Kiev, Ukraine | AFP | Ukraine said Wednesday its aerial defence units had detected half a dozen balloons, apparently launched by Russia, over the capital Kyiv and shot most of them down. Kyiv authorities said the balloons could carry reconnaissance equipment and were launched to “detect and exhaust our air defence forces.” “Most of the probes have been shot down,” the city administration said in a statement, adding authorities would carefully examine the debris. […]
Europe
UN appeals for $5.6 billion for aid to Ukraine in 2023
Geneva, Switzerland (AFP) — The United Nations said Wednesday that $5.6 billion was needed to provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine and to the millions who have fled the war-ravaged country. Nearly a year after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UN estimated that 21.8 million Ukrainians were now in need of humanitarian assistance. “The war continues to cause death, destruction and displacement daily, and on a staggering scale,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths […]
Ukraine’s allies scramble to keep ammo flowing
Brussels, Belgium | AFP | Tuesday 2/14/2023 by Max DELANY Ukraine’s Western backers pushed at a meeting on Tuesday to keep the huge amounts of ammunition and arms Kyiv needs flowing to the battlefield, as Russia ramps up its assaults. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has knuckled down on his plea for Western aircraft after securing commitments for tanks, air defence and precision missiles. But allies insist they are scrambling to ensure his forces have […]
Hour by hour in a battered town on Ukraine’s front line
by Phil HAZLEWOOD Agence France Presse Avdiivka, Ukraine (AFP) — The civilians of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine have been in the crossfire of fierce fighting since pro-Russian rebels seized control of nearby Donetsk in 2014. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, the once-thriving industrial city of 30,000 in the disputed Donbas region has become a ghost-town. Those who haven’t fled now hide indoors, huddling in the basements of apartment blocks with no running water […]
Ukraine using more munitions than NATO producing: Stoltenberg
Brussels, Belgium | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 NATO needs “to ramp up production” of ammunition as Ukraine’s rate of usage is far outstripping current capacities and draining stockpiles, the defence alliance’s chief Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting allied stockpiles,” Stoltenberg told journalists. “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defence […]
Turkey-Syria quake toll rises above 35,000
Kahramanmaras, Turkey | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 by Fulya Ozerkan with Joris Fioriti in Antakya and Maher al-Mounes in Damascus The toll from last week’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria rose above 35,000 on Monday, as rescue teams started to wind down the search for survivors and the aid effort shifted to hundreds of thousands of people made homeless. Eight days after the 7.8-magnitude tremor, Turkish media reported a handful of people were […]
URGENT: Death toll rises above 35,000 in Turkey, Syria quake
Istanbul, Turkey | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 The death toll from a catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria climbed above 35,000 on Monday, with search and rescue teams starting to wind down their work. Officials and medics said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria from last Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 35,224. This is a developing story. © Agence France-Presse
The reckoning: child sex abuse in the Catholic Church
Paris, France | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 Portugal on Monday will become the latest country to issue an independent report into clerical sexual abuse, an issue that has dogged the Catholic Church for years and undermined its moral authority. From Australia to Ireland via the United States, thousands of priests, bishops and cardinals have been caught up in abuse scandals, as well as lay members of the Church such as Catholic school teachers or […]
Portugal Catholic clergy sexually abused nearly 5,000 minors: inquiry
Lisbon, Portugal | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 by Thomas CABRAL Catholic clergy in Portugal have abused nearly 5,000 children since 1950, an independent commission said on Monday, announcing its findings after hearing hundreds of victim accounts. Thousands of reports of paedophilia within the Catholic Church have surfaced around the world and Pope Francis is under pressure to tackle the scandal. The Portuguese inquiry, commissioned by the Church in the staunchly Catholic country, published the results […]
Ten deadliest quakes of the 21st century
Paris, France | AFP | Monday 2/13/2023 Graphic Content The massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 is the fifth-deadliest this century. Here is a list of the 10 worst quakes since 2000, ranked by death toll: – 2004: 230,000 dead, southeast Asia – On December 26, a massive 9.1-magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that kills more than 230,000 people throughout the region, […]
‘It’s like Verdun’: The grinding battle for Ukraine’s Bakhmut
by Susannah WALDEN Agence France-Presse BAKHMUT, Ukraine (AFP) — An ambulance screams toward a triage hub for wounded Ukrainian soldiers outside Bakhmut, the stage for the longest battle of Russia’s invasion, where there is no end in sight to a brutal stalemate. Men with limbs lost to mines and artillery wounds are pulled from battlefields carved with trenches and scarred by shells in a fight drawing comparisons to infamous battles of World War I. “It’s […]
Thousands join latest round of Portuguese teachers’ protests
Lisbon, Portugal | AFP | Thousands of teachers from across Portugal marched through the streets of Lisbon on Saturday in the latest round of protests demanding higher pay and better working conditions. More than 150,000 people took part in the rally, according to the National Federation of Teachers (FENPROF), the profession’s main union. “This is probably the biggest demonstration of teachers” in Portugal, said FENPROF secretary general Mario Nogueira. “We are outraged,” Augusto Figueiredo, a […]