The US, Canada and key European countries, including Germany, have agreed to remove ‘selected Russian banks’ from the Swift international payments system. UK prime minister Boris Johnson welcomed the move, saying: 'More countries are joining the call of the UK to use Swift … to tighten the economic ligature around the Putin regime'. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that cutting off some Russian banks will 'effectively block Russian exports and imports’. The move was welcomed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. ‘This is billions and billions of losses for Russia, a tangible price for this vile invasion of our country,’ he said
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Las Vegas shooting: 13 wounded and one dead at hookah lounge, police say
Two people reported critically injured in Nevada shooting, which happened early on Saturday morning
Fourteen people were shot before dawn on Saturday at a hookah lounge in Las Vegas. Police said one man died and two people suffered critical injuries.
The shooting happened at about 3.15am and preliminary information indicated there was a party during which two people got into an altercation and exchanged gunfire, striking multiple people, said police captain Dori Koren.
Continue reading...Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say
Two studies released by scientists but yet to be published in journals say virus did not emerge from Wuhan Institute of Virology
International scientists on Saturday released two major studies which one participant said made it “extraordinarily clear” a market in Wuhan, China was the source of the coronavirus which fueled the Covid-19 pandemic – and not a Chinese government laboratory, a theory championed in the US by rightwing campaigners, columnists and politicians.
The question of where Covid-19 came from and how it spread has proved divisive.
Continue reading...Russia-Ukraine latest news: gunfights continue in Kyiv as Germany sends anti-tank weapons and missiles – live
Ukrainians mount strong resistance to Putin’s troops, as Germany breaks with policy of not exporting arms to war zones
- Russian strikes pound Kyiv as Zelenskiy refuses US offer to evacuate
- Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures
- How Ukrainian defiance has derailed Putin’s plans
- Profile: Volodymyr Zelenskiy stands defiant in face of Russian attack
Reuters reports that President Joe Biden has instructed the US state department to release $350m in military aid to Ukraine as it struggles to repulse a Russian invasion.
In a memorandum to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Biden directed that $350m allocated through the Foreign Assistance Act be designated for Ukraine’s defence.
Fierce fighting has broken out in Kyiv as Russian forces tried to push their way towards the city centre and were met with resistance from the Ukrainian military.
Throughout Friday night, explosions rocked the capital. Artillery fire could be heard in the streets and as dawn broke, a post on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Facebook page said “active combat” was taking place in the city.
Continue reading...Armed with hammers and pistols, Ukrainians wait at barricades for the Russians
At makeshift checkpoints, motley crews of citizens vow to do everything in their power to halt the Russian advance
The barricade started as a few men waiting nervously in the road on Friday, and grew gradually over the course of Saturday. By the afternoon, this modest attempt to stop a Russian advance on the capital of Ukraine was complete: sandbags, wooden crates and bricks piled high, with a blue-yellow national flag flying above them.
The motley crew had no illusions about the level of resistance they would be able to offer to one of the world’s most ruthless and technologically advanced armies, but like thousands in and around Kyiv they were determined to do what they could anyway. “I practised shooting yesterday and I came out here today for my first shift. I’ll be honest, I’m terrified,” said Alexander, 50. He was brandishing a US-made Remington shotgun he said a friend had acquired for him.
Continue reading...Putin shunned by world as his hopes of quick victory evaporate
Russian troops facing fierce resistance as Germany abandons its postwar military stance to supply arms to Ukraine
Vladimir Putin was facing growing international isolation and the prospect of pariah status on Saturday night as long-term allies dramatically turned against him following the invasion of Ukraine, and western nations planned further decisive military and financial action against Moscow.
As his hopes of a quick victory evaporated in the face of fierce resistance by Ukrainian soldiers and armies of citizen volunteers, Russia’s president was deserted by his key ally, China, and had his ultimatum demanding Kyiv’s surrender defiantly brushed aside by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Continue reading...From partygate to Putin’s war: Boris Johnson rides on a rare wave of unity
The prime minister’s stirring rhetoric on the crisis in Ukraine earns him a reprieve from his woes… for now at least
It was the silence in the House of Commons – more than the words spoken from the dispatch box – that captured the magnitude of the moment, and the dramatic shift of political mood, on Thursday evening.
Boris Johnson had been woken at 4.10am that morning to be told Vladimir Putin’s troops had crossed the border into Ukraine. It was what military intelligence had prepared him to expect.
Continue reading...‘Can I tow you back to Russia?’: Ukrainian confronts soldiers by broken armoured vehicle – video
A Ukrainian citizen confronted Russian soldiers after their armoured vehicle broke down on a country road in the Sumy region, close to the border with Russia.
After spotting the hapless soldiers, the driver pulled alongside them, and asked: 'Can I tow you back to Russia?'
Further along the road at another broken down vehicle, a Ukrainian told the Russians that the invading army was lost.
Read more in Luke Harding's latest report from Ukraine.
Continue reading...Trayvon Martin compared to Emmett Till on 10th anniversary of death
Martin’s mother says fight for justice must continue as Al Sharpton makes comparison with teen lynched in Mississippi in 1955
Trayvon Martin’s mother used the 10th anniversary of his death on Saturday to urge those who sought justice for her family to continue to fight.
Sybrina Fulton spoke to the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev Al Sharpton in Harlem. She said she had come to New York City from Florida in order to support her supporters.
Continue reading...Ukrainian mother hugs her children brought to safety by a stranger – video
A Ukrainian mother embraced her child and then the person who brought him and his sister safely to her across the Hungarian border.
Nataliya Ableyeva was entrusted with the two children by their father who was forced to stay behind to fight for their country.
The children’s mother, Anna Semyuk, was on her way from Italy to meet them and take them to safety.
Ableyeva had left her own two grownup children behind in Ukraine. One a policeman, the other a nurse, neither could leave Ukraine under the mobilisation decree
Continue reading...Calls to expel Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene after speech at white nationalist event
Republican leadership condemned for failing to discipline Georgia congresswoman for speaking at far-right summit
Republican leaders are facing fresh demands to expel the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, after she spoke at a conference of white nationalists and sympathisers with Vladimir Putin.
The event in Orlando, Florida, on Friday night was organised by the far-right extremist Nick Fuentes, who told attendees: “Now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin is Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing.”
Continue reading...How Ukrainian defiance has derailed Putin’s plans
It’s too early to describe the Kremlin operation as a failure, but it has not succeeded yet in its mission to seize and subjugate its neighbour
Three days after the invasion there are signs that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is not quite going to plan. In the Sumy region, close to the border with Russia, a local resident came across an extraordinary sight. On a country road lined with birch trees, a Russian armoured vehicle had broken down.
He pulled up in his car and stopped. There was then a surreal conversation.
Continue reading...Fear, darkness and newborn babies: inside Ukraine’s underground shelters
As war rages above ground, Ukrainians have sought safety in metro stations and basements
In the bunkers and underground tunnels of Kyiv, life continues underground, even as explosions sound overhead.
Teens sit glued to iPhones, parents tuck quilts around their children to sleep. Some hold pets, while others sit in darkened, unmoving subway cars. And babies arrive. In one shelter in Kyiv, a woman gave birth to a girl, Mia.
Continue reading...Poll: US majority believes no Russian invasion with Trump as president
Caps-Harris poll shows 62% of respondents believe Putin would not have ordered troops into Ukraine with Trump in White House
A clear majority of Americans think Vladimir Putin would not have ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine had Donald Trump still been in the White House, according to a new poll.
The poll, by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (Caps)-Harris, found that 62% of those surveyed believed Putin would not have sent troops into Ukraine with Trump in the White House.
Continue reading...At the Ukrainian border, a mother brings a stranger’s children to safety
The ban on men aged 18 to 60 leaving the country leads one father to take drastic action
Clutching a mobile phone number of a woman she had never met, Nataliya Ableyeva crossed the border from Ukraine into Hungary entrusted with a precious cargo: a stranger’s children.
Waiting at the border crossing on the Ukrainian side, Ableyeva had met a desperate 38-year-old man from her home town of Kamianets-Podilskyi, with his young son and daughter.
Continue reading...At least 13 people dead after tourist boat sinks off Vietnam coast
Two children are among four people missing after the boat capsized as it was returning to Hội An
At least 13 people were killed and four others are missing after a tourist boat capsized on Saturday in bad weather off the coast of Hội An, a world heritage-listed Vietnamese city, an official said.
The accident occurred as the vessel carrying 39 local tourists and crew members was returning to Hội An from Cu Lao Cham island – a popular spot for diving, snorkelling and water sports.
Continue reading...Will we get a single, variant-proof vaccine for Covid?
The goal of a universal vaccine would have seemed a fantasy only a few years ago. But not now…
This week the government announced additional vaccine booster jabs for the over-75s and suggested a further shot is likely to be needed in the autumn. But imagine if the next Covid vaccine jab you have were the last you would ever need. That’s a dream being actively pursued now by researchers, who feel it could be possible to make a “universal” vaccine against the Sars-CoV-2 virus that would work well not only against all existing variants but any that the virus could plausibly mutate into in the future.
Some are thinking even bigger. In January, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, and two other experts called for more research into “universal coronavirus vaccines” that would work not only against Sars-CoV-2 but against the many other coronaviruses in animal populations that have the potential to spill over into humans and cause future pandemics. “We need a research approach that can characterise the global ‘coronaviral universe’ in multiple species,” Fauci and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, “and apply this information in developing broadly protective ‘universal’ vaccines against all [coronaviruses].”
Continue reading...Elderly resident reprimands Russian soldiers: ‘You have your own country’ – video
A man who claimed to be Russian was filmed apparently reprimanding a group of Russian soldiers in Melitopol, Ukraine. Russia has made claims to have taken the coastal city, where an airbase and a hospital were hit on Saturday morning.
He says to the soldiers: 'Russians invading Ukraine is so fucked up! What are you doing here? We have our life and you have yours. I’m Russian too, but I live in this country.
'You have your own country and we have ours. Don’t you have any problems in your own country? Are you all rich there? Shame on you!'
- Russia-Ukraine latest news
- How Ukrainian defiance has derailed Putin’s plans
- Kyiv apartment building hit as Ukrainians fight off Russian attacks – video report
The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracy
Welcome to the the grassroots CPAC summit, where conservatives see themselves not as dismantlers of democracy, but as saviors
On stage in a hotel ballroom glowing red, white and blue, Ron DeSantis was recalling his days in Congress and a book he wrote about America’s troubles. It was “read by about a dozen people,” the Florida governor said with rare self-deprecation.
DeSantis then told a gathering of grassroots conservatives on Thursday: “I look back at that time, it almost seems a little quaint to me because the threats we face to freedom, the threats we face to a just society, are much more pervasive than they were just 10 years ago.”
Continue reading...Man wrongfully convicted of Alice Sebold rape sues New York for $50m
Anthony Broadwater served 16 years in prison but was exonerated last year after prosecutors re-examined case
Anthony Broadwater, who served 16 years in prison for the 1981 rape of the author Alice Sebold but was exonerated last year, has filed a $50m wrongful conviction lawsuit against New York state.
Broadwater, 61, was cleared in November of his conviction for the rape after a re-examination of the case found serious flaws in his arrest and trial.
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