World News

By Simon Lewis

KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (Reuters) -Firefighters and soldiers searched on Tuesday for survivors in the rubble of a shopping mall in central Ukraine after a Russian missile strike killed at least 16 people in an attack condemned by the United Nations and the West.

Family members of the missing lined up at a hotel across the street where rescue workers had set up a base after Monday’s strike on the busy mall in Kremenchuk, southeast of Kyiv.

More than 1,000 people were inside when two Russian missiles slammed into the mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. At least 16 people were killed and 59 injured, Ukraine’s emergency services said.

Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies, at a summit in Germany, said the attack was “abominable”.

“Russian President Putin and those responsible will be held to account,” they wrote in a joint statement tweeted by the German government spokesperson.

Zelenskiy said in a Monday evening video address that it was “not an accidental hit, this is a calculated Russian strike exactly onto this shopping centre”.

He said the death count could rise. More than 40 people have been reported missing, the prosecutor general’s office said.

A survivor receiving treatment at Kremenchuk’s public hospital, Ludmyla Mykhailets, 43, said she was shopping with her husband when the blast threw her into the air.

“I flew head first and splinters hit my body. The whole place was collapsing,” she said.

“It was hell,” added her husband, Mykola, 45, blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around his head.

Russia has not commented on the strike but its deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, accused Ukraine of using the incident to gain sympathy ahead of a June 28-30 summit of the NATO military alliance.

“One should wait for what our Ministry of Defence will say, but there are too many striking discrepancies already,” Polyanskiy wrote on Twitter.

The United Nations Security Council will meet Tuesday at Ukraine’s request following the attack. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the missile strike was “deplorable”.

BATTLE FOR LYSYCHANSK

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Ukraine endured another difficult day following the loss of the now-ruined city of Sievierodonetsk after weeks of bombardment and street fighting.

Russian artillery pounded Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk’s twin city across the Siverskyi Donets River.

Lysychansk is the last big city still held by Ukraine in eastern Luhansk province, a main target for the Kremlin after Russian troops failed to take the capital Kyiv early in the war.

A Russian missile strike killed eight and wounded 21 others in Lysychansk on Monday, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said. There was no immediate Russian comment.

Ukrainian forces still controlled the city but its loss was possible as Russia poured resources into the fight, he added.

“They really want this and a lot of reserves are being thrown just for this … We do not need to lose an army for the sake of one city,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Rodion Miroshnik, the ambassador to Moscow of the separatist Luhansk People’s Republic, said Russian troops and their Luhansk Republic allies were advancing westward into Lysychansk and street battles had erupted around the city’s stadium.

Fighting was on in several villages around the city, and Russian and allied troops had entered the Lysychansk oil refinery where Ukrainian troops were concentrated, Miroshnik said on his Telegram channel.

Reuters could not confirm Russian reports that Moscow’s troops had already entered the city.

Russia also shelled the city of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine on Monday, hitting apartment buildings and a primary school, the regional governor said.

The shelling killed five people and wounded 22. There were children among those wounded, the governor said.

‘AS LONG AS IT TAKES’

Moscow denies targeting civilians in what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, but Kyiv and the West have accused Russian forces of war crimes.

The war has killed thousands, sent millions fleeing, and triggered spikes in global food and energy prices.

During their summit in Germany, G7 leaders vowed to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes” and tighten the squeeze on Russia’s finances with new sanctions that include a proposal to cap the price of Russian oil.

Zelenskiy asked for more arms in a video address to the G7 leaders, U.S. and European officials said. He requested help to export grain from Ukraine and for more sanctions on Russia.

The White House said Russia had defaulted on its external debt for the first time in more than a century as sanctions have effectively cut the country off from global finance.

Russia rejected the claims, telling investors to go to Western financial agents for the cash which was sent but bondholders did not receive.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

source

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO allies will decide at a summit this week to increase the strength of their rapid reaction force nearly eightfold to 300,000 troops as part of their response to an “era of strategic competition,” the military alliance’s secretary-general said Monday.

The NATO response force (NRF) currently numbers around 40,000 soldiers which can deploy quickly when needed.

Coupled with other measures including the deployment of forces to defend specific allies, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the move is part of the “biggest overhaul of collective defense and deterrence since the Cold War.”

“These troops will exercise together with home defense forces,” Stoltenberg said. “And they will become familiar with local terrain, facilities, and our new pre-positioned stocks. So that they can respond smoothly and swiftly to any emergency.”

In response to the Kremlin’s decision to start the war, U.S. President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts agreed in February to send thousands of troops, backed by air and naval support, to protect allies near Russia and Ukraine. The 30-nation organization decided at the time to send parts of the NRF and elements of a quickly deployable spearhead unit to the alliance’s eastern flank, marking the first time the force had been used in a defense role.

Stoltenberg made the remarks at a press conference ahead of a NATO summit this week in Madrid when the 30 allies are expected to also agree on further support to Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Stoltenberg said he expects allies to make clear they consider Russia “as the most significant and direct threat to our security.” At the summit, allies will also decide to strengthen their battlegroups on NATO’s eastern flanks, he said.

In NATO’s new strategic concept, the alliance is also set to address for the first time the security challenges posed by China, Stoltenberg said. In Madrid, allies will discuss how to respond to the growing influence of Russia and China in their “southern neighborhood,” he added.

Stoltenberg said allies will agree to deliver further military support to Ukraine when they convene in Spain, with NATO members set to adopt a “strengthened comprehensive assistance package,” including deliveries of secure communication and anti-drone systems.

Over the long term, Stoltenberg said allies aim to help Ukraine transition from Soviet-era armaments to modern NATO equipment. The world’s seven leading economic powers underscored Monday their commitment to Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Another central theme at the NATO summit will be the possibility for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

NATO member Turkey has so far blocked the applications, citing what it considers to be the two countries’ soft approach to organizations Turkey considers to be terrorist, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Stoltenberg said that Turkish president Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and the Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson have agreed to meet Tuesday on the sidelines of the summit.

Officials from the three countries have stepped up talks ahead of the NATO gathering in a bid to break the deadlock.

“My strong hope is that this dialogue can be successful and concluded in the near future, ideally before the summit,” Andersson said after talks with Stoltenberg in Brussels.

Turkey is demanding that Sweden and Finland grant extradition requests for individuals who are wanted by Turkish authorities. Ankara claims the countries are harboring PKK members as well people it says are linked to a failed 2016 coup.

Turkey also wants assurances that arms restrictions imposed by the two countries over Turkey’s 2019 military incursion into northern Syria will be removed.

“I will not make any promises, but I can assure you that we are working actively to ensure progress because the application of Finland and Sweden to join NATO, they are historic,” Stoltenberg said.

Andersson said Sweden’s stance toward the PKK is “crystal clear” and that her country considers the organization as a terror group. She added that Sweden’s anti-terror legislation is undergoing its most comprehensive overhaul in 30 years.

“Moreover, constitutional amendments are being prepared, which would help pave the way for criminalization or participation in terrorist organizations,” she said.

NATO released new defense spending figures showing that U.S. allies in Europe as well as Canada have increased defense spending for an eighth consecutive year.

“By the end of the year, they will have invested well over 350 billion US dollars extra since we agreed our defense investment pledge in 2014,” Stoltenberg said.

NATO countries slashed their military budgets in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War, but upped spending when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. In that year, NATO allies also pledged to reach a defense budget target of 2% of their gross domestic product by 2024.

“Nine allies now reach – or exceed – the 2% target. Nineteen allies have clear plans to reach it by 2024,” Stoltenberg said. “Two percent is increasingly considered a floor, not a ceiling. We will also agree to invest more together in NATO.”

___

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

source

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — A poisonous gas leak in Jordan’s southern port city of Aqaba on Monday killed at least 10 people and injured some 250, authorities said.

The Public Security Directorate said a gas tank sprung a leak while being transported. It did not identify the contents of the tanker.

The directorate said authorities sealed off the area after evacuating the injured to hospitals and sent specialists in to deal with the leak.

The directorate said 10 people were killed and 251 injured. State-run al-Mamlaka TV said 199 were still being treated in hospitals.

Dr. Jamal Obeidat, a local health official, urged people to stay inside and close windows and doors. The nearest residential area is 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.

source

CEROCAHUI, Mexico (AP) — Two Jesuit priests killed last week in remote mountains of northern Mexico were expected to be buried Monday in the village where a gunman attacked them inside the church.

The Revs. Javier Campos, 79, and Joaquín Mora, 80, had spent much of their lives serving Indigenous Raramuri people of the region. On Sunday, their friends, colleagues and parishioners mourned the priests’ return to Cerocahui in wooden caskets.

Last Monday, a local crime boss pursuing a tourist guide who sought refuge in the church facing Cerocahui’s central square, killed the guide and the two priests. Their bodies were initially taken by their attacker, but were recovered days later.

The attack has drawn strong criticism from the Roman Catholic church to Mexico’s security situation and the federal government’s strategy.

Organized crime has a firm hold on communities in the Tarahumara mountains of Chihuahua state, where they grow marijuana and opium poppy. Colleagues said Campos and Mora provided a moral balance in the marginalized communities controlled by gunmen.

In a Mass Saturday for the priests in the state capital Chihuahua, Rev. Javier Ávila, referenced President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s saying of “hugs not bullets,” lamented that “there aren’t enough hugs anymore to cover the bullets.”

From there, the caskets made their way up the winding roads into the mountains where the priests had worked for decades among the impoverished Raramuri. They were to buried later Monday in Cerocahui.

source

(Reuters) – Sudan’s military accused Ethiopia’s army of executing seven Sudanese soldiers and a civilian who were captives, the Sudanese armed forces said in a statement on Sunday.

The Sudanese army also accused Ethiopia of displaying the bodies of the executed people to the public and vowed that there would be “an appropriate response”.

“This treacherous act will not pass without a response,” it said.

There was no immediate response from Ethiopian authorities to a request for comment.

Tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia have run high in recent years because of a spillover of the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and Ethiopia’s construction of a giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile.

Tens of thousands of refugees have fled into eastern Sudan and there have been military skirmishes in an area of contested farmland along the border between Sudan and Ethiopia.

(Reporting by Moataz Mohamed; Writing by Mahmoud Mourad; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

source

(Removes extra words ‘in the past year’ in paragraph 7)

By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) -Places including U.S. states that have legalized cannabis appear to have increased its regular use, while COVID lockdowns had a similar effect, raising the risk of depression and suicide, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Cannabis has long been the world’s most widely used drug and that use is increasing while the cannabis on the market is getting stronger in terms of its tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual World Drug Report.

Various U.S. states have legalized non-medical use of cannabis, starting with Washington and Colorado in 2012. Uruguay legalized it in 2013, as did Canada in 2018. Others have taken similar steps but the report focused on those three countries.

“Cannabis legalization appears to have accelerated the upwards trends in reported daily use of the drug,” the Vienna-based UNODC’s report said.

While the prevalence of cannabis use among teenagers “has not changed much”, there had been “a pronounced increase in reported frequent use of high-potency products among young adults”, it said.

“The proportion of people with psychiatric disorders and suicides associated with regular cannabis use has increased.”

The report said roughly 284 million people, or 5.6% of the world’s population, had used a drug such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamines or ecstasy in 2020, the most recent data available. Of those, 209 million used cannabis.

“Periods of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic drove increases in the use of cannabis … in 2020,” it said.

Cocaine production hit a record in 2020 and trafficking by sea is growing, it added, with 2021 seizure data suggesting an expansion outside the two main markets of North America and Europe into Africa and Asia.

Opioids remain the deadliest drugs, it said, with fentanyl driving U.S. overdose deaths to a new record: the provisional estimate for 2021 is 107,622.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

source

NITEROI, Brazil (Reuters) – The family of Dom Phillips on Sunday bid farewell to the British journalist, who was killed earlier this month along with Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon.

Phillips’ wife Alessandra Sampaio, siblings Sian and Gareth, and brother-in-law Paul Sherwood attended the 57-year-old’s funeral in Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro.

“Today Dom will be cremated in the country he loved, his chosen home,” Sampaio said.

“He was a very special person not only for defending what he believed in as a professional but also for having a huge heart and great love for humanity,” she said.

Sian revealed that the couple was planning to adopt two Brazilian children.

Phillips, a freelance reporter who had written for the Guardian and the Washington Post, was doing research for a book on the trip with Pereira, a former head of isolated and recently contacted tribes at federal indigenous affairs agency Funai, when they vanished in the remote Javari Valley on June 5.

Their remains were recovered from a grave in the jungle roughly 10 days later after a fisherman who confessed to killing them, Amarildo da Costa, led Brazil’s police there.

His memorial happened two days after Pereira’s funeral, which was attended by indigenous peoples who paid their respects with song and dance.

Outside the cemetery where Phillips’ funeral was held people protested with signs reading “Who ordered to kill Dom and Bruno?”

Police said earlier this month that their investigation suggested that more individuals were involved beyond Costa but that they were likely to have acted alone, with no bosses behind the crime. That theory was challenged by indigenous group Univaja.

Phillips’ family said they will keep following the investigation and demanding justice.

“He was killed because he tried to tell the world what was happening to the rainforest and its inhabitants,” Sian said.

(Reporting by Sebastian Rocandio and Pilar Olivares; Writing by Gabriel Araujo)

source

LONDON (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be the Russian leader’s first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and led to severe financial sanctions from the West, which Putin says are a reason to build stronger trade ties with other powers such as China, India and Iran.

Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow.

In Dushanbe, Putin will meet Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon, a close Russian ally and the longest-serving ruler of a former Soviet state. In Ashgabat, he will attend a summit of Caspian nations including the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan, Zarubin said.

Putin’s last known trip outside Russia was a visit to the Beijing in early February, where he and Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a “no limits” friendship treaty hours before both attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games.

Russia says it sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 to degrade its neighbour’s military capabilities, keep it from being used by the West to threaten Russia, root out nationalists and defend Russian-speakers in eastern regions. Ukraine calls the invasion an imperial-style land grab.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Peter Graff)

source

KYIV (Reuters) -Russian missiles struck near the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy on Sunday, killing one person and hitting a bridge that helps connect western regions with eastern battle zones, Ukrainian officials said.

Cherkasy has been largely untouched by bombardment since the war started in February, but Russia has stepped up missile attacks across Ukraine this weekend.

“Today, the enemy launched missile attacks on the Cherkasy region. There are 2 strikes near the regional center. One dead and five wounded. Infrastructure damaged,” said regional governor Ihor Taburets on the Telegram app.

He did not provide further details, but a presidential adviser told Reuters one of the missiles targeted a bridge across the Dnipro river.

“They are trying to limit the transfer of our reserves and western weapons to the east,” adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a message.

“It means that these kinds of transfers are going well and causing them major issues.”

He did not say how damaged the bridge was. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

(Reporting by Pavel PolityukWriting by Alessandra PrenticeEditing by Toby Chopra and David Goodman)

source

SCHLOSS ELMAU, Germany (Reuters) – World leaders must recognise the price of supporting Ukraine including the surge in energy and food costs but must also acknowledge that the price of allowing Russia to win would be far higher, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

Speaking at the start of a Group of Seven summit on Sunday, Johnson said the West needed to maintain its unity in the face of Moscow’s aggression.

“In order to protect that unity, in order to make it work, you’ve got to have really, really honest discussions about the implications of what’s going on, the pressures that individual friends and partners are feeling,” he told reporters.

“But the price of backing down, the price of allowing (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to succeed, to hack off huge parts of Ukraine, to continue with his programme of conquest, that price will be far, far higher. Everybody here understands that.”

(Reporting by William Schomberg; writing by Kate Holton)

source