Kyiv: A court in Ukraine has sentenced a Russian tank commander for life in charge of killing a civilian at the first war crimes trial since the invasion.
Captured soldier Sgt Vadim Shishimarin was convicted of killing Oleksandr Shelipov, 62, in the north-eastern village of Chupakhivka on 28 February.
He admitted shooting Mr Shelipov but said he had been acting on orders and asked forgiveness of his widow.
Multiple other alleged war crimes are under investigation in Ukraine.
New Delhi: As Sri Lanka reels under a severe economic and energy crisis, India has supplied another 40,000 MT consignment of diesel to Sri Lanka to help ease the fuel shortage in the country.
The High Commission of India in Sri Lanka informed about the current consignment on Twitter. “Pumping diesel into #SriLanka!!! Another 40,000 MT consignment of diesel under the credit line from #India reached #Colombo today,” tweeted India High Commission in Sri Lanka.
Further, another consignment carrying rice, milk powder, and medicines worth more than SLR 2 billion from India is scheduled to reach Colombo on Sunday.
The consignment was flagged off from Chennai by Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M K Stalin. Indian High Commission also tweeted: “People of #India, standing by their bretheren in #SriLanka. Rice, milk powder and medicines worth more than SLR 2 billion is scheduled to reach #Colombo on Sunday. The consignment was flagged off from #Chennai by CM of Tamil Nadu @mkstalin on Wednesday.”
Moreover, India has promised to provide over $3 billion to the debt-ridden island country in loans, credit swaps, and also credit lines since the beginning of the year. Sri Lanka is going through the worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.
A crippling shortage of foreign reserves has led to long queues for fuel, cooking gas and other essentials while power cuts and soaring food prices heaped misery on the people.
The economic crisis has also triggered a political unrest in Sri Lanka and a demand for the resignation of the powerful Rajapaksas. In keeping with neighbourhood First policy, India has pledged nearly USD 3 billion to cash-strapped Colombo through currency swaps, credit lines for essential goods and repayment of loans since January 2022 to help Sri Lanka. Read at livemint
Amid tough global sanctions over the Ukraine war, Russia has published an updated “stop list”, permanently banning 963 Americans – including US president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris, and secretary of state Antony Blinken – from entering the country. Hollywood celebrities – including Morgan Freeman and actor-filmmaker Rob Reiner – also make the list, American news network CNN has reported.
Moscow said the list includes people who “incite Russophobia and those who serve them” and not the common Americans “who have always been respected by us”.
According to a Washington post report, Biden’s name figured in the March list too but this updated version has his deputy Harris’s name too.
Heavy rains have caused widespread flooding in parts of Bangladesh and India, leaving millions stranded and at least 57 dead, officials say.
In Bangladesh, about 2 million people have been marooned by the worst floods in the country’s north-east for nearly two decades.
At least 100 villages at Zakiganj were inundated after floodwater rushing from India’s north-east breached a major embankment on the Barak River, said Mosharraf Hossain, the chief government administrator of the Sylhet region.
“Some two million people have been stranded by floods so far,” he said on Saturday.
Many parts of Bangladesh and neighbouring regions in India are prone to flooding, and experts say climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events around the world.
Dozens of people were killed in India during the week in days of flooding, landslides and thunderstorms, according to local disaster management authorities. (AFP)
NEW DELHI: Amid SOS over food scarcity from countries such as Egypt, India has said that World Trade Organization (WTO) members should not resort to “naming and shaming” it for the wheat export controls and argued that that there was no shortage of grain in the global market.
Following the imposition of strict export restrictions, India has been under attack, finding an unusual ally in China. Ahead of a meeting of WTO ministers next month, the issue came up in Geneva during talks for a package on public stock-holding, a key concern for India as it has breached the limit and is seeking a permanent solution as it wants adequate flexibility to continue with the procurement programme. Read more at Times of India.
UK: More than 80 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in at least 12 countries.
The World Health Organization has said another 50 suspected cases are being investigated – without naming any countries – and warned that more cases are likely to be reported.
Infections have been confirmed in nine European countries, as well as the US, Canada and Australia.
Monkeypox is most common in remote parts of Central and West Africa.
It is a rare viral infection which is usually mild and from which most people recover in a few weeks, according to the UK’s National Health Service.
HELSINKI: Russia halted gas exports to neighboring Finland on Saturday, a highly symbolic move that came just days after the Nordic country announced it wanted to join NATO and marked a likely end to Finland’s nearly 50 years of importing natural gas from Russia.
The measure taken by the Russian energy giant Gazprom was in line with an earlier announcement following Helsinki’s refusal to pay for the gas in rubles as Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded European countries do since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Finnish state-owned gas company Gasum said that “natural gas supplies to Finland under Gasum’s supply contract have been cut off” by Russia on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. local time (0400 GMT).
The announcement follows Moscow’s decision to cut off electricity exports to Finland earlier this month and an earlier decision by the Finnish state-controlled oil company Neste to replace imports of Russian crude oil with crude oil from elsewhere.
After decades of energy cooperation that was seen as beneficial for both Helsinki — particularly in the case of inexpensive Russian crude oil — and Moscow, Finland’s energy ties with Russia are now all but gone. Such a break was easier for Finland than it will be for other European Union nations. Natural gas accounts for just some 5% of total energy consumption in Finland, a country of 5.5 million.
Almost all of that gas comes from Russia, and is used mainly by industrial and other companies with only an estimated 4,000 households relying on gas heating. Read more at Associated Press.
Kathmandu: Nepal confirmed its first-ever outbreak of African swine fever on Thursday, with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reporting that the disease had killed almost a thousand pigs in the Kathmandu valley.
The authorities had confirmed the epidemic and provided the facts to the OIE, according to Chandra Dhakal, the spokesperson for Nepal’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development’s Department of Livestock Services.
The OIE, based in Paris, announced on Thursday that the disease had killed 934 pigs in six farms in the Kathmandu Valley.
According to a report prepared by experts from Nepal’s Tribhuvan University and published in the Swiss journal Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute in 2021, the pig farming business in Nepal has grown dramatically in recent years, with a porcine population of 1.4 million last year.
“The virus’s ability to withstand extreme weather conditions, along with the traditional swill feeding strategy for raising pigs, might cause havoc in the Nepalese pork industry,” the report said.
The African swine fever is fatal to pigs and wild boars, with a fatality rate of up to 100%, according to the OIE, although it is not harmful to people or other animals.
Within two to ten days of transmission, the extremely contagious hemorrhagic sickness can kill you.
There are now no vaccinations or cures available for the virus, which has been documented in 73 countries across Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Pacific (except Africa).
After China’s first epidemic in August 2018, the disease expanded across the region, with South Korea reporting the first case in September 2019 and India reporting the first cases in 2020. The disease was discovered for the first time in Thailand in January 2022.
UK: SpaceX paid an employee $250,000 in a bid settle a claim she was sexually harassed by Elon Musk in 2016, according to a report from Insider.
The closely held rocket launch company, of which Musk is founder and chief executive officer, made the payment in 2018 to an unidentified flight attendant who worked as a contract employee on a SpaceX corporate jet, the online news provider said, citing interviews and documents, including a declaration signed by a friend of the attendant and made in support of her claim. (Bloomberg)
Colombo: Sri Lanka appointed nine new cabinet members on Friday, among them ministers for the critical portfolios of health, trade and tourism, as the island nation battles its worst economic crisis in history.
“Nine cabinet ministers of the new all-party government took their oaths before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa,” a presidential news statement said.
Veteran politician Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as prime minister this month to form a new cabinet after the president’s elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, resigned from the job. (Reuters)
UK: The United Nations has warned the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked a global food crisis that could risk tens of millions of people and last for years.
United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is in “intense contact” with Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the United States and the European Union in an effort to restore Ukrainian grain export amid the worsening global food crisis.
“It threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity, followed by malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years,” Mr Guterres said.
Colombo: Sri Lankan police arrested two ruling party MPs on Wednesday for allegedly instigating mob violence that led the island nation into days of unrest and left nine people dead last week.
The members of parliament from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s party were questioned by criminal investigators on Tuesday evening and detained overnight, according to a police official.
Sanath Nishantha and Milan Jayathilake were among 22 politicians–including former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his son Namal–whose passports were seized last week following allegations that they instigated the violence.
On May 9, thousands of ruling party supporters who were bussed into the capital attacked a peaceful demonstration by anti-government protesters.
Kathmandu: Naveen Srivastava has been named India’s next ambassador to Nepal.
Srivastava’s appointment was announced by the Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday, a day after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s daylong visit to Lumbini. Srivastava, an assistant secretary at the Ministry of External Affairs who oversees the East Asia desk, succeeds Vinay Kumar Kwatra, who finished his Nepal assignment in April after being appointed foreign secretary.
Srivastava is renowned as a strong China hand who was present at a conference of India-China military chiefs in May last year to diffuse the situation following border clashes in the Galwan region.
Srivastava is anticipated to start his new job in Kathmandu soon, according to the Ministry of External Affairs.
America: Mexico has officially registered more than 100,000 people as missing or disappeared, the data from the Interior Ministry’s National Registry of Missing People states.
Afghanistan: The Taliban have dissolved the Human Rights Commission amid growing concerns over the grave human rights situation in Afghanistan, media reports said. Rights activists condemned this decision saying that this institution abolished by the Taliban was not perfect but it mattered enormously to have a place to demand justice.
“Let’s take moment to remember an Afghanistan which had a human rights commission. It was not perfect–these institutions never are–but it mattered enormously to have somewhere to go, to ask for help and to demand justice. Shocking to see a country go backwards in this way,” said Heather Barr, Associate women’s rights director and former senior Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions had 120 member countries in April, but they will need to remove Afghanistan now,” she added. This meeting comes against the backdrop of a range of issues affecting Afghanistan. In the past few weeks, dozens of countries have expressed deep disappointment about escalating restrictions on the human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
Last week, the G7 Foreign Ministers had deplored the Taliban’s recent decree enforcing hijab on Afghan women and new punishments for family members to enforce compliance with these restrictions. They had condemned the imposition of increasingly restrictive measures that severely limit half the population’s ability to fully, equally, and meaningfully participate in society.
“We, the G7 Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union express our strongest opposition and deplore the increasing restrictions imposed on the rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban,” the G7 Foreign Ministers’ said on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. RSS
Colombo: Sri Lanka’s new prime minister said on Monday the crisis-hit nation was down to its last day of petrol, as the country’s power minister told citizens not to join the lengthy fuel queues that have galvanized weeks of anti-government protests.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, appointed prime minister on Thursday, said in an address to the nation the country urgently needed $75 million in foreign exchange to pay for essential imports.
“At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day. The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives,” he said.
“We must prepare ourselves to make some sacrifices and face the challenges of this period.”
Two shipments of petrol and two shipments of diesel using an Indian credit line could provide relief in the next few days, he added — but the country is also facing a shortage of 14 essential medicines.
Sri Lanka currently faces a budget deficit of $6.8 billion (2.4 trillion Sri Lankan rupees), or 13% of their GDP.
The crisis led to widespread protests against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family, culminating in the resignation of his elder brother Mahinda as prime minister last week after fighting between government supporters and protesters killed nine people and wounded 300.
In response to the crisis, Wickremesignhe said the country will print more money and propose to privatize Sri Lanka’s flagship airline to keep the economy afloat — though he conceded that inflation may worsen in the short term.
In his address on Thursday, he vowed to “build a nation without queues for kerosene, gas, and fuel … a nation with plentiful resources.” Read more at CNN
