Oksana Markarova appears moved as she thanks attendees, while US president condemns Putin’s ‘tyranny’
Oksana Markarova, the ambassador of Ukraine to the US, was given a standing ovation at the US Capitol on Tuesday nightduring Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address to Congress.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominated the early part of Biden’s speech, as the president condemned Vladimir Putin’s “tyranny” and announced he would ban Russian aircraft from US airspace.
Continue reading...The study of fossils and prehistoric species is exploitative of local communities, says international team
The public image of palaeontologists as dusty, but rather affable academics, could be due an update. The study of ancient life is a hotbed of unethical and inequitable scientific practices rooted in colonialism, which strip poorer countries of their fossil heritage, and devalue the contributions of local researchers, scientists say.
Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, an international team of palaeontologists argue that there has been a steady drain of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, prehistoric spiders, and other fossils from poorer countries into foreign repositories or local private collections – despite laws and regulations introduced to try to conserve their heritage.
Continue reading...Bombed and menaced by an unchecked Putin since 2015, Syrians hope the tide might be finally turning
When a Russian air raid in north-western Syria killed 34 Turkish troops, Ankara’s revenge quickly followed. But, instead of targeting the forces of Vladimir Putin, whose jets had caused the carnage, Turkey sent armed drones towards the Syrian army, pulverising hundreds of pieces of weaponry and killing scores of troops – all as Russia watched on blithely.
In the years since Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 to save the regime of Bashar al-Assad there had been countless examples of Russian attacks on civilian sites – schools, bakeries and hospitals – all of which had met meek responses from global leaders and drawn scant attention from war crimes prosecutors.
Continue reading...Mobile-phone video shows wrecked residential buildings with no windows, and fallen trees and power lines, in the aftermath of strikes that killed at least 11 people in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city on Monday.
Kharkiv’s regional administration chief said artillery had pounded residential districts. The city has been the target of some of the worst aerial attacks since Ukraine was invaded by Russian forces
Unarmed people in Ukraine have been filmed attempting to stop Russian vehicles with their bodies in a string of defiant acts.
In the south-eastern city of Melitopol people pushed on Russian military vehicles with their bare hands, while in the north-east Kupyansk residents jumped on a Jeep with Russian markers to fight the Russian occupation.
There were reports of fierce shelling in the northern city of Chernihiv, where people were filmed singing the Ukrainian national anthem and standing in front of tanks
Continue reading...Chinese foreign minister says Ukrainian counterpart asked for help to find diplomatic solution
China has signalled its willingness to play a mediator role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as the war entered its sixth day.
In his first phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, since the outbreak of the war, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said on Tuesday that Beijing “laments” the outbreak of the conflict and is “extremely concerned” about the harm to civilians, according to a Chinese readout.
Continue reading...Analysis: Economic penalties have been meted out since Napoleon’s day but there’s little proof they achieve the desired outcome
Waging war by economic means is nothing new. Napoleon imposed an ineffective embargo on British exports in the early 19th century and during the first world war there were attempts by both sides to starve each other into submission.
But since 1945 sanctions have been used with increasing frequency as a means of trying to change either the policy stance or the regimes in targeted countries.
Continue reading...Pundits and officials turn to ‘mythbusting’ as evidence of Ukraine destruction undermines official line
Russian state television talkshows are describing videos of missiles striking Ukrainian cities and reports of Russian soldiers killed in action as “fakes”, as the country’s media try to account for photos and video emerging from Ukraine that contradict official reports of the invasion.
The “mythbusting” is one of the adjustments that TV propaganda shows have had to make as evidence of the growing destruction in cities such as Kharkiv and Kyiv makes it increasingly difficult for the government to present the fiction of a concentrated offensive in the Donbas region.
Continue reading...Thousands of people trying to escape Ukraine capital amid fears that large-scale attack is imminent
The piercing screams of children mingled with the barking of traumatised dogs and the shouts of soldiers desperately trying to maintain order, as the 14.07 to Ivano-Frankivsk pulled into Kyiv’s central station.
There was a crowd of thousands on platform one, surging towards the blue carriages and desperate to secure a prized place on a ride westwards out of the Ukrainian capital. Most people would not be able to board.
Continue reading...Five people have been killed and several wounded in a Russian attack on a TV tower in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, according to reports.
Two explosions were heard in the Borshchahivka and Dorohozhychi areas, said the news agency Interfax-Ukraine, knocking several channels off air.
The incident was first reported on social media by the Ukrainian interior ministry adviser, Anton Herashchenko, moments after Russia warned Kyiv residents to evacuate military and intelligence infrastructure
Continue reading...Analysis: On a national level, web access has so far been largely unaffected by the invasion, and supports daily life
Ukraine’s continued access to the internet not only supports day-to-day life and the country’s financial system but it is also enabling the coordination of Ukrainian civil resistance – plus the ability of everyone, from the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to ordinary citizens, to communicate with the outside world.
How much of Ukraine still has access to the internet?
Ukraine remains largely connected to the internet, especially in major population centres. Mobile networks have struggled under the weight of connections and there have been broadband outages in areas with heavy fighting.
At a busy train station in Poland, families arrive while others head in the opposite direction to take up arms or be with family
Platform four or three: at the railway station in Przemyśl, Poland, the fates of hundreds of Ukrainians lie divided. On platform four, families fleeing the Russian bombing of Ukraine get off the carriages, seeking asylum in Europe. At platform three, dozens of Ukrainian men and women are about to board a blue train bound for Odessa, southern Ukraine.
“I have worked and lived in many countries,” says Oksana, 50. “I have lived in Poland and Italy. Ukraine may not be as beautiful as Italy, but it is my country. And I’m not leaving my country at such a difficult time. If all Ukrainians flee the country, who will stay in Ukraine? I see many of my fellow countrypeople around me here, coming from Germany and Poland. Some of them had good jobs. But they left them to return to Ukraine and fight.”
Continue reading...Analysis: convoy estimated to be 40 miles long raises fears of siege tactics and escalating civilian casualties
In the satellite image, the trees of the forest just north of the Ukrainian village of Rudnya-Shpylivska – population 107 – appear as if you could brush them with your hand.
Before last week, this hamlet was almost too small to notice, a place that cars would speed past on the P02 highway, those trees a blur.
Continue reading...A vast, fast-moving cloud of ash hundreds of metres tall and several kilometres wide has swept over southern Paraguay, blown in from wildfires raging in neighbouring Argentina after two years of severe drought.
A weather front of cold air from the south acted 'like a broom', explained Eduardo Dose, a Paraguayan hydrologist, scooping up soot from burnt pastures and forests as well as dust from drought-stricken wetlands. Strong winds then channelled the choking cloud
Wildfires send giant cloud of ash across southern Paraguay
Continue reading...Dozens of diplomats walked out of a speech by the Russian foreign minister to the UN human rights forum on Tuesday.
Sergei Lavrov was addressing the UN human rights council remotely, after cancelling his attendance previously because of what the Russian mission in Geneva said on Monday were EU states blocking his flight path, when delegates from the UK, US and EU started to walk out in protest.
Yevheniia Filipenko, Ukraine's ambassador to the UN, said the organisation was taking a 'very strong stance in defence of its own principles'
Continue reading...During an emergency session of the European parliament, Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the EU via video link to 'prove that you are with us' as Ukraine defends itself against an onslaught from Russia, a day after Kyiv officially asked to join the bloc. EU lawmakers, many bearing the Ukrainian flag, gave Zelenskiy a standing ovation. The Ukrainian president has remained in Kyiv to rally his people against the invasion. As he spoke on Tuesday, a Russian armoured column was bearing down on the capital
Continue reading...The mind-boggling hoard of jewellery the plundering first lady tried to smuggle out of the Philippines is being remade as sculpture by artist Pio Abad – with all its sparkle gone
Over his three terms as president of the Philippines from 1965, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were able to cream off some $10bn of the nation’s assets through offshore banks. New revelations that a close associate of the dictator was also able to maintain an account with Credit Suisse as late as 2006 therefore comes as no surprise to Manila-born Pio Abad. For a decade the artist has been making work under the title The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders, a reference to the aliases the couple used with the Swiss bank.
“It’s funny when a 10-year project becomes news,” says Abad, who is now London-based. “These institutions are very culpable for what happened in the Philippines.”
Continue reading...Friends become possessed by conspiracy theories after moving into Epstein’s old apartment in this smirking love letter to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut
In 2019, reviewing a re-release of Eyes Wide Shut, Peter Bradshaw pointed out that in the age of Epstein, the idea of a secret society of the rich and powerful exploiting the vulnerable no longer seemed far-fetched. Now comes The Scary of Sixty-First, a kind of cinematic love letter to Stanley Kubrick set in the New York of Eyes Wide Shut, about Jeffrey Epstein and the conspiracy theories around his death. It’s a shallow, outrage-baiting movie out to shock but not much else. Disappointingly, the director and co-writer is supersmart switched-on Dasha Nekrasova, an actor who plays Kendall’s press adviser Comfrey in Succession and co-hosts the Red Scare podcast.
The movie begins like an episode of Girls: friends Noelle (co-writer Madeline Quinn) and Addie (Betsey Brown) move into a suspiciously cheap rented apartment in Manhattan’s swanky Upper East Side. Eli Keszler’s pounding synth-y score signals something is up; so too does the creepy second bedroom, which has a mirror on the ceiling and doors that lock from the outside. Then comes a knock at the door. A woman credited only as The Girl (played by Nekrasova, possessing Chloë Sevigny levels of aloof cool), tells them that the apartment was previously owned by Epstein.
Continue reading...Steve Bladon led his Lincolnshire school tirelessly through the pandemic and thought the worst was over – then fatigue set in
Last month, Steve Bladon, a father of four, watched with some unease as the prime minister announced the lifting of all Covid restrictions in England. After two years of the pandemic – the lockdowns, the legal requirements to self-isolate, the social distancing and mandatory masks – the message from government was that it may not be over, but it’s time to learn to live with Covid.
As the headteacher of a primary school in a small town in Lincolnshire, Bladon, 46, knows as much as anyone about living with the virus. He has led his team and school community tirelessly through the pandemic, delivering remote education and food parcels, reassuring anxious parents and keeping colleagues calm.
Continue reading...European stocks are falling again, but not collapsing... The UK’s FTSE 100 index has followed the rest of Europe and is now trading 11 points, or 0.15%, lower at 7,447, giving up earlier modest gains.
Germany’s Dax has lost 1% while France’s CAC and Italy’s FTSE MiB are 0.7% and 0.9% lower respectively.
Russia exposed stocks more mixed this morning: Polymetal, JPMorgan Russian Securities and Petropavlosk all lower again, whilst Evraz and Ferrexpo rallied a bit. The rouble has come off its lows and trades around 91 to the US dollar. At the moment it looks as though the Russian central bank is doing a not terrible job of supporting the currency, but through some pretty tough measures – massive rate hike and capital controls. How long can this last? First Switzerland and now even Monaco is kicking out Russian money!
As for Russia and Ukraine....the dreadful situation gets worse as heavy shelling of built-up areas shows us what is to come. Talks yesterday didn’t get far but the two sides have agreed to try again as a massive Russian convoy starts to encircle Kyiv. Bombing of civilians will harden Western public opinion against Russia – voters are already taking a pretty hard line across Europe. Unified public opinion complicates matters for governments who might prefer to base policy solely on the advice of their military intelligence and strategic advisors. But that is the way of things.
We think there is a clear financial as well as a moral case for divestment with respect to our Russian holdings.
Morals drive finance and if you are a financial investor and you don’t think about the moral impacts of what you are doing you are both shortsighted and, dare I say it, immoral.
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