Russian drone attack kills nine in east Ukraine

Russian drone attack kills nine in east Ukraine
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, rescuers search for civilians who were killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Sumy, Ukraine, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP)
Short Url
Updated 30 January 2025
Follow

Russian drone attack kills nine in east Ukraine

Russian drone attack kills nine in east Ukraine
  • Images distributed by the emergency services showed a gaping hole in the facade of the long block of flats and rescue workers digging through debris for survivors
  • “This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media

KYIV: A Russian drone attack on a residential block killed nine people including three elderly couples in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, officials said on Thursday.
Moscow has pummelled Ukrainian cities with dozens of drones or missiles almost daily since it invaded in early 2022.
Images distributed by the emergency services showed a gaping hole in the facade of the long block of flats and rescue workers digging through debris for survivors.
“This is a terrible tragedy, a terrible Russian crime. It is very important that the world does not pause in putting pressure on Russia for this terror,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
National Police later said the search operation had been completed after 19 hours, with rescuers finding nine bodies in the ruins, while 13 people were wounded.
Among the dead were three couples — men and women between the ages of 61 and 74 — Ukrainian prosecutors said.
Those killed also included a 37-year-old woman, while her eight-year-old daughter was wounded, the Sumy prosecutor’s office said.
Sumy lies just over the border from Russia in northeastern Ukraine and has been regularly targeted by Moscow. Around 255,000 people lived there before the war.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin claims to be ready for negotiations, but this is what he actually does. Only strength works with liars,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said on social media.
Ukraine said Russian guided bombs hit the Kyiv-held town of Sudzha in the Kursk region, one of which damaged a boarding school used to house Russian residents trapped by the cross-border offensive.
“As a result of the strike, the windows of the boarding school were smashed again, the doors were broken. The elderly people will have to spend the night in the cold,” Ukraine’s military spokesman for Kursk, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, said in a video statement.
The school was damaged by air strikes earlier this month, according to Ukraine, with one woman dying after being wounded.
Dmytrashkivsky said at the time that all those housed in the school are elderly and many are disabled and ill.
Several thousand Kursk region residents remain missing since Ukraine captured territory there, prompting criticism from relatives over the slow pace of efforts to return them.
Dmytrashkivsky accused Russian officials of seeking to “destroy” Kursk residents.
The Ukrainian air force said Moscow had attacked with 81 drones, including the Iranian-designed Shahed type.
Ukraine’s air defense units downed 37 of the drones in various regions, including in Sumy and near the capital Kyiv.
In the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea, officials said Russian drones targeted the port town of Izmail, one of several important Ukrainian export hubs.
Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak on Thursday accused Russia of launching Shahed drones charged with shrapnel “to increase the number of civilian casualties.”
Separate Russian attacks killed one person and wounded 14 more, including two children, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin said it annexed in late 2022.
Ukrainian shelling of a Moscow-held village on the Dnipro River’s western bank in the southern Kherson region killed an elderly man and wounded a woman, a spokesman for the Russian authorities told TASS news agency.


Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say

Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say
Updated 21 sec ago
Follow

Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say

Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say
  • Zelensky rejected detailed US proposal for minerals deal for lack of security guarantees for Kyiv
  • Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv this week for talks with Zelensky

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: The Trump administration may seek to strike a simplified minerals deal with Ukraine to get a pact in place quickly and later negotiate detailed terms, such as how much of Ukraine’s vast resources the US would own, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. This follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rejection of a detailed US proposal last week that would have seen Washington receiving 50 percent of Ukraine’s critical minerals, which include graphite, uranium, titanium and lithium, the latter a key component in electric car batteries. That episode made clear that reaching a full deal will take time, the sources said. But US President Donald Trump wants a pact with Ukraine in place before potentially authorizing more US military support for Kyiv or moving ahead with a bid to broker formal peace talks between Ukraine and Russia to end the three-year-old war, which was triggered by Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor. Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg is in Kyiv this week to discuss the parameters of a revised pact and what Ukraine needs in return for signing. Zelensky said he would meet with Kellogg on Thursday “and it is crucial for us that this meeting — and overall cooperation with America — be constructive.”
When asked if US officials would continue to pursue a deal, a Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said about Zelensky: “Absolutely, we need to get this guy back to reality.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The push for a deal continues despite a widening rift between Trump and Zelensky. Trump denounced his Ukrainian counterpart as “a dictator without elections” on Wednesday after Zelensky said Trump was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble, a response to the US president suggesting Ukraine started the war.

The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine in the past three years , and Trump has said US investment in Ukrainian minerals could ensure “that we’re going to in some form get this money back.” He is pushing for Kyiv to grant the US mineral concessions worth $500 billion in recognition of Washington’s aid.
The sources said it is important to Trump that he can signal publicly to the American people that the US is recouping the aid.

Less ‘rapacious’
It’s unclear the extent to which the original US proposal was framed as compensation for past weapons shipments or for future installments. But Zelensky said it focused too heavily on US interests and lacked security guarantees for Kyiv. “I can’t sell our country,” he told reporters Wednesday.
A third source familiar with the matter said Ukraine is willing to make a deal with the Trump administration. Another source also said Kyiv was ready to make a deal but that it must not look as “rapacious” as the arrangement the US first proposed.
Details of the US discussions about a potential mineral deal, including who inside the administration helped draft the original proposal, are unknown.
The revised approach is just one of several being discussed at the White House on how to clinch a deal with Kyiv in the coming weeks, an unusually quick timeline for a complex sector where deals usually involve private companies and state entities, not governments.
Trump on Wednesday repeated his frustration that most US aid was grants while Europe, he said, primarily made loans. “While the United States gets nothing back, so they get their money back,” he said.
He also criticized Zelensky’s rejection of the 50-50 split, characterizing it as breaching an accord without any evidence Kyiv had actually agreed to it. “And we had a deal based on rare earth and things, but they broke that deal… they broke it two days ago,” Trump said.

’Tried, tested’ Chinese tool
A revised, simplified approach would help the United States sidestep numerous legal and logistical hurdles and give it time to negotiate the details of the development, including revenue sharing, at a later date.
“The US has not historically used natural resource-for-aid swaps, but it’s a tried and tested tool in China’s minerals playbook,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Ukraine was keenly interested in building a deeper economic and security relationship with the United States and finding a way to recognize the significant US investment already made in Ukraine’s future, said Tyson Barker, former US deputy special envoy for Ukraine’s economic recovery.
“The Ukrainians are more than willing to give extra advantages to the United States, in the form of privileged concessional access to critical mineral resources, in recognition of the billions of dollars that American taxpayers have put into Ukraine,” he said. “This is something that the Ukrainians have been strategizing about for some time.”
Barker said some similar terms would need to be offered to other countries that contributed heavily to Ukraine during the war, including Canada, Britain, Japan and the EU. But Russia also covets Ukraine’s natural resources and its forces, which have already seized a fifth of Ukraine including reserves of rare earths, are now little more than 4 miles from a giant lithium deposit. Ukraine and the United States need to discuss the fate of mineral deposits in areas captured by Russia, Zelensky has said, questioning if minerals in those areas would be given to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his partners Iran, North Korea and China.


Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police
Updated 20 February 2025
Follow

Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

MADRID: Spanish police said Wednesday they had discovered a tunnel running from Moroccan territory to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta as part of an operation targeting suspected trafficking of hashish.
The police stated the underground gallery, several dozen meters long and 12 meters deep, was uncovered during a search of a warehouse in an industrial zone of Ceuta, a small territory located on Morocco’s northern Mediterranean coast opposite mainland Spain.
“It is a narrow construction, reinforced with wood which could have been used to transport drugs between Morocco and Spain,” said a statement from the Civil Guard police force.
Spanish media reported the tunnel as measuring at least 50 meters long, running just inside Moroccan territory.
It could, however, prove even longer, with authorities yet to determine where it ends.
The discovery came during an operation targeting a number of criminal gangs accused of smuggling hashish into Spain in lorries.
The police said the crackdown, dubbed Operation Hades, has led to the arrest of 14 people over the past three weeks, including two policemen, and the discovery of 6,000 kilos of the drug.
 


Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget
Updated 20 February 2025
Follow

Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has ordered senior US military leaders to plan for expansive cuts that could slash the defense budget by eight percent annually, or some $290 billion within the next five years, US media reported Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Pentagon to develop the deep reductions, The Washington Post reported, citing a memo.

The Pentagon’s budget for 2025 is some $850 billion. Lawmakers across the political spectrum agree that the massive spending is needed to deter threats, especially from China and Russia.

The cuts, if implemented in full, would reduce that figure by tens of billions each year to some $560 billion by the end of the five years.

The report did not give details of where the cuts would be made in the world’s biggest military, but an earlier Post report said that junior civilian workers, not uniformed personnel, were being targeted.

The news — which comes after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly visited the Pentagon last week — was likely to be met with stiff resistance from both the military and Congress.

Trump on Wednesday signaled support for a House of Representatives bill that would increase the defense budget by $100 billion — a move at odds with the Hegseth-directed cuts.

The planned reductions also run counter to calls by Trump and Hegseth for NATO members to increase their military spending to five percent of GDP a year.

The United States currently spends around 3.4 percent of its GDP on defense, and the five percent threshold would be even farther out of reach if the Pentagon’s budget is reduced.

The stock prices of major US defense contractors were hit by the news, with Lockheed Martin dropping briefly before recovering, Northrop Grumann falling nearly two percent and Palantir closing down more than 10 percent.

Hegseth’s memo said the proposed cuts must be drawn up by February 24, and include 17 categories that Trump wants exempted, including operations at the US border with Mexico and modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense.

It also calls for funding for regional headquarters such as Indo-Pacific Command and Space Command.

But other major centers such as European Command, which has led the way on US strategy throughout the war in Ukraine, and also Africa Command and Central Command — which oversees operations in the Middle East — were absent from the list, the Post reported.

The Defense Department “must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday, according to the Post.

“Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit,” he reportedly continued.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to slash government spending and end US support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion.


Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump

Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump
Updated 20 February 2025
Follow

Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump

Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump
  • Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning some Democrats would need to vote for impeachment in order to remove the judge from the bench

A Republican ally of Donald Trump has moved to impeach a federal judge who blocked a team set up by the president and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing US Treasury Department systems responsible for trillions of dollars in payments. Congressman Derrick Van Orden on Tuesday filed a resolution in the House of Representatives seeking to have US District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan removed from office following calls by Musk and several conservative lawmakers for judges to be impeached after stymieing key parts of Trump’s agenda.
Van Orden’s resolution accused the judge of judicial misconduct and abuse of power.
In order to be removed from office, the House must pass by a simple majority vote an article of impeachment accusing Engelmayer of a crime and then the Senate must then vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Engelmayer, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, drew Musk’s scorn after temporarily blocking Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing Treasury Department systems in a lawsuit brought by 19 Democratic state attorneys general. That decision and rulings by other judges have prompted Trump, Musk and their conservative allies to sharply criticize judges who have ruled against the Republican president’s policies, fueling concerns about whether his administration will abide by judicial rulings.
Van Orden and Engelmayer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Judges rarely speak publicly about matters concerning pending litigation.
Trump has put Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, in charge of his efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. Musk has called for a “wave of judicial impeachments.” Two conservative lawmakers have announced plans to introduce articles of impeachment against US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, who blocked Trump’s administration from freezing federal funding, as well as Engelmayer.
Van Orden, whose reelection bid last year received Trump’s endorsement, was the first member of Congress to formally do so, accusing Engelmayer in his resolution of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. He is the resolution’s sole sponsor.
Van Orden in his resolution accused Engelmayer of ruling against DOGE and Trump “on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the president and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.”
Marin Levy, a Duke University School of Law professor who studies the federal judiciary, said impeachment under the US Constitution is supposed to be reserved for serious misconduct, not disappointment with court decisions, which can be appealed.
“Articles of impeachment filed against judges who are simply performing their constitutional role represent an attempt to politicize the judiciary and quite frankly to intimidate judges,” Levy said.
Impeachments of federal judges are rare: Only 15 have ever been impeached in US history, and only eight have been convicted by the Senate, most recently in 2010. Such impeachments in modern history have typically related to criminal or bribery offenses.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning some Democrats would need to vote for impeachment in order to remove the judge from the bench. US Chief Justice John Roberts in a year-end report issued on December 31 defending the judiciary’s independence described a threat by an unnamed elected official to impeach a judge over her decisions as a regrettable example of “recent attempts to intimidate judges.”


Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas

Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas
Updated 20 February 2025
Follow

Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas

Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas
  • About 11,840 people filed refugee claims in Canada in January, down from a high of 19,821 in July, Immigration and Refugee Board data shows
  • Canada is publicly discouraging asylum-seekers and clamping down on the visas it issues

TORONTO: Refugee claims in Canada are dropping from historic highs as the country grants fewer visas and advocates worry legitimate claimants are being left stranded with few good options.
About 11,840 people filed refugee claims in Canada in January, down from a high of 19,821 in July, Immigration and Refugee Board data shows. This was the lowest monthly figure since September 2023.
Canada is publicly discouraging asylum-seekers and clamping down on the visas it issues, aiming to gradually reduce the population and reduce strain on services amid a broader backlash against migrants.
Last year Canada issued about 1.5 million visitor visas, down from about 1.8 million in 2023, according to government data.
The decline was particularly sharp for certain countries that have been significant sources of asylum-seekers, Reuters analysis shows.
The number of visitor visas granted to Bangladeshi citizens dropped to 27,975 from 45,322; Haitians dropped to 5,487 from 8,984; Nigerians, to 51,828 from 79,378. Visitor visas to some countries with high refugee acceptance rates have declined from 2023. Last year Canada granted visitor visas to 330 Afghans, down from 468; 38,075 Iranians, down from 57,127; 2,019 Ugandans, from 6,096; 1,174 Syrians, from 2,716; and 3,199 Kenyans, from 11,464.
The number of pending claims is still at a historic high — 278,457 in January, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Canada has no asylum-seeker visas. Anyone who wants to claim refugee status must come as a visitor, student or worker — or sneak into the country, no easy feat for a place surrounded by water and an agreement with the United States to turn back asylum-seekers.
Displaced people can also wait in refugee camps, potentially for years, in hopes they will be selected for resettlement.
Canada is using heightened scrutiny of visa applications from countries with the “highest rates of abuse” with the aim of ensuring visas are used for their intended purpose, Renee LeBlanc Proctor, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Marc Miller, wrote in an email.
“This work additionally protects the asylum process ... so that it is available for those who need it most.”
At a time of global displacement, advocates argue, Canada’s clampdown leaves desperate people with no good options. “It’s very problematic,” said Diana Gallego, co-executive director at Toronto-based FCJ Refugee Center, which provides services to asylum-seekers.
“If people are fleeing persecution the only way that some of them may find safe haven is having an exit visa because, if not, they are forced to cross borders walking, putting their lives in danger.”
Gallego said the center is seeing fewer people, although she does not know if they are being sent elsewhere.
“It’s like invisible walls.”