Author: AFP
Russia has ramped up pressure on Ukraine’s troops in the Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday, adding that Kyiv was doing “as much as possible” to protect its soldiers. “The Russians are clearly trying to put maximum pressure on our troops, and our military command is doing what it has to do,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv. “We are preserving the lives of our soldiers as much as possible.”
The dollar fell sharply on Tuesday, particularly against the European currency, weighed down by fears about the health of the US economy. At around 1816 GMT, the greenback was down one percent against the euro, at $1.0944, its lowest level since mid-October. “In my experience, typically, such a sharp move happens because both sides of the blade are moving” in a scissor effect, Marc Chandler of Bannockburn Global Forex told AFP, describing a “growth scare” in the United States. Currency traders are especially worried about the economic impact of the tariffs imposed or threatened by President Donald Trump in recent…
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will buy a “brand new Tesla” to show support for his top campaign donor and advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB!,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform just after midnight on Tuesday. “But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm…
Cuba has granted early release to 553 prisoners, completing a deal struck in the final days of Joe Biden’s US presidency that his successor Donald Trump later abandoned, a Supreme Court official said Monday. “The process was successfully completed,” the court’s vice president Maricela Soza Ravelo said on state television, noting that 378 applications had been filed in January and 175 in February. In one of his final official acts, Biden on January 14 removed Cuba from a US list of state terror sponsors in return for the communist island agreeing to free 553 prisoners. But six days later marked…
Ukraine will present the United States on Tuesday with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia, hours after conducting what Moscow said was a “massive” drone attack on the capital and around the country. With US President Donald Trump pushing Ukraine for an agreement to end the war that began with Russia’s invasion in 2022, the Russian military has also ramped up its attacks. The meeting due later Tuesday between Ukrainian and US officials in the Saudi port city of Jeddah will be the most senior since a disastrous White House visit last month when Trump berated Kyiv’s President…
China said Tuesday it hoped a “just and lasting solution” can be found to the three-year war between Ukraine and Russia, ahead of talks due involving Ukrainian and US officials in Saudi Arabia. “China supports all efforts that contribute to a peaceful resolution of the crisis,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning when asked about the talks at a daily news conference in Beijing. “We expect and hope that parties can reach a just and lasting solution that is acceptable to all sides,” said Mao. “China is also willing to continue to work with the international community to play a…
China warned the United Kingdom on Tuesday against “provoking tensions” in the South China Sea after its foreign minister David Lammy called Beijing’s actions in the disputed waters “dangerous and destabilising”. “The UK should respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea and refrain from provoking tensions or sowing discord over regional disputes,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a daily news conference in Beijing.
Swedish prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former national security advisor, who resigned in January, for forgetting classified documents at a hotel. Henrik Landerholm — whose appointment two years ago sparked debate due to his longstanding friendship with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — was charged with “carelessness with secret information,” the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement. The charge was over a March 2023 incident in which the former national security advisor was reported to have left classified documents behind at a hotel conference centre. The documents “concerned matters of a secret nature, the disclosure of which to a foreign…
Talks between US and Ukrainian delegations on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia are going “OK”, a senior Ukrainian official said. “The talks are going OK, a lot of questions have been discussed,” the official, who requested anonymity, told AFP of the first high-level talks between Kyiv and Washington since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky clashed with Donald Trump during an Oval Office meeting last month.
The Ukrainian presidency’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Tuesday that Russia must show “very clearly” it wants peace in Ukraine following talks with the US in Saudi Arabia. “Russia needs to say, very clearly, they want peace or not, they want to end this war, which they started or no,” Yermak told reporters on the sidelines of the meetings in Jeddah, “Today, we demonstrated to all the world that we wanted peace,” he added.