Six In The Morning Tuesday 19 April 2022

 

A Ukrainian-American woman's family were forced to flee to Russia. She smuggled them to Poland

By Salma Abdelaziz, Lauren Kent and Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou, CNN

Updated 0957 GMT (1757 HKT) April 19, 2022

Mila Turchyn walks into a McDonald's parking lot near the Poland-Ukraine border. She is anxious. She doesn't trust the man she is about to meet. He is a smuggler.

Turchyn found the man via a messaging app a few days ago, advertising transport services for Ukrainians stranded in Russia. They made a deal-- $500 to drive Turchyn's mom and sister from Moscow to Przemysl, Poland. It's more than most families fleeing war can afford.

She is wondering if it worked.

Turchyn turns and suddenly finds herself in her sister's arms. There is a brief moment of joy, but no time to hug her mom. The smuggler wants to be paid now. He extorts her for more cash. She pays. At this point, there's nothing more that she wants than to be with her family.

Shanghai prepares to ease Covid lockdown as factories reopen

Authorities in city of 25 million people hope to limit transmissions to quarantine facilities by Wednesday

Helen Davidson in Taipei

@heldavidson

Shanghai is preparing to ease its lockdown over the city’s 25 million people with authorities hoping Covid transmissions will mostly be limited to quarantine facilities.

Factories are returning to production in closed-loop systems, with Tesla staff reportedly told to sleep on site.

Amid China’s worst outbreak since Wuhan at the start of the pandemic, Shanghai continues to report tens of thousands of cases a day, with the majority among people in quarantine or isolation. On Monday, Reuters reported officials had set a target of reaching “zero-Covid at the community level” by Wednesday.

First activist charged for infringing Poland’s near-total abortion ban to face ‘Kremlin-funded’ group in court

‘What kind of justice system protects a foetus and an abuser over a woman and her life?’ says activist

Maya Oppenheim

Women’s Correspondent

The first abortion rights activist to be charged for infringing Poland’s near-total abortion ban has said she is “shocked” she will be forced to face a “Kremlin funded, far right organisation” in court.

Justyna Wydrzynska, an activist from the Polish campaign group Aborcyjny Dream Team, is facing up to three years in jail due for helping a pregnant woman access an abortion.

The campaigner told The Independent Ordo Iuris, an anti-LGBT+ Polish Catholic organisation that has campaigned for a total abortion ban in the country, will “join the prosecution's case, to represent the foetus and also the abusive partner of Ania.”

Will the war in Ukraine delay India's green energy transition?

With global prices of crude oil, gas and coal spiraling, a lengthy Russia-Ukraine war could delay India's progress in achieving renewable energy and climate change targets.

Russia's war on Ukraine has triggered a huge rise in global crude oil prices and for India, which imports 80% of its crude oil and 45% of its natural gas, there is a high price to pay.

The war is driving up food inflation and increasing manufacturing production prices. India's wholesale price-based inflation quickened to 14.55 % in March from 13.11 % in February amid hardening of fuel prices. Retail inflation last month has also climbed to 6.95 %, a 17-month high, as food prices went up.

Record low Antarctic sea ice extent could signal shift

Sea ice around Antarctica shrank to the smallest extent on record in February, five years after the previous record low, researchers said Tuesday, suggesting Earth's frozen continent may be less impervious to climate change than thought.

In late February, the ocean area covered by ice slipped below the symbolic barrier of two million square kilometres (around 772,000 square miles) for the first time since satellite records began in 1978, according to a study in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

Researchers found that the key driver of ice loss was change in temperature, though shifts in ice mass also played a lesser role.

Ukraine children: Killed as he escaped, Elisei is one of 200 child victims

By Yogita Limaye
BBC News, Kyiv, Ukraine

Evhen Ryabukon patted the coffin gently, and appeared to be having a final conversation with his son. He broke down, over and over again, before he could finish.

His wife Inna, steeling herself, adjusted the framed photo of a smiling, young boy placed on the coffin - a mother's last act of care.

The boy was Elisei Ryabukon. He would have been 14 in May.

Just over a month after he was killed in firing by Russian soldiers, his family, friends, neighbours and classmates gathered at a church in the city of Brovary in the east of Kyiv, to say goodbye to this much loved child from Peremoha village. A community that had been scattered by war, came together in grief.