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Kyiv endures bombardment as Russia steps up targeting of Ukrainian cities

Kyiv endures bombardment as Russia steps up targeting of Ukrainian cities
Rescuers work at the site of a building damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 25, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 26 March 2024
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Kyiv endures bombardment as Russia steps up targeting of Ukrainian cities

Kyiv endures bombardment as Russia steps up targeting of Ukrainian cities
  • Seven people were injured in the strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said
Updated 26 March 2024
AP
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KYIV: Russia launched missiles against Kyiv for the third time in five days Monday, part of an apparent escalation of aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities as the war stretches into its third year with the front line largely stationary.

Seven people were injured in the strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said.

Russia fired two ballistic missiles at Kyiv from occupied Crimea in the daylight attack, but both were intercepted above the city, said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.

The Pecherskyi district was the hardest hit. Missile debris damaged homes in two districts and a gym in another district, Ukraine’s National Police said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his appeal for Western partners to provide more air defense systems to protect against the unrelenting attacks.

“We never tire of repeating that Ukraine needs more air defense,” he said. “This is security for our cities and saved human lives.”

The attack came three days after a concert hall attack in Russia killed more than 130 people. Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to tie the attack to Ukraine, even though an affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Putin could use the Moscow attack to shore up support for the war and as a pretext to escalate attacks on Ukraine, analysts said.

Topics: Kyiv russian strikes Russia

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Zelensky accuses Russia of rejecting ceasefire as new strikes hit Ukraine

Zelensky accuses Russia of rejecting ceasefire as new strikes hit Ukraine
Updated 55 min 30 sec ago
AFP
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Zelensky accuses Russia of rejecting ceasefire as new strikes hit Ukraine

Zelensky accuses Russia of rejecting ceasefire as new strikes hit Ukraine
  • Washington has been pushing for an immediate 30-day ceasefire as a first step to ending the grinding three-year-old war
  • Vladimir Putin said a comprehensive deal would be contingent on the West halting all military aid and intelligence to Ukraine
Updated 55 min 30 sec ago
AFP

KYIV: Ukraine accused Russia on Wednesday of effectively rejecting a US-backed ceasefire proposal, reporting a barrage of strikes hours after Moscow agreed to temporarily pause attacks on energy facilities.

Washington has been pushing for an immediate 30-day ceasefire as a first step to ending the grinding three-year-old war.

But in a 90-minute call with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said a comprehensive deal would be contingent on the West halting all military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

While the highly anticipated call did not secure the breakthrough ceasefire endorsed by Ukraine last week, it did result in a scaled-back commitment to halt attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days.

According to the Kremlin, Putin has already ordered his military to pause strikes against Ukraine’s power grid for 30 days.

Russia and Ukraine will also exchange 175 prisoners each on Wednesday “as a goodwill gesture,” with further talks to take place immediately in the Middle East.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the proposed energy truce, he also said he needed more “details” from Washington.

Explosions rang out and air raid sirens wailed in Ukraine just hours after Trump and Putin spoke.

Zelensky said “there have been hits, specifically on civilian infrastructure,” including a hospital in Sumy.

“Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire.”

Ukraine authorities later said Russia had launched six missiles and dozens of drones overnight in a barrage that killed one person and damaged two hospitals.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the strikes showed that Putin was “playing a game.”

“We’ve seen that attacks on civilian infrastructure have not eased at all in the first night after this supposedly ground-breaking, great phone call,” he said.

Across the border, Russian emergency service officials said debris from a repelled Ukrainian drone attack ignited a fire at an oil depot in the village of Kavkazskaya.

Zelensky has accused Russia of not being “ready to end this war.” In Kyiv, war-weary Ukrainians were prone to agree.

“I don’t believe Putin at all, not a single word. He only understands force,” said Lev Sholoudko, 32.

Trump, who says he has an “understanding” with Putin, stunned the world in February when he had started direct talks with Russia to end the conflict, sparking fears among allies that he would capitulate to Moscow’s demands.

Trump hailed his latest call with Putin as “good and productive.”

“We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Moscow has launched devastating attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure throughout the war, while Ukraine has used drones to bomb multiple Russian oil installations.

But the Russian government said a fuller truce was dependent on its long-standing demands for a “complete cessation” of Western military and intelligence support to Ukraine’s military.

A Kremlin statement also demanded that Kyiv could not rearm or mobilize during any ceasefire.

In a televised interview after the Trump-Putin call, US envoy Steve Witkoff said ceasefire talks would pick up again Sunday in Jeddah.

He acknowledged lingering “details to work out,” including negotiations on a maritime ceasefire for the Black Sea and, eventually, a full truce.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump acknowledged that pressing Putin into a full ceasefire would be tough as “Russia has the advantage.”

Since seizing Crimea in 2014 and launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Moscow now occupies around a fifth of Ukraine.

Washington has made clear that Ukraine will likely have to cede territory in any deal.

Western allies have watched with alarm as Trump has upended years of US policy staunchly backing Ukraine, most evident in his televised shouting match with Zelensky in the Oval Office.

The UK and French governments have been cobbling together a so-called “coalition of the willing” to protect any ceasefire in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron vowed after the Kremlin statement that they would keep sending military aid to Ukraine.

“Ukraine can count on us,” Scholz said.

But soldiers on Ukraine’s front line remained doubtful peace could soon be at hand.

“How can you trust people who attack you and kill civilians, including children?” said Oleksandr, 35, who has returned to military training in the Donetsk region after being wounded in combat.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky

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NASA astronauts return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space

NASA astronauts return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space
Updated 19 March 2025
Reuters
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NASA astronauts return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space

NASA astronauts return to Earth after drawn-out mission in space
  • NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were in space for nine months due to the faulty Boeing Starliner craft
  • Issues with Starliner’s propulsion system led to cascading delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule
Updated 19 March 2025
Reuters

WASHINGTON: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida’s coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.
Their return caps a protracted space mission that was fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles, turning a rare instance of NASA’s contingency planning – and the latest failures of Starliner – into a global and political spectacle.
Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Starliner’s first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But issues with Starliner’s propulsion system led to cascading delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule and return them on a SpaceX craft this year.
On Tuesday morning, Wilmore and Williams strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the ISS at 1.05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth.
The four-person crew, formally part of NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, plunged through Earth’s atmosphere, using its heatshield and two sets of parachutes to slow its orbital speed of 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) to a soft 17 mph at splashdown, which occurred at 5:57 p.m. ET some 50 miles off Florida’s Gulf Coast under clear skies.
“What a ride,” NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander inside the Dragon capsule, told mission control moments after splashing down. “I see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear.”
The astronauts will be flown on a NASA plane to their crew quarters at the space agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of routine health checks before NASA flight surgeons say they can go home to their families.
“They will get some well-deserved time off, well-deserved time with their families,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich told reporters after the splashdown. “It’s been a long time for them.”
Political spectacle
The mission captured the attention of US President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden “abandoned” them on the ISS for political reasons.
NASA acted on Trump’s demand by moving Crew-9’s replacement mission up sooner, the agency’s ISS chief Joel Montalbano said Tuesday. The agency had swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner and sped through its methodical safety review process to heed the president’s call.
Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that Wilmore and Williams will visit the Oval Office after they recover from their mission.
Wilmore earlier this month told reporters on a call from the ISS that he did not believe NASA’s decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10’s arrival had been affected by politics under the Biden administration.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, had echoed Trump’s call for an earlier return, adding the Biden administration spurned a SpaceX offer to provide a dedicated Dragon rescue mission last year.
NASA officials have said the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS to maintain adequate staffing levels and it did not have the budget or the operational need to send a dedicated rescue spacecraft. Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million to $150 million.
Crew Dragon is the only US spacecraft capable of flying people in orbit. Boeing had hoped Starliner would compete with the SpaceX capsule before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty.
Stich said on Tuesday that Starliner might need to fly another uncrewed flight – which would be its third such mission and fourth test overall – before it routinely carries US astronauts.
Boeing, which congratulated the astronauts’ return on X, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
286 days in space
The ISS, about 254 miles in altitude, is a football field-sized research lab that has been housed continuously by international crews of astronauts for nearly 25 years, a key platform of science diplomacy managed primarily by the US and Russia.
Swept up in NASA’s routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams worked on roughly 150 science experiments aboard the station until their replacement crew launched last week.
The pair logged 286 days in space on the mission – longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of US record holder Frank Rubio, whose 371 days in space ending in 2023 were the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.
Living in space for months can affect the human body in multiple ways, from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.
Williams, capping her third spaceflight, has tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson’s 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.
“We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore told reporters from space earlier this month.
“That’s what your nation’s human spaceflight program’s all about,” he said. “Planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.”

Topics: NASA

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Supreme Court chief rebukes Trump over call for judge’s impeachment

Supreme Court chief rebukes Trump over call for judge’s impeachment
Updated 19 March 2025
AFP
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Supreme Court chief rebukes Trump over call for judge’s impeachment

Supreme Court chief rebukes Trump over call for judge’s impeachment
  • Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issues a rare public rebuke of a US president
  • Impeachment of federal judges is exceedingly rare and the last time a judge was removed by Congress was in 2010
Updated 19 March 2025
AFP

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s rumbling conflict with the judiciary burst into open confrontation on Tuesday as Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued a rare public rebuke of a US president over his call for the impeachment of a federal judge.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a brief statement.
“The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts’s extraordinary rebuke of the president came after Trump called for the impeachment of District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension over the weekend of deportation flights of alleged illegal migrants.
The White House has been sharply critical of district courts that have blocked some of the president’s executive actions.
However, this was the first time Trump has personally called for a judge’s impeachment since he took office in January, saying that Boasberg was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” he said in a Truth Social post earlier Tuesday.
Hours later, Brandon Gill, a Republican lawmaker from Texas, announced on social media platform X that he had introduced articles of impeachment in the House against Boasberg, whom he described as a “radical activist judge.”
Following Roberts’s rare statement, Trump said in another post: “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!”
Federal judges are nominated by the president for life and can only be removed by being impeached by the House of Representatives for “high crimes or misdemeanors” and convicted by the Senate.
Impeachment of federal judges is exceedingly rare and the last time a judge was removed by Congress was in 2010.
Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has a history of attacking the judges who presided over his civil and criminal cases.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, described Roberts’s intervention as “extremely rare” and recalled that the chief justice made similar remarks after Trump criticized the rulings of federal judges during his first term.
Roberts was compelled to respond at the time by saying the federal bench “does not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges, or Clinton judges,” Tobias said.
Boasberg ordered a suspension on Saturday to the deportation flights taking alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador, where they were put in prison.
The White House invoked little-used wartime legislation known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as legal justification for the move.
However, no evidence has been made public to confirm the deportees were gang members or even in the country illegally.
Boasberg held a hearing on Monday on whether the White House had deliberately ignored his orders by carrying out the flights.
Justice Department lawyers told the judge the more than 200 Venezuelan migrants had already left the United States when he issued a written order barring their departure.
Boasberg no longer had jurisdiction once the planes had left US airspace, they claimed.
The Justice Department had previously filed a motion with an appeals court seeking to have the judge removed from the case for allegedly interfering with the president’s lawful “conduct of foreign policy.”
Trump, in his Truth Social post earlier Tuesday, said Boasberg “was not elected President.”
“I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY,” he wrote.
The Yale-educated Boasberg, 62, was appointed to the DC Superior Court by president George W. Bush, a Republican, and later named a district court judge by Obama, a Democrat.
The White House has repeatedly lashed out following court rulings it disagrees with, such as the rejection of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Trump’s bid to amass power in the executive has increasingly raised fears he will openly defy the judiciary, triggering a constitutional crisis.

Topics: Trump Returns Donald Trump

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Pope pens letter to the editor while in hospital as Buckingham Palace announces King Charles’ visit

Pope pens letter to the editor while in hospital as Buckingham Palace announces King Charles’ visit
Updated 19 March 2025
AP
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Pope pens letter to the editor while in hospital as Buckingham Palace announces King Charles’ visit

Pope pens letter to the editor while in hospital as Buckingham Palace announces King Charles’ visit
  • Italian daily Corriere della Sera published a letter to the editor from Francis, signed and dated March 14 from Rome’s Gemelli hospital
Updated 19 March 2025
AP

ROME: Pope Francis said in a letter published Tuesday that his lengthy illness has helped make “more lucid” to him the absurdity of war, as his top deputy rejected any suggestion of resignation and Buckingham Palace announced plans for an upcoming audience with Britain’s King Charles III.
Italian daily Corriere della Sera published a letter to the editor from Francis, signed and dated March 14 from Rome’s Gemelli hospital where the 88-year-old pontiff has been treated since Feb. 14 for a complex lung infection and double pneumonia.
In it, Francis renewed his call for diplomacy and international organizations to find a “new vitality and credibility.” And he said that his own illness had also helped make some things clearer to him, including the “absurdity of war.”
“Human fragility has the power to make us more lucid about what endures and what passes, what brings life and what kills,” he wrote.
Responding to a letter from the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Luciano Fontana, Francis also urged him and all those in the media to “feel the full importance of words.”
“They are never just words: they are facts that shape human environments. They can connect or divide, serve the truth or use it for other ends,” he wrote. “We must disarm words, to disarm minds and disarm the Earth.”
The letter was published as Francis registered slight improvements in his treatment and as the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, shot down any suggestion the pope might resign.
“Absolutely no,” Parolin told journalists on Monday when asked if he and the pope had discussed a resignation. Parolin has visited Francis twice during his hospitalization, most recently on March 2, and said he found Francis better than during his first Feb. 25 visit.
Also on Tuesday, Francis received a standing ovation from the Italian Senate, after Premier Giorgia Meloni sent her greetings and said “not just this chamber, but all of the Italian people″ wish the pope a full recovery “as soon as possible.”
Meloni, who was the first outsider to visit the pope after he was hospitalized, said that “even in a trying moment, his strength and guidance have been felt.”
Francis for the second day spent some time off high flows of oxygen and used just ordinary supplemental oxygen delivered by a nasal tube, the Holy See press office said Tuesday. In addition, for the first time in several weeks he didn’t use the noninvasive mechanical ventilation mask at night at all, to force his lungs to work more.
While those amount to “slight improvements,” the Vatican isn’t yet providing any timetable on when he might be released. That said, Buckingham Palace announced Monday that King Charles III was scheduled to meet with Francis on April 8 at the Vatican, assuming he is back and well enough.
Such state visits are always closely organized with Parolin’s office. However, the Vatican press office on Tuesday declined to confirm the visit, noting that the Holy See only confirms papal audiences shortly before they happen.
The developments came as the Vatican released some details on the first photograph of Francis released since his hospitalization. The image, taken Sunday from behind, showed Francis sitting in his wheelchair in his private chapel in prayer without any sign of nasal tubes.
The photo, showing Francis wearing a Lenten purple stole, followed an audio message the pope recorded March 6 in which he thanked people for their prayers, his voice soft and labored.
Together, they suggested Francis is very much controlling how the public follows his illness to prevent it from turning into a spectacle. While many in the Vatican have held up St. John Paul II’s long and public battle with Parkinson’s disease and other ailments as a humble sign of his willingness to show his frailties, others criticized it as excessive and glorifying sickness.
The image certainly reassured some well-wishers who came to Gemelli to pray for Francis, who is recovering in the 10th-floor papal suite reserved for popes.
“After a month of hospitalization, finally a photo that can assure us that his health conditions are better,” said the Rev. Enrico Antonio, a priest from Pescara.
But Benedetta Flagiello of Naples, who was visiting her sister at Gemelli, wondered if the photo was even real.
“Because if the pope can sit for a moment without a mask, without anything, why didn’t he look out the window on the 10th floor to be seen by everyone?” she asked. “If you remember our old pope (John Paul II), he couldn’t speak up, but he showed up.”

Topics: Pope Francis

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Trump administration releases over 1,100 JFK files

Trump administration releases over 1,100 JFK files
Updated 19 March 2025
AP
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Trump administration releases over 1,100 JFK files

Trump administration releases over 1,100 JFK files
  • President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the release was coming, though he estimated it at about 80,000 pages
  • There is an intense interest in details related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories
Updated 19 March 2025
AP

DALLAS: Unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released Tuesday evening.
More than 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the website of the US National Archives and Records Administration. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination had previously been released.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the release was coming, though he estimated it at about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
There is an intense interest in details related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
Here are some things to know:
Trump’s order
Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination
He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s top health official. He’s the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle’s assassination.
Nov. 22, 1963
When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.
But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.
The JFK files
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.
The National Archives says that the vast majority of its collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have already been released.
Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part. And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.
Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
What’s been learned
Some of the documents from previous releases have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban Embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September. The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.

Topics: JFK assassination

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