world
Former Pakistani President Rafiq Tarar dies at 92
Rafiq Tarar, a former Pakistani judge who served as the country’s President from 1997 to 2001, died on Monday in the eastern city of Lahore after a prolonged illness at the age of 92.
Tarar’s grandson, Azam Tarar, announced on Twitter that his grandfather had died.
Pakistan’s President Arif Ali, Prime Minister Imran Khan and prominent politicians expressed their grief, along with the country’s military chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Tarar was elected the country’s president after the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif backed him in the presidential election in 1997. Tarar was a close friend of Sharif, who won the parliamentary elections in 1997.
Read: UN court hearings to open in Ukraine case against Russia
Sharif was ousted from power by a former military dictator Pervez Musharraf in 1999 in a bloodless coup. However, Musharraf allowed Tarar to continue working as President until 2001 when he forced Tarar to resign and replaced him.
Musharraf is currently living in self-imposed exiled in Dubai after being forced to resign in 2008 when politicians backing him lost parliamentary elections. Sharif, who was ordered out in 2017 by a court over charges of corruption, has been living in exile in London.
At Romania hotel, ballroom welcomes refugees fleeing Ukraine
As Olga Okhrimenko walked into a bustling ballroom-turned-refugee shelter at a four-star Romanian hotel, her corgi, Knolly, strained at the leash anxiously seeking the warmth inside. It had taken them three days to flee Ukraine by car, bus and taxi in the bitter cold.
The 34-year-old Ukrainian marketing manager could hardly contain her emotions, and a simple “are you OK?” filled her eyes with tears she thought she no longer had.
The first refugees began arriving more than a week ago at the Mandachi Hotel and Spa in Suceava in Romania, where the owner decided to make the lavish, 850-square-meter ballroom available to them. Since then, more than 2,000 people and 100 pets have taken shelter here, with row upon row of numbered mattresses under an incongruous glittering disco ball.
They are part of the swiftest refugee exodus so far this century, in which more than 1.5 million people have fled Ukraine in just 10 days, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Since the war started on Feb. 24, more than 227,000 Ukrainians have crossed into neighboring Romania, according to local authorities.
Like Okhrimenko, some of the refugees at the Mandachi have fled cities on the front lines of the war.
“Whenever somebody asks me where I am from, and I say Kharkiv, their expression, it’s like I arrived from Hiroshima,” Okhrimenko told The Associated Press from mattress number 60. “Then, I remember everything going on there and I break down.”
Read: Russia sets ceasefire for evacuations amid heavy shelling
After five days of shelling, she decided to flee Kharkiv on March 1 with Knolly, a couple of friends and their two cats. Their car passed by the city’s central Freedom Square just 20 minutes before it was engulfed by a giant ball of fire in a Russian military strike.
“It was difficult for me before to say I’m a great patriot of my land,” she said. “But on Feb. 24, I became one 100%.”
As she spoke, volunteers on megaphones interrupted several times to announce buses leaving for Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and other European nations. The room was chaotic, filled mostly with women and children, as men stayed in Ukraine to fight. Some spoke Russian, underlining the sense of a war on family.
The majority of the refugees were Ukrainian, but there were also Nigerians, Moroccans, Italians, Chinese and Iranians. Toddlers cried in the arms of exhausted mothers, who took deep breaths to calm their children and themselves. Cats and dogs of all sizes shared beds with their owners, and one stressed Chihuahua with bulging eyes bit anyone who attempted to pet it.
Some 300 volunteers, translators and social workers take turns to help here. In the mornings, they change the mismatched sheets on vacated mattresses, placing a “reserved” or “free” handwritten sign over them. In the reception area, the two bars display not alcohol but an array of diapers, toothbrushes, snacks and even surgical masks and disinfectant gel.
At the opposite end of the King Salon, at mattress number 82 near stacks of red velvet chairs, 85-year-old Nellya Nahorna sat in silence combing her gray hair with her fingers.
It was the second time this Ukrainian grandmother had fled war. In 1941, when she was just 4 years old, Nahorna was injured by shrapnel in Nazi Germany’s invasion of Ukraine, she said.
“The first night of the war, my mother grabbed me from my cradle and ran to take the last car that carried the wounded to the border,” Nahorna recalled in a soft, low voice.
Now, more than 80 years later, it was her daughter, 57-year-old Olena Yefanova, who grabbed her on the first day of the war and crossed the border. They came from the town of Zaporizhzhia, where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was hit by Russian shelling last week.
“This war is different,” Nahorna said in Russian. In World War II, the enemies were German “fascists,” she said. But now, she was fleeing from her “brothers.” They had to make stops along the way to get her a Ukrainian passport.
“I would like to tell the Russian mothers .... help by keeping your sons right next to yourselves and don’t let them fight and attack other countries,” Nahorna said.
In an astonishing accomplishment, the same grandmother who leaned on a cane to make it from her mattress to a table a few steps away had walked the last 5 km (3 miles) to Romania by foot. At one point, Nahorna’s heart seemed like it was giving up, and a doctor gave her some pills so she could continue, her daughter said.
“My mother clenched her will into a fist and left,” Yefanova said proudly. “She understood that this is going to be hard but she took it steadfastly.”
Yefanova had left her husband and one son behind, enlisted to fight the Russians. She wept as she showed a photo of them on her phone screensaver.
Read: Macron keeps an open line to Putin as war in Ukraine rages
“Our kids play a game called little tanks - (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is playing his own version of this game,” she said. “And he is (using) his people in this game.”
A row behind Yefanova on mattress 34, Anna Karpenko thought of her partner as their 6-year-old son played with a yellow balloon.
Before she left him at their home in Chornomorsk, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s biggest port city of Odesa, he promised they would get married after the war. But “when we said goodbye, it felt like it was forever,” Karpenko said, wiping tears from her eyes.
Normally, she said, she’s an optimistic person. Now she and her son both cry every day.
Russian ships have made repeated attempts to fire on the Black Sea port of Odesa, according to Ukrainian officials. Karpenko said people in her town had gathered on beaches to fill bags with sand.
Originally from Crimea, Karpenko speaks Russian, worked for a Russian language school and has relatives in Donetsk, one of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has divided her family, with her Donetsk relatives supporting Putin.
“They think that all of their problems are caused by Ukraine,” she explained in frustration. “They worship (Putin) as if he was a God.”
She’s given up trying to tell them it was Russian strikes she was fleeing.
By the next morning, Okhrimenko and her corgi had left. Her husband, who had moved to Germany only a few months ago, drove down to pick them up. She had planned to join him eventually, but never thought she would suddenly be chased out by sirens and explosions.
“We just took a deep sigh of relief together and hugged each other so strong,” Okhrimenko told AP by text message from the road to Germany.
Karpenko, her son and her mother boarded a bus also bound for Germany. On the same bus were Yefanova and Nahorna, the 85-year-old grandmother.
Thirty hours after leaving the makeshift shelter, they were still on the road. “The longest journey in my life,” Karpenko texted AP from a gas station in Austria.
As one bus left, others arrived at the Hotel Mandachi, full of freezing refugees carrying their children and their belongings. With no end to the war in sight, the wedding parties that once took place in the ballroom have been postponed indefinitely.
Macron keeps an open line to Putin as war in Ukraine rages
While most of the world is shunning President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the few leaders keeping an open line of communication is French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron’s diplomatic efforts to prevent the war failed, but he’s not giving up: the two men have spoken four times since Russian forces attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24, and 11 times over the past month.
The French leader, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, is now one of the few outsiders with a view into Putin’s mindset at the time of the largest military invasion in Europe since World War II. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is also becoming a mediator, meeting Putin on a surprise visit to Moscow on Saturday and speaking with him again by phone on Sunday.
Macron’s relentless push for dialogue reflects France’s post-World War II tradition of carving out its own geopolitical path and its refusal to blindly follow the United States.
After Russian troops pushed deep into Ukraine, Macron’s resolve to maintain communication channels with Putin is providing Western allies with insight into the Russian leader’s state of mind, his intentions on the battlefield and at home in Russia as the Kremlin cracks down on opponents.
“He is keeping a diplomatic channel open for the West in case Putin might want to de-escalate and look for a way out of this crisis,” said Benjamin Haddad, a senior director for Europe at the Atlantic Council in Paris and a member of Macron’s party.
Macron has also spoken to Putin on behalf of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Haddad said, trying to extract some mercy from Putin: local cease-fires, safe passage for trapped civilians and access to humanitarian aid.
During their most recent call on Sunday that came at Macron’s request, the French leader and Putin focused for nearly two hours on the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear plants.
Putin said he doesn’t intend to attack them and agreed on the principle of “dialogue” between the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ukraine and Russia on the issue, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the French presidency’s practices.
Read: UN court hearings to open in Ukraine case against Russia
There is “absolutely no illusion at the Elysee that Putin will keep his word on anything he promises,” Haddad said, or that Putin will change his mind about the invasion. But Haddad said that it’s important that Macron keeps trying to engage Putin even as the West punishes Russia and strengthens Ukraine’s defenses.
And breaking with the diplomatic norm of keeping such conversations secret, the French presidency has widely shared the content of Macron’s talks with Putin. Macron’s advisers and the president himself detailed the excruciating efforts to prevent the war and then laid bare Putin’s broken promises of peace.
That helped Macron galvanize support for the toughest sanctions against Russia, uniting the notoriously divided 27-member EU and revive NATO’s geopolitical role.
To the extent that keeping lines of communication open can be useful during a conflict to relay messages, warnings or threats, and hear the response, the Biden administration believes that such contacts can be useful for at least getting some insight into Putin’s mood, demeanor and mindset. Hence, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will go to Paris Tuesday to hear from Macron directly about his latest conversations with Putin.
But U.S. officials remain unconvinced that Macron’s efforts — or any other leader’s — have had any significant impact on Putin’s decison-making process. They note that despite a series of interventions by the French president, Putin has not only gone ahead with the invasion but also intensified the conflict.
The French president has been clear from the start: Putin alone is to blame for the death and destruction in Ukraine and the major consequences of the war for France and Europe. But on the other hand if Putin wants to talk, he will listen.
Putin called on Thursday. The number of refugees fleeing Ukraine had already topped 1 million and several towns in the east were in ruins. Macron picked up and they talked for 90 minutes.
An official in the French presidency rushed to brief reporters on the conversation. Putin told Macron the military operation in Ukraine is “going according to plan” and he will continue “until the end,” the official said.
Read: Ukraine says Russia steps up shelling of residential areas
Putin claimed that “war crimes” were being committed by Ukrainians. He called them “Nazis,” the official said. There’s no need to negotiate, Putin said. He will achieve the “neutralization and disarmament of Ukraine” with his army. The official couldn’t be named in keeping with Elysee practices.
Macron “spoke the truth” to Putin, the official said, and explained how his war on Ukraine is perceived by the West. “I spoke to President Putin. I asked him to stop attacks on Ukraine. At this point, he refuses,” Macron tweeted.
He said dialogue will continue. “We must prevent the worst from happening.”
Since he was elected president in 2017, Macron has shown a keen interest in forging personal relationships with world leaders, including those who value a degree of pragmatism when discussing democracy and human rights while pursing business opportunities.
His business-friendly diplomacy paid off in the Persian Gulf in December when he signed a multi-billion euro weapons contract with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nayhan. Macron drew fierce criticism on that trip for traveling to Saudi Arabia to become the first Western leader to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“Macron stands out among European Union leaders with his willingness to be in the spotlight, to drive the foreign policy and push things ahead,” said Silvia Colombo, an expert on EU foreign relations at the International Institute in Rome.
There is no other foreign leader that Macron has tried to bring closer to his corner than Putin. Macron, a staunch European, was confident that a mixture of personal charm and the splendor of France’s past would convince Putin to keep Russia within the European security habitat.
Macron first hosted Putin in the sumptuous Place of Versailles in 2017. Two years later they discussed stalled Ukraine peace talks in Macron’s summer residence at the Fort de Bregancon on the French Riviera as Macron tried to build on European diplomacy that had helped ease hostilities in the past.
It’s become clear over the past several weeks that Putin was on the war path even as he denied it, sitting across from Macron at a very long table during his last visit to Moscow.
Macron wanted to believe him, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said after critics claimed the French president has fallen into the old European trap of appeasing Putin’s Russia.
“The president is not naive,” Le Drian said on the eve of Russia’s invasion. “He knows the methods, the character and the cynical nature of Putin.”
UN court hearings to open in Ukraine case against Russia
As Russian forces pound Ukrainian cities with rockets despite announcing a cease-fire to allow civilians to flee some areas, lawyers representing Kyiv and Moscow face off Monday at the United Nations’ top court in a legal bid to halt the devastating war.
The International Court of Justice is opening two days of hearings at its headquarters, the Peace Palace, into Ukraine’s request for its judges to order Russia to halt its invasion. Ukraine is scheduled to present its arguments Monday morning and Russia can respond Tuesday.
Ukraine has asked the court to order Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations” launched Feb. 24 “that have as their stated purpose and objective the prevention and punishment of a claimed genocide” in the separatist eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
A decision is expected on the request within days, though it remains to be seen if Russia would abide by any order the court might issue.
If the court were to order a halt to hostilities, “I think the chance of that happening is zero,” said Terry Gill, a professor of military law at the University of Amsterdam. He noted that if a nation does not abide by the court’s order, judges could seek action from the United Nations Security Council, where Russia holds a veto.
Read: Russia sets ceasefire for evacuations amid heavy shelling
The request for so-called provisional measures is linked to a case Ukraine has filed based on the Genocide Convention. Both countries have ratified the 1948 treaty, which has a clause allowing nations to take disputes based on its provisions to the Hague-based court.
Kyiv argues that Moscow’s claims of genocide by Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk thatPresident Vladimir Putin used as a pretext for his invasion are fabricated.
“Ukraine emphatically denies that any such genocide has occurred, and that the Russian Federation has any lawful basis to take action in and against Ukraine for the purpose of preventing and punishing genocide,” the country said in its claim to the court.
Ukraine’s nine-page legal filing launching the case argues that “Russia has turned the Genocide Convention on its head” by making a false claim. It adds that “Russia’s lie is all the more offensive, and ironic, because it appears that it is Russia planning acts of genocide in Ukraine.”
The success of Ukraine’s request will depend on whether the court accepts it has “prima facie jurisdiction” in the case, which is not a guarantee that the court ultimately would proceed with the suit. Cases at the International Court of Justice typically take years to complete.
Raed: Ukraine says Russia steps up shelling of residential areas
Regardless of the outcome of the hearings Monday and Tuesday, they give Ukraine another platform to air grievances about Moscow’s invasion.
“It’s part of, I think, an overall diplomatic strategy to try to put maximum pressure on Russia,” said Gill.
Russia sets ceasefire for evacuations amid heavy shelling
Even as Russia announced a ceasefire starting Monday morning and the opening of humanitarian corridors in several areas, its armed forces continued to pummel Ukrainian cities, with multiple rocket launchers hitting residential buildings.
The limited ceasefire announcement came a day after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians attempting to flee to safety were forced to shelter from Russian shelling of cities in Ukraine’s center, north and south. Officials from both sides planned a third round of talks Monday.
Russian forces continued their offensive, opening fire on the city of Mykolaiv, 480 kilometers south of the capital of Kyiv, Ukraine’s General Staff said Monday morning. Rescuers said they were putting out fires in residential areas caused by rocket attacks.
Read: Russia-Ukraine War: What to know on Russia's war in Ukraine
Shelling also continued in the suburbs of Kyiv, including Irpin, which has been cut off from electricity, water and heating for three days.
“Russia continues to carry out rocket, bomb and artillery strikes on the cities and settlements of Ukraine,” the General Staff said. “The invaders continue to use the airfield network of Belarus to carry out air strikes on Ukraine.”
The Russians have also been targeting humanitarian corridors, taking women and children hostage and placing weapons in residential areas of cities, according to the General Staff.
New Zealand considering law to sanction Russia
New Zealand’s government plans to rush through legislation that will allow it to impose economic sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
New Zealand’s existing laws don’t allow it to impose meaningful sanctions except as part of a broader United Nations effort. That has left New Zealand hamstrung since Russia has U.N. Security Council veto power.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday the new legislation would allow New Zealand to target people, companies and assets associated with the invasion, including Russian oligarchs. New Zealand also could freeze assets and stop superyachts or planes from arriving.
Read: Russia sets ceasefire for evacuations amid heavy shelling
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the bill “will send a very clear signal that New Zealand will not be a safe haven for those wishing to move their investments here.”
The Russia Sanctions Bill is scheduled to be heard by lawmakers on Wednesday and could pass as quickly as the same day. Ardern said she’s hoping it will be supported by lawmakers across all parties although a unanimous vote wasn’t guaranteed.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House is exploring legislation to further isolate Russia from the global economy, including banning the import of its oil and energy products into the U.S.
Death toll nears 6 million as pandemic enters its 3rd year
The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over.
The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,997,994 as of Sunday afternoon.
Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two years, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant.
Hong Kong, which is seeing deaths soar, is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it clings to mainland China’s “zero-COVID” strategy.
As death rates remain high in Poland, Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries, the region has seen more than 1 million refugees arrive from war-torn Ukraine, a country with poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths.
And despite its wealth and vaccine availability, the United States is nearing 1 million reported deaths on its own.
Death rates worldwide are still highest among people unvaccinated against the virus, said Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore’s medical school and co-Chair of the Asia Pacific Immunization Coalition.
Read: Hawaii to lift COVID-19 travel quarantine rules this month
“This is a disease of the unvaccinated — look what is happening in Hong Kong right now, the health system is being overwhelmed,” said Pang, the former director of research policy and cooperation with the World Health Organization. “The large majority of the deaths and the severe cases are in the unvaccinated, vulnerable segment of the population.”
It took the world seven months to record its first million deaths from the virus after the pandemic began in early 2020. Four months later another million people had died, and 1 million have died every three months since, until the death toll hit 5 million at the end of October. Now it has reached 6 million — more than the populations of Berlin and Brussels combined, or the entire state of Maryland.
But despite the enormity of the figure, the world undoubtedly hit its 6 millionth death some time ago. Poor record-keeping and testing in many parts of the world has led to an undercount in coronavirus deaths, in addition to excess deaths related to the pandemic but not from actual COVID-19 infections, like people who died from preventable causes but could not receive treatment because hospitals were full.
Edouard Mathieu, head of data for the Our World in Data portal, said that — when countries’ excess mortality figures are studied — as many as nearly four times the reported death toll have likely died because of the pandemic.
An analysis of excess deaths by a team at The Economist estimates that the number of COVID-19 deaths is between 14 million and 23.5 million.
Russia-Ukraine War: What to know on Russia's war in Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its 12th day following what Ukrainian authorities described as increased shelling of encircled cities and another failed attempt to evacuate civilians from the besieged southern port of Mariupol.
Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed to an 11-hour cease-fire Sunday, but Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks quickly closed the safe-passage corridor.
A third round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian leaders was planned for Monday.
More than 1.5 million Ukrainians had been forced from the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his people to keep resisting, and Ukraine's foreign minister said more than 20,000 people from 52 countries had volunteered to fight in Ukraine's newly created international legion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war.”
Here’s a look at key things to know about the conflict:
VIOLENCE STOPS PLANNED CIVILIAN EVACUATIONS AGAIN
Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko blamed Russian artillery fire for halting a second attempt in as many days to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, where food, water and medicine are scarce.
A day earlier, Ukrainian officials similarly said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving. Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort.
Russia has sought to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov in the south. Capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Read:Oil prices jump as conflict in Ukraine deepens
WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ON THE GROUND?
Russian forces launched hundreds of missiles and artillery attacks across the country, including powerful bombs dropped on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of the capital of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said. But a miles-long Russian armored column threatening the capital remained stalled outside Kyiv.
Sunday evening, heavy shelling also came to Mykolaiv in the south and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. Efforts to evacuate residents from the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Hostomel and Irpin on Sunday were mostly unsuccessful.
A senior American defense official said Sunday the U.S. believes that about 95% of the Russian forces that had been arrayed around Ukraine are now inside the country. Ukrainian air and missile defenses remain effective and in use, and the Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and to employ air defense assets, the official said.
Ukrainian forces were also defending Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port city, from Russian ships, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich said.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday announced plans to strike Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, and it alleged that Ukrainian forces were plotting to blow up an experimental nuclear reactor in Kharkiv and to blame it on Russia. The ministry offered no evidence to back its claims, which could not be independently verified.
ZELENSKYY PUSHES CALL FOR NO-FLY ZONE
Zelenskyy pushed his call for foreign countries to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Establishing a no-fly zone would risk escalating the conflict by involving foreign militaries directly. Although the United States and many Western countries have backed Ukraine with weapons shipments, they have sent no troops.
Zelenskyy said in a video address on Sunday that “the world is strong enough to close our skies" and over the weekend he urged U.S. officials help his country obtain warplanes to fight the invasion and retain control of its airspace.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Sunday that some Ukrainian combat planes had redeployed to Romania and other Ukraine neighbors he didn’t identify. He warned an attack from planes operating out of those nations could be deemed an engagement by them in the conflict.
DIRECTLY WITNESSED OR CONFIRMED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Onlookers in Chernihiv cheered as a Russian military plane fell from the sky and crashed, according to video released by the Ukrainian government. In Kherson, hundreds of protesters waved blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouted, “Go home.”
In Mariupol, Associated Press journalists saw doctors make futile attempts to save wounded children. Pharmacies ran bare and hundreds of thousands of people faced food and water shortages in freezing weather.
In Irpin, near Kyiv, a sea of people on foot and even in wheelbarrows trudged over the remains of a destroyed bridge to cross a river and leave the city. Assisted by Ukrainian soldiers, they lugged pets, infants, purses and flimsy bags stuffed with minimal possessions. Some of the weak and elderly were carried along the path in blankets and carts.
Kyiv’s central train station remained crowded with people desperate to leave, and frequent shelling could be heard from the center of the capital city.
Read:Ukraine says Russia steps up shelling of residential areas
DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS
Intense diplomatic efforts continued, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Moldova pledging America’s support to the small Western-leaning former Soviet republic. The country is coping with an influx of refugees from Ukraine and keeping an eye on Russia’s intensifying war with its neighbor.
Blinken says the United States and its allies are having a “very active discussion” about banning the import of Russian oil and natural gas.
In a call with Putin that lasted nearly two hours on Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron repeated calls for Russia to halt military operations, protect civilians and allow humanitarian aid. A French official reported that Putin said he does not intend to attack nuclear plants.
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Sunday that Ukrainian staff at the country's largest nuclear plant are now required to seek approval for any operation, even maintenance, from the Russians. The Zaporizhzhya plant was seized by the Russians last week.
Putin continued to blame the war on the Ukrainian leadership, saying, “They are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood.” In a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, Putin said the invasion could be halted only “only if Kyiv ceases hostilities,” according to a Kremlin account.
Israel’s prime minister spoke with Putin on Sunday, a day after they met directly in Russia. Israel is one of the few countries that has good working relations with both Russia and Ukraine.
THE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION
The death toll of the conflict has been difficult to measure. The U.N. human rights office said at least 364 civilians have been confirmed killed since the Feb. 24 invasion, but the true number is probably much higher.
The World Health Organization said it verified at least six attacks that have killed six health care workers and injured 11 others.
The U.N. World Food Program says millions of people inside Ukraine, a major global wheat supplier, need food aid “immediately.”
Ukrainian refugees continued to pour into neighboring countries, including Poland, Romania and Moldova. The number of people who have left since fighting began has now reached 1.5 million, according to U.N. refugee agency.
BUSINESS IN RUSSIA
A growing number of multinational businesses have cut off Russia from vital financial services, technology and a variety of consumer products in response to Western economic sanctions and global outrage over the war.
Two of the so-called Big Four accounting firms — KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers — said Sunday they were pulling out of Russia, ending relationships with member firms based in the country.
TikTok said users won’t be able to post new videos in Russia in response to the government’s crackdown on what people can say on social media about the invasion, and American Express announced it was suspending all operations in Russia and Belarus.
Netflix also announced it was suspending its service in Russia.
Oil prices jump as conflict in Ukraine deepens
The price of oil jumped more than $10 a barrel Monday as the conflict in Ukraine deepened amid mounting calls for harsher sanctions against Russia.
Brent crude oil briefly surged over $10 to nearly $130 a barrel early Monday. Benchmark U.S. crude was up nearly $9 at more than $124 a barrel.
Read:Ukraine says Russia steps up shelling of residential areas
The surge followed a warning from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukrainian statehood was imperiled as Russian forces battered strategic locations.
A temporary cease-fire in two Ukrainian cities failed — and both sides blamed each other.
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was exploring legislation to further isolate Russia from the global economy, including banning the import of its oil and energy products into the U.S.
7 dead after tornadoes tore through central Iowa: Officials
Seven people were killed, including two children, when several tornadoes swept through central Iowa, destroying homes and knocking down trees and power lines in the state's deadliest storm in more than a decade, authorities said.
Emergency management officials in Madison County said four were injured and six people were killed Saturday when one tornado touched down in the area southwest of Des Moines near the town of Winterset around 4:30 p.m. Among those killed were two children under the age of five and four adults.
In Lucas County, about 54 miles (87 kilometers) southeast of Des Moines, officials confirmed one death and multiple reported injuries when a separate tornado struck less than an hour later.
The state Department of Natural Resources said that person who died was in an RV at a campground at Red Haw State Park in Chariton, Iowa.
Read: 6 dead as large tornado roars through central Iowa
Thunderstorms that spawned tornadoes moved through much of Iowa from the afternoon until Saturday night with storms also causing damage in the Des Moines suburb of Norwalk, areas just east of Des Moines and other areas of eastern Iowa. The storms were fueled by warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico.
Officials reported a number of homes were damaged or destroyed, roads were blocked by downed lines and tree branches were shredded by the strong winds. At one point, power outages affected more than 10,000 in the Des Moines area. About 800 customers remained without power Sunday evening.
The storms are the deadliest to occur in Iowa since May 2008 when one tornado destroyed nearly 300 homes and killed nine people in the northern Iowa city of Parkersburg. Another tornado a month later killed four boys at the Little Sioux Boy Scout ranch in western Iowa.
Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini said there have been plenty of examples of deadly storms in March even though they are more common in April and May. Saturday's storms were not nearly as unusual as the mid-December tornado outbreak that Iowa saw last year, he said.
“The storms that produce these tornadoes — these supercell storms — they don’t care what the calendar says,” Gensini said. “It doesn’t have to say June. It doesn’t have to say May. They form whenever the ingredients are present. And they were certainly present yesterday.”
Scientists have said that extreme weather events and warmer temperatures are more likely to occur with human-caused climate change. However, scientifically attributing a storm system to global warming requires specific analysis and computer simulations that take time, haven’t been done and sometimes show no clear connection.
Gensini said Saturday’s storms likely caused more than $1 billion in damages over their entire track when the severe damage in Iowa is combined with wind damage as far away as Illinois.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation for Madison County, which allows state resources to be used to assist with response and recovery efforts. Madison County Emergency Management Director Diogenes Ayala said 52 homes were damaged or destroyed across nearly 14 miles.
The White House said President Joe Biden was briefed Sunday on the storm devastation in Iowa. Biden reached out Reynolds and directed the leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency to remain in close contact with state and local officials as they assessed damage and determined what federal assistance was needed, the White House said in a statement.
After touring the storm damage near Winterset, Reynolds described “unimaginable destruction.”
Reynolds teared up as she described the hundreds of people who streamed into the area to volunteer their help to clear debris that blocked roads and littered the hardest hit areas. Homeowners and volunteers were picking up wood debris and beginning to clear it away Sunday in the rolling hills south of Winterset as chainsaws whirred away in the background.
“It’s just unbelievable. I tried to walk through and thank them and over and over (and) the response was, we’re Iowans and that’s what we do,” she said.
The foundation was all that was left of several homes. The tornado carved a path of destruction along a ridge while several hundred feet away other homes were undamaged.
Read: Kentucky's death toll from tornadoes rises to 77
Ayala said emergency responders navigated narrow roads blocked by downed trees and debris Saturday night to help after the storm.
“With trees and debris and everything around, just to go out there and start the search and rescue and get the people affected out of there, I cannot express the heroism of the first responders who were out there last night," Ayala said.
Officials identified the six people who were killed in Madison County as Melissa Bazley, 63; Rodney Clark, 64; Cecilia Lloyd, 72; Michael Bolger, 37; Kenley Bolger, 5; and Owen Bolger, 2. The victims came from three different households.
Lucas County officials didn't immediately identify the person who died there Sunday afternoon.
Six people hurt in Madison County, which is known for the “Bridges of Madison County” book and movie, were being treated for injuries Sunday, but their conditions weren't immediately available.
The National Weather Service in Des Moines said Sunday that the tornado that killed one person in Lucas County remained on the ground for more than 16 miles (25.75 kilometers) and rated an EF-3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale with peak winds of 138 mph. The damage assessment for the Winterset tornado isn't likely to be completed until Monday, but the Weather Service tweeted Saturday that initial photos of the damage there suggested that tornado was also at least an EF-3 tornado.
Elsewhere, the National Weather Service said the storms generated an EF-1 tornado in southeastern Wisconsin near Stoughton that included winds up to 80 mph. The storm flattened trees, snapped power poles and blew out windows in homes. No injuries were reported.