Over five million refugees have left Ukraine - UN
More than five million refugees have now fled Ukraine since Russia invaded in February, according to the latest figures released by the UN.
The UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says over 4.7 million refugees have crossed Ukraine's borders.
In addition, the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM), cited by AFP, says nearly 215,000 third-country nationals - people who are neither citizens of Ukraine nor the country they entered - have also escaped to neighbouring countries.
The highest proportion of refugees - 2.7 million - have fled to Poland. However, official figures suggest some people are now choosing to return to Ukraine.
Summary
- Russia says it has hit a plant making anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv
- It came hours after it admitted that the Moskva warship had sunk following an explosion on Wednesday
- Ukraine says it hit the Russian cruiser in the Black Sea with missiles - Russia has said a fire on board caused the sinking
- Russia's defence ministry said attacks on Kyiv would be intensified if Ukraine targeted Russian territory
- In the destroyed city of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials have accused the occupiers of exhuming bodies to hide evidence of crimes
- Ukrainian forces will face a huge challenge in the east of the country, according to former CIA director David Petraeus
Putin thought Ukraine war was a missile to Nato. It may be a boomerang
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
It is conceivable that by the end of the year Nato’s land mass, GDP and territorial borders with Russia may expand by nearly as much as they would have if Ukraine had achieved its distant goal of eventual membership of the western defence alliance – if not more.
The brutal manner in which Vladimir Putin has tried to foreclose Ukraine’s security options has led to a sudden change in thinking in Finland and Sweden that has been all the more powerful since it seems to have come from below, as opposed to from the political elites.
It is not yet a done deal. Opinion so volatile, and previously so settled in its opposition to Nato membership, could swing back towards the comforts of semi-neutrality. Russian nuclear threa
GOP ‘groomer’ smears are sparking a new wave of anti-LGBT+ violence: ‘This is going to lead to tragedy’
As American conservatives wield baseless accusations of ‘grooming’ against political opponents, trans and gay people say they have been harassed or attacked by strangers shouting the same words, Io Dodds and Alex Woodward report
Aurora was walking home past the K-Mart, listening to a podcast and minding her own business, when a stranger shoved her into the road and began to yell at her calling her a “groomer”.
There were two people, she says, one shorter and wearing a backpack, one taller and seemingly recording her with a smartphone, both hurling abuse and calling her a child predator as she crossed the street to get away.
“I’ve been transitioning for about eight or nine years now, and I have been assaulted and harassed by people on the street before. I have never been accused of sexually predatory behaviour,” says Aurora, a 34-year-old transgender woman studying to be a nurse in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She asked for her surname not to be used because she fears for her safety.
Jerusalem on edge as Jews, Christians and Muslims mark religious festivities
The next days bring a rare convergence of festive times for Jerusalsem's major religions: Judaism’s Passover, Christianity’s Easter and Islam’s Ramadan. But the triple blessing is being overshadowed by fresh tensions.
At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, one of the holiest sites for Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem, a steady flow of tourists and devout believers enter through the wooden gate of the church. "Being here at Easter, when Jesus rose from the dead, is just a special time and it feels really special to be around," says Kelly Hoffman, a visitor from California.
After two years of COVID-19 restrictions, the narrow alleys of the Old City in east Jerusalem are bustling again with foreign and local visitors for the season. "Once you enter the Old City, you feel the atmosphere of the feasts," says Rula Ghazawi, a Palestinian Christian who works in the Old City. "But the atmosphere is also sad, because of the situation. And there is [the war] in Ukraine. We feel with the refugees, the people who are killed."
‘Catastrophic’ Durban floods leave trail of death and destruction
Intense rains have swept through KwaZulu for almost a week now, sweeping away people and property.
At 8pm on Monday, Mthobisi Gasa struggled to cross a bridge that had been submerged in water to go to his home in Inanda, on the outskirts of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The 24-year-old retail trainee trekked through waist-high water for more than an hour by forming a human chain with strangers heading in the same direction to avoid drowning. He was devastated when he finally reached his two-bedroom home.
“My door would not open, so I looked through the window and realised it was completely filled with water,” said Gasa. “I forced the door open and the entire front area of my house collapsed. I decided to save important things and then watched my entire house fall. The floods have destroyed me.”
China's Covid controls risk sparking crisis for the country -- and its leader Xi Jinping
Updated 0824 GMT (1624 HKT) April 15, 2022
Across China, cities are locking down their residents, supply lines are rupturing, and officials are scrambling to secure the movement of basic goods -- as its largest ever recorded outbreak of Covid-19 threatens to spiral into a national crisis of the government's own making.
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