Author: cnadmin

A bear that killed a jogger in the Italian Alps has had its life spared for now after a court suspended an order to have it euthanised.

Andrea Papi died in early April in the north-eastern region of Trentino-Alto Adige in an attack that shocked many Italians.

The 17-year-old brown bear, known as JJ4, was later captured by park rangers after DNA proved she was involved.

An order by the authorities to kill her has now been frozen until 27 June.

The local provincial government has argued the bear needs to be put down as she has a history of attacking humans – injuring a father and son while they were hiking on Mount Peller in 2020.

But the Trento administrative court on Friday partially upheld an appeal against the destruction that was made by environmental groups, who claim the bear is innocent.

It has called on all parties involved to provide more evidence, including further details of a plan by those opposed to the killing to send JJ4 and another bear, known as MJ5, to a bear reserve either in Italy or abroad.

MJ5, an 18-year-old male bear that has yet to be captured, attacked a man who was walking his dog in March and is also facing death.

In a statement posted on social media, animal rights lobby group LAV welcomed the news, saying their rehousing plans are “concrete and real” and that it would fund them.

A hearing about this plan has been set for 14 December, meaning JJ4’s execution may be delayed further.

Andrea Papi was fatally attacked while jogging above the town of Caldes on the slopes of Mt Peller in the Brenta Dolomites, prompting fear and anger in the region. He is the first Italian known to have been killed by a bear in recent years.

JJ4 had been with her three cubs when she was captured in a tube-style bear trap filled with fruit following an intensive two-week hunt, in which forest rangers with dogs tracked her footprints in snow in woodland in the Meledrio valley.

All of the cubs were weaned and already independent of their mother.

Bears are a protected species in Italy, and their population has been increasing in recent years after they were reintroduced to the region two decades ago.

JJ4’s own parents had been brought into northern Italy from Slovenia under the “Life Ursus” European conservation project.

Last month, Trentino governor Maurizio Fugatti said the optimal number of wild bears was roughly 50 and that the province now had around 70 “excess” bears.

Source: BBC

Two people have died and 23 others have been injured in a missile strike on a medical clinic in Dnipro – a city in east Ukraine, locals official say.

Authorities shared videos of the building on fire, with firefighters on the scene.

The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, confirmed the attack and said teams were working to rescue others from the hospital.

Source: BBC

Kiev City Council has decided to deprive the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was Ukrainian-born, of the title of honorary citizen of Ukraine’s capital.

During the vote on Thursday, the move was supported by 82 MPs out of 120, the city council said in a statement on its website.

“This decision is another step towards eliminating the legacy of the former Communist regime,” the statement read, adding that it was made in line with the country’s “decommunization” law of 2015.

In 1964, Brezhnev replaced Nikita Khrushchev as secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and also became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1977. He occupied both of the highest-ranking positions in the country until his death at the age of 75 in 1982.

The Soviet leader was awarded honorary citizenship by Kiev several months before his passing, after he opened the 62-meter-tall Motherland Monument, dedicated to the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, in the capital of then-Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Brezhnev was born in 1907 in the Russian Empire, on the territory of present-day Ukraine. His home town was Kamenskoye, located near the city of Yekaterinoslav, now known as Dnepropetrovsk.

During his rise to power, Brezhnev was also the Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the Communist Party. It’s believed that he propelled many Ukrainians to high positions in the Soviet state during his rule.

Together with Brezhnev, several other Soviet military commanders and politicians, as well as Vietnamese revolutionary Truong Chinh, have also been deprived of the titles of honorary citizens of Kiev.

Ukraine has accelerated its push to remove links with Russia and the former USSR since the launch of Moscow’s military operation in February 2022. Earlier this month, Kiev changed the names of 26 streets and subway stations in line with a “decolonization” law signed by President Vladimir Zelensky in April.

Source: Russia Today

Three migrants were found dead off the Greek island of Mykonos on Friday after their boat capsized and up to 12 others missing, the Greek coastguard said.

The nationality of the victims, according to preliminary reports two women and a man, has not been confirmed by Greek authorities.

The coastguard is searching by ground, air and sea for up to others whom survivors said were missing after the boat overturned.

Witnesses said up to 17 people had been on the same boat, including five women and a seven-year-old child. Two men, a Palestinian and a Syrian, were rescued by the coastguard.

For several months, migrants have sought to reach Italy from Turkey through Greece’s southeast Cyclades islands which attract thousands of visitors each summer.

Non-profit groups say the new route is designed to avoid the northern Aegean Sea, where witnesses accuse Greek authorities of stepping up illegal pushbacks, accusations that Athens has long rejected.

Footage published by The New York Times on May 19 reportedly showed the forceful expulsion of a group of migrants, including a baby, being bundled into a van and then transferred to an inflatable raft and set adrift.

Former prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his government would investigate the incident and called such pushbacks “completely unacceptable

Source: Nam News Network

The volcanic topography of La Gomera prompted its inhabitants to find a way of communicating across long distances. Before the advent of mobile phones, they found that a whistle, echoing through the island’s mountains, could reach up to 4 kilometres away.

Once used to notify fellow islanders of important events, then to escape the Guardia Civil during Franco’s dictatorship, Silbo is now one of the last 80 whistled languages in the world, helping scientists make ground-breaking discoveries about the human brain.

The ENTR team met Francisco Niebla, a young whistler whose passion for Silbo was passed down to by his grandfather, and Quico Correa, among the island’s most experienced silbadores.

Source: France24.com

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has honored UN peacekeeping personnel who had lost their lives in the line of duty, including Russia’s Lieutenant Colonel Alexey Mizyura, who was part of a reconnaissance team killed in a helicopter crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year.

The ceremony at the UN General Assembly Hall in New York on Thursday marked the upcoming 75th anniversary of UN Peacekeepers Day on May 29. The UN chief laid a wreath to honor over 4,200 peacekeepers who had lost their lives under the UN flag since 1948, and awarded posthumous medals to the 103 deceased last year.

Lt. Col. Mizyura was a senior intelligence officer with the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). On March 29, 2022 he flew a surveillance and reconnaissance mission with a team of UN military observers when their helicopter came under fire near the town of Rutshuru. The area had seen fighting between the Congolese military and militants affiliated with the March 23 Movement (M23), with the two sides blaming each other for shooting down the aircraft. The entire UN team was killed in the crash, including six Pakistani and one Serbian peacekeeper.

“Mizyura remained true to his duty to the very end, striving to bring peace and stability to the Congolese land. High professionalism, as well as his inherent courage, helped him to successfully carry out the most important missions,” the Russian mission to the UN said. Moscow’s permanent representative, Vassily Nebenzia, accepted the medal on behalf of Mizyura, and will pass it on to the officer’s surviving family.

The posthumous award is named after Dag Hammarskjold, a former UN secretary-general who was killed in a plane crash en route to ceasefire talks during the Congo Crisis in 1961. The exact circumstances of that disaster are still unknown.

The M23 militants were thought to have been defeated back in 2013 with the help of UN peacekeepers, but rose again in recent years. Earlier this month, the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) agreed to send troops to join the East African regional military force that has been present in several areas of the Congo previously controlled by the M23 militia since December 2022.

Source: Russia Today

The facade of an office building was damaged in a Friday morning blast in the city of Krasnodar, southern Russia, according to the region’s crisis center. Local news outlets and Telegram channels claimed that the facility was likely struck by a Ukrainian drone or its debris, citing eyewitness accounts and sharing photos and videos of the incident.

There were no casualties, according to preliminary information cited by the mayor, Evgeny Naumov, upon arriving at the scene. However, a residential building had several windows blown out. Naumov urged the public to “remain calm” while emergency services are working at the scene.

While authorities have yet to confirm details, popular digital news outlets, including Mash, Baza, Readovka and SHOT, all shared footage of the suspected drone strike. Some reports suggested the UAV was shot down by the air defenses, as eyewitnesses reportedly heard at least two blasts.

In one of the videos, an explosion could be heard seconds after what appears to be a drone flies out of frame.

The Baza Telegram channel shared another video captured by a local, which shows smoke billowing from an area near two cell towers following the explosion.

Meanwhile, Readovka shared pictures of the aftermath, apparently showing the damaged facade of a building that belongs to the Russian cellphone network operator MTS.

In one of the videos shared by SHOT, an unmanned aerial vehicle could be seen flying across the sky, but the date and location of the video have not been verified.

Source: Russia Today

A Ukrainian missile has been shot down by Russian air defenses over Rostov Region, the local governor has said. The attack follows a wave of attempted strikes on Russian territory in recent weeks, as Kiev prepares to launch its much-hyped “spring counteroffensive.”

Rostov Governor Vasily Golubev reported the missile attack in a Telegram post on Thursday, saying at least one projectile was intercepted near the Morozovsk district, located about 255km (158 miles) northeast of the regional capital of Rostov-on-Don.

“An air defense system went off in the Morozovsk area, shooting down a Ukrainian missile,” the official said, adding “The military is doing its job. Keep calm.”

Footage purporting to show the interception has circulated online, with a light seen streaking across the night sky before detonating in mid-flight, after which debris from the missile appears to fall to the ground. It is unclear what type of munition might have been used.

Ukrainian forces have carried out a series of attacks in recent weeks, increasingly targeting both Russia’s border regions and new territories, as well as naval assets in Crimea, which voted to join the Russian Federation soon after a US-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014.

Early on Thursday morning, Russian authorities said at least two Ukrainian drones were shot down near Sevastopol, the port city which hosts Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet, while Ukrainian unmanned speed boats were also repelled after an assault on a Russian reconnaissance vessel sailing in the Bosporus Strait on Wednesday.

The Russian capital has also come under drone attack, with the Kremlin saying a failed UAV strike earlier this month was an attempt to assassinate President Vladimir Putin. While Kiev has denied any involvement, keeping with its usual policy for cross-border strikes, Russian officials have accused Washington of facilitating Kiev’s “terrorist attacks” in Russia.

Source: Russia Today

The Chinese yuan has become a major player in Russia’s foreign trade and its share in the country’s cross-border settlements is expected to grow tenfold, Herman Gref, the head of Russia’s largest state-owned lender, Sber, said on Tuesday.

The share of the yuan in Russia’s export settlements jumped from 2% to 18% and in import payments from 5% to 27% over the past year, according to Gref.

Speaking at a Russian-Chinese Business Forum in Shanghai, he highlighted the “significant” interest in national currencies, and in the yuan in particular, among the bank’s clients.

“In 2023, we expect a tenfold increase in the number of transactions in yuan compared to last year,” he said.

Gref called Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure and investment project an important model for the development of global infrastructure. He added that Sber, as a systemically important lender in the Russian economy, would be willing to take part in the project.

Two-thirds of current trade between Russia and China is carried out in the national currencies, the yuan and the ruble, according to the Bank of Russia.

The latest trading data shows that almost all of Beijing’s purchases of crude oil, gas, coal, and certain metals from Moscow are now settled in yuan.

A shift from the US dollar and euro in international trade has accelerated against the backdrop of sweeping sanctions imposed by Western nations against Russia, which is a major global energy producer and exporter.

The yuan surpassed the dollar to become the most-used currency in China’s cross-border transactions in March, according to calculations based on data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Source: Russia Today

It can recreate voices, and write fresh and perfect text; AI has even found a cure for cancer. On this edition of 360 View, Scottie Nell Hughes talks with lawyer and media analyst, Lionel, to discuss the various capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and asks: “is AI growing faster than the world and the law is prepared for?”

Source: Russia Today