Russian president has ordered nuclear deterrence forces on high alert. We look at what that means
Russia’s president summoned the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, to a public meeting on Sunday and ordered them to “transfer the deterrence forces” – a reference to nuclear weapons – “of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty”.
Continue reading...Spokesperson for billionaire says Russian owner of football club was contacted by Ukrainian side
The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, is reportedly mediating over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although his spokesperson has acknowledged he would have “limited” influence.
The move comes amid pressure from campaigners and MPs for Abramovich to be targeted by western sanctions. He made his first public comment since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, via his Chelsea spokesperson, to claim his help had been requested.
Continue reading...Initiative aimed at boosting Covid-hit sector is open to Italians and foreigners who marry this year
Whether the nuptials are in Rome, in a castle or on a beach, authorities in Lazio are giving €2,000 (£1,670) to couples who get married in the region as they seek to salvage the wedding sector from the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
The initiative, called “In Lazio with love”, is open to Italians and foreigners who marry or have a civil union in the region between 1 January and 31 December 2022.
Continue reading...We look at different economic measures deployed around world to counter aggression from Putin
Countries around the world have imposed an unprecedented array of economic and other sanctions on Russia after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, targeting its finance, energy and military-industrial sectors as well as individuals and sporting events.
Here are some of the measures adopted by the US, EU and UK, with countries including Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand all taking similar steps:
The EU, US, UK and Canada have agreed to prevent the Russian central bank from deploying its €640bn (£540bn) of international reserves “in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions”.
The EU has banned all transactions with the institution. The US has done the same, and added the Russian finance ministry and national wealth fund. The Russian state has, in effect, been banned from raising sovereign debt; shares of Russian state-owned entities may no longer be listed on EU stock exchanges.
A range of Russian banks – their names have not yet been announced – are also being cut out of the Swift international payments system by the EU, US, UK and Canada. Brussels has said this will “stop them from operating worldwide, and effectively block Russian exports and imports”.
The US has placed Russia’s top 10 financial institutions, representing about 80% of the country’s banking sector, under restrictions, including cutting off the biggest – Sberbank, which accounts for about 30% of Russian banking – and its subsidiaries from conducting transactions through the US system.
The assets of many other Russian banks, including VTB, the country’s second largest, Bank Rossiya and Promsvyazbank, have also been hit with strict asset freezes and/or new business restrictions in the EU, UK, US and elsewhere.
The foreign assets of the Russian president, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, have been frozen in the EU, US and UK, as have those of the FSB security head, Alexander Bortnikov, the armed forces chief, Valery Gerasimov, and members of the Kremlin’s security council. The EU has imposed sanctions on all 351 members of Russia’s parliament, the Duma; the US and UK are punishing selected members as are Australia, Japan and New Zealand.
More than a dozen billionaire oligarchs with ties to Putin’s regime, including Andrey Patrushev (oil company Rosneft), Petr Fradkov (Promsvyazbank), Yury Slyusar (United Aircraft), Boris Rotenberg (gas pipeline company SMP), Denis Bortnikov (VTB bank) and Kirill Shamalov, ex-husband of Putin’s daughter Katarina, are on asset freeze and travel ban lists around the world. The US is also sanctioning top state-owned bank executives from VTB and Sberbank. Canada and Australia have also imposed sanctions on multiple oligarchs.
The UK has imposed a £50,000 limit on bank accounts held by Russian nationals in the UK), and the EU a limit of €100,000 in EU banks.
Russian airlines and private jets have been progressively banned from UK and EU airspace and the US is considering similar action but has yet to make a final decision. Aeroflot has said it will cancel all flights to European destinations; multiple European airlines have said they are halting routes to Russia.
The US has in effect banned the Russian energy company Gazprom, the oil pipeline company Transneft, and the power company RusHydro, as well as the country’s biggest freight, rail and telecoms companies, from its credit markets.
The EU has introduced a ban on exports of aircraft and aviation parts to Russia, as well as exports of hi-tech goods including semiconductors, computers, telecoms and information security equipment and sensors. UK and EU-based companies are also banned from exporting to a wide range of Russian defence, naval, transport and communications companies, including the infamous Internet Research Agency troll farm in St Petersburg.
The Uefa Champions League final has been removed from St Petersburg to Paris.
Fifa and Uefa have suspended Russian clubs and national teams from all competitions.
The Formula One grand prix and all World Cup skiing events in Russia have been cancelled.
Russia has been banned from taking part in the Eurovision song contest.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy has appealed to the European Union to allow Ukraine to gain membership immediately under a special procedure, as it defends itself from invasion by Russian forces.
'Our goal is to be with all Europeans and, most importantly, to be equal. I'm sure that's fair. I am sure we deserved it,' he said in a speech shared on social media
Continue reading...Report says human actions are causing dangerous disruption, and window to secure a liveable future is closing
Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said.
Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unliveable, according to the landmark report published on Monday.
Everywhere is affected, with no inhabited region escaping dire impacts from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.
About half the global population – between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people – live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change.
Millions of people face food and water shortages owing to climate change, even at current levels of heating.
Mass die-offs of species, from trees to corals, are already under way.
1.5C above pre-industrial levels constitutes a “critical level” beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis accelerate strongly and some become irreversible.
Coastal areas around the globe, and small, low-lying islands, face inundation at temperature rises of more than 1.5C.
Key ecosystems are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, turning them from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
Some countries have agreed to conserve 30% of the Earth’s land, but conserving half may be necessary to restore the ability of natural ecosystems to cope with the damage wreaked on them.
Continue reading...Fishermen in Mexico are using the ike jime method, which aims to reduce fish trauma, to improve the quality of catches and help sustainability
Every morning, hundreds of small white fishing boats dot the dark blue waters of Veracruz’s coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the crews, many of whose families have been fishing for generations, employ traditional methods – using nets to catch large numbers of fish, which then slowly asphyxiate once out of the water.
But a few of the fishermen are doing something different, using a technique that emerged in Japan several centuries ago. It is a method for slaughtering fish that emulates a process called ike jime, which is based on a simple scientific principle: the less trauma the fish experiences, the longer the flesh remains fresh.
Continue reading...From the return of wildlife to the pressures of tourism and the climate crisis, Steven Fuller has seen it all in his nearly 50 years watching over America’s oldest national park
• Read more: Native Americans are at the heart of Yellowstone. After 150 years, they are finally being heard
As “winterkeeper” at Yellowstone national park, Steven Fuller lives in a rustic cedar-shingled cottage, built in 1910, set on a hill a short walk from the majestic Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
On balmier days, with the windows open, he can hear the roar of the 308ft Lower Falls tumbling into the chasm. In autumn, he is treated to the sound of bugling bull elk in rut or, in the middle of night, the howls of wolves.
Continue reading...As government officials downplay the fighting in Afar, families are separated, children killed and young people ready to take up arms, while hopes of peace talks fade
When the bombs started to fall on Afar, people scattered. In the chaos and panic families were ripped apart. A young father lost two of his children, killed by ricocheting rocks. A grandmother had to leave behind her dying son-in-law, a bullet wound in his back; his wife still hasn’t heard the news. A 28-year-old woman doesn’t know if three of her five children are alive or dead.
All of them are nomadic people from Ethiopia’s north-east Afar region, and survivors of the latest round of bloodshed in the country’s devastating civil war. In makeshift shelters that have sprung up around Afdera, a hardscrabble merchant town beside a volcanic salt lake, they talk about homes destroyed by shelling and villages looted bare. Afar’s authorities estimate that more than 300,000 people have fled the fighting since January.
Continue reading...Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disaster
The sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.
Nigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.
Continue reading...Change comes as NZ, virus-free for much of pandemic, records some of world’s highest transmission rates amid Omicron surge
New Zealand has ended its self-isolation requirements for vaccinated travellers arriving from Australia, as the country’s Covid transmission rates soar to among the highest in the world.
From Wednesday, vaccinated travellers will no longer need to self-isolate but will still be required to undergo a Covid-19 test on arrival and on day five or six, prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday.
Continue reading...An open letter written by five historians denounced the war and called on Beijing to make its stance clearer
For Xu Guoqi, a Chinese historian, Beijing’s reluctance to denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is alarming. “I’m a historian of the first world war. Europe sleep-walked into a huge conflict over 100 years ago, which also had had enormous consequences for China,” Xu said. “The world may be at the point of no return again”.
But looking at how Chinese diplomats are responding to it, and how Chinese people have talked about it on social media in the past week, he said, “I’m afraid it seems we still have not learned the lessons of the past tragedies. As a historian I’m very disappointed.”
Continue reading...Star conductor and close friend of Putin dropped by his management ahead of deadline to speak out or be fired from Munich Philharmonic
Russia’s star conductor, Valery Gergiev, has been dropped by his management over his close ties to Vladimir Putin as he faces a looming deadline to publicly denounce the Russian president or lose yet another role in his rapidly crumbling career.
The 68-year-old Russian, an old friend and supporter of Putin, has faced increasing pressure to speak out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the last week. He has been removed from performances around the world and faces more professional punishment if he does not condemn Putin’s aggression in the next 24 hours.
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Continue reading...Deterrence order given as Zelenskiy says Ukraine delegation will meet Russian officials at Belarus border
Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to put Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert, in the latest signal from the Russian leader that he is prepared to resort to the most extreme level of brinkmanship is his effort to achieve victory in Ukraine.
The US accused Putin of “totally unacceptable” escalation and made clear that it would keep up its support of Ukraine and punitive measures on Russia. With the EU also announcing unprecedented new measures against Moscow, it was clear that Putin’s assault on Ukraine had failed to yield the quick victories he had anticipated but had instead rallied a concerted western response that was potentially devastating for Russia’s economy.
Continue reading...Rescuers still searching for four villagers believed to have been buried in mud after magnitude-6.2 quake
Rescuers on Indonesia’s Sumatra island have retrieved more bodies after a strong earthquake two days ago, raising the death toll to 11 while another 400 were injured and thousands displaced.
The body of the latest victim was recovered on Sunday from the rubble of homes toppled by the magnitude-6.2 earthquake that shook West Sumatra province on Friday morning, said National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari.
Continue reading...Russian currency expected to plunge in first day’s trading since Swift ban and ECB says state-owned Sberbank subsidiaries are set to collapse
Moscow is bracing for economic panic when markets open on Monday morning, with the value of the rouble expected to plummet at least 25% after the US and European Union announced unprecedented sanctions over the weekend.
Those measures targeted the Russian central bank, which has intervened to prop up the value of the rouble following Vladimir Putin’s order to invade Ukraine. They also marked the first time Russian banks have been excluded from the Swift international payments system.
Continue reading...Oleg Deripaska and Ukrainian-born Mikhail Fridman call for peace, as activities come under threat from sanctions
Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have become two of the country’s first leading businesspeople to speak out against Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Fridman, who is one of Russia’s richest men, controls private equity firm LetterOne and was a founder of Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank. In a letter to his employees he called for an end to the “bloodshed”.
Continue reading...Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announce moves as Covid infections continue to fall dramatically
The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams announced on Sunday that a dramatic drop in coronavirus infections could lead to the lifting of vaccine mandates on restaurants, bars and theaters as soon as 7 March.
His announcement came shortly after the governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, announced plans to lift the mask mandate on schools, effective Wednesday.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the Ukrainian and Russian delegations will meet without preconditions at Pripyat in Belarus. The Ukrainian president revealed that he was not confident that any progress would come from the meeting, but said he would do everything he could for the Ukrainian people
Continue reading...Trafalgar Square a sea of blue and yellow as demonstrators protest against brutal Russian invasion
Thousands of people gathered in cities across the UK for at times highly emotional rallies in support of Ukraine as the country defended itself against the brutal Russian invasion.
In London, Trafalgar Square was a sea of blue and yellow as protesters voiced anguish and despair at Russian president Vladimir Putin’s assault on the eastern European country.
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