World
Twitter sues to force Musk to complete his $44B acquisition
Twitter sued Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday, trying to force him to complete his $44 billion takeover of the social media company by accusing him of “outlandish” and “bad faith” actions that have caused the platform irreparable harm and “wreaked havoc” on its stock price.
Back in April, Musk pledged to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter, which agreed to those terms after reversing its initial opposition to the deal. But the two sides have been bracing for a legal fight since the billionaire said Friday that he was backing away from his agreement to buy the company.
Twitter’s lawsuit opens with a sharply-worded accusation: “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the suit stated.
Twitter filed its lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, which frequently handles business disputes among the many corporations, including Twitter, that are incorporated there.
As part of the April deal, Musk and Twitter had agreed to pay each other a $1 billion breakup fee if either was responsible for the deal falling through. The company could have pushed Musk to pay the hefty fee but is going farther than that, trying to force him to complete the full $44 billion purchase approved by the company’s board.
Read: Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter deal gets board endorsement
“Oh the irony lol,” Musk tweeted after Twitter filed the lawsuit, without explanation.
The arguments and evidence laid out by Twitter are compelling and likely to get a receptive ear in the Delaware court, which doesn’t look kindly on sophisticated buyers with highly-paid legal advisers backing off of deals, said Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College.
“They make a very strong argument that this is just buyer’s remorse,” Quinn said. “You have to eat your mistakes in the Delaware Chancery Court. That’s going to work very favorably for Twitter.”
Musk alleged Friday that Twitter has failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts on its service. Twitter said last month that it was making available to Musk a ″fire hose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.
Also read: Looming Musk-Twitter legal battle hammers company shares
The company has said for years in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake. Musk is also alleging that Twitter broke the acquisition agreement when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team.
Twitter’s suit repeatedly emphasizes Musk’s contemplation of starting a Twitter competitor -- an alternative option he sometimes aired publicly and sometimes privately to Twitter’s executives and board members. While the company has said it cooperated in providing the data he requested on fake “spam bot” accounts, the lawsuit suggests Twitter was concerned that disclosing too much “highly sensitive information” could expose the company to competitive harm if shared.
The biggest surprise for Quinn was how much evidence Twitter has -- for instance, communications with Musk about whether to retain or lay off employees, as well as the billionaire’s own public tweets -- to reject his arguments for backing out.
“They are marshaling many of Musk’s own tweets to hoist him on his own petard,” he said.
In a joint press release announcing the acquisition deal, Musk pledged to “unlock” the social media company’s potential by loosening restrictions on speech and rooting out fake accounts. Among his most attention-grabbing promises was to let former President Donald Trump back onto the platform. Musk argued that Twitter’s ban of Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was “morally bad” and “foolish in the extreme.”
But his confidence didn’t last long. Tesla’s stock — Musk’s primary source of wealth — plummeted amid a broader stock market selloff in May, and Musk soon seemed less enthusiastic about owning Twitter.
“For Musk, the best case is he pays the $1 billion breakup fee but that appears very unlikely,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives. “The irony is that Twitter as a fiduciary is clearly looking to enforce a deal that Musk doesn’t want to get done. It’s like buying a house you don’t want.”
Twitter’s suit calls Musk’s tactics “a model of hypocrisy,” noting that he had emphasized plans to take Twitter private in order to rid it of spam accounts. Once the market declined, Twitter said, “Musk shifted his narrative, suddenly demanding ‘verification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform, and claiming a burning need to conduct ‘diligence’ he had expressly forsworn.”
Similarly, the company charges that Musk operated in bad faith, accusing him of requesting company information in order to accuse Twitter of providing “misrepresentations” about its business to regulators and investors.
Musk “has been acting against this deal since the market started turning, and has breached the merger agreement repeatedly in the process,” the suit charged. “He has purported to put the deal on ‘hold’ pending satisfaction of imaginary conditions, breached his financing efforts obligations in the process, violated his obligations to treat requests for consent reasonably and to provide information about financing status, violated his non-disparagement obligation, misused confidential information, and otherwise failed to employ required efforts to consummate the acquisition.”
Jan. 6 probe: Trump sets rally after ‘unhinged’ WH meeting
In a heated, “unhinged” dispute, Donald Trump fought objections from his White House lawyers to a plan, eventually discarded, to seize states’ voting machines and then, in a last ditch effort to salvage his presidency, summoned supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol for what turned into the deadly riot, the House Jan. 6 committee revealed Tuesday.
In another disclosure, raising the question of witness tampering, the panel’s vice-chair said Trump himself had tried to contact a person who was talking to the committee about potential testimony. And still more new information revealed that Trump was so intent on making a showing at the Capitol that his aides secretly planned for a second rally stage there on the day of the attack.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, said it had notified the Justice Department that Trump had contacted the witness who has yet to appear in public.
“We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously,” said Cheney, a Wyoming Republican.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley declined to comment when asked if the department was investigating the call.
The hearing Tuesday was the seventh for the Jan. 6 committee, which is portraying the defeated Trump as “detached from reality,” clinging to false claims of voter fraud and working feverishly to reverse his election defeat. It all led to his “be there, will be wild” tweet summoning supporters to Washington.
The panel delved into a critical three weeks of secret planning in the run-up to the Capitol attack and heard remorseful testimony from an Ohio father who believed Trump’s election lies and answered the defeated president’s tweet to come to Washington. The panel also heard form a former spokesman for the extremist Oath Keepers who warned of the far-right group’s ability for violence.
Read: 1/6 panel: Told repeatedly he lost, Trump refused to go
“I think we need to quit mincing words about just talk. ... What it was going to be was an armed revolution,” said Jason Van Tatenhove. “I mean, people died that day.”
Tuesday’s session focused in part on December 2020, a time when many Republicans were moving on from the November election Trump lost to Joe Biden. Testimony brought out details of a late night Dec. 18 meeting at the White House with Trump’s private lawyers suggesting he order the U.S. military to seize state voting machines in an unprecedented effort to pursue his false claims of voter fraud .
The panel featured new video testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel at the time, recalling the explosive meeting when Trump’s outside legal team brought a draft executive order to seize the states’ voting machines — a “terrible idea,” Cipollone said.
“That’s not how we do things in the United States,” he testified.
Another former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, called the meeting “unhinged” in separate video testimony.
Cipollone and other White House officials scrambled to intervene as Trump met late into the night with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, retired national security aide Michael Flynn and the former head of the online retail company Overstock. It erupted in shouting and screaming, another aide testified.
“Where is the evidence?” Cipollone demanded of the claims of voter fraud.
“What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts,” testified another official, Eric Herschmann.
But Trump was intrigued and essentially told his White House lawyers that at least Powell and outside allies were trying to do something.
As night turned to morning, Trump tweeted his call for supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, when Congress would be tallying the Electoral College results. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump wrote.
Instantly, the extremists reacted.
The panel showed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of right-wing figures, including Alex Jones, and others vowing that Jan. 6 would be the day they would fight for the president.
Messages beaming across the far-right forums laid out plans for the big day that they said Trump was asking for in Washington. It would be a “red wedding,” said one, a reference to a mass killing in “Game of Thrones.” “Bring handcuffs.”
Several members of the U.S. Capitol Police who fought the mob that day sat stone-faced in the front row of the committee room.
Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups are now facing rare sedition charges over the siege. Nine people died the day of the attack and in its aftermath.
“This tweet served as a call to action -- and in some cases a call to arms,” said one panel member, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.
The committee revealed new details about what happened next, as planning was underway for Trump’s big rally on the Ellipse outside the White House, and aides scrambled to secretly set up a second stage outside the Capitol complex across the street from the Supreme Court.
In a Jan. 4 text message from rally organizer Kylie Kremer to Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, Kremer explains: “This stays only between us, we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the Ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol.”
Kremer warns that if the information gets out, others will try to sabotage the plans and the organizer “will be in trouble” with the National Park Service and other federal agencies.
”But POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly,’” Kremer wrote.
On the morning of Jan. 5, Trump ally Ali Alexander sent a similar text to a conservative journalist saying: “Ellipse then US capitol. Trump is supposed to order us to capitol at the end of his speech but we will see.”
And the panel showed a draft tweet from Trump, which was obtained from the National Archives and never sent, calling on supporters to arrive early for the rally and expect crowds.
“March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!” the draft Trump tweet said.
Committee member Murphy said, “This was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy.”
Tuesday’s was the only hearing this week, as new details emerge. An expected prime-time hearing has been rescheduled for July 21.
Cheney said the Trump team is shifting its strategy in dealings with the committee, and is now trying to shield the former president from blame, suggesting he received bad advice from “crazy” advisers or was otherwise “incapable” of understanding some of the details of the situation.
Trump is “not an impressionable child,” Cheney said. “Just like everyone else in our country he is responsible for his own actions.”
The panel also heard from a sorrowful Stephen Ayres, the Ohio father who said he got caught up in social media after the election, but has since lost his job and his house after joining the mob at the Capitol. He pleaded guilty last month to disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building.
When Trump summoned supporters to Washington, “I felt like I needed to be down here,” he testified.
Ayers hugged and apologized to the police officers after the hearing.
“The problem of politicians whipping up mob violence to destroy fair elections is the oldest domestic enemy of constitutional democracy,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Sri Lankan president flees the country amid economic crisis
The president of Sri Lanka fled the country early Wednesday, slipping away only hours before he promised to step down under pressure from protesters angry over economic chaos that has triggered severe shortages of food and fuel.
But the crisis that has gripped the island nation for months was far from over: Protesters have also demanded that prime minister go, and thousands rallied outside his office with some storming the compound. The prime minister’s office declared a nationwide state of emergency and imposed a curfew in part of the country.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife left aboard a Sri Lankan Air Force plane bound for the Maldives, the air force said in a statement.
“What Rajapaksa did — flee the country — is a timid act,” said Bhasura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old student of maritime electrical engineering, who came with friends. “I’m not celebrating. There’s no point celebrating. We have nothing in this country at the moment.”
While Rajapaksa agreed under pressure resign Wednesday, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would leave once a new government was in place.
Groups could be seen scaling the wall and entering the prime minister’s office compound as the crowds roared in support, cheering them on, waving Sri Lankan flags and tossing water bottles to those heading inside.
Police used tear gas to try to disperse the crowd but failed and more and more marched down the lane and towards the office. As helicopters flew overhead, some demonstrators held up their middle fingers.
Some protesters who appeared to be unconscious were taken to a hospital.
Read: State of emergency declared in Sri Lanka
Protesters have already seized the president’s home and office and the official residence of the prime minister following months of demonstrations that have all but dismantled the Rajapaksa family’s political dynasty, which ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades.
On Wednesday morning, Sri Lankans continued to stream into the presidential palace. A growing line of people waited to enter the residence, many of whom had traveled from outside Colombo on public transport.
Protesters have vowed to occupy the official buildings until the top leaders are gone. For days, people have flocked to the presidential palace almost as if it were a tourist attraction — swimming in the pool, marveling at the paintings and lounging on the beds piled high with pillows. At one point, they also burned the prime minister’s private home.
At dawn, the protesters took a break from chanting as the Sri Lankan national anthem blared from speakers. A few waved the flag.
Malik D’ Silva, a 25-year-old demonstrator occupying the president’s office, said Rajapaksa “ruined this country and stole our money. He said he voted for Rajapaksa in 2019 believing his military background would keep the country safe after Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks earlier that year killed more than 260 people.
Nearby, 28-year-old Sithara Sedaraliyanage and her 49-year-old mother wore black banners around their foreheads that read “Gota Go Home,” the rallying cry of the demonstrations.
“We expected him to be behind bars — not escape to a tropical island! What kind of justice is that?” Sithara said. “This is the first time people in Sri Lanka have risen like this against a president. We want some accountability.”
The air force said in a statement that it provided an aircraft with the defense ministry’s approval for the president and his wife to travel to the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean known for exclusive tourist resorts. It said all immigration and customs laws were followed.
Read: A brief history of the rise, fall of Sri Lanka’s president
The whereabouts of other family members who had served in the government were uncertain.
“This shows what befalls a leader who uses his power to the extreme,” said lawmaker Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior official of the main opposition party in Parliament, United People’s Force.
Sri Lankan lawmakers agreed to elect a new president next week but have struggled to decide on the makeup of a new government to lift the bankrupt country out of economic and political collapse.
The new president will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024, and could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.
The current prime minister is to serve as president until a replacement is chosen — a prospect that angered protesters who want Wickremesinghe out immediately.
Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in power, and it is likely Rajapaksa planned his escape while he still had constitutional immunity. A corruption lawsuit against him in his former role as a defense official was withdrawn when he was elected president in 2019.
Corruption and mismanagement have left the island nation laden with debt and unable to pay for imports of basic necessities. The shortages have sown despair among the country’s 22 million people. Sri Lankans are skipping meals and lining up for hours to try to buy scarce fuel.
Until the latest crisis deepened, the Sri Lankan economy had been expanding and growing a comfortable middle class.
Sithara said the people want new leaders who are young, educated and capable of running the economy.
“We don’t know who will come next, but we have hope they will do a better job of fixing the problems,” she said. “Sri Lanka used to be a prosperous country.”
As a restaurant manager in a hotel in Colombo, she once had a steady income. But with no tourists coming in, the hotel closed, she said. Her mother, Manjula Sedaraliyanage, used to work in Kuwait but came back to Sri Lanka a few years ago after she suffered a stroke. Now the daily medication she needs has become harder to find and more expensive, Sithara said.
The political impasse added fuel to the economic crisis since the absence of an alternative unity government threatened to delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from neighboring India and from China.
Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from government coffers for years and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but Rajapaksa acknowledged some of his policies contributed to the meltdown.
Venezuela jails 3 Americans amid US outreach
Three Americans were quietly jailed in Venezuela earlier this year for allegedly trying to enter the country illegally and now face long prison sentences in the politically turbulent nation, The Associated Press has learned.
None of the arrests have previously been reported. Two of the men — a lawyer from California and a computer programmer from Texas — were arrested in late March, just days after President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government freed two other Americans.
Venezuelan security forces nabbed lawyer Eyvin Hernandez, 44, and computer programmer Jerrel Kenemore, 52, in separate incidents in the western state of Tachira, according to a person familiar with investigations into the arrests. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the cases publicly.
Hernandez is from Los Angeles; Kenemore is from the Dallas area, but had lived in Colombia since 2019.
A third American was arrested in January, also for allegedly entering the country illegally along its lengthy border with Colombia. AP is withholding his name at the request of his family
At least eight more Americans — including five oil executives and three veterans — remain imprisoned in Venezuela, and U.S. officials insist they are being used as political bargaining chips.
The latest arrests come amid efforts by the Biden administration to unwind the Trump-era policy of punishing Maduro for what they consider his trampling on Venezuela’s democracy. Instead, Biden officials are trying to lure him back into negotiations with the U.S.-backed opposition to pave the way for free and fair elections.
As part of that still-early outreach, the U.S. has dangled the possibility of easing sanctions on the OPEC nation — a move that, over time, could also help lower oil prices, which spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The release of two Americans on March 8 was celebrated in Washington, giving a boost to the Biden administration’s outreach to Maduro. It’s not clear what impact, if any, the jailing of three more Americans will have on relations with Maduro, a close ally of Russia whom the U.S. has sanctioned and indicted on narcotics charges.
Read: White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia
The State Department confirmed the three arrests and a spokesperon said officials are advocating for the immediate release of all wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela.
Beyond any political fallout, the arrests point to what U.S. officials consider an alarming trend: the arrest of unsuspecting Americans along the Colombia-Venezuela border, a lawless area dominated by criminal gangs and leftist rebels. Americans trying to enter Venezuela without a visa are especially vulnerable.
Despite Maduro’s often fiery rhetoric against the U.S. “empire,” there’s no indication he is targeting Americans for arrest.
But with the South American country torn apart after years of political unrest, hyperinflation and devastating food shortages, Maduro’s grip on his poorly paid security forces is constrained. That’s created an opening for criminal elements and hardliners looking to spoil Maduro’s talks with the U.S.
“There’s a lot of different centers of power in Venezuela and not all of them are aligned with Maduro or share his goal of seeing talks with the U.S. advance,” said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.
In one arrest report seen by the AP, Venezuelan military counterintelligence agents substantiated their actions by citing the U.S.’s “constant threats, economic blockade, and breaking of diplomatic relations.”
Some top Venezuelan officials also justify the arrest of Americans. In a June 13 press conference announcing the arrest of another, unnamed American, Socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello said: “They have their plans against our country.”
Hernandez, who was arrested March 31, was supposed to appear in court on Monday but the hearing was postponed.
Hernandez migrated to Los Angeles as a toddler with his parents, who were fleeing civil war in El Salvador. After graduating from the University of California Los Angeles law school, he turned down lucrative jobs to instead work as a public defender representing indigent and sometimes homeless defendants, a sign of his charitable spirt, friends and relatives said.
Like Maduro, Hernandez loves salsa music and has a history of labor activism. An avid traveler, Hernandez was taking a short break from work when he traveled to Colombia, where he’s been several times before, his brother said. Right before he was due home, he accompanied a Venezuelan friend to the border. His family said it was never his intention to go to Venezuela, nor would he knowingly break the law.
Hernandez’s friend is also being held and faces the additional charge of migrant smuggling, according to the person familiar with investigation.
“My entire family deeply misses my brother,” Henry Martinez, who also lives in Los Angeles, said in a statement. “He has worked his entire career serving marginalized people and he is truly the best of us. We hope and pray that Eyvin can return home very soon from this mistaken arrest.”
Two weeks before Hernandez’s arrest, Kenemore was taken into custody in similarly murky circumstances.
According to Kenemore’s family, he had been living in Colombia for over a year with a Venezuelan woman he met online when both were getting over divorces. The two shared a small apartment where Kenemore was working remotely for a client in the U.S., but had decided to relocate to Venezuela, where his girlfriend had a home.
London’s Heathrow Airport caps daily passenger numbers
London’s Heathrow Airport is capping daily passenger numbers for the summer and telling airlines to stop selling tickets as it steps up efforts to quell travel chaos caused by soaring travel demand and staff shortages.
Britain’s busiest airport said Tuesday that it’s setting a limit of 100,000 passengers that it can handle each day through Sept. 11. The restriction is likely to result in more canceled flights even after airlines already slashed thousands of flights from their summer schedules.
U.K. aviation authorities demanded that airlines ensure they can operate without disruption over the summer, with carriers not punished for not using their valuable takeoff and landing slots. They were responding to chaotic airport scenes as passengers complained about long lineups at security, lost luggage and lengthy flight delays.
Even with that allowance, Heathrow, which had warned a day earlier that it may ask airlines to cut flights further, said it still expected more passengers than airport ground staff could handle.
“Some airlines have taken significant action, but others have not, and we believe that further action is needed now to ensure passengers have a safe and reliable journey,” Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said in an open letter to passengers.
Read: Dhaka requests London for resettlement of one lakh Rohingyas
Airlines are expected to operate flights over the summer with an overall daily capacity of 104,000 seats, or 4,000 more than Heathrow can handle, the airport said. Only about 1,500 of the 4,000 extra daily seats have been sold to passengers.
“So we are asking our airline partners to stop selling summer tickets to limit the impact on passengers,” Holland-Kaye said.
British Airways, the airline with the biggest presence at Heathrow, has already cut 11% of its scheduled flights between April and October. It didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether it would cancel more.
Virgin Atlantic, which is also based at Heathrow, said it’s “ready to deliver its full schedule this summer” but supported the airport’s “proactive measures” to reduce disruption, as long they don’t have an outsized impact on its home carriers.
Other European airports have imposed similar caps this summer. London’s Gatwick has limited daily flight numbers, while Amsterdam’s Schiphol cut its maximum daily passenger numbers by 13,500.
Booming demand for summer travel after two years of COVID-19 travel restrictions have overwhelmed European airlines and airports that had laid off tens of thousands of pilots, cabin crew, check-in staff, ground crew and baggage handlers amid the depths of the pandemic.
Heathrow has said it started a recruiting drive in November and expects security staffing to be back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of July.
“However, there are some critical functions in the airport which are still significantly under-resourced, in particular ground handlers, who are contracted by airlines to provide check-in staff, load and unload bags and turnaround aircraft,” making it a “significant constraint” to overall capacity, Holland-Kaye said.
Ukraine reports striking Russian ammunition depot in south
Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday that their forces targeted a Russian ammunition depot in southern Ukraine overnight, resulting in a massive explosion captured on social media.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command said a rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of the Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.
The precision of the strike suggested Ukrainian forces used U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to hit the area. Ukraine indicated in recent days that it might launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory in the country’s south as Russia devotes resources to capturing all of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia’s Tass news agency offered a different account of the blast in Nova Kakhovka, saying a mineral fertilizer storage facility exploded, and that a market, hospital and houses were damaged in the strike. Some of the ingredients in fertilizer can be used for ammunition.
A satellite photo taken Tuesday and analyzed by The Associated Press showed significant damage. A massive crater stood precisely where a large warehouse-like structure once stood in the city,
Ukraine now has eight of the HIMAR systems, a truck-mounted missile launcher with high accuracy, and Washington has promised to send another four.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian shelling over the past 24 hours killed at least 16 civilians and wounded 48 more, Ukraine’s presidential office said in its Tuesday morning update. Cities and towns in five southeast regions came under Russian fire, the office said.
Nine civilians were killed and two more wounded in Donetsk province, which makes up half of the Donbas. Russian rocket attacks targeted the cities of Sloviansk and Toretsk, where a kindergarten was hit, the presidential office said.
The British military said Tuesday that Russia was continuing to make “small, incremental gains” in Donetsk, where heavy fighting led the province’s governor last week to urge its 350,000 remaining residents to move to safer places in western Ukraine.
Yet many in the Donbas, a fertile industrial region in eastern Ukraine made of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, refuse — or are unable — to flee, despite scores of civilians being killed and wounded each week.
The death toll in a Russian rocket attack that struck an apartment building in Donetsk province on Saturday has risen to 34. The head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, made the announcement on social media, saying nine wounded people had been rescued from the building in Chasiv Yar.
Read:Some Ukrainians won't flee areas caught in crosshairs of war
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and its surrounding region, Russian strikes hit residential buildings, killing four civilians and wounding nine, Ukrainian officials said.
“The Russians continue their tactics of intimidating the peaceful population of the Kharkiv region,” Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote Tuesday on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities also said that Russian fire struck the southern city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday morning, hitting residential buildings. Twelve people were wounded as the result of the Russian shelling, with some of the rockets hitting two medical facilities, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.
Air raid sirens sounded Tuesday in the western city of Lviv — the first daytime sirens there in over a week — and in other areas of Ukraine as Russian forces continued to make advances.
In eastern Luhansk, “fighting continues near the villages” on the administrative border with neighboring Donetsk, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
“The Russian army burns down everything in its way. The artillery barrage doesn’t stop and sometimes continues for four to six hours on end,” Haidai said.
The British Defense Ministry's intelligence briefing said Russia had seized the Ukrainian town of Hryhorivka and continued to push toward the Donetsk province cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
“Russian forces are likely maintaining military pressure on Ukrainian forces whilst regrouping and reconstituting for further offensives in the near future,” the intelligence briefing said.
However, Russia may be relying more heavily on private military contractors, like the Wagner Group, to avoid a general mobilization, the British ministry said. Western officials have accused Wagner of using mercenaries to fight in Africa and elsewhere.
In other developments:
— The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would visit Iran next week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will travel to Tehran next Tuesday to attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, a format for Syria-related talks. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that Russia was seeking hundreds of surveillance drones from Iran, including weapons-capable ones, for use in Ukraine.
— Russian and Turkish military representatives plan to meet in Istanbul on Wednesday to discuss the transport of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said. Pyotr Ilyichyov, head of the ministry’s department for international organizations, told Russian news agency Interfax that “representatives of Ukraine, as well as U.N. (officials) in the role of observers” are also expected to take part in the talks. Ilyichyov reiterated that Moscow was ready “to assist in ensuring the navigation of foreign commercial ships for the export of Ukrainian grain.”
Sri Lanka lawmakers to pick new president but no deal on PM
Sri Lanka’s leaders agreed that lawmakers will elect a new president next week but struggled Tuesday to decide on the makeup of a new government to lift the bankrupt country out of economic and political collapse.
Desperate in the face of severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine, protesters on Saturday stormed embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home, his seaside office and the official residence of his prime minister in the most dramatic day of a three-month crisis.
Both officials said they would concede to demands that they resign: Rajapaksa promised to step down Wednesday, while Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he would leave once a new government was in place. In a possible indication of the president's next move, immigration officials said Rajapaksa's brother, who was once his finance minster, tried to leave the country on Monday night. Local media reported he was not able to.
But negotiating a new government has stymied opposition leaders — and the protesters have said they will stay put in the official buildings until their top leaders are gone. For days, people have flocked to the presidential palace turning it into almost a tourist attraction — swimming in the pool, marveling at the paintings and lounging on the beds piled high with pillows. At one point, they also burned the prime minister's private home.
A partial solution came late Monday, with lawmakers agreeing to elect a new president from their ranks in the coming days. Nominations for the post will be submitted on July 19, and a secret vote will follow in Parliament on July 20. The new president will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024.
But they have not yet decided who will take over as prime minister and fill the Cabinet. Between Rajapaksa’s expected resignation Wednesday and the vote, the prime minster will serve as president — an arrangement that is sure to further anger protesters who want Wickremesinghe out immediately.
Read: Sri Lanka's new president to be elected on July 20: speaker
The political impasse is further fueling the economic crisis since the absence of an alternative unity government threatened to delay an agreement for aid from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from neighboring India and from China.
Corruption and mismanagement have left the island nation laden with debt, unable to pay for imports of food, fuel, medicine and other necessities, causing widespread shortages and despair among its 22 million people. Sri Lanka announced in April it was suspending repayment of foreign loans due to a foreign currency shortage.
Asked whether China was talking with Sri Lanka about possible loans, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official gave no indication whether such talks were happening.
“China will continue to offer assistance as our capability allows for Sri Lanka’s social development and economic recovery,” said the spokesman, Wang Wenbin. “As to its debt to China, we support relevant financial institutions in finding a proper solution through consultation with Sri Lanka.”
On Tuesday, Sri Lanka’s religious leaders urged protesters to leave the government buildings they're occupying if Rajapaksa steps down as promised Wednesday. The protesters have vowed to wait until both Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe are out of office.
It's not clear what will happen to those men once they do step down.
Months of demonstrations have all but dismantled the Rajapaksa political dynasty, which has ruled Sri Lanka for most of the past two decades, and there is speculation the president may try to flee Sri Lanka — as apparently his brother tried to.
S. Kanugala of Sri Lanka’s Immigration and Emigration Officers’ Association said Basil Rajapaksa’s name was spotted on a list of departures from Colombo airport Monday and his officers feared for their safety if they cleared him to leave.
Kanugala said the officers withdrew from their posts and he did not know what happened to the brother. But local media reported he was prevented from leaving the country.
UN projects world population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15
The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November.
John Wilmoth, director of the U.N. Population Division, said at a news conference to release the report that the date when the U.N.’s projection line crosses 8 billion is Nov. 15.
But, he noted, “we do not pretend that that’s the actual date … and we think that the uncertainty is at least plus or minus a year.”
Nonetheless, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called 2022 a “milestone year,” with “the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.”
“This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” Guterres said in a statement. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another.”
The report projects that next year India, with a current population of 1.412 billion, will surpass China, with a current population of 1.426 billion, but Wilmoth said there is more uncertainty about that date than the Earth reaching 8 billion inhabitants on Nov. 15.
Read:Rising incomes more harmful to environment than population growth: UN report
Wilmoth said the U.N. moved the date forward from 2027, especially as a result of China’s 2020 census. India had been planning its census in 2021, but he said it was delayed because of the pandemic. The U.N. will reassess its projection after it takes place.
The U.N. projects that in 2050 the United States will remain the third most populous country in the world, behind India and China. Nigeria is projected to be No. 4, followed by Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Congo, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. Russia and Mexico, which are in the top 10 most populous countries in 2022, are projected to lose their ninth and 10th spots in 2050.
“The population of 61 countries or areas are projected to decrease by 1% or more between 2022 and 2050,” the report says.
“In countries with at least half a million population, the largest relative reductions in population size over that period, with losses of 20% or more, are expected to take place in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia and Ukraine.”
In other highlights, the report said global life expectancy improved almost 9 years from 1990 — to 72.8 years for babies born in 2019 — and is projected to reach 77.2 years in 2050 as death rates continue to decrease. But in 2021, it said, life expectancy in the world’s poorest countries lagged 7 years behind the global average.
As for gender balance, the report says, “Globally, the world counts slightly more men (50.3%) than women (49.7%) in 2022.” “This figure is projected to slowly invert over the course of the century," it says. “By 2050, it is expected that the number of women will equal the number of men.”
The share of working age people between ages 25 and 64 has been increasing in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean “thanks to recent reductions in fertility,” the report says.
The U.N. said this “demographic dividend” provides an opportunity for accelerated economic growth for those countries.
In another trend, the report said, “the population above age 65 is growing more rapidly than the population below that age.”
“As a result, the share of global population at age 65 and above is projected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050,” it said.
Wilmoth said high life expectancy and very low levels of fertility and birth rates in European countries, Japan, North America, Australia and New Zealand are driving the tendency toward rapid population aging, and eventually potential population declines.
As a result, over the next few decades, international migration “will be the sole driver of population growth in high-income countries,” the report said.
“By contrast, for the foreseeable future, population increase in low-income and lower-middle-income countries will continue to be driven by an excess of births over deaths,” it said.
Iran arrests 3rd outspoken filmmaker in escalating crackdown
Iran has arrested an internationally renowned filmmaker, several newspapers reported Tuesday, the third Iranian director to be locked up in less than a week as the government escalates a crackdown on the country's celebrated cinema industry.
Jafar Panahi, one of Iran's best-known dissident filmmakers, had gone to the prosecutor's office in Tehran on Monday evening to check on the cases of his two colleagues detained last week, when security forces scooped him up as well, the reports said.
A colleague of Panahi, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, told The Associated Press that authorities sent Panahi to Iran’s notorious Evin Prison to serve out a prison term dating back years ago.
In 2011, Panahi received a six-year prison sentence on charges of creating anti-government propaganda and was banned from filmmaking for 20 years. He was also barred from leaving the country.
However, the sentence was never really enforced and Panahi continued to make underground films — without government script approval or permits — which were released abroad to great acclaim.
Panahi has won multiple festival awards, including the 2015 Berlin Golden Bear for “Taxi,” a wide-ranging meditation on poverty, sexism and censorship in Iran, and the Venice Golden Lion in 2000 for “The Circle,” a deep dive into women's lives in Iran's patriarchal society.
The Berlin International Film Festival said it was “dismayed and outraged” to hear of Panahi's arrest.
Read: White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia
“The arrest of Jafar Panahi is another violation of freedom of expression and freedom of the arts,” the festival directors said.
His arrest came after the arrest of two other Iranian filmmakers, Mohamad Rasoulof and Mostafa al-Ahmad.
Authorities accused Rasoulof and al-Ahmad of undermining the nation’s security by voicing opposition on social media to the government’s violent crackdown on unrest in the country’s southwest.
Following the catastrophic collapse of the Metropol Building that killed at least 41 people in May, protests erupted over allegations of government negligence and deeply rooted corruption. Police responded with a heavy hand, clubbing protesters and firing tear gas, according to footage widely circulating online.
Rasoulof won the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize in 2020 for his film “There Is No Evil" that explores four stories loosely connected to the themes of the death penalty in Iran and personal freedoms under tyranny. In 2011, Rasoulof’s film “Goodbye” won a prize at Cannes but he was not allowed to travel to France to accept it.
The Cannes Film Festival sharply condemned the arrests of the three filmmakers “as well as the wave of repression obviously in progress in Iran against its artists.”
The increased pressure on filmmakers follows a wave of arrests in recent months as tensions escalate between Iran's hard-line government and the West. Security forces have arrested severalforeigners as talks to revive Tehran's nuclear accord with world powers have hit a deadlock.
Some Ukrainians won't flee areas caught in crosshairs of war
Burned-out cars and splintered trees smolder in the aftermath of a missile strike on Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine. A body lies on the ground, covered by a sheet. Wounded residents sit dazed and covered in blood. A crater has been gouged in the center of a once-calm, sunlit courtyard.
Across the beleaguered city, Valerii Ilchenko sits under the shade of the trees, working on a crossword puzzle. The 70-year-old widower now has difficulty walking, and this daily ritual in the fresh air gets him through the day.
Just last week, the governor of Donetsk province urged its 350,000 remaining residents to move to safer places in western Ukraine. But like many other civilians who have come under fire in the nearly 5-month-old war, Ilchenko has no intention of leaving — no matter how close the fighting gets.
Read: Putin extends fast-track Russian citizenship to all Ukraine
“I don’t have anywhere to go and don’t want to either. What would I do there? Here at least I can sit on the bench, I can watch TV,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in his one-room apartment where he lives alone.
Moscow and Kyiv are battling for control of the Donbas, a fertile and industrial region in eastern Ukraine where a conflict with Russia-backed separatists has raged since 2014. In recent weeks, Russia has made significant gains and is poised to fully occupy Luhansk province, which along with Donetsk province makes up the region. Attacks on key cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk have increased dramatically, killing and wounding scores of civilians weekly.
Since the war began, Ilchenko has been unable to call his son and grandson, who live in Moscow. Although he is still somewhat self-sufficient, Ilchenko is nearly immobile. Volunteers make sure he gets regular deliveries of bread, water and cigarettes; neighbors call in from time to time.
The windows of his apartment were blown out in an earlier attack. As he spoke, an air raid siren wailed. But Ilchenko smiled and shrugged.
“Where would I run to when the sirens start? I have no basement, so where? In this building, we all stay right here,” he said.
In urging the evacuation, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said it would allow the Ukrainian army to better defend towns, adding that about 80% of the region had departed by Monday.
“Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy,” Kyrylenko said, adding that shelling had intensified and was “very chaotic.”
Observers say Sloviansk and Kramatorsk could end up like Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, cities now under Russian control after bombardment so ferocious that they are practically uninhabitable.
“I will be more severe this time -- people should leave,” Kyrylenko said.
Yet for many, the urge to stay is strong, because they are retirees or have incomes so low that they fear they cannot support themselves away from what Kyrylenko called their "comfort zone.”
Others worry they won't be welcome in western Ukraine — a concern based on a perception that some of their countrymen resent the predominantly Russian-speaking easterners and blame them for the war.
A few harbor pro-Moscow sympathies — either from nostalgia for their Soviet past or from watching Russian state TV. Still others don't believe their lives will change significantly under a Russian or a Ukrainian flag.
Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Liakh told AP that whatever the motivations are for those who stay, "we see that when their homes are ruined, having only the slippers on their feet with one plastic bag, they leave. They do not think about the money.”
Like Ilchenko, Maria Savon has no plans to leave Kramatorsk. Waiting in line for food under a blinding sun, the 85-year-old is a stooped and fragile figure. When she speaks, however, her high voices rings out across the square.
“Why should I leave? Where one is born, one must die. This is our land. We are not needed there, from time immemorial. Old people, as far as I know, even ask for their native earth before they die,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.
Read:Ukraine official says Russia strikes ‘absolute terrorism’
Savon said she wants to live in a country ruled by Ukrainians — not Russians — but she also is suspicious of the West. She wants President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to cut ties with Europe and the U.S. President Joe Biden, and agree to a cease-fire with Moscow.
Her feelings illustrate the complexity of public opinion in the Donbas.
“I’ll tell you honestly, I feel sorry for the young people, the young men who are dying. I would take that Zelenskyy and tear him apart, along with Biden, with America, with all those fascists,” she said.
A retiree fishing on the Kazennyi Torets River said he loves his hometown but is too old to fight.
“Of course, it would be a shame to leave. Without the apartment, what would I leave my children? We will wait until this ends," said the man, who identified himself only as Viktor for fear of reprisal.
Then there are those like 38-year-old Lena Ravlis — both terrified to stay and terrified to go.
“Of course it is very dangerous here, but the road out is very dangerous too,” she said, citing the horrific attack in April on Kramatorsk's train station that killed 59 civilians and wounded over 100, including children.
Still, as Russian troops march west, a steady flow of people are leaving towns caught in the crosshairs of war. Hundreds depart daily on a train from Pokrovsk. Liakh, the Sloviansk mayor, said they are given food and places to stay in western Ukraine and can register for compensation.
One woman who asked to be identified only by her first name, Olena, also for security reasons, said that when she fled Sloviansk last week with her small child, she was shocked by the destruction.
“We waited too long. But finally I decided to save my child and myself. They were shelling us with every weapon in existence,” she said.
The streets of Kramatorsk are eerily quiet. Most shops have closed and the last working cafes are boarded up. This once-vibrant city with a prewar population of about 150,000 is mostly empty in anticipation of the Russian advance.
Ilchenko said he sometimes feels lonely. “It’s bad when the blues gets you, and then other times it’s fine,” he said sadly.
A former soldier in the Soviet army, he's furious at the Russians and wants them “expelled as soon as possible."
As Ilchenko spoke, his neighbor, also a solo pensioner, got ready to cook potatoes for lunch on a makeshift outdoor stove since there is no cooking gas in the district. Another woman lives on the building's top floor.
“That’s it, the rest are gone,” Ilchenko said.
“Let them leave. It’s better than getting bombed," he added. "I only wish they knew where they were going. What if it’s the same there as it is here? You can run from the bombs. But bombs are bombs, they don’t pick and choose.”