United News of Bangladesh

Global prices for food commodities like grain and vegetable oils were the highest on record last year even after falling for nine months in a row, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said, as Russia’s war in Ukraine, drought and other factors drove up inflation and worsened hunger worldwide. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of commonly traded food commodities, dipped by 1.9% in December from a month earlier, the Rome-based organization said Friday. For the whole year, it averaged 143.7 points, more than 14% above the 2021 average, which also saw large increases. The December decline was led by a drop in the price of vegetable oils amid shrinking import demand, expectations of increased soy oil production in South America and lower crude oil prices. Grain and meat were also down, while dairy and sugar rose slightly. Read: ‘Seeing signs of looming global food crisis, Bangladesh must be protected’ “Calmer food commodity prices are welcome after two very volatile years,” FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said in a prepared statement. “It is important to remain vigilant and keep a strong focus on mitigating global food insecurity given that world food prices remain at elevated levels, with many staples near record highs, and with prices of rice increasing, and still many risks associated with future supplies.” Last year, the U.N. organization’s Food Price Index hit the highest level since its records began in 1961, according to FAO data. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February exacerbated a food crisis because the two countries were leading global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other products, especially to nations in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia that were already struggling with hunger. With critical Black Sea supplies disrupted, food prices rose to record highs, increasing inflation, poverty and food insecurity in developing nations that rely on imports. Read: ADB plans to provide $14 billion to ease worsening food crisis in Asia The war also jolted energy markets and fertilizer supplies, both key to food production. That was on top of climate shocks that have fueled starvation in places like the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are badly affected by the worst drought in decades, with the U.N. warning that parts of Somalia are facing famine. Thousands of people have already died. Prices for wheat and corn reached a record high last year, though they fell in December along with the costs of other grains, the FAO said. It said harvests in the Southern Hemisphere boosted supplies and there was strong competition among exporters. The organization’s Vegetable Oil Price Index hit an all-time high last year, even as it tumbled in December to its lowest level since February 2021. For all of 2022, the FAO Dairy Price Index and Meat Price Index also were the highest since 1990.

Hawaii's Kilauea began erupting inside its summit crater Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, less than one month after the volcano and its larger neighbor Mauna Loa stopped releasing lava. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory detected a glow in webcam images indicating Kilauea had begun erupting inside Halemaumau crater at the volcano's summit caldera, the agency said. Kilauea’s summit is inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and away from residential communities. Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey raised the alert level for Kilauea due to signs that magma was moving below the summit surface, an indication that the volcano might erupt. Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes. It last erupted for 16 months starting in September 2021. For about two weeks starting Nov. 27, Hawaii had two volcanoes spewing lava side by side when Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in 38 years. Both volcanoes stopped erupting at about the same time. During the twin eruption, visitors to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park were able to see lava from both eruptions at the same time. Read more: Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupts, lava fountains form in park “It was a beautiful eruption, and lots of people got to see it, and it didn’t take out any major infrastructure and most importantly, it didn’t affect anybody’s life,” said Ken Hon, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s scientist in charge. Mauna Loa lava didn’t pose a threat to any communities, but got within 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) of a major highway connecting the east and west sides of the island. A 2018 Kilauea eruption destroyed more than 700 residences. The observatory planned to continue monitoring the volcanoes for signs of renewed activity. Hon previously said there is generally a three-month “cooling off” period before scientists consider an eruption to be complete. It was unclear what connection there could be to the volcanoes stopping their eruptions around the same time. The volcanoes can be seen at the same time from multiple spots in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park near Kilauea’s caldera. Read more: World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa erupts in Hawaii Scientists planned to look at data to study the relationship between the two volcanoes, Hon previously said. For Native Hawaiians, volcanic eruptions have deep cultural and spiritual significance. During Mauna Loa’s eruption, many Hawaiians took part in cultural traditions, such as singing, chanting and dancing to honor Pele, the deity of volcanoes and fire, and leaving offerings known as “hookupu.”

Pope Francis praised Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s “acute and gentle thought” as he presided over a packed Wednesday general audience in the Vatican, while thousands of people paid tribute to the former pope on the final day of public viewing in St. Peter’s Basilica. Francis was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd in the Paul VI auditorium and shouts of “Viva il papa!” or “Long live the pope” as he arrived for his weekly catechism appointment with the faithful. This week’s audience was conducted as tens of thousands of people continued to flock to St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their respects before Benedict’s body, lying in state. The first two days of viewing drew a total of 135,000 people. Wednesday’s viewing began before dawn and was set to end in early evening. Francis is due to preside over the late German pope’s funeral on Thursday, an event that is drawing heads of state and royalty despite Benedict’s requests for simplicity and Vatican efforts to keep the first Vatican funeral for an emeritus pope in modern times low-key. Francis drew applause when he opened his remarks by noting all those who were outside paying tribute to Benedict, whom he called a “great master of catechesis.” “His acute and gentle thought was not self-referential, but ecclesial, because he always wanted to accompany us in the encounter with Jesus,” Francis said. Later Wednesday, Vatican officials were to place Benedict’s body in a cypress coffin — the first of three coffins —along with a brief, written summary of his historic papacy, the coins minted during his pontificate and his pallium stoles. Read more: Pope on Christmas: Jesus was poor, so don’t be power-hungry After the funeral, the retired pontiff’s remains will be carried back into the basilica, where the coffin will placed inside a zinc one, and then finally into another made from oak. In keeping with Benedict’s wishes, his remains will be placed in the crypt once occupied by the tomb of St. John Paul II in the grottos underneath the basilica. Benedict, who was elected pope in 2005 following John Paul’s death, became the first pope in six centuries years to resign when he announced in 2013 he no longer had the strength to lead the Catholic Church. After Francis was elected pope, Benedict spent his nearly decade-long retirement in a converted monastery in the Vatican Gardens. “We can’t forget the example that he gave in his resignation, that he more or less said, ‘Look, I’m not in this for the prestige, the power of the office, I’m in it for service, as Jesus taught,’” recalled Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whom Benedict named archbishop of New York in 2009 and cardinal in 2012. Dolan came to Rome for the funeral. Thursday’s rite takes into account the unusual situation in which a reigning pope will preside over a funeral for a retired one, making important changes to a funeral ritual for popes that is highly codified. Two key prayers, from the diocese of Rome and the Eastern rite churches, that were recited during John Paul’s funeral, for example, will be omitted because Benedict wasn’t pope when he died and because both branches of the Catholic Church still have a reigning pope as their leader: Francis. Read more: Did the Pope actually say ‘even nuns watch porn’? While the funeral will be novel, it does has some precedent: In 1802, Pope Pius VII celebrated the funeral in St. Peter’s of his predecessor, Pius VI, who had died in exile in France in 1799 as a prisoner of Napoleon, the Vatican noted Wednesday.

Ecuador, Japan, Malta, Mozambique and Switzerland got a formal welcome into the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, taking the two-year seats they won unopposed in June. In a tradition that Kazakhstan started in 2018, the five countries’ ambassadors installed their national flags Tuesday alongside those of other members outside the council chambers. Mozambican Ambassador Pedro Comissário Afonso of Mozambique called it “a historic date” and Swiss Ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl said she felt “a deep sense of humility and responsibility” as their countries marked their first-ever terms on U.N.’s most powerful body. Malta joined for a second time, Ecuador a fourth and Japan a record 12th. China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are permanent, veto-wielding members of the group. Its 10 other members are elected by the 193-nation General Assembly for staggered, two-year terms. They’re allocated by global regions. Read more:UN Security Council adopts first-ever resolution on Myanmar; China, Russia and India abstain from voting  To many countries, winning a council seat is considered a signature diplomatic accomplishment that can raise a nation’s global profile and afford small countries a bigger voice than they might otherwise have in the major international peace and security issues of the day. The council deploys peacekeeping missions, can approve sanctions and speaks out — sometimes — on conflicts and flashpoints, while also surveying such thematic issues as terrorism and arms control. While many matters are perennials on the agenda, council members also can use the platform to spotlight emerging concerns or topics of particular interest to them. Countries often campaign for the council for years. Some 60 nations have never had a seat since the group’s formation in 1946. Read more: Ambassador Muhith briefs Security Council as Chair of Peacebuilding Commission The five latest members are replacing India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway. Their terms ended Dec. 31. The other current two-year members are Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and United Arab Emirates.

The overall number of global Covid-19 cases has now surpassed 666 million. According to the latest global data, the total case count mounted to 666,001,230 while the death toll from the virus reached 6,700,964 on Wednesday morning. The US has recorded 102,747,552 cases so far, while 1,118,757 people have died from the virus in the country, both highest counts around the world. Read: Beijing threatens response to ‘unacceptable’ virus measures India reported 134 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, with the active caseload standing at 2,582. No Covid-19 related death has been reported across the country during the past 24 hours.. Meanwhile, France has registered 39,356,184 Covid-19 cases so far, while 162,377 people have died in the country, as per the Worldometer. Covid in Bangladesh Bangladesh registered 31 more Covid cases in the 24 hours till Tuesday morning. With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,187, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,440 as no new fatalities were reported. Read: Children aged 5-11 get Covid jabs on trial basis The daily case test positivity fell to 0.74 per cent from Monday's 0.84 per cent as 4,189 samples were tested during the period. The mortality rate remained unchanged at 1.45 percent while recovery rate rose to 97.59 per cent, it added.  

The European Union and China on Tuesday moved closer to a political standoff over the COVID-19 crisis, with Beijing vehemently rejecting travel restrictions some EU nations have started to impose that could well be expanded in coming days. An EU offer of help, including vaccine donations, was also as good as slapped down, with Beijing insisting the situation was “under control” and medical provisions “in adequate supply,” government spokesperson Mao Ning said. And as the 27-nation bloc was moving closer to imposing some sort of restrictions on travelers from China, Beijing clearly laid out what to expect in return. “We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” Mao said. Still, the EU seemed bent on taking some sort of joint action to ensure incoming passengers from China would not transmit any potential new variants on to the continent. “Travelers from China need to be prepared for decisions being taken at short notice,” Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, warned in a statement. Several member nations announced individual efforts over the past week. At the same time, the EU’s European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control insisted that the situation in China didn’t pose an immediate overall health threat. “The variants circulating in China are already circulating in the EU, and as such are not challenging for the immune response” of EU citizens, it said in its latest impact study published Tuesday. Other scientists have also said limits on travel would have little impact on containing the disease, but they also insisted on the value of looking for potential variants not in Europe at the moment. Read more: Beijing threatens response to ‘unacceptable’ virus measures Yet fearful not to be caught unawares like at the outset of the global pandemic in early 2020, medical experts from EU member states were already preparing potential action to be taken up by an Integrated Political Crisis Response meeting on Wednesday, where measure like EU-wide entry requirements could be decided. Over the past week, EU nations reacted in a chaotic cascade of national measures to the crisis in China, disregarding an earlier commitment to act in unity before anything else. Italy was the first EU member in requiring coronavirus tests for airline passengers coming from China, but several others have said such measures might not be the best option to protect local populations since new variants now coming from China have already been around in Europe, often for many months. France, Spain and Italy have already announced independent measures to implement tougher COVID-19 rules for passengers arriving from China. France’s government is requiring negative tests, and is urging French citizens to avoid nonessential travel to China. France is also reintroducing mask requirements on flights from China to France. Spain’s government said it would require all air passengers coming from China to have negative tests or proof of vaccination. Read more: China to resume issuing passports, visas as virus curbs ease The United States announced new COVID-19 testing requirements Wednesday for all travelers from China, joining some Asian nations that had imposed restrictions because of a surge of infections.

Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year. RSV, COVID-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her full-time job at the Rand Corp., a think tank. She switched last month to independent contract work to give her more flexibility to care for her son and 4-month-old daughter. In the first and even second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, multi-week quarantines and isolations were common for many Americans, especially children. But nine weeks of missed child care, nearly three years in? “The rest of the world has moved on from the crisis that I’m still in,” said Edwards, who studies women’s issues. “That’s sometimes how it feels like to me.” This fall and winter have upended life for working parents of little children, who thought the worst of the pandemic was behind them. The arrival of vaccines for younger children and the end of quarantines for COVID exposure were supposed to bring relief. Instead, families were treated to what some called a “tripledemic.” Flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus cases collided, stressing children’s hospitals and threatening the already imperiled child care system. Even parents of babies with less serious cases of COVID-19 have run into 10-day isolation rules that have taxed the patience of employers. A record-high 104,000 people missed work in October because of child care problems, surpassing even early pandemic levels, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Child care-related absences fell to 59,000 in November, but numbers still surpass typical pre-pandemic levels. The instability has hurt many working parents’ finances. Most of those who missed work in October because of child care problems didn’t get paid, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. Now, doctors are bracing for the number of sick children to rise after families gathered for the holidays. “I think we’re going to have to be ready to do it all over again,” said Dr. Eric Biondi, director of pediatric hospital medicine at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland. Illnesses among teachers and children have strained a child care system that’s already short-staffed. “This is the worst year I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Shaunna Baillargeon, owner of Muddy Puddles Early Learning Program in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. She faces “a constant battle of staff and children being sick with a different virus every day,” with no backups if a teacher calls in sick. At the Washington, D.C., day care where Jana Williams teaches, illness has caused classroom shutdowns almost weekly since October. Her 19-month-old daughter is also enrolled there, coming down with the same viruses. “It’s stressful,” she said before Christmas, when she was home with her sick toddler. “You want to stay home and care for your child. But then it’s like, you have to get to work.” Read more: Global Covid cases near 634 million During the early months of the pandemic, women in the prime of their careers left the labor market at a rate far exceeding men. They were more likely to work in the service-oriented fields that were decimated, and they often were caring for children, Edwards said. Women have since returned to the workforce, particularly women of color, said economist Diane Swonk of professional services firm KPMG. But the participation of prime-age working women in the U.S. lags most industrialized nations, Swonk said. Advocates have long blamed the country’s lack of universal preschool and paid family leave. Finding child care and heading back to work has proved far from simple. At the pandemic’s height, more than one-third of day care jobs were lost, Edwards said. Staffing hasn’t fully recovered. As of November, the country had 8% fewer child care workers than before the pandemic, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. The strong labor market has driven up the cost to hire new workers. That means child care spots are pricey and hard to find. Even centers with openings may close when staff or kids are sick. That babies and toddlers are prone to illnesses adds to the challenge. In the wake of COVID, day cares are more anxious about accepting a snotty toddler. Isolation guidelines have hit parents of babies especially hard. While older preschoolers who have COVID-19 may return with masks after five days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children under 2 stay home for 10 days, or until they test negative twice, 48 hours apart. Read more: COVID-19: US vaccine donations to Bangladesh exceed 100 million One issue is masks aren’t recommended for the under-2 crowd. Their smaller airways mean wearing them can increase the risk of suffocation, according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. Not all centers are adhering to the CDC’s guidance. But many are following it to the letter, or even going further. When Chicago educator Tamisha Holifield and her daughter had COVID-19 in May, the toddler had to miss 15 days of child care. Bouts of colds have followed, in what Holifield described as a “constant whirlwind” of sickness that has been stressful both financially and emotionally. “It’s a major inconvenience. But I’m a single parent, so I don’t have a choice. If I drop the ball, the game is over,” Holifield said. Disruption from illness can have ripple effects on young kids. Unduly stressed parents can become a stress on the baby, which can in turn cause sleep, gastrointestinal or socialization problems, said Dr. Sherri Alderman, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician. The situation has also strained employers. Brad Lukas, chief nursing officer at Corewell Health Beaumont Grosse Pointe Hospital in Michigan, has seen eight or nine nurses calling out per shift, some because of sick children. “We’re seeing a lot of people reduce their hours,” Lukas said. His own wife cut back nursing shifts so she can mostly stay home with their young children. The continued chaos for young families is isolating, especially when other Americans’ lives are back to normal, said Lauren Hipp, early learning chief at MomsRising, an advocacy organization. “I feel pretty angry about it,” said Hipp, whose own 2-, 6- and 8-year-old children have been wracked with illnesses, including RSV. “To feel like society has passed you by is a really difficult and lonely feeling.”  

Nearly 1,600 death row inmates have been put to death in the U.S. since 1977, but an execution scheduled for Tuesday in Missouri would be the first of an openly transgender woman. Amber McLaughlin, 49, is set to die for stalking a former girlfriend and stabbing her to death nearly 20 years ago. With no legal appeals planned, McLaughlin’s fate rests with Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who is weighing a clemency request. A database for the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center shows 1,558 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-1970s. All but 17 of them were men, and the center said there are no known previous cases in which an openly transgender inmate was executed. A clemency petition cited McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard at her trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her, according to the petition, which also cited severe depression resulting in multiple suicide attempts, both as a child and as an adult. The petition also included reports citing a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a condition causing anguish and other symptoms as a result of a disparity between a person’s gender identity and their assigned sex at birth. But McLaughlin’s sexual identity is “not the main focus” of the clemency request, said her attorney, Larry Komp. Read: Israel indicts soldiers for trying to bomb Palestinian home In 2003, long before transitioning, McLaughlin was in a relationship with Beverly Guenther. After they stopped dating, McLaughlin would appear at the suburban St. Louis office where Guenther worked, sometimes hiding inside the building, according to court records. Guenther obtained a restraining order and police officers occasionally escorted her to her car after work. Guenther’s neighbors called police on the night of Nov. 20, 2003, when she failed to return home. Officers went to the office building, where they found a broken knife handle near her car and a trail of blood. A day later, McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St. Louis where the body had been dumped. McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. Komp said Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow a judge, rather than a jury, to sentence someone to death. A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021. McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago, recalled Jessica Hicklin. Hicklin, 43, sued the Missouri Department of Corrections, challenging a policy that prohibited hormone therapy for inmates who weren’t receiving it before being incarcerated. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin. Hicklin, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing before being released a year ago, described McLaughlin as a painfully shy person who came out of her shell after deciding to transition. Read: Attack kills 10 in Syria, Kurdish forces arrest 52 militants “She always had a smile and a dad joke,” Hicklin said. “If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated there are 3,200 transgender inmates in the nation’s prisons and jails. Perhaps the best-known case of a transgender prisoner seeking hormone therapy was that of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who served seven years in federal prison for leaking government documents to Wikileaks until President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017. The Army agreed to pay for hormone treatments for Manning in 2015. McLaughlin has not had hormone treatments, Komp said. The U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a 2015 court filing that state prison officials must treat an inmate’s gender identity condition just as they would treat other medical or mental health conditions, regardless of when the diagnosis occurred. The only woman ever executed in Missouri was Bonnie B. Heady, who was put to death on Dec. 18, 1953, for kidnapping and killing a 6-year-old boy. Heady was executed in the gas chamber alongside the other kidnapper and killer, Carl Austin Hall. Nationally, 18 people were executed in 2022, including two in Missouri. Kevin Johnson was put to death in November for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carman Deck was executed in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri. Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die Feb. 7. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her three young children.

The overall number of global Covid-19 cases has now crossed 665 million. According to the latest global data, the total case count mounted to 665,546,183 while the death toll from the virus reached 6,699,015 on Tuesday morning. The US has recorded 102,686,752 cases so far, while 1,118,478 people have died from the virus in the country, both highest counts around the world. Read: Revellers throng to New Year’s parties after COVID hiatus India reported 173 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, with the active caseload standing at 2,670. The country also logged two more deaths related to COVID-19, taking the death toll to 530,707 since the beginning of the pandemic, the ministry said. According to data released on Monday morning by the federal health ministry, a total of 44,145,445 COVID-19 patients have been cured and discharged from hospitals. Read: Lack of info on China’s COVID-19 surge stirs global concern Meanwhile, Singapore reported 390 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total tally to 2,203,146. One new death from COVID-19 was reported on Monday, pushing the total death toll to 1,712. Covid in Bangladesh Bangladesh registered 14 more Covid cases in the 24 hours till Monday morning. With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,037,156, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,440 as no new fatalities were reported. The daily case test positivity fell to 0.84 per cent from Sunday's 1.07 per cent as 1,667 samples were tested during the period.

Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian soldiers were stationed, killing 63 of them, Russia’s defense ministry said Monday, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not say when the strike happened. The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive. According to the governor of Russia’s Samara region, Dmitry Azarov, an unspecified number of residents of the region were among those killed and wounded by the strike on the town of Makiivka. Russian military bloggers, whose information has largely been reliable during the war, said ammunition stored close to the facility had exploded in the attack and contributed to the high number of casualties. Expressing anger at the losses, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the Russian-appointed administration in Russian-occupied Donetsk, called for the punishment of military officers who ordered a large number of troops to be stationed at the facility. The Ukrainian military appeared to acknowledge the attack Monday, with the General Staff confirming that Makiivka was hit on Dec. 31, and saying 10 Russian military vehicles were destroyed or damaged. It added that Russian personnel losses were still being clarified. In a claim that could not be independently verified, the Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces had maintained Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school. Meanwhile, Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion. The barrage was the latest in a series of relentless year-end attacks, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve. On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight. All of them were destroyed, according to air defense forces. Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces. Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital. In the outlying Kyiv region a “critical infrastructure object” and residential buildings were hit, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said. Russia has carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of “energy terrorism” as the aerial bombardments have left many people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is “weaponizing winter” in its effort to demoralize the Ukrainian resistance. Read more: Putin, Xi vow closer ties as Russia bombards Ukraine again Ukraine is using sophisticated Western-supplied weapons to help shoot down Russia’s missiles and drones, as well as send artillery fire into Russian-held areas of the country. Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.” Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war. Russia is currently observing public holidays through Jan. 8. Drones, missiles and artillery shells launched by Russian forces also struck areas across Ukraine. Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram. The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said. Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted. Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported Monday that 39 Iranian-made exploding Shahed drones were shot down overnight, as well as two Russian-made Orlan drones and a X-59 missile. “We are staying strong,” the Ukrainian defense ministry tweeted. A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said. Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night. The strikes came 36 hours after widespread missile attacks Russia launched Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities, and the unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials. In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. A village was left without power as a result, he said. Read more: Ukraine conflict casts shadow on Russia as it enters 2023