Six In The Morning Thursday 31 March 2022

 

What's the latest on the Ukraine war?

On the international stage:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that from tomorrow foreign buyers of Russian gas will have to pay in roubles by opening a Russian bank account or have their contracts cancelled
• In response, Germany - Russia's largest EU customer - said it would not be blackmailed, while France said it was planning to cut Russian gas deliveries
• The Kremlin has responded to US claims that Putin has been "misled by the Russian military" by saying that Washington does not understand the Russian president
• It comes after the head of GCHQ, the UK's intelligence, security and cyber agency, said Putin was being misled by his advisers and had made a miscalculation in his invasion of Ukraine
• The UK government has announced further sanctions against Russia, most of which target media figures

On the ground:

• A convoy of buses is on its way to Mariupol in a bid to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city after Russia agreed to a ceasefire to allow civilians to leave
• The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is ready to lead the evacuation operation if both sides agree to terms, after previous efforts collapsed
• Shelling appears to have continued around Kyiv and Chernihiv despite Russia having said it would scale down its operations there
• Ukraine's state nuclear company has said that many of the Russian troops holding the Chernobyl nuclear plant have left, according to Reuters news agency

Revealed: migrant workers in Qatar forced to pay billions in recruitment fees

Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts

Pete Pattisson and Pramod Acharya in Kathmandu and Muhammad Owasim Uddin Bhuyan in Dhaka

Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.

Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.

The total cost incurred by Qatar’s low-wage migrant workforce is likely to be far higher because workers from other labour-sending countries in south Asia and Africa also pay high fees.

Opinion: The Taliban must not get away with suppressing girls' education

The West can't afford to simply stand by and watch how the Taliban turn back the clock in Afghanistan. For the sake of the people there and in its own self-interest it must act, says Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi.

Girls crying; teachers sobbing, news readers losing their composure — the Taliban's decision not to open schools for girls from the sixth grade up, despite earlier announcements to the contrary, triggered widespread shock and anger.

The Taliban kept the people of Afghanistan and the international community waiting for months, arguing that they wanted to create the necessary conditions to ensure the safety of girls and young women. Both in bilateral talks and in statements to the media, the Taliban repeatedly claimed that Afghan girls should have the right to education.

Turkey in delicate balancing act with Russia, Ukraine amid economic woes

Turkey has played a major role in the search for an end to the Ukraine war as the host for this week’s talks between Moscow and Kyiv – the product of an ambivalent stance experts say is largely rooted in the troubled Turkish economy’s deep links to both countries.

Weeks before Russia and Ukraine agreed on Istanbul as the site for the March 28-30 peace talks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made Turkey’s equivocal position clear, saying “we cannot give up” on either nation the day before Russia invaded.

Ankara has stayed true to this approach. The Turkish foreign ministry called the invasion “unacceptable” and a “grave violation of international law” when it began on February 24. Four days later Turkey followed Ukraine’s request to recognise the conflict as a war, allowing it to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to most warships under the 1936 Montreux Convention.  

Court blocks bid by 7 for Minamata disease recognition

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

March 31, 2022 at 18:43 JST

The district court here March 30 ruled against seven people seeking official recognition as Minamata disease patients, thereby depriving them of eligibility to receive state assistance for their medical treatment.

The plaintiffs had called for decisions by the Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectural governments on the issue to be revoked.

The presiding judge dismissed their requests on grounds the court could not recognize them as Minamata disease patients based on the arguments their lawyers presented. The plaintiffs vowed to appeal the ruling.

China's tech layoffs could become a self-inflicted headache for Xi

Analysis by Laura He, CNN Business

Updated 0904 GMT (1704 HKT) March 31, 2022

China's huge tech sector may be staring at its worst jobs crisis ever.

The once-freewheeling industry was long the main source of well-paid employment in China, but major companies are now reportedly downsizing at a scale not seen before as President Xi Jinping's government continues its crackdown on private enterprise.

The layoffs come as the world's second largest economy is already struggling with rising Covid-19 cases, a slump in the housing market and geopolitical tensions. They threaten to become a serious headache for the government, which wants to prioritize economic and social stability this year— with Xi expected to assume an almost unprecedented third term.