Author: News Desk

Russia’s war in Ukraine entered the third week on Thursday with none of its stated objectives reached, despite thousands of people killed, more than two million made refugees and thousands cowering in besieged cities under relentless bombardment. The foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine met on Thursday in Turkey, the highest level contact between the two countries since the war began on Feb. 24. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on the eve of his talks with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov that his expectations were low. Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky said Moscow “will not concede a single negotiating point”. Previous talks…

BRUSSELS : Europe faces a tough choice: Is it worth a recession to choke off oil and gas money to Russia while it fights a war in Ukraine? While U.S. and British bans on Russian oil increase the pressure on Europe to follow suit, the continent’s dependence on Russia for energy makes an immediate embargo much more difficult. Still, some officials say it is the only way to stop pouring billions in oil and gas revenue into President Vladimir Putin’s coffers, despite the near certainty of record inflation worsening. Europe gets around 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil from Russia, whereas the…

MARIUPOL :  A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital Wednesday in the besieged port city of Mariupol amid growing warnings from the West that Moscow’s invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn. Ukrainian officials said at least 17 people were wounded in the attack. The ground shook more than a mile away when the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to scene to evacuate victims, carrying out a heavily pregnant and bleeding woman on a…

Bahrain :  Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, Wife of His Majesty the King and President of the Supreme Council for Women, is at the forefront of the list published by the Contemporary and Historical Women Leadership Initiative that was announced by the delegation of the European Union to the United Nations and the Permanent Mission of Gabon, on the occasion of UNESCO’s launch of the International Day of Women in Multilateralism. Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka Bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa was selected from among a number of world leaders in multilateral work in view of the…

Abu Dhabi : Sebastien Loeb continued from where he left off overnight in the UAE’s Al Dhafra dunes, securing his third consecutive second place on stage four of the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. The result means the Bahrain Raid Xtreme (BRX) driver scored four more points towards his FIA World Rally-Raid campaign, as he closed the gap to WRRC competitors ahead of him on the leaderboard and moved up a place to seventh overall in the rally. The Desert Challenge presents terrain that is different to any of the other events in the WRRC, being run almost entirely on sand…

London : Scientists say they have found the sunken wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, more than a century after it was lost to the Antarctic ice. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust says the vessel lies 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) below the surface of the Weddell Sea, about 6.4 kilometers (four miles) south of the location recorded in 1915 by its captain, Frank Worsley. An expedition set off from South Africa last month to search for the ship, which was crushed by ice and sank in November 1915. Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, said…

Washington : Google is fortifying its cloud services with a $5.4 billion acquisition of the cyber security firm Mandiant, the companies announced Tuesday. Google, a subsidiary of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc., will pay $23 per Mandiant share in all-cash deal expected to close this year. The price represents a 57% premium on Mandiant’s share price in early February, when speculation about a deal between the companies first surfaced. Mandiant, based in Reston, Virginia, and its 5,300 employees will join Google Cloud as soon as the transaction closes. “The Mandiant brand is synonymous with unmatched insights for organizations seeking to…

Bahrain : The Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Chief Executive Mohammed Ali Al Qaed met Chief of Customer Services Ali Darwish to discuss improvements on Tawasul app. Al Qaed highlighted the importance of the Fikra competition that was launched following the directives of the Crown Prince and Prime Minister His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. The competition promotes creativity in the public sector in line with the Bahrain Economic Vision 2030, he said. Al Qaed explained that the Tawasul app promotes transparency between beneficiaries and government entities. He stressed the authority’s commitment to improve government services and confirmed the efforts…

Geneva :  An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said Tuesday it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses, in a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous insistence that boosters weren’t necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity. In a statement, WHO said its expert group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death amid the global circulation of the hugely contagious omicron variant. It said vaccination, including the use of boosters, was especially important for people at risk of severe disease. Last year, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom…

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday the U.S. will ban all Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia’s economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine, but he acknowledged it will bring costs to Americans, particularly at the gas pump. The action follows pleas by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to U.S. and Western officials to cut off the imports, which had been a glaring omission in the massive sanctions put in place on Russia over the invasion. Energy exports have kept a steady stream of cash flowing to Russia despite otherwise severe restrictions on its financial sector. Biden said the U.S. was acting in…