World
Your Wednesday Briefing: E.U. Leaders Visit Kyiv
Good morning. We’re masking a go to by three European leaders to Ukraine, the ripple results of China’s surge of Covid instances and a once-perilous highway in Afghanistan.
Three European leaders head to Ukraine
The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia traveled by practice to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on Tuesday to specific the European Union’s help for Ukraine. Subsequent week, President Biden will journey to Brussels to attend a particular NATO assembly in regards to the warfare.
The Tuesday go to comes as combating raged across the metropolis. Blasts shook Kyiv at daybreak, killing at the least 4 individuals, the mayor mentioned. Comply with stay updates right here.
Russia’s advance stays stalled on a number of fronts as Ukrainian forces repel assaults in elements of the east and the south. However the Russian Protection Ministry claimed to have captured all the Kherson area, after seizing the principle metropolis two weeks in the past.
Ukrainian resistance: The transfer probably strengthens Russia’s potential to push west towards Mykolaiv, a strategic port metropolis the place the morgue is already overflowing. Our correspondent and photographer reported from Mykolaiv on a “refusal to succumb” by Ukrainian fighters and residents.
The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, predicted that any Russian effort to take Mykolaiv would result in a bloody firefight. Residents have piled tires and incendiary bombs on each road nook. It might be apocalyptic, Kim mentioned.
Extra updates:
China’s Covid surge hits oil costs
Oil costs dropped under $100 a barrel on Tuesday, the bottom costs in weeks, as a coronavirus outbreak in China threatened to sluggish the nation’s financial system and reduce world demand. Over the previous week, crude oil costs have plunged by greater than 20 %, reversing a lot of the surge that got here after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The worldwide financial hurt attributable to China’s rise in Covid instances — and the federal government’s powerful response — might quickly worsen. Quite a few lockdowns and mitigation ways have disrupted the manufacturing of products like vehicles, iPhone circuit boards and laptop cables.
Context: China’s strict measures come as another nations within the Asia-Pacific area are easing pandemic guidelines, regardless of seeing a number of the world’s steepest spikes in Covid instances.
Listed here are the most recent updates and maps of the pandemic.
In different developments:
A once-deadly highway now bustles
Earlier than the Taliban took management of Afghanistan, a visit alongside the highway from Kabul to Kandahar was harmful. Gunfire, roadside bombs, extortion and demise have been as soon as rampant.
Not anymore. The freeway between the nation’s two largest cities, nonetheless dotted with destroyed automobiles and bullet-ridden properties, has come again to life. Grape farmers dig their fields in what was probably the most violent provinces within the warfare. Younger males giggle and play volleyball close to the highway.
However the price of U.S. sanctions is obvious alongside the freeway, which is half-paved and half-gnarled nonetheless. In Ghazni, a metropolis alongside the highway, costs for gadgets like cooking oil have skyrocketed. Persons are touring to Pakistan, looking for medical care. And out of doors Kabul, a 12-year-old boy pried aside outdated boundaries to make a hen coop. “We’re hungry,” he mentioned.
Because the world warms, Switzerland’s glaciers are melting. A group of cartographers are racing to appropriate the ever-changing mountain maps — a activity they usually must do by hand.
A present of E.U. help. The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia headed to Kyiv to specific the European Union’s “unequivocal help” and supply monetary assist to Ukraine. The go to was saved secret till the final minute as combating rages across the Ukrainian capital.Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Key Issues to Know
ARTS AND IDEAS
The video that modified the sport
In March 2021, the faculty basketball participant Sedona Prince posted a TikTok video.
“That is our weight room,” she mentioned, pointing at a sorry stack of hand weights on the N.C.A.A. ladies’s basketball event. “Let me present y’all the lads’s weight room,” she says, panning throughout a state-of-the artwork fitness center for the lads’s event, filled with machines and benches.
Prince’s video instantly went viral. It additionally led to a gender-equity evaluation in faculty basketball and to modifications within the ladies’s occasion, together with branding the event with the moniker March Insanity. The N.C.A.A. had beforehand resisted such a transfer.
“Each funds line is in contrast and contrasted,” mentioned Dan Gavitt, the N.C.A.A.’s senior vice chairman for basketball. “The place there are variations, they’re resolved within the identify of fairness.”
Prince achieved final March what generations earlier than her couldn’t: She confirmed the disparity between the tournaments in a manner that couldn’t be defined away.
World
Middle East Crisis: Critically Ill Children Allowed to Leave Gaza for First Time Since May
Sixty-eight people, including sick and injured patients and their escorts, crossed the border to get treatment, the Israeli military said. The evacuation was carried out in coordination with the U.S., Egypt and the international community.
World
Taiwan issues travel advisory after China vows to execute independence supporters
The Taiwanese government warned its citizens not to travel to mainland China on Thursday after Beijing threatened to execute residents who support the island’s independence.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Liang Wen-chieh issued the warning during a routine press conference. The Chinese government announced a new policy targeting “separatists” last week, and said it would pursue the death penalty for “diehard” supporters of Taiwanese independence.
“I want to stress: Democracy is not a crime; it’s autocracy that is the real evil. China has absolutely no right to sanction Taiwan’s people just because of the positions they hold. What’s more, China has no right to go after Taiwan people’s rights across borders,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday.
“I also want to call on China to face up to the existence of the Republic of China and have exchanges and dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected, legitimate government,” he said, using Taiwan’s formal name. “If this is not done, relations between Taiwan and China will only become more and more estranged.”
FBI DIRECTOR WARNS OF JIHADIST ATTACK IN US, SIMILAR TO RUSSIAN CONCERT HALL: ‘HEIGHTENED TERRORIST THREAT’
China has long considered Taiwan to be its territory, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has threatened to take the island by force in recent years.
IRAN CAPABLE OF BUILDING NUCLEAR BOMB IN ONE WEEK, REPORT FINDS AS MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS FLARE
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office clarified on Wednesday that the threat of execution applies only to a small number of Taiwanese independence “diehards’ evil words and actions.”
The move is the latest escalation of tensions between Taipei and Beijing. Recent months have also seen China conduct extensive military drills surrounding the island. China has used the drills as intimidation, typically following events connecting the U.S. and Taiwan.
EUROPEANS AWAIT CHINA’S RESPONSE TO NEW EU TARIFFS ON CHINESE CARS
China first conducted live-fire drills in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. D-Calif., traveled to Taiwan. It was the first time a U.S. speaker visited the island in over 25 years.
Beijing’s execution threat comes just days after the U.S. approved the sale of $360 million in drones, missiles and other equipment to Taiwan.
Reuters contributed to this report.
World
Serbian police shut down cultural exchange festival with Kosovo
The festival ban comes a day after the EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said no progress had been made during talks in Brussels towards implementing an EU-backed agreement towards normalising ties between Belgrade and Pristina.
Serbian police have banned a festival that promotes cultural exchange with Kosovo following a rally by far-right protesters outside the venue.
In a statement, Belgrade police cited security concerns as the reasons for stopping the event from going ahead, saying they wanted to prevent ‘danger to the security of people and property and to public peace and order on a larger scale.’
The police statement also said that the anti-festival protest, which saw several dozen right-wing extremists gather outside the festival venue, waving Serbian flags and banners saying ‘No surrender’, had also been banned.
Several Serbian government officials have sharply criticised the festival in recent days, describing it as anti-Serb.
While the festival has been held alternatively in Serbia and Kosovo for the past decade, this year’s ban in Serbia illustrates a general toughening of the government’s stance toward its critics.
The Mirëdita, dobar dan festival, whose name means ‘hello’ in Albanian and Serbian, is organised by youth groups from Serbia and Kosovo and was due to open on Thursday with a theatre show from Kosovo.
According to the festival’s website the event, which was due to run for two days, aims to ‘enrich regional perspectives and foster cooperation and peacebuilding’.
No progress
The festival ban came a day after the EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said no progress had been made during talks in Brussels towards implementing an agreement between Belgrade and Pristina.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti had met to discuss an EU-backed plan to normalise ties. However, unresolved issues, including Pristina’s demands that Belgrade hands over the suspected organisers of the Banjska attack, blocked further progress.
Speaking after the meetings, Borrell said that the European Union will continue to exert all its efforts and capacity to normalise relations between Belgrade and Pristina.
“Kosovo was not ready for this, Kosovo was not willing to do this trilateral meeting. Serbia was ready to do it, but you need two to dance tango and we need two to sit around the table in order to continue the dialogue,” Borrell added.
Borrell said on Wednesday ahead of the meeting that a new round of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina would “hopefully send a different message and end in a different note.”
Brussels has warned both Belgrade and Pristina that refusal to compromise jeopardises Serbia and Kosovo’s chances of joining the bloc.
Kosovo, a former Serbian province, declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade does not recognise.
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