Category: News

India is considering establishing a payment mechanism in local currencies to allow it to continue trade with Russia, which has been hit with Western sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine. New Delhi is proceeding with purchases of Russian crude at discounted prices despite pressure from the United States. The state-run Indian Oil Corp. …

Read more “Amid Western Sanctions, India Explores Rupee-Ruble Mechanism for Trade with Russia  “

A car slammed at high speed into carnival revelers in a small town in southern Belgium early Sunday, killing six people and leaving 10 more with life-threatening injuries. Several dozen were more lightly injured. “What should have been a great party turned into a tragedy,” said Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden. The prosecutor’s office said …

Read more “Car Runs into Carnival Revelers in Belgium, Killing 6”

There’s no room in the morgue at Mazyr. It’s filled with the bodies of Russian soldiers. At one hospital in this Belarusian city about 60 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, the hallways and wards are filled with the sounds of soldiers moaning from their battlefield wounds. At the main train station, Russian soldiers have …

Read more “In Belarusian Morgues and Hospitals, Clues to Russian Military Losses in Ukraine “

One of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works, Azovstal, has been badly damaged as Russian forces lay siege to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, officials said Sunday. “One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated,” tweeted Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko. Vasylenko posted …

Read more “One Of Europe’s Biggest Steel Works Damaged in Ukraine’s Mariupol”

Three companies have lodged a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft, accusing the U.S. technology giant of anti-competitive practices in its cloud services, sources told AFP on Saturday, confirming media reports. Microsoft is “undermining fair competition and limiting the choice of consumers” in the computing cloud services market, said one of the three, French …

Read more “Microsoft Faces Anti-Competition Complaint in Europe”

When three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station wearing yellow flight suits with blue accents, some saw a message in them wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag. They shot that down on Saturday. Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev said each crew picks the color of the flight suits about six months before launch because …

Read more “Russian Cosmonauts: Suits Not Inspired by Ukrainian Flag”

Pope Francis released his long-awaited reform program of the Holy See bureaucracy Saturday that envisions greater decision-making roles for the laity and gives new institutional weight to efforts to fight clerical sex abuse. The 54-page text, titled Praedicate Evanglium, or Proclaiming the Gospel, replaces the founding constitution Pastor Bonus that St. John Paul II wrote …

Read more “Pope Releases Vatican Reform, Gives Weight to Fighting Abuse”

Hoping to restore some normalcy after fleeing the war in Ukraine, thousands of refugees waited in lines in the Polish capital of Warsaw to receive local identification papers that will allow them to move on with their lives. The refugees started queuing by Warsaw’s National Stadium overnight …

Katya Hill tried to talk her brother out of it. She urged Jimmy Hill to postpone his trip to Ukraine as she saw reports of Russian tanks lining up at the border. But he needed to help his longtime partner, who has been suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis. “He said, ‘I don’t know what I …

Read more “American Killed in Ukraine Flew Into War to Help Sick Partner”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for comprehensive peace talks with Moscow in a video address released Saturday, as Russia reported its first hypersonic missile strike on Ukrainian territory. “The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk,” Zelenskyy said. “The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, …

Read more “Ukraine’s Zelenskyy Calls for Peace Talks With Moscow as Russia Claims Hypersonic Weapon Strike”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday that Brexit showed British people loved freedom in the same way as Ukrainians fighting Russia’s invasion, comments that were branded tasteless by opposition lawmakers and commentators. With Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain present, Johnson told a Conservative Party conference it was the instinct of British people, like Ukrainians, to choose …

Read more “UK’s Johnson Raises Eyebrows With Apparent Off-Cuff Ukraine Remark”

Experts warn the war in Ukraine could increase hunger and food insecurity for some people in Africa. Most African countries import wheat and vegetable oil from Ukraine and Russia, a region now engulfed in conflict since Russia invaded its neighbor. African families are feeling the pinch as prices of essential commodities increase due to persistent …

Read more “Ukraine War to Compound Hunger, Poverty in Africa, Experts Say”

The World Food Program is warning the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine threatens severe food shortages and acute hunger there, and risks triggering a global surge in hunger and malnutrition. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes, forced them to hide in bomb shelters and forage for scraps of food and …

Read more “War in Ukraine Will Worsen Hunger, UN Agency Says”

Russian military officials said Saturday that they fired a hypersonic missile for the first time in Ukraine to target a weapons storage site in the west of the country. “The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the …

Read more “Russia Claims Hypersonic Missile Use in Attack on Ukraine”

All four people on board a U.S. military aircraft were killed when it crashed in a remote part of northern Norway on Friday during a NATO-led military training exercise, local police said Saturday. “As far as the police are aware, all four are of American nationality,” police said. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere tweeted condolences …

Read more “4 Die in US Military Aircraft Crash in Norway”

World-famous ballet dancers from Russia and Ukraine, Argentina, Cuba, France and Japan come together Saturday for a gala to raise funds for Ukraine and send a message of peace. “We as artists have talent and we need to use this talent to say what we believe in,” Ukraine’s Ivan Putrov, co-organizer of the event to …

Read more “Ballet Greats Unite For London Ukraine Benefit Gala”

Ukrainian nurse Oksana Martynenko and her colleagues have 21 babies to look after at a makeshift clinic in a residential basement on the outskirts of Kyiv – all of them surrogates whose parents cannot come to collect them because of the war. All the while she has her own family to worry about. Her children …

Read more “Kyiv Nurse Cares for Others’ Children as War Keeps Her from Her Own”

Pope Francis, ramping up his implicit criticism of Russia, on Friday called the war in Ukraine a “perverse abuse of power” waged for partisan interests which has condemned defenseless people to violence. The pope has not actually named Russia in his condemnations, but he has used phrases such as “unacceptable armed aggression” to get his …

Read more “Pope Calls Ukraine War ‘Perverse Abuse of Power’ for Partisan Interests”

President Joe Biden spoke with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for nearly two hours Friday, saying the U.S. wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to end to his war on Ukraine.  Chinese state media said Xi told Biden that Beijing does not want crisis or conflict. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports. …

Three weeks ago, Haseeb Noori became a refugee — for a second time. The Afghan lawyer, 45, was living with his wife and five children at a makeshift refugee camp near the Ukrainian-Slovak border when Russian bombs started falling. “My children panicked, and we decided to leave and head for the border,” Noori said in …

Read more “War Drives Thousands of Afghan Refugees Out of Ukraine”

Ukrainian officials said Friday that they had yet to find any casualties in the ruins of a theater hit by a Russian airstrike this week in the southern city of Mariupol, as Russian forces continued to fire on Ukrainian cities and as negotiators from both countries sought common ground. So far, 130 people have been …

Read more “Civilians Survive Ukrainian Theater Bombing; Search for Others Continues “

In just three weeks, amid Russia’s invasion, an estimated 3 million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries, including Poland where herculean efforts are underway to feed and care for the new arrivals. VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze reports from Medyka, a Polish town along the border with Ukraine. …

Russian internet regulator Roskomnadzor has accused Google’s YouTube of “spreading threats against citizens of the Russian Federation” in a statement released Friday. “Earlier it became known that YouTube video hosting users are broadcasting commercials with calls to disable the railway communications of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” the statement added. “The actions …

Read more “Russia Says YouTube Users Spreading ‘Terrorist’ Threats”

When Iraqi-born American entrepreneur Emad Ballack watched footage of war breaking out in Ukraine from his office in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, he decided he had to act. As civilians started to pour out of the country, Ballack, who is an ethnic Kurd, began a four-day trip to Kyiv, a city he has called home …

Read more “Man Who Grew Up With War in Iraq Now in Kyiv Using His Business to Help”