UKRAINE
Russia bombards nation
A wave of Russian missiles on Tuesday hit Kyiv and other cities, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 100, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed a forceful response. Rescue workers in Kharkiv — the country’s second-largest city, near Russia’s border — hauled survivors from shouldering piles of rubble as apartment blocks were set ablaze and toppled by the strikes, journalists reported. “Ordinary life is what Russia sees as a threat to itself. The state is a typical terrorist,” a somber Zelenskiy said in his evening address to the nation, adding that 130 people had been injured in the attacks. “The Russian war will inevitably be brought back home, back to where this evil came from, where it must be quelled,” Zelenskiy said.
AUSTRALIA
Storm gains strength
A tropical low slowly moving toward the country’s northeast yesterday reached cyclone strength and was expected to bring flooding into Queensland into the weekend. Tropical Cyclone Kirrily was moving west at 8kph and forecast to make landfall overnight. “After the cyclone crosses the coast, it’s likely to weaken to a tropical low, but have very high levels of rainfall associated with it,” Queensland Premier Steven Miles told a news conference in Brisbane. “And so depending on its path, that rainfall is likely to cause flooding in parts of the state.”
SINGAPORE
Thousands ensnared in scam
More than 6,300 people fell prey to “fake friend” scams last year and collectively lost an equivalent of nearly US$16 million, police said. Such scams involved contacting victims, pretending to be someone they know and asking for financial assistance. Police on Tuesday said in a statement that the scams had cost victims S$21.1 million (US$15.8 million) in losses from January to November last year. In the latest case, five Malaysians were extradited on Tuesday to Singapore over “fake friend” scam calls involving more than US$1 million in lost funds, police said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Nose wheel falls off plane
The nose wheel of a Boeing 757 passenger jet operated by Delta Air Lines popped off and rolled away as the plane was lining up for takeoff over the weekend from Atlanta’s international airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. A preliminary notice filed on Monday by the agency said that none of the 184 passengers or six crew members aboard was hurt in the incident at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The aircraft was lining up and waiting for takeoff when the “nose wheel came off and rolled down the hill,” it said.
FRANCE
Coal use falling: IEA
Renewables are set to displace coal as the top source of energy for electricity production globally next year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday. In its annual report on the electricity market, it said that renewables — in particular from solar panels — should see their share of total electricity production surpass one-third of the total, passing from 30 percent last year to 37 percent in 2026. If nuclear power, which the IEA sees hitting a record next year, is included, almost half of the world’s electricity would be generated by low-emissions sources by 2026, up from a share of just less than 40 percent last year.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
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