Month: January 2024

london — An unlikely refugee from the war in Ukraine — a rare Asiatic black bear — arrived at his new home in Scotland on Friday and quickly took to a meal of cucumbers and watermelon.  The 12-year-old Yampil was named for a village in the Donetsk region where he was one of the few survivors found by Ukrainian troops in the remains of a bombed-out private zoo.  Yampil, who had previously been called Borya, was discovered by soldiers who recaptured the devastated city of Lyman during the Kharkiv counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, said Yegor Yakovlev of Save Wild, …

READ MORE

TALLINN, Estonia — A Belarusian journalist went on trial Friday on charges linked to his professional work covering protests, the latest move in a government crackdown on dissent.  Photojournalist Alyaksandr Zyankou faces up to six years in prison if convicted on charges of “participation in an extremist group” at Minsk City Court. Such accusations have been widely used by authorities to target opposition members, civil society activists and independent journalists.  Zyankou has been in custody since his arrest in June, and his health has deteriorated behind bars, according to the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists.  “Zyankou was just taking pictures to …

READ MORE

istanbul — Five Turkish soldiers were killed Friday in an attack on a military base in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. Authorities blamed Kurdish militants. Eight soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously, when the attackers attempted to infiltrate the base, the ministry said on social media. It indicated 12 militants had been killed and that operations were continuing in the area. The wounded troops were hospitalized for treatment. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan later expressed condolences for the families of the slain soldiers. “We will fight to the end against the PKK terrorist organization within and …

READ MORE

In its annual report published Thursday, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of war crimes and said many governments were expressing “selective outrage” over atrocities committed in the conflict in Gaza. Henry Ridgwell reports …

READ MORE

Shanghai — China is willing to strengthen relations with Europe, President Xi Jinping said on Friday, at a meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in Beijing. De Croo arrived in China on Thursday, attending the inauguration of the new Belgian embassy in Beijing and meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the same day. “China is willing to work with the European Union to promote steady progress in China-EU relations in the new year,” Xi told De Croo when the two men met on Friday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing? according to a readout …

READ MORE

SEOUL, South Korea — Russian tourists reportedly going on a ski trip to North Korea will be the first international travelers to visit the country since its borders closed in 2020 amid the global pandemic lockdown. The report, published Wednesday by the Russian state-run Tass news agency, underscores deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. It also follows the meeting last September between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. Tass did not specify a timeframe but the report brought some surprise to Asia observers who had expected the first post-pandemic …

READ MORE

MOSCOW — Russia said it had requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday to discuss military strikes on Yemen by the United States and Britain. “Russia has requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on January 12 in connection with the U.S. and UK strikes on Yemen,” Russia’s permanent mission to the United Nations said. The United States and Britain launched strikes from the air and sea against Houthi military targets in Yemen in response to the movement’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea, a dramatic regional widening of the Israel-Hamas war in …

READ MORE

pentagon — The United States and Britain have launched a massive attack against Iranian-backed Houthis inside Yemen in retaliation for more than two dozen recent attacks against vessels transiting international shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to talk to reporters, said American and British military assets struck more than a dozen Houthi targets Thursday, ranging from training sites and airfields to drone storage sites. “We hit them pretty hard, pretty good,” a U.S. defense official, likewise talking on the condition of anonymity, told …

READ MORE

Istanbul / Washington — When it comes to gender equality in Turkish media, men are still dominating managerial roles, research by a journalist union has found. The Journalists’ Union of Turkey, known as the TGS, released its latest findings on gender disparities in Turkish media to mark the country’s Working Journalists’ Day on Wednesday. “Once again, we see that those who produce, go after and edit news stories are women, and those who manage media institutions are men in Turkish media,” Banu Tuna, the TGS secretary-general, told VOA. The union analyzed 10 newspapers, 10 TV channels, four news agencies and six …

READ MORE