Allies turn off Russian energy, Ukraine fears 300 dead in theatre – Newstrends
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Allies turn off Russian energy, Ukraine fears 300 dead in theatre

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Provided by AFP :Images of destruction in Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol

The United States and EU announced Friday a new drive to wean Europe off Russian gas imports and so choke off the billions in revenues that are fuelling Moscow’s ruinous war against Ukraine.

A clearer scale of the ruin emerged from Ukraine’s besieged port city of Mariupol, which a month into the invasion now resembles scenes of Russian cities razed by the Nazis in World War II.

Authorities said some 300 civilians may have died in a Russian air strike on a theatre-turned-bomb shelter last week, in what would be the invasion’s single bloodiest attack.

After a trio of summits in Brussels, US President Joe Biden warned that NATO would “respond” if Russia’s Vladimir Putin resorts next to chemical weapons as part of his aggression against a Western-leaning democracy.

“The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use,” Biden said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Biden of seeking to “divert attention”, and also denied Ukrainian claims that Russia had broken international law by dropping incendiary phosphorus bombs on civilians.

Biden and EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announced a joint energy task force in Brussels, before he headed to the eastern Polish town of Rzeszow, a mere 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Ukraine.

Taken together, Western sanctions are “draining Putin’s resources to finance this atrocious war”, von der Leyen told reporters alongside Biden.

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On the battlefield, Moscow said it had destroyed Ukraine’s largest remaining military fuel depot, at Kalynivka near the capital Kyiv, using sea-borne cruise missiles.

‘Bodies lying there’ 

Fireballs leapt into the air from the storage facility, while a smaller fire blazed from a severed fuel line and a huge plume of black smoke rose over the site, AFP reporters at the scene said.

“Fortunately, there were no casualties,” a security guard said at a checkpoint near the depot, asking not to be identified.

But in the east, Russian strikes targeting a medical facility in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv killed four civilians and wounded several others, police said.

“I had gone out looking for bread. There were explosions. When I came back there were four bodies lying there, with relatives crying by their side,” 71-year-old Mykola Hladkiy told AFP.

Several residents said cluster munitions were used, and AFP journalists saw large fires after other strikes in Kharkiv.

NATO, European Union and G7 leaders in Brussels shied away from impassioned demands by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for more advanced weapons systems to take the fight to the invaders.

He underlined the toll inflicted by incessant Russian bombardment of cities such as the southern port of Mariupol — where authorities said a horrifying picture was emerging from the Drama Theatre.

Up to 1,000 civilians were said to be sheltering in the theatre when it was flattened by a Russian bomb last week. Ukraine said efforts to dig people out of the ruins were hampered by relentless bombardment.

“From eyewitnesses, information is emerging that about 300 people died in the Drama Theatre of Mariupol following strikes by a Russian aircraft,” Mariupol city hall wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine re-occupying towns 

Zelensky says nearly 100,000 people are trapped without food, water or power in the besieged city.

Addressing the EU summit late Thursday by video feed, he thanked countries including Poland and Estonia for their support, noted German backing came “a little later” — and singled Hungary out for censure.

“You have to decide for yourself who you are with,” Zelensky told Hungary’s right-wing populist leader Viktor Orban, who has close ties to Moscow.

“Listen, Viktor, do you know what’s going on in Mariupol?” he added.

While Mariupol is now a charred ruin, Western defensive systems including shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles have helped Ukraine’s armed forces hold their line.

“Ukrainian counter-attacks, and Russian forces falling back on overextended supply lines, has allowed Ukraine to re-occupy towns and defensive positions up to 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of Kyiv,” Britain’s defence ministry said in a daily update.

After several rounds of sanctions banished Russia from much of Western finance, Ukraine’s EU allies broadened their economic offensive to energy, which largely powers European homes and industry.

Biden and von der Leyen said the United States would strive to help supply Europe with an extra 15 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas this year — replacing one-third of supplies from Russia.

Germany, Moscow’s biggest customer in Europe, said it would halve Russian oil imports by June and end all coal deliveries by the autumn.

“The first important milestones have been reached to free us from the grip of Russian imports,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck said.

3.7 million refugees 

In Poland, Biden will meet members of the US 82nd Airborne Division, part of NATO’s increasingly muscular deployment to its eastern flank.

He will also receive a briefing on the dire humanitarian situation in Ukraine, which nearly 3.7 million people have fled, mostly to Poland.

The UN believes that more than half of Ukraine’s children have already been driven from their homes, “a grim milestone that could have lasting consequences for generations to come”, according to Unicef chief Catherine Russell.

In the flashpoint town of Irpin on Kyiv’s north-western outskirts, little Daria played with her dinosaur mittens as a yellow evacuation bus took her family and others away. It was her fourth birthday on Thursday.

“We were planning some candles and a cake, but we had to leave it there,” said Daria’s mother Susanna Sopelnikova, 29, holding her tightly on her lap.

“We stayed in the basement for about three weeks, then we decided to leave,” said Sopelnikova, as Daria’s six-year-old brother Yehor sat silently next to their father Anatolii to the distant boom of shelling.

After the Putin regime imposed an information blackout on its “special military operation”, most Russians are unaware of the true picture of fighting in Ukraine.

But an exhibition of 24 shocking images opened on Friday at a train station in Lithuania used by Russians transiting from the exclave of Kaliningrad.

On some of the pictures, exhibited at the height of the carriage windows, an inscription read: “Today, Putin is killing the peaceful population of Ukraine. Do you approve of this?”

AFP

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EU approves 1st retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports

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U.S President Donald Trump

EU approves 1st retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports

EU member states on Wednesday approved initial retaliatory tariffs of 10 per cent to 25 per cent on U.S. imports, which the European Commission says will be implemented next week.

This includes special levies on items such as jeans and motorcycles from the United States, while U.S.-made whiskey and other alcoholic beverages were removed from the commission’s proposed list.

Further counter-tariffs are due to be imposed in mid-May and at the end of the year, affecting products including beef, poultry and citrus fruits such as oranges or grapefruit.

Additional tariffs on nuts and soybeans are planned for early December.

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The tariffs approved on Wednesday are in response to the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium imports imposed about a month ago.

According to EU calculations, the U.S. measures affect exports worth 26 billion euros (28.8 billion U.S. dollars).

The measures being imposed by Brussels target goods worth approximately 21 billion euros, according to EU sources.

The EU has stressed its preference for negotiations rather than escalating the trade dispute.

Work is still under way on a further package of measures in response to the tariffs on cars and almost all other EU exports to the U.S. more recently announced by President Donald Trump.

Trump’s tariff policy aims to correct alleged trade imbalances and shift production to the United States, while partially offsetting tax cuts promised during his election campaign.

EU approves 1st retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports
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Israeli strikes kill 20 in fresh attack on Gaza

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Israeli strikes kill 20 in fresh attack on Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a residential building in the Shujaiya area of Gaza City killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, as the military said they were looking into the attack.

The agency’s spokesman, Mahmud Bassal told AFP the strike resulted in “20 martyrs and more than 40 injured” and the search for bodies in the rubble was ongoing.

Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said on Wednesday that at least 1,482 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,846.

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Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP on Tuesday that it was “necessary to reach a ceasefire” in Gaza.

He added that “communication with the mediators is still ongoing” but that “so far, there are no new proposals”.

Badran said Hamas “is open to all ideas that would lead to a ceasefire and stop the genocide enacted against our Palestinian people”.

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from captivity in Gaza.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack on Israel, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

 

Israeli strikes kill 20 in fresh attack on Gaza

AFP

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Dominican Republic: At least 98 die in club roof collapse

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Dominican Republic: At least 98 die in club roof collapse

A nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday claimed at least 98 lives and left another 160 others injured.

Hundreds of people along with VIPs had been attending a meringue concert at an iconic nightclub when the collapse took place.

Crews were on Tuesday searching for potential survivors under the rubble at the one-story Jet Set nightclub in Santo Domingo.

What the rescuers said “We presume that many of them are still alive, and that is why the authorities here will not give up until not a single person remains under that rubble,” said Juan Manuel Méndez, director of the Center of Emergency Operations.

Among the victims was Nelsy Cruz, the governor of the northwestern Montechristi, as was former Major League baseball player Octavio Dotel.

Reports in the country say merengue singer Rubby Perez, who was performing at the venue, died as a result of the collapse, but Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the Emergency Operations Center, said forensics experts had “not confirmed that they found the body.”

Legislator Bray Vargas was among those injured.

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“It was sudden. I thought it was an earthquake, so I threw myself to the ground and covered my head,” said Enrique Paulino, manager of the singer.

“One of our saxophonists is dead, we tried to get to the area where Rubby was but there was too much debris there,” he said.

Local media said there were between 500 and 1,000 people in the club when the disaster happened.

‘Main objective is to save lives’ Dominican President Luis Abinader posted on the X social media platform that all rescue agencies are “working tirelessly” to help those affected.

“We deeply regret the tragedy that occurred at the Jet Set nightclub. We have been following the incident minute by minute since it occurred,” he wrote.

“All relief agencies have provided the necessary assistance and are working tirelessly in the rescue efforts. Our prayers are with the affected families.”

Abinader visited the scene and hugged people looking for friends and family, some with tears streaming down their faces. He did not speak to reporters.

“The main objective is to save lives… We are deeply affected,” he said on his arrival.

Dominican Republic: At least 98 die in club roof collapse

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