Six In The Morning Thursday 14 April 2022

 

They tried to take a boat to safety. Then Russian rockets came raining down

By Tara John, Oleksandr Fylyppov, Sandi Sidhu and Julia Presniakova, CNN

Updated 0944 GMT (1744 HKT) April 14, 2022

 All Vladimir Nesterenko wanted to do when he grew up was to play basketball. The brown haired 12-year-old dribbled and shot hoops with his dad Oleh in the village where they lived in Ukraine's southern Kherson region. He idolized NBA legend Michael Jordan.

His mother Julia Nesterenko was happy to encourage the habit. "We even had a basketball hoop at home," the 33-year-old told CNN as she described their first family home. It was their "nest," she said, with a small garden and a vegetable patch.

When Russian forces captured the regional capital, also called Kherson, and its surrounding area soon after the invasion began, the family knew they could not stay, Julia said. Russian checkpoints, armed forces, and officers of the FSB intelligence agency were reportedly flooding the region at the same time as disappearances and detentions of local mayors, journalists, and civilians became rife, according to local officials and rights groups.

Russia warns of nuclear weapons in Baltic if Sweden and Finland join Nato

‘No more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic,’ senior member of security council says

Jon Henley Europe correspondent

Moscow has said it will be forced to strengthen its defences in the Baltic if Finland and Sweden join Nato, including by deploying nuclear weapons, as the war in Ukraine entered its seventh week.

The former president Dmitry Medvedev, a senior member of Russia’s security council, said on Thursday that Russia would bolster all its forces in the region if the two Nordic countries joined the US-led alliance.

Finland and Sweden are deliberating whether to abandon decades of military non-alignment and join Nato, with the two Nordic countries’ leaders saying Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine had changed Europe’s “whole security landscape”.

Mimi Reinhard, secretary who typed up Schindler’s List saving Jews during Holocaust, dies at 107

She was one of 1,200 Jews saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler after he bribed Nazi authorities

Tom Batchelor

A secretary who typed up Oskar Schindler's list of Jewish people to be spared from extermination by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust has died at the age of 107.

Mimi Reinhard was one of 1,200 Jews saved by the German industrialist after he bribed Nazi authorities to let him keep them as workers in his factories during the Second World War. The story was made into the 1993 film Schindler's List.

Reinhard, who died last week in Israel, was in charge of compiling lists of Jewish workers from the Krakow ghetto to work at Schindler's factory, saving them from deportation. She continued working for him until the end of the war in 1945.

Why Pakistani feminists are reluctant to talk about marital rape

In many South Asian countries, it is not illegal for a husband to rape his wife. Pakistan's feminist movement faces challenges in exposing sexual assaults that have been shrouded in secrecy.

Since the first "women's march" in 2018, the struggle for women's rights has grown into a large-scale movement in patriarchal Pakistan. The country's feminists have been relentless in campaigning for the right to bodily autonomy, safer public spaces, and an end to violent sexual crimes.

Campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have also given more women a public platform to expose sexual harassment and violence.

Iraqis queue for fuel as stations protest government

Motorists in Iraq formed long queues for fuel Thursday after some owners of filling stations shut off their pumps to protest government policies on fuel distribution and pricing.

Some government-run fuel stations have been ordered to operate around the clock to meet demand, the official news agency INA reported.

Dozens of vehicles were lined up at stations that remained open.

Some owners of petrol stations have denounced the method of fuel distribution imposed by the authorities, complaining they end up paying more for the quantity of fuel they receive from the government than what they say it is worth.

‘Ripe for explosion’: Israel-Palestine tensions rise in Ramadan

The situation in occupied Palestinian territories is escalating, as Gaza residents worry about another war.

By Maram Humaid and Zena Al Tahhan

Published On 14 Apr 202214 Apr 2022

 Tensions on the ground in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory are heading towards a large-scale eruption this Ramadan, analysts expect, as residents of the besieged Gaza Strip fear yet another war.

“We are moving gradually towards an escalation – the conditions are ripe for an explosion,” Jerusalem-based political analyst Mazen Jaabari told Al Jazeera.

Last year, escalating tensions around the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem were the catalyst for widespread Palestinian protests across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.