Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoner of war

The BBC has confirmed the location west of Kyiv and found satellite images showing bodies on the ground

Soldiers fighting for Ukraine appear to shoot a Russian prisoner of war outside a village west of Kyiv in a video posted online.

The footage was originally shared on social media app Telegram. The New York Times said it had verified the video and the BBC said it had confirmed the location north of the town of Dmytrivka and found satellite images showing bodies on the ground.

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Republicans’ ugly attacks on Ketanji Brown Jackson show lurch to far right

The QAnon-tinged questioning at the hearings for the supreme court justice displayed a party in thrall to conspiracy theories

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson reached a historic milestone on Thursday, becoming the first Black woman ever appointed to the US supreme court. But before Jackson could be confirmed, she first had to navigate a brutal opposition campaign from far-right critics who challenged her credentials and outlandishly accused her of supporting child abuse.

The bareknuckle tactics used by some Republicans to discredit Jackson underscored just how far to the right the party has drifted and may foreshadow a new, disturbing “normal” for American politics.

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Trial of Greek pilot accused of murdering British wife Caroline Crouch to begin

Babis Anagnostopoulos alleged to have confessed to Athens murder and to hanging puppy

The trial of a Greek helicopter pilot accused of strangling his British wife as she slept next to their baby daughter is due to begin on Friday in Athens.

Nearly a year after Caroline Crouch was found dead in the couple’s maisonette, her husband, who had originally tried to blame the murder on ruthless “foreign thieves”, will appear before a mixed jury court in the Greek capital. It will be the first time Babis Anagnostopoulos, 33, has been seen in public since his alleged confession to a crime that has gripped the nation.

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Turkey to send case against Khashoggi’s alleged killers to Saudi Arabia

Suspension of trial reflects President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s desire to strengthen trade and political links with Middle East

A Turkish court has confirmed a request from prosecutors to transfer the case against the alleged assassins of Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, shutting down a trial that had been a centrepiece of attempts to cast light on the plot and expose the hit squad’s ultimate leader.

The move ends any meaningful hope of securing justice and paves the way for a political reset between the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler whose security aides were on trial in Istanbul and who is widely believed to have ordered the murder.

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Brazil military ‘posed as NGOs on social media’ to play down deforestation

Facebook owner Meta removes network from social media in move which could damage President Jair Bolsonaro

Facebook owner Meta Platforms has removed a network of social media accounts with ties to the Brazilian military that posed as fake non-profits to play down the dangers of deforestation.

The comments by Meta, published in a quarterly report, pose a reputational risk to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. The far-right former army captain is a longtime sceptic of environmentalism.

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Thieving sea lions break into salmon farm and gorge on feast of fish

Conservationists say the farms are a danger to sea lions and other marine mammals, who can become entangled in their nets

Dozens of thieving sea lions in western Canada have spent the last few weeks gorging on fish after brazenly slipping into an industrial salmon farm – and ignoring all attempts to make them move on.

Cermaq, the aquaculture giant with operations in Norway, Chile and Canada, says the wily predators were able to evade netting and electric fences in late March as part of a “breach event” at the Rant Point farm near Tofino in British Columbia.

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Exiled Yemen president steps aside as truce raises hopes of end to war

Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi says a newly established council will lead negotiations with Iranian-backed Houthis

Yemen’s exiled president has stepped aside and transferred his powers to a presidential council as international and regional efforts to end the country’s long-running civil war gained momentum with a two-month truce.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, major players in the conflict, appear to have had a role in Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s decision, quickly welcoming it with a pledge of $3bn (£2.3bn) in aid. The head of the new council has close ties to Riyadh.

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Ukraine says Russia will see new sanctions as ‘permission to attack’ amid warnings of fresh offensive

Zelenskiy says sanctions unveiled by west have ‘a spectacular look. But this is not enough’, as fears mount of large-scale Russian offensive

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said new sanctions by the west against Russia do not go far enough and will be seen by invading forces as a “permission to attack”, as fears of an assault on the east of the country intensify.

It comes after the US, UK and EU unveiled a raft of new sanctions targeting Russian banks and the country’s elites. The US measures include a ban on investing in Russia as well as sanctions on president Vladimir Putin’s adult daughters. The EU sanctions include a ban on coal imports and restrictions on banks.

The Pentagon said a “small number” of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained in the United States to operate the deadly Switchblade drones that Washington is supplying to Kyiv. The troops were already in the US before Russia invaded.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby offered some optimism about the Ukraine resistance. “Of course, they can win this. And if you look at what they’ve been able to do just thus far, Mr Putin has achieved exactly zero of his strategic objectives inside Ukraine,” he said.

Nato foreign ministers will meet in Brussels on Thursday for two days of talks on providing support to bring an end to the war.

US sanctions against two of Russia’s largest banks are “a direct blow to the Russian population [and] ordinary citizens”, Tass news agency cited Russia’s US ambassador as saying on Wednesday. Anatoly Antonov made his remarks after Washington hit Sberbank and Alfabank.

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Shanghai lockdown: some parents allowed to stay with Covid-positive children after backlash

Reports that parents were being separated from their infected children has sparked a flood of online protest

Shanghai is allowing at least some parents to stay with children infected with Covid-19, making an exception to a policy of isolating anyone who tests positive after a public outcry.

The announcement came as China’s largest city remained in lockdown and conducted more mass testing on Wednesday following another jump in new cases.

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Blast food: chip factory calls bomb squad after muddy spud turns out to be grenade

A night shift worker pulled the device from a ‘potato reception area’ thinking it was a muddy stone

New Zealand’s bomb squad has been called into a chip factory after a suspicious-looking potato trundling down the production line turned out to be a grenade.

Grenades frequently pop up in potato fields in Europe, but are a highly unusual find in New Zealand.

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Court hears US hostage’s emotional letter to father as IS trial continues

Peter Kassig, who was later killed, described paralysis and hope and offered words of comfort to his family

An American hostage’s harrowing story about captivity at the hands of the Islamic State militants who would kill him was recounted in court in Virginia on Wednesday.

A letter from the late Peter Kassig was read aloud during the terrorism trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a 33-year-old former British citizen and alleged member of a kidnap-and-murder cell known to captives as the “Beatles” because of their British accents.

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House votes to hold Trump duo Navarro and Scavino in contempt of Congress

Approval of contempt resolution over months-long defiance of subpoenas sets pair on path towards criminal prosecution by DoJ

The House voted on Wednesday to hold two of Donald Trump’s top advisers – Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino – in criminal contempt of Congress for their months-long refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.

The approval of the contempt resolution, by a vote of 220 to 203, sets the two Trump aides on the path toward criminal prosecution by the justice department as the panel escalates its inquiry into whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

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El Salvador press cries censorship as anti-gang law targets media

El Salvador’s congress has authorised sentences of 10-15 years for media spreading gangs’ messages

El Salvador’s congress has authorised prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from gangs, prompting accusations of censorship from press freedom groups.

The vote late on Tuesday was the latest in a flurry of legislative action against the gangs after 62 suspected gang killings on 26 March led President Nayib Bukele to seek and win a state of emergency. Harsh measures against imprisoned gang members and increased prison sentences followed, as well as the arrests of some 6,000 people accused of being gang members.

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Rishi Sunak’s wife claims non-domicile status

Tax status allows Akshata Murthy to avoid tax on foreign earnings

Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.

Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.

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Peru president at bay as fuel and fertiliser prices detonate political crisis

Pedro Castillo lifted a curfew in Lima but is still facing calls to resign after a rash of bad decisions and allegations of corruption

Peru’s beleaguered president, Pedro Castillo, is at the centre of a spiralling political crisis caused by rising fuel and fertiliser prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and his own heavy-handed efforts to quell the unrest.

On Tuesday Castillo lifted a curfew in Lima that he had decreed less than a day earlier in an attempt to quell sometimes violent protests over rising fuel and food prices. But the move came too late to defuse public anger.

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Ancient cemetery of flying reptiles unearthed in Chile’s Atacama desert

Scientists say remains belong to pterosaurs, who lived alongside dinosaurs more than 100m years ago

Scientists in Chile have unearthed a rare cemetery with well-preserved bones of ancient flying reptiles that roamed the Atacama desert more than 100m years ago.

The remains belong to pterosaurs, scientists determined, flying creatures that lived alongside dinosaurs and had a long wingspan and fed by filtering water through long, thin teeth, similar to flamingos.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Russia will regard weak sanctions as ‘permission to attack’, says Zelenskiy – live

Ukraine president says latest economic measures are not enough; authorities in eastern Ukraine urge civilians to leave

Zelenskiy questioned the ability of the UN Security Council to provide security, undermining the very functions for which it was created during his Tuesday night national address.

The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn’t. For anyone.

This definitely means that the United Nations is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created. And only one state is to blame for this - Russia, which discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates.

Even if we sign the most powerful agreement, we understand that in two years Russia may return. And if you and I accept this, then we act accordingly,” he said.

All this is being discussed at the level of advisers and leaders with France, the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Israel, and there are many friends who want to join. So far, we have not received a specific list of guarantees and a list of countries that are ready to join us 100%.

We do not need to have 40 countries of the world that are ready to join and fight for Ukraine under the agreement. We need serious players who are ready for anything. We need a circle of states that are ready to provide any weapons within 24 hours. We need individual countries on which sanctions policy really depends, so that these sanctions are deeply elaborated in advance. So that in the first second when we feel the threat from the Russian Federation, these states will unite and within three days introduce everything at once, block everything.”

If we are offered to join Nato tomorrow, if they don’t play with our lives again, but seriously offer, we will join. But this will not happen, unfortunately, and did not happen.

That is why we will build those security guarantees that can protect us, protect people’s lives.”

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Liz Truss announces full asset freeze against Russia’s biggest bank

Eight more oligarchs will also face sanctions and UK oil and coal imports will stop by end of year, says foreign secretary

The UK will impose a full asset freeze on Russia’s largest bank and end all imports of oil and coal by the end of the year, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said.

Eight more oligarchs will also be sanctioned, including Moshe Kantor, the largest shareholder of the fertiliser company Acron and Andrey Guryev, the founder of another key fertiliser company, whom the UK described as a close associate of Vladimir Putin.

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Putin’s daughters targeted in US sanctions against Russia

Joe Biden links new measures directly to accounts of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Bucha

The US has announced a new round of sanctions targeting Russia’s top public and private banks and two daughters of Vladimir Putin, following mounting global accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The sanctions targeted Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two adult daughters of Putin’s with his former wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.

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Hong Kong security official to stand as chief executive

John Lee’s bid for top political post is sign of power security officials are gaining

Hong Kong chief secretary John Lee, a security official during the global financial hub’s prolonged and often violent 2019 pro-democracy protests, has resigned in a bid to run in an election in May to become the city’s new leader.

Lee, 64, a former deputy commissioner of police, was promoted to the role in 2021 in a move that some political analysts said showed Beijing’s priorities for Hong Kong were security rather than the economy.

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