'The Moment' - a short comic about COVID-19 by Sonny Liew, with Hsu Li Yang
Teacher Oleksandr Pogoryelov occasionally strolls up the sloping road to the school in his village in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine where he taught for more than two decades.Parents have been supportive, he said, but the village is emblematic of tensions in many communities in the Donetsk region, where pro-Russian separatists had been fighting Ukrainian forces for years.Â
New York officials and members of the city's Jewish community called Friday for the removal of plaques bearing the name of French Nazi collaborators from Manhattan's celebrated Broadway street.The parade took place before they worked for the Nazis during Germany's occupation of France during World War II. "Removing the plaques is not a whitewashing of history.
Two of the biggest hitters in women's tennis go toe-to-toe when Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina clash in Saturday's Australian Open final in Melbourne.Rybakina, 23, has coolly moved through the draw, unfazed by the snub of her opening match being shunted out to the wilderness of Melbourne Park's Court 13.
Indian trailblazer Sania Mirza bowed out of Grand Slam tennis Friday with defeat in the Australian Open mixed-doubles final playing alongside Rohan Bopanna -- her first playing partner 22 years ago."Rohan was my first-ever mixed-doubles partner at (aged) 14 and we won the nationals," said Mirza, a six-time Grand Slam champion, three in doubles and three in mixed.
At the Stalingrad Battle Museum in Russia's southern city of Volgograd, dozens of teenagers stand in a circle, waiting to take oath as they join the patriotic Youth Army movement.The oath-taking ceremony in Volgograd came ahead of the 80th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad, the name of the city at the time.
The pensioner who allegedly sent letter bombs to Spain's prime minister and the Ukrainian embassy was placed in pre-trial detention on Friday on grounds he could flee to "Russian territory". The home-made devices were sent in late November and early December to Spain's prime minister and defence minister, the Ukrainian and US embassies, the European Union Satellite Centre near Madrid and to a Spanish arms manufacturer in the northeastern city of Zaragoza.
Peru's embattled president Dina Boluarte on Saturday urged lawmakers to find a way out of a deepening political crisis by agreeing to snap elections in December, just hours after Congress voted against the idea.In the early hours of Saturday, lawmakers had rejected her request to move elections forward to December, even as anti-Boluarte protests raging across the country have left dozens dead.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -A security assessment by Indian police in the Himalayan region of Ladakh says there could be more clashes between Indian and Chinese troops along their contested frontier there as Beijing ramps up military infrastructure in the region. At least 24 soldiers were killed when the armies of the Asian giants clashed in Ladakh, in the western Himalayas, in 2020 but tensions eased after military and diplomatic talks. The assessment is part of a new, confidential research paper by the Ladakh Police that was submitted at a conference of top police officers held from January 20 to 22 and has been reviewed by Reuters.
Hundreds of people, including foreign diplomats and activists, paid homage Saturday to a human rights lawyer who was shot dead in Eswatini, sparking alarm over political violence in Africa's last absolute monarchy.EU ambassador Dessislava Choumelova called for the "safety of all citizens including political activists".
All roads lead to Rome, as the saying goes, and the most prestigious is the Appian Way, the strategic highway for the Roman Empire now hoping to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.Italy, which earlier this month presented its bid for the Appian Way to UNESCO, already has 58 sites recognised as World Heritage Sites, the most of any country.Â
Tunisians are to vote again on Sunday in elections for a parliament stripped of its powers, the final pillar of President Kais Saied's remake of politics in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.The second-round vote comes as the North African country grapples with a grave economic crisis and deep political divisions over Saied's July 2021 power grab.
First Valentyna's gas was cut when Russia's invasion came to Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region.They are just two among some 8,000 Bakhmut residents whose precarious existence in the city has been thrown into even greater uncertainty since water supplies were fully cut in October.
With anti-France feelings running high in many of its former colonies in West Africa, Paris is being forced to retreat ever further from the increasingly unstable region and re-think its presence, experts say.After the ruling junta in Mali forced French troops out last year, the army officers running neighbouring Burkina Faso followed suit this week, asking Paris to empty its garrison in the next month.
Polling stations opened Friday for the Czech presidential election run-off in which retired NATO general Petr Pavel is expected to beat billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis.Pavel won the endorsement of several parties in the governing centre-right coalition of Prime Minister Petr Fiala, while Babis secured backing from long-time ally Zeman, whose last term expires in March.
The Indian rupee rose marginally against the dollar on Friday, but ended the week lower due to suspected intervention by the central bank. For the week, the local currency was down 0.5%. The currency came under pressure after it managed to climb above the 81 level on Monday thanks to dollar purchases from public sector banks, likely on the directions of the Reserve Bank of India.
Czechs went to the polls Friday on the first day of a presidential run-off election in which retired NATO general Petr Pavel is expected to beat the billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis.Analysts predicted high turnout for the two-day vote, after an acrimonious campaign marked by controversial stances.Pavel, a former paratrooper, topped the most recent opinion polls with 58 to 59 percent support, compared with 41 to 42 percent for Babis.The victor will replace Milos Zeman, an outspoken and divisive politician who had sought close ties with Moscow before making a U-turn when Russia invaded Ukraine last year.Casting his vote in the northern village of Cernoucek, Pavel said he wanted to be "a dignified president" for the country, an EU and NATO member of 10.5 million people."I won't offer you pie in the sky, but instead I'll describe reality as it is," he said.Babis, whose wealth and legal headaches have made him a divisive figure, called the election "a referendum on Babis" as he cast his ballot in Pruhonice, just south of Prague. Pavel edged ahead of Babis at 35.4 percent to 35 percent in the first round of voting two weeks ago, wooing right-wing and centrist voters with his no-nonsense rhetoric.Babis is banking on support from his centre-left ANO movement, but experts say he has turned off some voters with chaotic diatribes in campaign debates.Babis is "rhetorically hard to figure out", said Otto Eibl, a political scientist at Masaryk University.Since the first round of voting, Babis and his family have been targeted by death threats, while Pavel was the victim of a hoax claiming he was dead. "Quite frankly, if the polls are well conducted, I think it will be hard for Babis to come back," said Tomas Lebeda, a political scientist at Palacky University. While the role is largely ceremonial in Czech politics, the president names the government, picks the central bank governor and constitutional judges, and serves as commander of the armed forces.- NATO remarks -Pavel, 61, was decorated as a hero in the Serbo-Croatian war, when he helped free French troops from a war zone.He went on to become chief of the Czech general staff and chair of NATO's military committee.Like Babis, Pavel was a member of the Communist Party in the 1980s, when Czechoslovakia was ruled by Moscow-steered communists.Babis went on to become the fifth wealthiest person in the Czech Republic, according to Forbes magazine, as owner of the Agrofert food, chemicals and media group.The 68-year-old, who served as prime minister from 2017 until 2021, stirred controversy at the tail end of the campaign by saying he would not send troops to fellow NATO members Poland and the Baltics if they were attacked.He later walked back the comments, which go against NATO's collective defence protocol, but not before he had garnered criticism from all four countries.Tereza Branis, casting her vote for Pavel at a school in Prague on Friday, said she wanted a "reliable" president."He should represent us so that other countries could rely on us and we on them," she told AFP. Independent political analyst Jan Kubacek said the election was unlikely to result in significant foreign policy shifts, no matter the victor."The Czech Republic will stay pro-Western," he told AFP.Polling stations will close at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Friday before reopening at 8:00 am and closing at 2:00 pm on Saturday, with final results expected shortly afterwards.frj/amj/js
Some direct invites were given to pro players, which included those that are part of a VALORANT franchise team or are contracted with a tier-one organisation.
A top French university on Friday forbade students from using artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT to complete assignments, in the first such ban at a college in the country.ChatGPT still makes factual mistakes, but education facilities in other countries have rushed to ban the AI tool.
Italian energy giant Eni signed an $8 billion gas deal with Libya's state-run National Oil Corporation Saturday as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Tripoli.Meloni also visited Algeria this week seeking supply deals from Africa's top gas exporter.
The United States said Friday it would refuse entry to two Serbian ultra-nationalist former members of parliament wanted by a UN court for witness tampering in a trial over crimes against humanity."The United States continues to stand with all Serbians in support of democracy and the rule of law and will continue to promote accountability for those who abuse public power for personal gain," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.