Six In The Morning Wednesday 9 March 2022

 

'How it's possible to bomb a children's hospital?'

The deputy mayor of Mariupol, Sergei Orlov, has just spoken to the BBC World Service.

The city council says Russia has destroyed a children's and maternity hospital in the besieged southern port city.

Orlov says: "We don't understand how it is possible in modern life to bomb children's hospital."

He says people in Mariupol who managed to escape the hospital are in "total anger" and "cannot believe it is true".

As we have been reporting, Ukraine and Russia agreed to hold a 12-hour ceasefire in six cities in Ukraine to allow civilians to escape. Mariupol was one of the cities that would have been covered by the temporary ceasefire.

South Korea election contenders neck and neck, according to exit polls

Contest between People Power party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol and Democratic party rival Lee Jae-myung too close to call

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Exit polls in South Korea showed the two main contenders in the presidential election neck and neck, after a campaign overshadowed by personal attacks and the country’s worst coronavirus wave of the pandemic.

The People Power party’s candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative who supports a tougher stance on North Korea, has 48.4% of the vote, according to a joint exit poll by three TV networks, while his Democratic party opponent, Lee Jae-myung, was on 47.8%.

But another poll by broadcaster JTBC showed Lee ahead with 48.4% to Yoon’s 47.7%. With the result still too close to call, the identity of the leader of Asia’s fourth biggest economy will not be made official until around midnight.

SPLC report: Hate groups in decline as views hit mainstream

The number of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and anti-government extremist groups across the U.S. fell for a third straight year in 2021, even as some groups were reinvigorated by the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year

Via AP news wire

The number of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and anti-government extremist groups across the U.S. fell for a third straight year in 2021, even as some groups were reinvigorated by the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol last year and by the ongoing culture wars over the pandemic and school curriculums.

In its annual report, released Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it identified 733 active hate groups in 2021, down from the 838 counted in 2020 and the 940 counted in 2019. Hate groups had risen to a historic high of 1,021 in 2018, said the law center, which tracks racism, xenophobia and far right militias.

The number of anti-government groups fell to 488 in 2021, down from 566 in 2020 and 576 in 2019. Such groups peaked at 1,360 in 2012, the year former President Barack Obama was elected to a second term.

Russian forces almost destroyed this Ukrainian artist's work. Now it's becoming a global symbol of peace

Not only is Maria Prymachenko among the 20th century's great self-taught artists, she is an icon of Ukrainian national identity. Her fantastical paintings, praised during her lifetime by the likes of Pablo Picasso, are now found in some of the country's most important museums. Her work has also been featured on postage stamps and her likeness is immortalized on commemorative coins.

But 25 years after her death, the Russian invasion is threatening Prymachenko's legacy. Last week, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said that several of the artist's paintings were among those destroyed at a museum in her native region of Ivankiv, about 50 miles northwest of the capital Kyiv, following an attack by Russian forces.

A video widely circulated online appears to show flames engulfing the one-story institution, which had previously described Prymachenko's work as the "pride of the museum." Her brightly-colored, almost childlike depictions of flora and fauna -- as well as of farmers tending crops and plowing fields -- were among the items initially thought to have been lost.

Hydrogen-powered airliners: Twiggy teams with Airbus in bid for net-zero travel

By Rob Harris

March 9, 2022

Aviation giant Airbus will team with billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest in an attempt to fast-track the development of carbon-neutral aircraft.

Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries unveiled the latest step in his quest to create hydrogen-powered planes, trains and automobiles in the French city of Toulouse on Tuesday.

The deal with the European aerospace manufacturer aims to fly commercial hydrogen-based aircraft by 2035. It comes as the war in Ukraine drives up carbon energy prices, highlighting the need to transition toward renewables.

Kishida revives tougher words with Russia in dispute over isles

By YUICHI NOBIRA/ Staff Writer

Japan revived its stronger wording concerning the disputed Northern Territories after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, essentially ending Tokyo’s policy of avoiding expressions that could antagonize Moscow in negotiations for the isles.

Asked about the Northern Territories at the March 7 Upper House Budget Committee, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said: “They are ‘Japan’s inherent territory’ as well as ‘territory over which Japan possesses sovereignty.’ In either case, it is a matter that the government has to deal with.”

The Northern Territories are four small islands off the coast of the main northern island of Hokkaido that were seized by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II.