Month: July 2022

Russia said Tuesday it will pull out of the International Space Station after 2024 to build its own orbiting outpost. The country’s space chief made the announcement during a meeting with President Vladmir Putin. Yuri Borisov, CEO of state space agency Roscosmos, said during the meeting that Russia plans to fulfill a promise to its partners before fully stepping away. “Of course, we will comply with all our commitments to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Borisov said during the meeting. “I think we will have started work on the Russian space …

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Britain and the European Union have extended sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.K. Foreign Office said on its website Tuesday that the sanctions, which included travel bans and asset freezes, were imposed on 42 new people and entities, including several governors of Russian regions and the Kremlin-installed prime minister of the separatist-controlled Donetsk region of Ukraine, Vitaly Khotsenko. The EU, meanwhile, approved the extension of its sanctions for another six months until January 31, the European Council said in a statement. The U.K. said its list also includes Vladislav Kuznetsov, the Moscow-imposed first deputy …

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European Union energy ministers approved a plan Tuesday to reduce natural gas use by 15% in order to cut dependence on Russian supplies. The agreement involves voluntary reductions between August and March, and will allow member states to stockpile supplies ahead of the coming winter months. In case of emergency, the EU could make the cuts mandatory, although with certain exemptions that were agreed to as part of a compromise in order to reach the agreement. The deal also comes amid the prospect that Russia will cut off gas supplies to the EU in response to EU sanctions against Russia …

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In late June, HBO premiered a new documentary called Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, which features newly recovered documents about the events of 1986. VOA Ukrainian interviewed the documentary director James Jones on the details of his work. Khrystyna Shevchenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice …

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David Trimble, a former Northern Ireland first minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a key role in helping end Northern Ireland’s decades of violence, has died, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said Monday. He was 77. The party said in a statement on behalf of the Trimble family that the unionist politician died earlier Monday “following a short illness.” Trimble, who led the UUP from 1995 to 2005, was a key architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland known as “the Troubles.” Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s …

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Pope Francis apologized Monday for the Catholic Church’s role in Canada’s former policy of separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend Christian schools, where many were abused. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Pope Francis said at a former Indigenous residential school in the western Canadian town of Maskwacis, Alberta. More than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend government-funded Christian residential schools from the late 1880s to the 1970s in an effort to distance them from their native languages and cultures. Many of …

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Sweltering heat broke records across Europe last week, the latest in a series of heat waves that have baked the continent since June. Temperatures crept near or above 40 degrees Celsius in much of western Europe, and the heat is now moving east, where it is expected to linger into August. Heat waves are becoming increasingly intense, frequent and long lasting around the world because of climate change. But the pattern of heat waves unfolding in Europe is a global outlier. “We have had an outstanding increase in the number [and] intensity of heat waves,” climate scientist Robert Vautard of …

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