Month: April 2023

A Russian court on Thursday fined the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, two million rubles ($24,510) for not deleting what it said was “banned content” related to the Russian military, Interfax reported. It said this was the seventh fine imposed on Wikimedia in 2023 for not removing prohibited information. The fines now total 8.4 million rubles. The latest penalty was for not removing an article about a military unit that contained “classified military information” about its location, composition and equipment, including information related to the progress of what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine. Wikimedia did not immediately …

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One dead, 23 wounded in Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s Mykolaiv – officials NATO allies, partners have given 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks to Ukraine: NATO Chief Stoltenberg welcomes Xi’s call with Zelenskyy but says it doesn’t change the fact that China has still not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine British defense ministry says imagery shows that by March 2023, Russian forces had established sandbag fighting positions on the roofs of several of the six reactor buildings at Zaporizhzhia A Russian missile strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv early Thursday has killed one person and injured 23 others. …

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The humanitarian suffering created by Russia’s war on Ukraine has been accompanied by an economic shock that resonates globally, driving up food and energy prices on distant continents. With Russia’s shelling of energy infrastructure and industrial plants, its destruction of cities, mining and agricultural sites, Ukraine lost a third of its economic output in 2022 as 8 million people fell into poverty — a 15-year setback in poverty reduction goals, according to World Bank data. Even so, Ukraine’s government continues to function, making social and compensation payments, conducting emergency repairs of heating and electrical grids struck by Russian missiles in …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced he was canceling a day of election campaigning Wednesday to rest at home, a day after he was forced to briefly interrupt a television interview over what he said was a stomach complaint. Erdogan was being interviewed live by Turkey’s Ulke TV and Kanal 7 stations late Tuesday when the program was suddenly stopped. When the interview resumed around 20 minutes later, Erdogan, 69, explained that he had developed a serious “stomach flu” while campaigning and apologized for the interruption. The president, who was scheduled to make a series of appearances in the cities …

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Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny said Wednesday that he was facing new extremism and terrorism charges that could keep him behind bars for life, as authorities set the stage for a new trial against the Kremlin’s leading critic.  Navalny said by video link from prison during the hearing that the extremism charges which he rejected as “absurd” could land him in prison for 30 years. He noted that an investigator had told him he also would face a separate military court trial on terrorism charges that could potentially carry a life sentence, adding on a sardonic note that the …

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Russia said on Wednesday that it had appointed one of its most senior army commanders to lead a peacekeeping force in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, as tensions rise again between Armenia and Azerbaijan.  Russian peacekeepers were deployed in 2020 to end a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the second that Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought since the 1991 Soviet collapse. The mountain enclave is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.  The Russian armed forces said the peacekeepers were now headed by Colonel-General Alexander Lentsov, deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian ground forces. He replaces Major-General Andrei Volkov, …

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The European Union’s environment agency on Wednesday urged member states to reduce pesticide use over concern that sales of harmful chemicals remain strong despite its effects on human health and biodiversity. The warning comes amid findings that one or more pesticides were detected above thresholds of concern at 22% of all monitoring sites in rivers and lakes across Europe in 2020, the European Environment Agency said. “From 2011 to 2020, pesticide sales in the EU-27 remained relatively stable at around 350,000 tonnes (tons) per year,” the EEA said in a new report, citing data from Eurostat. Pesticides are widely used …

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