of bitter conflict.

Disney’s theme parks have become the latest battlefront in the pugnacious rightwing Republican governor’s culture war on what he calls “wokeness”, and on the state’s LBGTQ+ community. DeSantis, a close Trump ally, and perhaps rival, is threatening sanctions on the corporate behemoth after it dared to challenge the controversial law banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.

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Lara Logan, who compared Fauci to Mengele, says Fox News pushed her out

Logan says network ‘does not want independent thinkers’ as Fox stays quiet on reports it dropped her after November remark

The former CBS reporter Lara Logan, who compared Dr Anthony Fauci to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, has claimed she was “pushed out” at Fox News because the conservative network does not want “independent thinkers”.

“I was definitely pushed out,” Logan told Eric Metaxas, a conservative radio host, this week. “I mean, there is no doubt about that. They don’t want independent thinkers. They don’t want people who follow the facts regardless of the politics.”

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Two acquitted and mistrial declared for two others in Whitmer kidnap plot trial

Jury in Grand Rapids acquits two of conspiracy to kidnap Michigan governor and unable to agree on verdicts for other two men on trial

Two of four men on trial were acquitted on Friday of conspiracy to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, in a plot prosecutors said was motivated by fury at the Democrat’s tough Covid-19 restrictions in the early stages of the pandemic.

The verdicts regarding Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were read in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, US district judge Robert Jonker presiding.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: children among at least 50 people killed in Kramatorsk train station attack – live

The mayor of Kramatorsk says there were 4,000 people, most of them elderly, women and children, at the station at the time of the attack

The President of the European Commission and EU representative Josep Borrell appear to be on their way to Kyiv this morning.

Ursula von der Leyen shared a photo of herself stepping off a Ukrainian train alongside the caption “looking forward to Kyiv”.

We have significant losses of troops. And it’s a huge tragedy for us.

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‘We have made it’: Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘honored’ to become supreme court’s first Black female justice – live

The White House celebration for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the US supreme court is under way, with vice-president Kamala Harris making the opening remarks.

“Today is indeed a wonderful day as we gather to celebrate the confirmation of the next justice of the United States supreme court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson,” she said.

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Germany will stop importing Russian gas ‘very soon’, says Olaf Scholz

Chancellor declines to endorse claim by Boris Johnson during London visit that goal will be achieved by mid-2024

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said his country is doing all it can to wean itself off Russian energy, but declined to endorse a claim by Boris Johnson that it would stop importing Russian gas by the middle of 2024.

Scholz said only that the goal would be achieved very soon, and that Germany would stop using Russian coal by the summer and Russian oil by the end of the year.

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Germany’s Watergate: 1950s chancellor used spy agency to infiltrate rival party

Covert flow of information from BND enabled Konrad Adenauer to cement his hold on power, historians reveal

Germany’s first democratically elected chancellor used the country’s foreign intelligence service to systematically spy on his biggest political rivals for almost a decade, a group of independent historians tasked with researching the formerly West German spy agency’s history have discovered.

The covert and illegal flow of information between the offices of Konrad Adenauer and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) chief, Reinhard Gehlen, enabled the conservative politician to cement his hold on power through accurate insider knowledge on the campaign strategies, parliamentary manoeuvres and internal power struggles of the Social Democratic party (SPD), which led the opposition in the Bundestag at the time.

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Over 300 villagers near Kyiv trapped in basement for weeks, say residents

Survivors in Yahidne recount writing names of the dead on wall during Russian occupation north of Ukrainian capital

Residents of a village north of Kyiv have said that more than 300 people were trapped in a school basement for weeks by Russian occupiers, scrawling the names of the dead on a peeling wall.

Halyna Tolochina, a member of the Yahidne village council, struggled to compose herself as she went through the list, scribbled in black on the plaster either side of a green door, in the gloomy warren where she said she and hundreds of others were confined.

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Third Israeli dies after Palestinian opened fire at Tel Aviv bar

Security forces say 28-year-old Palestinian suspect was killed after being tracked down in Jaffa

A third Israeli has died after an attack by a Palestinian man who opened fire into a crowded bar in central Tel Aviv, after Israeli security forces said they hunted down and killed the attacker early on Friday.

The shooting on Thursday evening in a downtown area packed with people in bars and restaurants caused scenes of mass panic in the heart of the bustling city. Two people were instantly killed and more than 10 people were wounded.

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France elections: Macron’s lead over Le Pen narrowing as vote nears

Centrist incumbent and far-right rival go into last day of campaigning after a week of sparring in media

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen attacked each other in media interviews and walkabouts as final polls showed the gap between them narrowing on the last day of campaigning before Sunday’s first-round vote.

Macron said Le Pen was “lying” to voters about her “racist” manifesto programme, which includes banning the Muslim headscarf, and accused her of “complacency” in her ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

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