Six In The Morning Saturday 30 April 2022

 

They fled Ukraine to protect their children. Now these mothers are returning home

By Eliza Mackintosh and Oleksandra Ochman, CNN
Photographs by Yurko Dyachyshyn for CNN

Updated 0408 GMT (1208 HKT) April 30, 2022

 At the train station in Lviv, on the westernmost edge of Ukraine, women are at a physical and psychological crossroads.

After arriving in the city, now a waypoint for displaced people, humanitarian aid and weapons, they've had to ask themselves a set of daunting questions. Where should we go next? Will my children be safe there? How long will we stay?

In the back of their minds is a gnawing fear: Will we even have a home to return to?

Beijing bans restaurant dining as holiday begins in zero-Covid clampdown

Chinese capital says negative test needed to enter some public areas, sporting events and to use public transport

Agence France-Presse in Beijing

Restaurants across Beijing will temporarily ban dining-in and residents will need negative Covid tests to visit public spaces, officials said on Saturday, in a major ramping up of virus controls at the start of the Labour Day holiday.

The five-day break is typically one of China’s busiest travel periods, but the country’s worst Covid resurgence since early in the pandemic is expected to keep people at home.

Faced with the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Chinese officials have doubled down on their zero-Covid policy, quashing virus clusters through mass testing and lockdowns.

Erdogan's Saudi Arabia trip could be a game changer for Middle East

Turkish President Erdogan's two-day trip to Riyadh will most likely boost bilateral ties but what's more crucial is that it could change the security situation for the entire region, from Iran to the war in Yemen.

It's rare that the visit of a head of state has a whole region holding its breath. 

However, the two-day trip by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Saudi Arabia has the potential to not only revive ties between the two countries but could be a game changer for the entire region.

Following a first meeting with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi state news agency.

Palestinian militant group claims responsibility for killing Al-Aqsa mosque guard

Israeli security forces reinforced their presence in the occupied West Bank on Saturday and made arrests after the killing of a guard at a Jewish settlement. 

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, one of the main militant groups present in the West Bank, claimed responsibility for the murder which -- along with the killing of a Palestinian, brought a deadly conclusion to a Friday marked by clashes at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque. 

The army said the guard was on duty at the entrance to Ariel settlement on Friday night when attackers opened fire. Emergency services confirmed that the man, in his 20s, had died from his wounds.

1st film written by Japanese AI bot takes movie-making to next phase

By Donican Lam

Writer's block may become a thing of the past as artificial intelligence is increasingly harnessed in the creative arts, and the first film written by a Japanese AI bot is aiming to demonstrate what it can do at a major short film festival this year.

"Boy Sprouted," a 26-minute short written by the AI "Furukoto" and directed by Yuko Watanabe, will feature in the lineup at the Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia, one of the region's biggest film festivals, themed this year on "meta cinema."

The story centers on a boy and his particular dislike of tomatoes, prompting his mother to go to great lengths to make him eat them. But little does she know her son has a plant literally sprouting from his back -- an idea that Furukoto cultivated itself.

Ethiopian drought leading to ‘dramatic’ increase in child marriage, Unicef warns

With hunger across Horn of Africa and 600,000 children out of school, ‘desperate’ parents push more girls into early marriage

Lizzy Davies

Drought-afflicted areas of Ethiopia are seeing “dramatic” increases in child marriage as the worst climate-induced emergency for 40 years pushes people to the brink, the head of Unicef has said.

Three consecutive failed rainy seasons have brought hunger, malnutrition and mass displacement to millions of people in the Horn of Africa, including parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Many girls in Ethiopia now face being married at a young age as their parents seek to find extra resources through dowries from the husband’s family, and hope their daughters will be fed and protected by wealthier families, warned Catherine Russell, Unicef’s executive director.