He had initially vowed to stay put in Kyiv despite the constant blaring of air raid sirens and attacks on residential buildings, but decided to leave after hearing reports of Russian soldiers ‘raping’ Ukrainian women.
* Russia threatened to bypass a U.N.-brokered grain deal unless obstacles to its agricultural exports were removed, while talks in Turkey agreed removing barriers was needed to extend the agreement beyond next month.
* Russian forces have likely seized the center of the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine and are threatening a key supply route for Ukrainian forces to the west, British intelligence said.
As he has done every Easter, Francis called for peace in the Middle East, his appeal made more urgent by recent violence in Jerusalem and cross-border exchanges of fire involving Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
The Austrian lender is now the most important Western bank in Russia, offering a lifeline to people and businesses there seeking to make international payments, but it is under growing pressure from Western officials and investors to quit.
ZURICH, April 8 (Reuters) – Austria’s government is monitoring the global banking turmoil although there are so far no signs of it spreading to the country’s financial sector, Finance Minister Magnus Brunner said in an interview published on Saturday.
* Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova is due to visit India on Monday and will seek humanitarian aid and equipment to repair energy infrastructure damaged during Russia’s invasion, the Hindu newspaper reported on Saturday.
But the traditional pomp and sacred singing then gave way to modern realities. Francis later went up to the central balcony of St.
Peter’s Basilica to deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message and blessing, addressing a crowd the Vatican estimated at about 100,000.
The newspaper said that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, insisting that the “end user” should be the U.S.
military. But internally, top South Korean officials were worried that the United States would divert them to Ukraine.
VATICAN CITY, child tutoring services April 9 (Reuters) – Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country’s invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, Francis has at least twice a week referred to Ukraine and its people as being “martyred” and has used words such as aggression and atrocities to describe Russia’s actions.
A statement released by the regulator on Friday said: “We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of the issues raised within such a short period to be of great concern – especially given RT’s compliance history, which has seen the channel fined £200,000 for previous due impartiality breaches.
The media watchdog went on: “We take seriously the importance, in our democratic society, of a broadcaster’s right to freedom of expression and the audience’s right to receive information and ideas without undue interference.
“By ignoring RT’s completely clean record of four consecutive years and stating purely political reasons tied directly to the situation in Ukraine and yet completely unassociated to RT’s operations, structure, management or editorial output, Ofcom has falsely judged RT to not be ‘fit and proper’ and in doing so robbed the UK public of access to information.”
Ofcom said it noted new laws in Russia which “effectively criminalise any independent journalism that departs from the Russian state’s own news narrative”, particularly in relation to the invasion of Ukraine.
Asked if South Korea planned to lodge a protest or demand an explanation from the United States, the official, who declined to be identified, said the government would review precedents and cases involving other countries.
SEOUL, April 9 (Reuters) – South Korea is aware of news reports about a leak of several classified U.S.
military documents and it plans to discuss “issues raised” as a result of the leak with the United States, a South Korean presidential official said on Sunday.
In a statement, she said: “Ofcom has shown the UK public, and the regulatory community internationally, that, despite a well-constructed facade of independence, it is nothing more than a tool of government, bending to its media-suppressing will.
In his message Francis also mentioned instability in Lebanon, expressed the hope that the “martyred Rohingya people” of Myanmar “may encounter justice”, and called for more aid for the victims of earthquakes in February that killed nearly 56,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
