List of All Articles with Tag 'euro'

Hops in major beer-producing European countries like Germany, Czech Republic and Slovenia are ripening earlier and producing less since 1994, scientists found. And, perhaps most alarmingly for the IPA lovers of the world, they are starting to lose their critical bitter component.

Russia’s desperate bid to rejoin the UN’s top human rights body will be tested in the General Assembly vote on Tuesday, more than a year after it was booted out for invading Ukraine. The 193-member assembly will be electing 15 members to the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council, with candidates put forward by the UN’s five regional groups. Russia will be competing against Albania and Bulgaria to win back two seats reserved for the East European regional group and will need majority votes from the assembly. A total of 47 member states are part of the UNHRC based on the geographic distribution. The UN’s five regional groups have sent names to shortlist 15 members to the body. Experts told The Independent that Russia will try to lure African and other ally nations with stolen Ukrainian grain and arms in exchange for votes. World leaders have cautioned against bringing Russian president Vladimir Putin’s membership back on the panel amid the continuing invasion, especially with the latest attack on Ukrainian village of Hroza in Kharkiv. At least 51 people died in the missile attack, wiping out members from almost every family. While Russia says it does not strike civilian targets, A two-day-old baby boy was killed after a Russian missile struck a hospital in the city of Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia. A child was also among the dozens killed when Russian missiles hit a grocery store and café in the village of Hroza. US’s deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that Russia’s re-election “while it openly continues to commit war crimes and other atrocities would be an ugly stain that would undermine the credibility of the institution and the United Nations”. Diplomats aware of the voting pitch by Russia to woo other nations using grains said that the US and others have distributed letters to many of the 193 members of the General Assembly, asking nations to vote against Russia. Moscow’s competitor Albania vying for the seat has also ramped up its campaign to join the UNHRC by highlighting Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine. Albanian UN ambassador Ferit Hoxha said those who care about human rights and the “credibility of the Human Rights Council and its work” should oppose the nation which kills innocent people, destroys civilian infrastructure, ports and grain silos and “then takes pride in doing so”. International rights group Human Rights Watch has said Russia and China are unfit to serve on the Human Rights Council. “Every day, Russia and China remind us by committing abuses on a massive scale that they should not be members of the UN Human Rights Council,” Louis Charbonneau, UN director of Human Rights Watch said last week. The rights group said Russian forces in Ukraine continue to commit apparent war crimes, including unlawful attacks and crimes against humanity, torture and summary executions. It pointed out how Mr Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights Maria Lvova-Belova are sought by the International Criminal Court for alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Experts have warned against Russia’s pattern of “flagrant disrespect” towards international law as Moscow expected the world to turn a blind-eye to the latest missile attacks inside Ukraine. “Russia’s pattern of flagrant disrespect towards international law remains shockingly consistent. War crimes committed by Russia over the past months are no less cruel or widespread than the ones committed in Bucha in spring 2022, when Russia was suspended from the Human Rights Council,” said Anna Mykytenko, senior lawyer and the Ukraine country manager for Global Rights Compliance headquartered at the Hague. “Although now most of these crimes do not make it to the front pages of the international media, the aggressor state that keeps on committing war crimes and violating human rights cannot benefit from decreasing attention to the war in Ukraine and an opening to slink back into a UN Human Rights Council seat,” she told The Independent. Wayne Jordash KC, president and co-founder of Global Rights Compliance, said any attempts to allow Russia back to the seat of the Human Rights Council are “not only unacceptable and indecent but signify a dangerous global drift into untrammelled violence against the most vulnerable and innocent”. Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Putin’s shameless UN charm offensive - with stolen grain from Ukraine Russia tries to rejoin UN Human Rights Council Truss calls on Russia to be suspended from UN human rights council after ‘heinous butchery’ in Bucha Ukraine finds evidence of torture on bodies exhumed from Izyum burial site Russia should be thrown off UN Human Rights Council over its role in Syria, global coalition demands

The mayor says he does not think a bedbug infestation will spread across the Tube or bus network.

Irish-Israeli woman Kim Damti, 22, has been missing since the Supernova music festival attack.

Vladimir Putin has given Russian lawmakers 10 days to find how best to revoke Moscow’s ratification of a critical nuclear treaty which bans Russia from testing atomic weapons shortly after he suggested the possibility of resuming such testing. The chair of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) Vyacheslav Volodin and other parliament heads laid out a deadline for Russian lawmakers to study the de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) option until 18 October, a statement from the Duma read. Mr Volodin said revoking the ratification on testing nuclear weapons will be in Russia’s national interest as he discussed the matter with parliamentary leaders on Monday. If revoked, Russia will signal a warning to the US that Moscow can fundamentally change the assumptions of post-Cold War nuclear planning. This comes just four days after Mr Putin said that Russia’s nuclear doctrine – which determines the conditions in which he would press the nuclear button – did not need updating. But he added that Russia could look at revoking ratification of the significant nuclear treaty to bring it into line with the United States, which has signed but not ratified the pact. The US has previously said Russia’s pulling out from the treaty will endanger "the global norm" against nuclear test blasts. In a U-turn from Mr Putin’s remarks on Friday, his envoy to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said Moscow would revoke its ratification of the pact. Western security analysts have said such a step from Moscow will be a reminder that it still possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal at a time when it is locked in a standoff with the West over Ukraine. If Russia goes ahead with a nuclear test, it could encourage others such as the US or China to retaliate in a similar test and renew a fresh wave of nuclear arms race between the global superpowers. These nations have not carried out nuclear tests after the Soviet Union collapse in 1991. Russia’s actions have sparked concern, said Robert Floyd, head of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty Organization. He added that he is in touch with senior Russian officials to make the case for continued ratification, something he said was in the interest of humanity as a whole. Mr Floyd had requested a meeting with "key leaders" in Moscow as soon as possible, he said. "The CTBTO operates a global monitoring system which can detect a nuclear test explosion anytime, anywhere," he said in a statement. "Banning nuclear testing remains essential to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and to safeguarding current and future generations from the harmful effects of explosive nuclear testing." The de-ratification move can take “Russia and the world backward to a dangerous era of tit-for-tat nuclear threats”, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. Read More Ukraine-Russia war – live: It is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East, says Zelensky Russia reports coolant leak in backup line at space station and says crew not in danger Ukraine advances in east and south with more ‘partial success’ even as rain muddies battlefield Ukraine repels Russian attacks on five fronts as Putin resorts to old weaponry and reserves Satellite images show spike in border activity as North Korea ‘supplies weapons to Russia’ for Ukraine war

Ukrainian soldiers fighting off Russian attacks in the eastern battlefield achieved “partial success” in the past 24 hours while troops in southern Ukraine inflicted over a hundred Russian casualties, officials said as the war was close to clocking 600 days. The troops secured partial success near Andriivka, a small Ukrainian village captured last month along with the nearby locality of Klishhiivka, said Ilia Yevlash, a spokesperson for Ukraine‘s eastern group of forces. "We are repelling constant attacks near Klishchiivka and Andriivka,” the spokesperson told national television. "Every day we are making headway in the Bakhmut sector. We are talking about hundreds of metres at a time that we are liberating from our enemies and strengthening our positions. It is, however, too early to talk about achieving concrete goals,” he said. The “partial” headway in territorial advance was also reported in southern Ukraine by general Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of forces in the south. “We have partial success west of Verbove. During the past 24 hours, the enemy carried out eight airstrikes, 18 combat encounters, and also launched 455 artillery barrages,” the top military official said on his Telegram channel. Verbove is one of the cluster of villages that Ukraine is targeting, with the larger town of Tokmak as the next large target. The Ukrainian units of rocket troops and artillery from the Tavria Air Defence Forces launched 795 fire missions during the day, he said. “The total losses of the enemy amounted to 147 people,” he said but did not give details about the injuries, deaths, and capture of Russian soldiers as prisoners of war. Three Russian ammunition depots were also bombed, along with two tanks and an artillery system, he said. This comes amid first signs of deterioration in battlefield conditions due to weather as Russian military bloggers said rainfall has worsened visibility in southern Ukraine. Experts monitoring the war said changing weather conditions will hinder the reconnaissance drone operations on both sides. “One Russian milblogger claimed that the ground has become muddy and obstructs tracked vehicle movement, though another milblogger claimed that the ground has not yet become muddy enough to inhibit vehicle movement,” said the Institute for the Study of War in its latest assessment on Monday. It added that exact conditions likely vary along the frontline, though weather conditions are generally worsening.It cited Yevlash’s report stating that the Russian forces are relying less heavily on aviation and drone activity in the Kupiansk-Lyman direction due to heavy rainfall. The Russian accounts of fighting claimed its forces thwarted Ukrainian attacks near Bakhmut and inflicted heavy casualties in strikes on Ukrainian positions outside the city. Now on the edge of entering its fifth month, Ukraine’s counteroffensive aims to secure control of areas around Bakhmut in order to recapture the town, which was seized by Russian forces in May after months of heavy battles. Read More Ukraine-Russia war – live: It is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East, says Zelensky Zelensky says Russia trying to incite war in the Middle East Satellite images show spike in border activity as North Korea ‘supplies weapons to Russia’ for Ukraine war Ukraine repels Russian attacks on five fronts as Putin resorts to old weaponry and reserves Russia reports coolant leak in backup line at space station and says crew not in danger

Bitcoin’s share of the cryptocurrency market is climbing toward levels last seen in 2021, a sign of the

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that it was in Russia’s interests to stoke war in the Middle East to weaken global unity. “Based on available information -- very clear information -- it is in Russia’s interests to inflame war in the Middle East to create a new source of pain and suffering that would weaken global unity, create divisions and help Russia in undermining freedom in Europe,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address. It comes as Ukrainian forces have made small gains over the weekend along multiple points of the frontline as “heavy rain” threatens to slow down Kyiv’s counteroffensive. Geolocated images showed Ukrainian infantry roughly 300 metres north of Novoprokopivka, south of Robotyne, which is the deepest they have been seen inside Russian-occupied territory as part of that attack. This line has emerged as Ukraine’s main axis of the counteroffensive in the past month, though progress slowed after the liberation of Robotyne at the end of August. The Ukrainian General Staff also claimed on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had achieved “partial success” near Bakhmut, though that remains unconfirmed. Read More Russia claims `neo-Nazis' were at wake for Ukrainian soldier in village struck by missile killing 52 Zelensky says Russia trying to incite war in the Middle East Ukraine repels Russian attacks on five fronts as Putin resorts to old weaponry and reserves Russia plans to reverse global nuclear test ban, announces envoy

Oil steadied after its biggest jump in six months as Israel said its retaliation for attacks by militant

After deadly flash floods in Sikkim, experts question why an early warning system was not in place.

Part of the plan to save Metro Bank Holdings Plc — the UK’s best-known challenger bank — was

Asian shares are poised to open broadly higher, following the lead from Wall Street after dovish comments on