An aid worker taken hostage by Islamic State (IS) with Briton David Haines has told the terror trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, allegedly one of the so-called “IS Beatles”, that he suffered “intense” beatings while being held captive.
Federico Motka endured 14 months of brutality after he and his colleagues were kidnapped near a refugee camp on the Turkish border in 2013.
The Italian relived his ordeal on Thursday at the trial of British national El Shafee Elsheikh, in the US.
We counted 13 bodies on a nightmarish stretch of road not much more than 200 yards long, between Mria and Myla, villages whose Ukrainian names translate as Dream and Sweetheart.
Two of the dead are confirmed as Ukrainian civilians who were killed by the Russians. The others have not been identified yet – they lie where they were killed – but only two are wearing recognisable Ukrainian military uniforms.
Our BBC team was able to get to the area, on the main E-40 highway as it approaches Kyiv, because Ukrainian forces had captured the sector only 10 hours earlier.
The head of the United Nations announced the appointment Thursday of an expert panel led by Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former environment minister, that will scrutinize whether companies’ efforts to curb climate change are credible or mere “greenwashing.”
McKenna, who was minister of environment and climate change from 2015 to 2019, will chair the panel.
Recent years have seen an explosion of pledges by businesses — including oil companies — to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” amid consumer expectations that corporations bear part of the burden of cutting pollution. But environmental campaigners say many such plans are at best unclear, at worst designed to make companies look good when actually they are fuelling global warming.
Canada’s electronic espionage agency is warning that Russian state-backed actors are seeding online disinformation around the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
While the news comes as no surprise to those familiar with Russian information warfare tactics, publicly releasing an assessment based on classified intelligence gathering is an unusual step for the Communications Security Establishment.
Is it just me or has Freeland gone to ground?
Canada is not quite as far ahead on defence spending as NATO predicted last year, according to the latest annual report compiled by NATO’s secretary general.
The report, released Thursday in Brussels by NATO Sec.-Gen. Jens Stoltenberg, shows Canada spent 1.36 per cent of its gross domestic product on the military and new defence hardware in 2021.
That’s a slight dip from the 1.39 per cent of GDP projected for Canada’s defence budget in the western military alliance’s last assessment of member nations, which was published last June.
Pope Francis has delivered a formal apology for the grave harm caused by Canada’s harrowing residential school system.
In a livestreamed audience with more than 190 Indigenous survivors, elders, knowledge keepers, youth and community leaders on Friday, he said he was “deeply grieved” by stories of abuse, hardship and discrimination he heard throughout the week.
Pope Francis has apologized for the conduct of some members of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada's residential school system.
Read more: https://t.co/0S8OJz6D7x pic.twitter.com/ESot4NRVfE
— CBC News (@CBCNews) April 1, 2022
April 1 (Reuters) – Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out an air strike against a fuel depot in the Russian city of Belgorod on Friday, an incident the Kremlin said set an unfavourable tone for peace talks with Kyiv.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he could not confirm or deny reports of Ukrainian involvement in the strike as he did not have military information. The Ukrainian Defence Ministry and the general staff did not respond to requests for comment.
#Ukraine: Early today, 2 Ukrainian Mi-24 attack helicopters flew at extremely low level over the border with Russia & struck the large oil facility in the city of #Belgorod with multiple S-8 series unguided rockets, causing a major fire. Here is the strike/escape in slo-mo. pic.twitter.com/oGs5eayc1c
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 1, 2022
Ukraine war: Russian forces regrouping for attack – Nato
Russian forces in Ukraine are regrouping to double down on their attacks in the east of the country, according to Nato’s secretary general.
“Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce,” Jens Stoltenberg said.
The UK said Russia was bringing in between 1,200 and 2,000 troops from Georgia as reinforcements.
Moscow said on Tuesday that it would reduce military activity in northern Ukraine and focus on “liberating” the Donbas region in the south-east.
Mr Stoltenberg said Russia’s aim of pursuing a military outcome had not changed.
#Ukraine: A retreating Russian convoy in #Chernihiv Oblast was ambushed by Ukrainian forces, apparently striking an MT-LB with RPG and small arms fire. pic.twitter.com/mAPO4fBkEy
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 1, 2022
Few brands are more valuable than that owned by the shareholders of The Walt Disney Company, one that now is being shattered. In 2020, Forbes rated it as number seven in the world in value. But I think this may actually understate the standing of the Disney brand. Few people would want to take a vacation at a Google resort or take a Microsoft cruise, but the allure of Disney’s brand is enough to attract vacationers from all over the world. Disney theme parks exist in the United States (2), France, China (2), and Japan, and these attract visitors from many other countries, many bringing their children along, others seeking to recapture the joys of their childhood.
The United Nations recently named March 15—also rather ominously known as the Ides of March—as “the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.” In doing so, they have accepted and seek to mandate the idea that whatever fear (literally, phobia) non-Muslims have of Islam is unfounded and irrational and therefore must be “combatted.”
In reality, aversion to Islam is not new or something that “just happened”; nor is it a byproduct of temporal circumstances (say, resentment towards Muslims due to the terror strikes of 9/11, etc.). Instead, it is something that all rational non-Muslims have felt from the very inception of Islam in the seventh century.
There’s something heartening about the way corporate America has rushed to cut ties with its operations in Russia. But the quick, sweeping moves offer a strange contrast to the way corporate America has rarely if ever uttered a critical word about the government of China despite its ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs, its human-rights abuses, its oppression of Hong Kong, its threats toward Taiwan, etc.
In fact, corporate America might be getting tough on the Russian government in hopes that people forget how much it has groveled to Beijing and obeyed the wishes of the equally autocratic, equally aggressive and abusive Chinese government.
The last of 47 police officers to be investigated over their handling of historic allegations of child sex abuse in Rotherham has been cleared of misconduct.
Former Det Sgt David Walker had been accused of not following up tip-offs about grooming gangs in the town.
A misconduct panel found he had acted appropriately with any information.
Rotherham MP Sarah Champion said the result would be a “bitter disappointment” for abuse victims.
Has Putin’s invasion of Ukraine punctured populism in western democracies? Last week I looked for evidence in recent polling, but there was no clear pattern. While support for some populists is down, support for others is up.
However, my focus was on Right-wing populism alone. I didn’t consider the populists at the other extreme of the political spectrum — or, if you prefer, the other side of the horseshoe. In some European countries, the parties of the anti-establishment Left are a significant presence. Many of them are characterised by a foreign policy platform that, if not explicitly pro-Putin, is anti-NATO.
The Left and violence at the Oscars.
Mea culpa. Last Friday I predicted here that the Sunday night Oscar ceremony would be wall-to-wall political rants, virtue signaling, celebrations of diversity, and lame, politically correct comedy.
For the first couple of hours of the show, that was true. The attempts at humor by the hosts – Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall – might well have been scripted by Amy’s cousin Chuck. Amy’s first joke was about the (fictitious) gender pay gap: “This year the academy hired three women to host, because it’s cheaper than hiring one man.” Then she took a gratuitous jab at an aging straight white male: “Look at Timothee Chalamet,” she said as the camera focused on 67-year-old J.K. Simmons. “What happened?”
Why won’t we talk about the heroism of the Ukrainian people?
There is something strange and unsettling about the media coverage of the war in Ukraine. We talk about the war constantly but we never see it. Sure, we see parts of it. We see shaky mobile-phone footage of Russian missiles hitting buildings. We see burnt-out tanks. And of course we see columns of refugees. We see mothers puffy-faced from crying and children clasping battered dolls. We see that kind of thing – the terrible residue of war – all the time. But the actual war? It seems oddly absent. It’s almost as if the war is just the mise-en-scene, the backdrop to the stories the media really want to tell about the suffering of women and children, and the goodness of us in the West who are taking them in.
The top U.S. general in Europe believes one of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine is because he thought he might have been able to exploit potential divisions in NATO caused by the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan.
Gen. Tod Wolters, the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, made the comments in front of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, after Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, asked why Putin decided to invade on Feb. 24 rather than some other time since 2014.
