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Oil prices broke past $100 and safe havens surged while equities tumbled Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “military operation” in Ukraine, accelerating fears of a major war. Markets have been hammered this week after the Kremlin recognised two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine and said it would provide “peacekeepers” to the regions, leading to warnings of a conflagration. The Russian president said in a surprise statement on television: “I have made the […]
World leaders on Thursday condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Western capitals vowing to escalate sanctions against Moscow while the head of the United Nations demanded the conflict end immediately. Key reactions: – US President Joe Biden – “The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” Biden said shortly after the operation began. He warned “Russia alone is […]
by Pierre-Henry DESHAYES and Viken KANTARCI Agence France-Presse OSLO, Norway (AFP) – Western diplomats Tuesday linked humanitarian aid to Afghanistan to an improvement in human rights after meeting a Taliban delegation on a landmark visit to Europe. On the final day of the Taliban’s first official trip to Europe since returning to power in August, the fundamentalists held talks behind closed doors with several Western diplomats. The Taliban are seeking international recognition and financial aid. […]
by Jan HENNOP There is “no answer yet” on whether vaccine makers will have to adapt their Covid shots to counter the rapidly-spreading Omicron variant, Europe’s medicines watchdog chief said on Tuesday. The highly-mutated variant, now present in dozens of countries, appears to be more contagious than previous strains and is driving new waves of infections globally. Scientists are also examining whether it is more resistant to vaccines than previous strains. But the head of […]
by Daniel Woolls with AFP bureaus The United States, Brazil, Canada, and Saudi Arabia became the latest countries Friday to restrict travel from southern Africa, where a new Covid strain labelled a “variant of concern” has been discovered in a potentially heavy blow to the world’s efforts to end the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization said the new variant is more infectious than the dominant, highly transmissible Delta strain, and renamed this B.1.1.529 strain […]
by Agnès PEDRERO Next week’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference, the global trade body’s biggest gathering in four years, was postponed at the last minute Friday due to the new Omicron Covid-19 variant. The WTO hoped the four-day gathering in Geneva would breathe new life into the crippled organisation, which has been stuck for years trying to make progress on resolving issues like fishery subsidies. New director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was also hoping, against the odds, […]
The new Covid variant, dubbed Omicron and originally detected in South Africa, poses a “high to very high” risk to Europe, the EU health agency warned on Friday. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) noted in a threat assessment report that there was still “considerable uncertainty related to the transmissibility, vaccine effectiveness, risk for reinfections and other properties of the Omicron variant.” However, the overall risk that Omicron posed to the European […]
by David COURBET Agence France Presse BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard will on Thursday become the oldest person yet to be tried for Nazi-era crimes in Germany when he goes before court charged with complicity in mass murder. The suspect, identified only as Josef S., stands accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 […]
VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Pope Francis on Wednesday expressed his personal shame and that of the Church at the sexual abuse of children by French Catholic clergy, after the scale of the problem was laid bare in a devastating report. “I wish to express to the victims my sadness and pain for the trauma they have suffered,” he said during his weekly audience at the Vatican. “And also my shame, our shame, my shame […]
by Karine PERRET and Joseph SCHMID Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — An independent inquiry into alleged sex abuse of minors by French Catholic priests, deacons and other clergy has found some 216,000 victims from 1950 to 2020, a “massive phenomenon” that was covered up for decades by a “veil of silence.” The landmark report, released Tuesday after two and a half years of investigations, follows widespread outrage over a string of sex […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLaT1wyLaE Climate change and increasingly extreme weather events, have caused a surge in natural disasters over the past 50 years disproportionately impacting poorer countries, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) said on Wednesday. According to the agencies’ Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, from 1970 to 2019, these natural hazards accounted for 50 per cent of all disasters, 45 per cent […]
The bodies of at least three people were seen in the sweltering crush outside Kabul airport, television news footage showed on Saturday, as thousands try desperately to flee Taliban rule in a chaotic evacuation. The footage from Britain’s Sky News showed soldiers covering three bodies in white tarpaulins. It was not clear how they died. Sky reporter Stuart Ramsay, who was at the airport, said that people at the front of the crowd were being “crushed” […]
