Month: March 2022

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 company OVHcloud, in a statement to AFP. The companies complain that under certain clauses in Microsoft’s licensing contracts for Office 365 services, tariffs are higher when the software is not run on Azure cloud infrastructure, which is owned by the U.S. group. They also say …

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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 a video of explosions on an industrial site, with thick columns of grey and black smoke rising from the buildings.  One of her colleagues, Serhiy Taruta, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces “had practically destroyed the factory.” “We will return to the city, rebuild the …

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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 …

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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 in 1988. Francis was elected pope in 2013 in large part on his promise to reform the bulky and inefficient Vatican bureaucracy, which acts as the organ of central governance for the 1.3 billion-strong Catholic Church. He named a Cabinet of cardinal advisers who have …

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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 would do if I lost her, I have to try to do everything I can to try to stop the progression of MS,’” Katya said. “My brother sacrificed his life for her.” James “Jimmy” Hill, 68, was killed in a Russian attack on the northern …

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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, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.” Zelenskyy’s appeal for another round of talks came one day after Russia’s lead negotiator said the sides have moved closer to agreement on the issue of Ukraine dropping its bid to …

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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 drought, the coronavirus pandemic, and now, the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The United Nations says Russia and Ukraine produce 53% of the world’s sunflowers and seeds, and 27% of the world’s wheat. The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development figures show Africa imported wheat from the two …

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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 freedom every time. “I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. When the British people voted for Brexit, in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. It’s because they wanted to be free to …

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Russian military officials said Saturday that they fired hypersonic missiles for the first time in Ukraine to target what they said was an underground weapons storage site in the west of the country.  Kinzhal missiles travel so fast, at Mach 9, they are meant to be able to evade detection by defense systems, and when announcing the missiles’ development in 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin described them as “invincible.” “The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aero-ballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region,” the Russian Defense …

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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 over what he said was the death of four Americans. The MV-22B Osprey aircraft belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps was taking part in an exercise called Cold Response. Rescue services reached the crash site by land early on Saturday after helicopters were unable to …

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