Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Ukraine war: Dashcam captures moment missile debris falls onto Kyiv road
Dashcam footage shows the moment missile debris crashed down on a street in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.
The incident happened on 29 May and came during a rare daytime attack on the city. No injuries were reported.
The way the missile falls suggests it was intercepted by air defences before it could reach its target. The BBC matched the dashcam footage to video from a nearby security camera and photographs in media reports.
The fragments were later collected by police for further investigation.
What impact could the US-China quarrel have on a booming chip market?
The tech company Nvidia's market value has soared on the rising demand for chips. Capitalizing on the AI revolution it briefly joined giants like Apple and Microsoft as a trillion dollar company. But its meteoric rise comes against the backdrop of an escalating chip war between the United States and China, which has seen Washington impose export bans on US chips.
Six In The Morning Wednesday 31 May 2023
Journalists who reported on Mahsa Amini’s death stand trial in Iran
Two journalists responsible for breaking the story of Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish-Iranian woman killed after being held in custody by Iran’s morality police last year, stood trial in an Iranian court this week.
Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi have been imprisoned in Iran for the past eight months and face charges of “conspiracy and rebellion against national security” and “anti-state propaganda” – charges carrying a possible death penalty, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
The two women separately stood trial on Monday and Tuesday in a revolutionary court presided over by notorious judge Abolghasem Salavati, according to Iranian pro-reform outlet SharghDaily.
Kosovan PM says he could consider early elections in north if violence ends
US and EU rebuke Albin Kurti over his handling of recent clashes triggered by ethnic Albanian mayors taking office
Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, has said he is prepared to consider early elections in Serb-majority northern Kosovo, as some British sources expressed concern that the US and EU are making a mistake by threatening their ally with punishment over Kurti’s handling of recent violent clashes in the region.
A former UK ambassador said the EU envoy to Kosovo should stand aside, while the UK foreign affairs select committee chair, Alicia Kearns, warned the US against disproportionate punishment of Kurti.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said Kurti had made mistakes and he would be meeting him jointly with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Germany: Drug-laden fridge defenestrated during police raid
A fridge loaded with illegal drugs went flying through a window in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg as police carried out a drug bust, police reported on Wednesday.
The incident took place in the Röthenbach district of the city last week. The report indicated that the suspects — three men between the ages of 28 and 46 and a 34-year-old woman — had tried to dispose of the incriminating fridge as police entered the apartment.
Police said that they discovered 800 grams of cannabis and several grams of synthetic drugs, as well as other drug paraphernalia.
The police statement did not say how big the fridge was, though apparently it was not too big to fit through a window and did not contain a very large quantity of drugs.
Sudan army suspends truce talks with paramilitary rivals, says official
The army took the decision "because the rebels have never implemented a single one of the provisions of a short-term ceasefire which required their withdrawal from hospitals and residential buildings, and have repeatedly violated the truce", the Sudanese official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
US and Saudi mediators said late Monday that the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had agreed to extend by five days a humanitarian truce they had frequently violated over the previous week.
But despite their pledges, fighting flared again on Tuesday both in greater Khartoum and in the flashpoint western region of Darfur.
‘Provocative, dangerous’: China blames US for air confrontation
Incident between planes over the South China Sea the latest in a series of confrontations between Chinese and US militaries.
China has blamed a US “provocation” for an incident in which a Chinese plane crossed in front of an American surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea.
“The United States’ long-term and frequent sending of ships and planes to conduct close surveillance on China seriously harms China’s national sovereignty and security,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Wednesday.
Ukraine war: The mothers going to get their children back from Russia
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe correspondent, Ukraine
When 15-year-old Sasha Kraynyuk studied the photograph handed to him by Ukrainian investigators, he recognised the boy dressed in Russian military uniform immediately.
The teenager sitting at a school desk has the Z-mark of Russia's war emblazoned on his right sleeve, coloured in the red, white and blue of the Russian flag.
But the boy's name is Artem, and he's Ukrainian.
Sasha and Artem were among 13 children taken from their own school in Kupyansk, north-eastern Ukraine last September by armed Russian soldiers in balaclavas. Ushered onto a bus with shouts of "Quickly!", they then disappeared for weeks without trace.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
BRICS - China's New Alliance Will FAIL
BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The counter to the western world. The counter to the G7. This is the new kid on the block that is going to take over the world... Except that it's not.
Erdogan 'keen' on taking vision of 'increasingly hard-core autocracy' to another level
After securing a strong new mandate in a runoff presidential election, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan could temper some positions that have irritated his NATO allies. But observers predicted that the country's longtime strongman leader is unlikely to depart from his policy of engaging with both Russia and the West
Video appears to show drone flying over Moscow
Video footage shared on social media appears to show a drone flying over the south west of Moscow.
Several buildings have been damaged in Russia's capital city after air defences shot drones down. It's the second drone incident in Moscow after an alleged attack on the Kremlin earlier in May.
The attack comes following a Russian attack on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, in which one person was killed.
Six In The Morning Tuesday 30 May 2023
Drones hit Moscow buildings in rare attack on Russian capital as Kyiv faces another night of bombardment
Russia is blaming Ukraine for launching a drone attack on Moscow early Tuesday which reportedly left two people injured and several buildings damaged, a rare incident in the Russian capital after months of war.
While incidents in Moscow are uncommon, residents in Kyiv have faced 17 airstrikes this month. There was a Russian bombardment of the Ukrainian capital overnight, which officials said killed at least one person.
At least three residential buildings in Moscow were damaged by drones on Tuesday, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency services and residents. The Investigative Committee of Russia has opened a criminal case on the matter.
Covid lab leak theory should not be ruled out, top Chinese scientist says
Virologist George Gao also states for first time that China has investigated claim virus came from a laboratory
The former director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) has said the lab leak theory for the origins of Covid-19 should not be discounted.
George Gao, an internationally respected virologist, also said another branch of the Chinese government had investigated the lab leak theory – the first such acknowledgment that some kind of official investigation took place. “They haven’t found wrongdoing,” he said.
Gao served as the CDC head until July 2022, putting him at the forefront of China’s investigations into the origins of Covid.
Germany and Poland tighten migrant route border checks
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is meeting her Polish counterpart to talk about border controls. German states have urged Berlin to tighten checks amid high irregular entries via Poland and the Czech Republic.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced a widening of checks at and near the border after talks with Polish counterpart Mariusz Kaminski on Tuesday — but stopped short of announcing stationary frontier controls.
Berlin is resisting the notion of reinstating fixed checkpoints in the fight against people smuggling from Belarus, as has been requested by two states on the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic.
What did the minister say?
Faeser said she wanted to see strengthened migration controls on the German-Polish border during a visit to the Polish border town in Swiecko. The tightening of checks would involve more controls on trains as well as on air traffic.
India’s protesting wrestlers say will toss medals into Ganges
Athletes protesting against alleged sexual harassment by a top official threaten to throw their medals in the river in the temple town of Haridwar.
India’s top wrestlers have threatened to hurl their medals into the river Ganges as they demand the arrest of the head of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) over sexual harassment allegations.
In a joint statement issued on Tuesday intensifying their month-old protest, the wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, spelled out their next step.
“We are going to immerse these medals into river Ganga … The more sacred we consider the Ganga, the more sacredly we had achieved these medals by toiling hard. These medals are sacred for the whole country and the right place should be in the Ganga itself,” said their statement in Hindi.
NHK may have come close to violating Broadcast Law
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
May 30, 2023 at 18:28 JST
Japan’s public broadcaster faced accusations it may have violated the Broadcast Law by earmarking around 900 million yen ($6.4 million) in its fiscal 2023 budget for online streaming of its satellite TV programs despite being prohibited from such activity.
Nobuo Inaba, who only took over as president of Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) in January, ordered an in-house investigation. Those interviewed included NHK’s managing directors at the time the decision was made, as well as the former president, Terunobu Maeda.
The investigation concluded that NHK’s behavior was flawed in terms of governance and that the processes to earmark the spending may have been in violation of the Broadcast Law, according to multiple insiders.
Artificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn
By Chris Vallance
Technology reporter
Artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts - including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind - have warned.
Dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety.
"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war" it reads.
But others say the fears are overblown.
Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have all supported the statement.
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