Category Archives: World News

Explosions hit Ukraine’s major airports as Russia begins invasion – video

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Footage shows explosions at Ukrainian airports near major cities including Kharkiv and Mariupol in the early hours of Thursday morning. Blasts from artillery rockets were filmed around 5am near Mariupol. Footage also showed smoke rising near Kharkiv military airport and a video posted on social media captured an explosion near the Ivano-Frankivsk airport in western Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a 'special military operation' at dawn. World leaders have warned the move could provoke the biggest war in Europe since the second world war

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Stay or flee? Kyiv comes to terms with disaster of Russian invasion

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Moments of normality puncture mood of shock, fear and quiet disgust in Ukraine’s capital

It began in darkness soon after 4.30am local time. There were distant explosions in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and the whine of car alarms. A nation shook itself awake. What had been foretold by western governments, by experts, and – late in the day – by the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was actually happening. Russia was attacking and invading.

Vladimir Putin’s apparent goal: the subjugation of a nation, a culture, a people. It was unthinkable in the twenty-first century. And yet, with imperial swagger, Russian troops, tanks and planes were on the move.

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Russia invades Ukraine as Putin launches war to ‘demilitarise’ neighbour

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Russia appears to be targeting military infrastructure in early strikes with explosions reported at airfields, military headquarters and military warehouses

Russian forces have unleashed an attack of Ukraine on the orders of Vladimir Putin, who announced a “special military operation” at dawn, amid warnings from world leaders that it could spark the biggest war in Europe since 1945.

Within minutes of Putin’s short televised address, at about 5am Ukrainian time, explosions were heard near major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv.

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CCTV shows Russian tanks entering Ukraine from Belarus and Crimea – video

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Russian forces can be seen crossing into Ukraine across the Senkivka-Veselivka border checkpoint with Belarus in border guard CCTV and a separate video shows tanks crossing the border from occupied Crimea. 

The attack on Ukraine was on the orders of Vladimir Putin, who announced a 'special military operation' at dawn. World leaders have warned the move could provoke the biggest war in Europe since 1945

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Zelenskiy introduces martial law in Ukraine as sirens blare in Kyiv – video

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President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Russia had carried out missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and the country's border guards, and that explosions had been heard in many cities. He said martial law had been declared across the country and that he had spoken by phone to the US president, Joe Biden

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Moment that Putin thundered to war, drowning out last entreaties for peace

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As members of UN security council poured out calls for restraint, Russian president was already launching attack on Ukraine

It will go down as one of the most surreal sessions the United Nations chamber has ever witnessed, as the very war it was supposed to prevent broke out while it was sitting.

Vladimir Putin, with brutal timing, delivered a speech announcing that Russia would start a “special military operation” in Ukraine – while an emergency session of the UN security council was under way.

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‘House of love’: the calm, creative space changing young lives in Karachi

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In Lyari, a slum notorious for violence in Pakistan’s most populous city, Mehr Ghar offers young people a safe place to hang out and study – and, for many, an alternative path to gang life

Living in Lyari was like living on the frontlines of a war, says Nauroz Ghani, who grew up in the Karachi slum notorious for its bloody gang battles. So used to the constant gunfire, he says he would “become restless if a day passed by without hearing the sound of a firing”.

“My teenage years were lost to violence,” says Ghani, 24. “I had no interest in getting an education. Instead, I was attracted by their guns and activities.” He saw dead bodies on the street and one boy was killed in front of him. “All of us who lived during those days have such memories. We lived in terror, but it had become habitual.”

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The west stood back and watched in Syria – it must not do the same in Ukraine | Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

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It’s time for the US and its allies to show their steel in the face of Putin’s aggression. We have learned that nothing else will work

The Syria crisis continues unnoticed. It holds key lessons for the west about Putin yet it has gone virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world. War crimes and crimes against humanity continue in the Russian-sponsored dictatorship, even as some misguided leaders want to usher Bashar al-Assad, the architect of these crimes, back into acceptable society.

We can rest assured that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, unlike Assad, is not welcoming Putin with open arms. But in responding to the Ukraine emergency, there are lessons the west can and should learn from the situation in Syria.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a chemical weapons expert, fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge and an adviser to the Union of Syrian Medical Charities

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UK government accused of ignoring victims in efforts to tackle ‘sex for aid’

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Foreign office’s ‘top-down’ approach failing people it is seeking to protect, says watchdog, with abuse cases still underreported

The British government has not listened to victims in its efforts to tackle abuse in the humanitarian sector after the “sex for aid” scandals, a UK watchdog has said.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai) said the government was falling short because of a “top-down” approach and needed to listen and learn from recipients of aid who remained reluctant to report abuse allegations.

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‘Their golden hour’: Donetsk and Luhansk leaders revel in rising profile

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Ukraine crisis has thrust Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik into centre of events, amid claim they are puppets of Putin

For many Russians, it was an unfamiliar sight to see the faces of the two leaders of the pro-Kremlin proxy states in eastern Ukraine pop up on their television screens last Friday, announcing the mass evacuation of Donbas citizens to Russia.

Since then, however, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, heads of the self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, have seen their political profiles rocket, culminating on Monday with the two leaders asking the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to recognise their “republics”.

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Anti-Covid vaccine mandate protesters chase New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern outside school

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Incident comes a month after prime minister’s vehicle was chased and forced on to a curb by demonstrators

A group of shouting protesters have chased the New Zealand prime minister’s van down a driveway as she visited a Christchurch primary school, amid tensions over increasingly volatile anti-vaccine mandate protests.

Jacinda Ardern, who was visiting a primary school in Christchurch, was met by a crowd of people shouting “shame on you” and “traitor”. Some held signs saying that the prime minister would be “put on trial” and “held responsible”, and one man brandished a fabricated arrest warrant – references to conspiracy theories that a cohort of world leaders and powerful people are secretly using vaccines to commit a genocide, and would soon be put on trial and hanged for treason.

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Hong Kong to allow in doctors from mainland China as Covid cases overwhelm hospitals

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City, which is pursuing a zero-Covid strategy, is registering thousands of cases a day in its worst-ever wave of the virus

Hong Kong’s government has invoked emergency powers to allow doctors and nurses from the Chinese mainland to practise in the financial hub as it struggles to tackle a spiralling coronavirus outbreak.

“The regulation will provide a legal framework for the CPG (central people’s government) to render the necessary emergent support to Hong Kong in a more effective and expeditious manner,” the government said in a statement.

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Hong Kong domestic workers left homeless after being fired for contracting Covid-19

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Dozens of live-in workers have been forced to sleep rough in the Hong Kong winter after bosses refuse to allow them back in the house

Live-in domestic workers in Hong Kong have been left homeless after they were diagnosed with Covid-19 and their employers fired them or refused their return to the residence, support groups have said.

Many of the workers, who are mostly women from Indonesia and the Philippines, were also left without insurance to cover their medical bills.

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Biden imposes sanctions on company behind Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline– live

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House speaker Nancy Pelosi is now holding a press conference on Capitol Hill, after attending the Munich Security Conference last week.

Pelosi attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin for recognizing the two self-proclaimed republics in east Ukraine and ordering troops into the region, repeatedly describing him as a “tyrant”.

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Ukraine crisis live: self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk ask Russia for military aid

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Experts see move from Russian-controlled territories as final pretext for full invasion

Russia’s ambassador to the United States has hit back at the imposition of sanctions imposed by US president Joe Biden, suggesting the move would hurt global financial and energy markets as well as ordinary citizens.

According to a recent post on the Russian embassy Facebook page early Wednesday, ambassador Anatoly Antonov said:

Sanctions will not solve anything regarding Russia. It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Washington is counting on Russia to review its foreign policy course under threat of restrictions.

I don’t remember a single day when our country lived without any restrictions from the Western world. We learned how to work in such conditions. And not only survive, but also develop our state.

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Covid live: Poland, Slovakia and Iceland latest countries set to end most coronavirus restrictions

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Move comes as case numbers and deaths continue to fall in many nations

Hong Kong reported a record 8,674 new Covid infections on Wednesday, as the city prepares for compulsory testing of its residents after authorities extended the toughest social restrictions imposed since the pandemic began.

Health authorities reported 24 deaths compared with Tuesday’s 32, as they step up measures, with assistance from their mainland counterparts, to contain the outbreak. On Tuesday, Hong Kong reported 6,211 new cases.

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Ukraine declares state of emergency and urges citizens to leave Russia

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Kyiv mobilises reserves and advises estimated 3 million people to depart in latest sign it believes Putin plans to invade

Ukraine has declared a state of emergency, mobilised reserves and told nearly 3 million of its citizens to leave Russia, as the US warned that Vladimir Putin had assembled almost 100% of the forces needed to launch a large-scale invasion of the country.

As Russian diplomats evacuated their embassy in the capital, the Ukrainian government said a massive cyber-attack had targeted ministries and banks on Wednesday. Officials have warned that Russia could use elements of hybrid warfare to sow confusion before launching an all-out military assault.

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Night-time attack on controversial Canadian gas pipeline site

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Police release video of attack on workers’ equipment at camp of Coastal GasLink, a 400-mile pipeline opposed by First Nation groups

Police in Canada have released footage of axe wielding attackers as they investigate a “calculated and organised” night-time raid on a remote work camp.

Up to 20 people are believed to have attacked Coastal GasLink’s pipeline construction camp last week on Marten Forest Service Road in British Columbia.

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France extends abortion limit after year of parliamentary rows

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Applause in national assembly as lawmakers vote to extend limit for ending pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks

France has extended its time limit for abortion after an epic battle in parliament, amid anger that thousands of women had to travel abroad each year to terminate pregnancies in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain or England because of French restrictions.

There was applause in the French national assembly on Wednesday when lawmakers voted definitively to extend the legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks. France’s new time frame is still lower than in some other European countries, including England at 24 weeks.

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Why a swift economic victory against Russia looks unlikely

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Analysis: country has positioned itself to blunt western sanctions and has a few retaliatory ones of its own

Be ready for a long haul. That was the subtext of Boris Johnson’s message to MPs as he committed to toughening up sanctions against Russia.

The warning to prepare for a “protracted struggle” was both timely and appropriate. There will be no quick knockout blow because Vladimir Putin has had time to prepare and is well dug-in.

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