United News of Bangladesh

The Guardian newspaper has fired longtime editorial cartoonist Steve Bell after refusing to run a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that critics said drew on antisemitic imagery. "The decision has been made not to renew Steve Bell's contract," the Guardian said. "Steve Bell's cartoons have been an important part of the Guardian over the past 40 years — we thank him and wish him all the best," publisher Guardian News and Media said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Thursday. Also read: As Israel readies troops for ground assault, Gaza awaits urgently needed aid from Egypt Bell has contributed to The Guardian since 1983. Several of his hundreds of cartoons over the years have been accused of including anti-Jewish stereotypes. The latest cartoon, posted by Bell on social media, shows Netanyahu holding a scalpel and preparing to cut a Gaza-shaped incision in his abdomen, with the caption "Residents of Gaza, get out now." It is labeled "after David Levine" and recalls a Vietnam War-era cartoon depicting U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson pointing at a Vietnam-shaped scar. American illustrator Levine drew inspiration from a photo of Johnson showing reporters his scar from gall-bladder surgery. Bell said he had been accused of evoking the "pound of flesh" demanded by the Jewish character Shylock in Shakespeare's play "The Merchant of Venice." Also read: Major US Muslim civil rights group cancels Virginia banquet over bomb and death threats He told industry newspaper the Press Gazette that "The Merchant of Venice" had "nothing to do with the cartoon." "I don't promote harmful antisemitic stereotypes. … Never have I done such a thing, I would not dream of doing such a thing," the publication quoted him as saying. Britain has a long tradition of cartoons showing politicians in exaggerated and grotesque form. Bell has created some of the most indelible caricatures of recent British leaders, portraying former Prime Minister John Major wearing underpants over his trousers, Tony Blair with a demonic oversized eye and David Cameron with a condom over his head. Also read: Gazans find nowhere is safe during Israel’s relentless bombing

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a visit that underscores China’s support for Moscow during its war in Ukraine as well as Russian backing for China's bid to expand its economic and diplomatic influence abroad. The two countries have forged an informal alliance against the United States and other democratic nations that is now complicated by the Israel-Hamas war. China has sought to balance its ties with Israel against its relations with Iran and Syria, two countries that are strongly backed by Russia and with which China has forged ties for economic reasons as well as to challenge Washington's influence in the Middle East. Putin's plane was met by an honor guard as the Russian leader began his visit that is also a show of support for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s signature “Belt and Road” initiative to build infrastructure and expand China’s overseas influence. In an interview to Chinese state media, Putin praised the massive but loosely linked BRI projects. Read: ‘UN not in the business of observing elections unless it receives a mandate’: Spokesman Dujarric “Yes, we see that some people consider it an attempt by the People’s Republic of China to put someone under its thumb, but we see otherwise, we just see desire for cooperation,” he told state broadcaster CCTV, according to a transcript released by the Kremlin on Monday. Putin will be among the highest profile guests at a gathering marking the 10th anniversary of Xi’s announcement of the BRI project, which has laden countries such as Zambia and Sri Lanka with heavy debt from contracts with Chinese companies to build roads, airports and other public works they could not otherwise afford. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has praised the Chinese policy as bringing development to neglected areas. Asked by reporters Friday about his visit, Putin said it would encompass talks on Belt and Road-related projects, which he said Moscow wants to link with efforts by an economic alliance of former Soviet Union nations mostly located in Central Asia to “achieve common development goals.” He also downplayed the impact of China’s economic influence in a region that Russia has long considered its backyard and where it has worked to maintain political and military clout. Read: With humanitarian aid blocked at Egyptian border, Gaza draws closer to total collapse “We don’t have any contradictions here, on the contrary, there is a certain synergy,” Putin said. Putin said he and Xi would also discuss growing economic ties between Moscow and Beijing in energy, high-tech and financial industries. China has also grown in importance as an export destination for Russia. Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that from China’s view, “Russia is a safe neighbor that is friendly, that is a source of cheap raw materials, that’s a support for Chinese initiatives on the global stage and that’s also a source of military technologies, some of those that China doesn’t have.” “For Russia, China is its lifeline, economic lifeline in its brutal repression against Ukraine,” Gabuev told The Associated Press. “It’s the major market for Russian commodities, it’s a country that provides its currency and payment system to settle Russia’s trade with the outside world — with China itself, but also with many other countries, and is also the major source of sophisticated technological imports, including dual-use goods that go into the Russian military machine.” Read: 600 days into the war, Russia's assault on a key eastern Ukraine city appears to be weakening Gabuev said that while Moscow and Beijing will be unlikely to forge a full-fledged military alliance, their defense cooperation will grow. “Both countries are self-sufficient in terms of security and they benefit from partnering, but neither really requires a security guarantee from the other. And they preach strategic autonomy,” he said. “There will be no military alliance, but there will be closer military cooperation, more interoperability, more cooperation on projecting force together, including in places like the Arctic and more joint effort to develop a missile defense that makes the U.S. nuclear planning and planning of the U.S. and its allies in Asia and in Europe more complicated,” he added. The Chinese and Soviets were Cold War rivals for influence among left-leaning states, but China and Russia have since partnered in the economic, military and diplomatic spheres. Just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing and the sides signed an agreement pledging a “no-limits” relationship. Beijing’s attempts to present itself as a neutral peace broker in Russia’s war on Ukraine have been widely dismissed by the international community. Xi visited Moscow in March as part of a flurry of exchanges between the countries. China has condemned international sanctions imposed on Russia, but hasn’t directly addressed an arrest warrant issued for Putin by the International Criminal Court on charges of alleged involvement in the abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.

A dayslong attempt by Russian forces to storm a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine appears to be running out of steam, Kyiv officials said Monday, as the Kremlin’s war entered its 600th day. Ukrainian forces repelled 15 Russian attacks from four directions on Avdiivka over the previous 24 hours, the Ukrainian General Staff said. That compared with up to 60 attacks a day in the middle of last week, according to Vitalii Barabash, head of the city administration. The slackening suggests the Russian effort to capture Avdiivka has “deflated,” Barabash said. A Washington-based think tank broadly concurred with that assessment. “Russian forces continued offensive operations aimed at encircling Avdiivka … but have yet to make further gains amid a likely decreasing tempo of Russian operations in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War said in analysis published late Sunday. Read: What to do with 1.1 million bullets seized from Iran? US ships them to Ukraine Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told a U.N. Security Council meeting last Friday that the ramped-up attacks in the east amounted to a new stage in Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine. With the looming onset of wintry conditions that will limit military operations, both sides have been seeking battlefield breakthroughs that could invigorate their efforts and raise morale. Ukraine launched its own counteroffensive about four months ago. It has made some headway but the limited success has underlined the daunting challenge of taking on the Kremlin’s more numerous forces. Kyiv’s Western allies insist that their military and financial support for Ukraine will continue, even as the Israeli-Hamas war rages and competes for resources. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday the Biden administration will ask Congress for a combined aid package for Ukraine and Israel worth more than $2 billion. Ukrainian officials have said their troops are holding out against fierce Russian efforts to wrest control of Avdiivka, a heavily fortified city. Read: Biden says there’s ‘not much time’ to keep aid flowing to Ukraine and Congress must ‘stop the games’ Avdiivka lies in the northern suburbs of the city of Donetsk, in a region of the same name that Russian forces partially occupy. Avdiivka’s location grants Ukrainian forces artillery advantages over the city and could serve as a springboard for them to liberate Donetsk. It is not possible to verify battlefield claims by either side. Misinformation and disinformation have played a central role in the war. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed Ukrainian forces have failed to make any significant gains during their counteroffensive. Kyiv’s troops are trying to make headway without air cover and have encountered multi-layered Russian defenses. Putin, in an interview with the China Media Group released Monday, claimed that Ukraine’s counteroffensive has achieved “no results so far, only massive losses.” Moscow can expect more diplomatic pressure from the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in coming months, according to the chief diplomat of North Macedonia, which currently holds that body’s rotating presidency. Read: Mexico's president slams US aid for Ukraine and sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba The country’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, urged Russia to cease its attacks on Ukraine and withdraw its forces. He spoke at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday. The OSCE was created during the Cold War to help to defuse tensions between East and West. Meanwhile, Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova claimed Monday that her office has helped 35 Ukrainian children reunite with their relatives in Ukraine and other countries. Lvova-Belova, who was indicted along with Putin by the International Criminal Court for war crimes connected to the deportation of children from Ukraine, claimed Russia never opposed reuniting children with their families. Qatar's foreign ministry issued a statement saying it had been involved in recent family reunifications through its embassy in Moscow but it provided no details.

Voting closed Saturday in New Zealand and ballot counting was underway in a general election, with early results indicating people were favoring a conservative change after six years of a liberal government led for most of that time by Jacinda Ardern. With more than one-third of the votes counted, former businessman Christopher Luxon was poised to become the nation's next prime minister. Ardern unexpectedly stepped down as prime minister in January, saying she no longer had "enough in the tank" to do the job justice. She won the last election in a landslide, but her popularity waned as people got tired of COVID-19 restrictions and inflation threatened the economy. World Cup 2023: Tigers outplayed again as New Zealand win by 8 wickets Her departure left Chris Hipkins, 45, to take over as leader. He had previously served as education minister and led the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The initial vote counting showed Luxon's National Party with over 40% of the vote. Under New Zealand's proportional voting system, Luxon, 53, was expected to form an alliance with the libertarian ACT Party. Meanwhile, the Labour Party that Hipkins leads was getting only a little over 25% of the vote — about half the proportion it got in the last election under Ardern. And in a result that would be particularly stinging for Labour should it hold up, National was leading in Ardern's old electorate seat, Mount Albert. The seat has long been a Labour stronghold and was also held by another former Labour prime minister, Helen Clark. New Zealand is partnering with BlackRock in aim to reach 100% renewable electricity The National Party candidate for the seat, Melissa Lee, told The Associated Press she was feeling excited but also nervous about the final result in Mount Albert. "It's been Labour since 1946. It has been the biggest, safest Labour seat forever," she said. "It would be fantastic if we won it." Lee said that when she was door-knocking, people had told her they were tired of the current government and were concerned with the state of the economy and the spiraling cost of living. David Farrar, a longtime conservative pollster, said there was still a good chance that Labour would end up holding the seat once all the votes were counted. However, he said, his initial impression of voting throughout the country was that it was turning out to be a "bloodbath" for the left. Luxon has promised tax cuts for middle-income earners and a crackdown on crime. Hipkins had promised free dental care for people younger than 30 and the removal of sales taxes on fruit and vegetables. Also at stake in the election is the government's relationship with Indigenous Māori. Luxon has promised to axe the Māori Health Authority, which he says creates two separate health systems. Hipkins says he's proud of such co-governance efforts and has accused Luxon of condoning racism. Britain to start free trade with New Zealand and Australia Within days of taking the reins in January, Hipkins found himself dealing with a crisis after deadly floods and then a cyclone hit New Zealand. He quickly jettisoned some of Ardern's more contentious policies and promised a "back to basics" approach focused on tackling the spiraling cost of living. Warm spring weather in the largest city of Auckland seemed to encourage voters, with queues forming outside some polling places. Early voting before Election Day was lower than in recent elections. During a six-week election campaign, both Hipkins and Luxon traveled the country and hammed it up for the cameras. Earlier in the week, Luxon, who served as chief executive of both Unilever Canada and Air New Zealand, told an energized crowd in Wellington that he would crack down on gangs. "I've gotta tell you, crime is out of control in this country," Luxon said. "And we are going to restore law and order, and we are going to restore personal responsibility." Luxon also got cheers when he promised to fix the capital's gridlocked traffic with a new tunnel project. Luxon is relatively new to politics but held his own against the more experienced Hipkins during televised debates, according to political observers. But Luxon also made some gaffes, such as when he was asked in a 1News debate how much he spent each week on food. His answer of "about sixty bucks" (U.S. $36) was ridiculed on social media as showing him being out of touch with the cost of living.  

The Nobel economics prize was awarded Monday to Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, for advancing the understanding of the gender gap in the labor market. Goldin is only the third woman to win the prize, which was announced by Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm. Read: The Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced in Oslo Friday “Understanding women’s role in the labor market is important for society. Thanks to Claudia Goldin’s groundbreaking research, we now know much more about the underlying factors and which barriers may need to be addressed in the future,” said Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences. Goldin does not offer solutions, but her research allows policymakers to tackle the entrenched problem, said Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the prize committee. “She explains the source of the gap, and how it’s changed over time and how it varies with the stage of development. And therefore, there is no single policy," Hjalmarsson said. "So it’s a complicated policy question because if you don’t know the underlying reason, a certain policy won’t work.” However, “by finally understanding the problem and calling it by the right name, we will be able to pave a better out forward,” said Hjalmarsson, who added that Goldin's discoveries have “vast societal implications.” Of receiving the award, Goldin, 77, “was surprised and very, very glad,” Ellegren said. It follows the awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace that were announced last week. The economics award was created in 1968 by Sweden's central bank and is formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Last year's winners were former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their research into bank failures that helped shape America’s aggressive response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Read: Nobel Prize in literature to be announced in Stockholm Only two of the 92 economics laureates honored have been women. A week ago, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine. The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov won the chemistry prize on Wednesday. They were followed by Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who was awarded the prize for literature. And on Friday, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi won the peace prize. The prizes are handed out at awards ceremonies in December in Oslo and Stockholm. They carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma.

Despite a breakthrough in negotiations earlier this week, the leaders of the European Union clashed again Friday on how to handle the human drama of migration that has tested their sense of common purpose over the past decade. The world’s largest club of wealthy countries remains split between those that support Brussels’ initiatives focused on distributing migrants between members in an act of solidarity and those countries, like Hungary or Poland, whose far-right governments flatly refuse any shared responsibility for migrants arriving to other member states. Italy is even going outside the EU to establish links with the United Kingdom to crack down on unwanted arrivals. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was blunt about how far Europe's leaders still are from reaching a consensus before they met in Granada, Spain. Orbán, who has pushed back against EU policy repeatedly and taken a hard-line approach against migration, said that he won't sign off on any deal at any point in the foreseeable future. He went as far as to compare the situation to being “legally raped” by Hungary's fellow EU members. Read: Russian strike on cafe kills 51, Ukrainian officials say, as Zelenskyy seeks more Western support “The agreement on migration, politically, it’s impossible — not today (or) generally speaking for the next years," Orbán said. “Because legally we are, how to say it — we are raped. So if you are raped legally, forced to accept something what you don’t like, how would you like to have a compromise?” The dispute is over an agreement struck on Wednesday by a majority of the EU's interior ministers unlocked a draft of a new overarching migration pact that would involve setting up processing centers on the EU’s outside borders to screen people as they arrive. That agreement will now go to the European Parliament, where further negotiations will take place before it can become binding. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is facing re-election this month, also bashed the deal, maintaining his government’s position that it keeps migrants out for security reasons. He called it a “dictate coming from Brussels and Berlin” that Warsaw would resist. Neither Hungary nor Poland could veto a final pact, but their refusal to comply with European policy in the past has bordered on provoking institutional crises, and the bloc is eager to avoid similar tensions with its eastern members. The summit's concluding declaration was intended to include a paragraph on migration but it was removed from the original draft after the leaders met. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the summit's host, said they had known “the risk” of that happening while downplaying the failure to reach consensus. Read: Trudeau pledges Canada's support for Ukraine and punishment for Russia European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen remained positive about the chances that the new pact could become a reality, hailing this week's deal to establish extraordinary measures that a country could take in the event of a massive, unforeseen movement of migrants toward its borders, as “a big success.” “This was an important piece of the puzzle of the whole puzzle of the Migration and Asylum pact,” she said at the post-summit news conference, skirting over the opposition by Hungary and Poland. Balancing demands from progressive politicians and rights groups supporting the rights of migrants with the political realities of a continent where the far-right is using migration to grow, Von der Leyen said it was key to dissuade migrants from using smuggling routes by opting for legal paths to entering the union. She said that some 3.7 million regular migrants entered the EU last year, while 330,000 irregular crossings attempts were registered. “We cannot accept that smugglers and traffickers define who and decide who is coming through the European Union," she said. The EU has been trying to forge a new common policy on migration ever since it was overwhelmed in 2015 by well over 1 million arrivals, mostly refugees fleeing war in Syria. Read: Erdogan says Turkey may part ways with the EU. He implied the country could ends its membership bid Since then it has focused on paying countries like Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to do the dirty work of stopping migrants before they embark on the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea, where nearly 30,000 people have died since 2014, according to the U.N. migration agency. A draft of a New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which has been criticized by human right groups as conceding ground to more hard-line approaches, was touted as the answer to the EU’s migration woes when it was made public in September 2020. For the scheme to enter into force, officials and lawmakers say, an agreement must be reached between a majority of member countries and parliament by February before EU elections in June. Migration flows into the EU have been on the rise this year, even if they are down from the 2015-16 peak. From January to October, some 194,000 migrants and refugees reached Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece and Cyprus by boat, compared to 112,000 in the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. The issue of migration was not going to be a priority of this informal meeting, where leaders already had the prickly question of how to continue with expansion to include the Balkan countries and a Ukraine that is immersed in battling Russia’s invasion. But migration was put on the agenda by Italy's far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni. Italy has seen an influx of people arriving in recent months, including the arrival of 7,000 people to the tiny fishing island of Lampedusa on a single day last month. Meloni and Britain’s conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced Friday in an op-ed article published in Corriere della Sera and The Times of London newspapers that they were forming an alliance against illegal migration in a bilateral move beyond Brussels’ sphere of influence. “We must fight criminal organizations and carry out the work we are doing in Africa to stop the departures,” Meloni, who also held a private meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on migration, told reporters in Granada. “We are now looking for concrete tools to solve the issues.” The one-day summit in the picturesque city of Granada is just an hour’s drive from Spain’s southern coast, where boatloads of people fleeing violence or poverty in Africa wash up regularly. Spain’s marine rescue service reported Friday it had intercepted another 500 migrants in six boats approaching the Canary Islands, located off the northwestern coast of Africa. Previously this week, the archipelago’s tiny El Hierro island — with a population of 10,000 — took in 1,200 migrants arriving in open wooden boats that are believed to have departed from Senegal on the hazardous journey northward.

A Russian rocket blast turned a village cafe and store in eastern Ukraine into rubble Thursday, killing at least 51 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks in the war in months, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials in Kyiv. Rescuers searched for survivors in the remains of the only cafe in the village of Hroza. Body parts were strewn across a nearby children's playground that was severely damaged by the strike. Cellphones were collected and put in a courtyard nearby, waiting to be claimed. Occasionally, one of them rang, lighting up a shattered screen. Around 60 people, including children, were attending a wake at the cafe when the missile hit, Ukrainian officials said. Zelenskyy, attending a summit of about 50 European leaders in Spain to drum up support from Ukraine's allies, denounced the strike as a “demonstrably brutal Russian crime” and “a completely deliberate act of terrorism.” According to preliminary information from Kyiv, the village was hit by an Iskander missile. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the strike “horrifying” and said it demonstrated why the United States is doing everything it can "to help the brave people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom, to fight for their democracy.” Hroza, which had a population of about 500 before the war, is in the northeastern Kharkiv region and was seized by Russia early in the war before being recaptured by Ukraine in September 2022. It's only 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Kupiansk, a key focus of the Russian military effort. Zelenskyy visited the area Tuesday to meet with troops and inspect equipment supplied by the West. Dmytro Nechvolot told The Associated Press he was looking for his 60-year-old father, who attended the wake for a soldier from Hroza who died last year but who was reburied after being identified by DNA. Nechvolot kept walking up to his father's red car, which was still parked nearby, while waiting for confirmation that he had been killed. “I have lost a man I looked up to, a beloved father, and an unforgettable grandfather,” he said. On Thursday, Zelenskyy was at a summit of the European Political Community in Granada, Spain, where he asked for more Western support, saying that “Russian terror must be stopped.” “Russia needs this and similar terrorist attacks for only one thing: to make its genocidal aggression the new norm for the whole world,” he said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel. “Now we are talking with European leaders, in particular, about strengthening our air defense, strengthening our soldiers, giving our country protection from terror. And we will respond to the terrorists.” “The key for us, especially before winter, is to strengthen air defense, and there is already a basis for new agreements with partners,” he told the group, which was formed in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Heeding Zelenskyy's cry, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany will supply Ukraine with another Patriot missile air defense system. He expects Russia will again target crucial infrastructure and cities across Ukraine in the winter months. “This is what is now needed the most,“ Scholz said after meeting Zelenskyy, according to the German news agency dpa. Read: Russian airstrikes reported in several Ukrainian cities including Kyiv Last winter, Russia targeted Ukraine's energy system and other vital infrastructure in a steady barrage of missile and drone attacks, triggering continuous power outages across the country. Ukraine's power system has shown a high degree of resilience and flexibility, but there have been concerns that Russia will again ramp up its strikes on power facilities as winter draws near. Zelenskyy noted that the Granada summit will also focus on “joint work for global food security and protection of freedom of navigation” in the Black Sea, where the Russian military has targeted Ukrainian ports after Moscow's withdrawal from a U.N.-sponsored grain deal designed to ensure safe grain exports from the invaded country’s ports. The U.K. Foreign Office cited intelligence suggesting that Russia may lay sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports to target civilian shipping and blame it on Ukraine. “Russia almost certainly wants to avoid openly sinking civilian ships, instead falsely laying blame on Ukraine for any attacks against civilian vessels in the Black Sea,” it said, adding that the U.K. was working with Ukraine to help improve the safety of shipping. Speaking in Granada, Zelenskyy emphasized the need to preserve European unity in the face of Russian disinformation and to remain strong amid what he described as a “political storm” in the United States. Read: Further Russian airstrikes on Mariupol Asked if he was worried that support for Ukraine could falter in the U.S. Congress, the Ukrainian president stressed that his visit to Washington last month made him confident of strong backing by both the Biden administration and Congress. Zelenskyy called for more air defense systems, more artillery weapons and shells, and more long-range missiles and drones for Ukrainian soldiers, as well as other forms of support and security guarantees to help protect Europe from potential aggression by Moscow. Earlier Thursday, Russia targeted Ukraine's southern regions with drones. Ukraine’s air force said the country’s air defenses intercepted 24 out of 29 Iranian-made drones that Russia launched at the Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kirovohrad regions. Andriy Raykovych, head of the Kirovohrad regional administration, said an infrastructure facility in the region was struck and emergency services were deployed to extinguish a fire, but there were no casualties. In other Russian attacks in the past day, two civilians were killed by shelling in the southern city of Kherson and one died after a strike on the city of Krasnohorivka in the eastern Donetsk region. At least eight people were wounded, according to Ukraine's presidential office. Read more: Russian missile strike on Ukrainian market kills 17 as Blinken announces new $1B aid package A Russian strike on a hospital in the city of Beryslav in the Kherson region ravaged the building and wounded two medical workers, according to the regional administration chief, Oleksandr Prokudin. Ukraine, in turn, has struck back at Russia with regular drone attacks across the border. In Russia's Kursk region that borders Ukraine, Gov. Roman Starovoit said Ukrainian drone attacks resulted in power cuts in several areas. He also said Ukrainian forces fired artillery at the border town of Rylsk, wounding a resident and damaging several houses.

The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced Thursday, with the new laureate, or laureates, joining an illustrious list of past winners that ranges from Toni Morrison to Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre — who turned down the prize in 1964. This year’s winner or winners will be known at 1 p.m. (1100 GMT), assuming there is no slip-up similar to Wednesday, when a press release divulging the names of the three chemistry laureates was sent to Swedish media hours before the official press event to unveil the winners. Read: 3 scientists win Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on tiny quantum dots Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France. Ernaux was just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates. The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize was awarded to Moungi Bawendi of MIT, Louis Brus of Columbia University, and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc. They were honored for their work with tiny particles called quantum dots — tiny particles that can release very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging. Read: 3 scientists win Nobel Prize in physics for looking at electrons in atoms during split seconds Earlier this week, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for producing the first split-second glimpse into the super-fast world of spinning electrons. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ends the awards season on Monday. The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma when they collect their Nobel Prizes at the award ceremonies in December.

The University of Exeter has announced that a degree in magic will be offered in 2024, making it one of the first in the UK. The “recent surge in interest in magic” prompted the creation of the “innovative” MA in Magic and Occult Science, according to the course leader, reports BBC. Also read: Bangladeshi student in UK says ‘had to share a 2-bed flat with 20 men’ According to the management, it will provide an opportunity to explore the history and influence of witchcraft and magic on society and science across the world, it said The one-year curriculum will begin in September 2024. Academics from history, literature, philosophy, archaeology, sociology, psychology, theatre, and religion will demonstrate the importance of magic in both the West and the East. It is one of the few postgraduate programmes in the UK that combines the study of the history of magic with such a diverse range of other areas, according to the university, the release also said. Also read: UK accepting applications for GREAT Scholarships “A recent surge in interest in magic and the occult inside and outside of academia lies at the heart of the most urgent questions of our society,” said Prof Emily Selove, course leader. “Decolonisation, the exploration of alternative epistemologies, feminism and anti-racism are at the core of this programme,” she said. The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies will provide the course, the report also said. “This MA will allow people to re-examine the assumption that the West is the place of rationalism and science, while the rest of the world is a place of magic and superstition,” said Selove. Also read: Not magic: Opaque AI tool may flag parents with disabilities The degree might prepare students for jobs in teaching, counselling, mentoring, historic and museum work, library work, tourism, arts groups, or the publishing sector, among other fields, the university said. Dragons in western literature and art, the King Arthur tale, palaeography, Islamic philosophy, archaeological theory and practise, and the representation of women in the Middle Ages are among the modules available.

At least 21 people were killed and 18 injured in a fiery bus crash in Mestre, Italy, just across the Venetian Lagoon from old Venice, where firefighters and other emergency responders worked into the night trying to extract bodies and squelch the flames. The bus was carrying foreign tourists, including Ukrainians, according to a Venice official, when it fell from an elevated street Tuesday en route to a camping site near the community of Marghera. “The people in the bus found themselves surrounded by flames, ” said Mauro Luongo, commander of the Venice firefighters team. “The scene we found was terrible. It took about one hour to extract some of the bodies.” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the crash scene was “apocalyptic” and declared the city in a state of mourning. Four of the injured were in serious condition following the accident, which happened on the mainland just 9 km (3.7 miles) northwest of the old city of Venice, said Renato Boraso, a Venice city official. Two of the dead were children, Venice prefect Michele Di Bari said. Read: A bus crashes off the road in central Turkey, leaving 12 passengers dead The injured were transferred to five different hospitals in the region. According to local media, the bus fell a few meters before crashing close to Mestre's railway tracks, where it caught fire. The Veneto region governor, Luca Zaia, told RAI state television that the cause of the accident was still unclear. “This is an important tragedy, but it's difficult to understand how it happened," he said. "The bus was new and electric, and that street wasn't particularly problematic.” Read: 25 dead after bus crashes and catches fire in western India In 2017, 16 people on a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona. And in 2013, 40 people were killed in one of Italy's worst vehicle accidents when a bus plunged off a viaduct close to the southern city of Avellino. Read more: At least 15 people killed and dozens injured in bus crash in Mali