News

Also, how the war in Ukraine changed Europe and Iranian women are removing their hijabs.

Updated finding comes with ‘low confidence’ and is a departure from previous studies on how virus emerged, Wall Street Journal reports
The virus that drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the on Sunday.
The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of national intelligence director, Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It follows a finding reportedly issued with “moderate confidence” by the FBI that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.

Vladimir Putin accuses west of wanting to liquidate Russia; US president Biden says China negotiating peace deal ‘not rational’
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of Nato as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia. “In today’s conditions, when all the leading Nato countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television, according to Tass.
The west, Putin claimed, wants to liquidate Russia. “They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” Putin said, according to Tass. The west, he said, was an indirect accomplice to the “crimes” committed by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut frontline, were Yahidne is located.
Two Russian rockets hit a house on the outskirts of Kramatorsk, one of the main towns in the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, on Saturday afternoon. The rockets appear to have missed their target, falling on the side of a local GP surgery, devastating the house next door as well as damaging houses around it. A Guardian team on the scene assessed the rockets shells likely came from a Russian Smerch rocket launcher.
US president Joe Biden has said the prospect of China negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia is “just not rational”. Speaking on ABC News about China’s peace plan, he said: “I’ve seen nothing [that] would indicate there’s something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia. The idea that China is gonna be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.”
China has not moved towards providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday. “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance, but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union programme.
The German defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said it was up to Kyiv to decide when, and under what conditions, to enter talks with Moscow. He suggested the same was true for any decision on recapturing the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and a close ally of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, will visit Beijing this week, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. Spokesperson Hua Chunying said Lukashenko was due to visit between Tuesday and Thursday, but gave no details about his agenda, the Associated Press reported.
Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday, citing a foreign ministry statement. “This decision falls within the framework of preserving the interests of the Algerian state and the interests of the national community in this country,” state TV quoted the foreign ministry statement as saying.

A number of new incentives encouraging people to have children highlight the challenges China faces in trying to boost its declining birthrate.

Republicans are demanding answers after the U.S. Energy Department assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, according to a new report.

Experts fear this moment of agreement in Washington could escalate tensions with Beijing and increase the risk of conflict
In the weeks since the US military shot down a , Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have spoken passionately about the need to more effectively compete with Beijing. A resolution condemning China for the balloon incident passed the House in an unanimous vote of 419 to 0.
Joe Biden has similarly expressed hope that efforts to strengthen America’s global competitiveness in response to a rising China can unite Democrats and Republicans in an era defined by bitter partisanship.

Political calculation, national self-interest and moral confusion lie behind many of the abstainers’ excuses for not taking a firm position on Russia
In times of trouble, a person or country discovers who their true friends are. Such insights can be disillusioning. The war in Ukraine has produced a number of such disturbing moments, for the government in Kyiv but also for the western democracies that are its most ardent supporters. “Whose side are you on?” is a crude but necessary question when international law is flouted and innocent people begin to die in large numbers.
The UN general assembly’s non-binding resolution last week condemning Russia’s invasion, and calling for a “just and lasting peace”, was . But 32 abstained and seven voted against. That North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua and Belarus sided with Russia is unsurprising. It says much about the benighted condition of all these ill-led pariah regimes.
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A state visit next week by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus comes as the U.S. has accused China of preparing to send lethal aid to Russia.

Comments from French president come after Joe Biden said it was ‘not rational’ for Beijing to be negotiating a peace deal
Ukraine has issued a postage stamp with a reproduction of a Banksy mural, of a boy defeating a grown man in judo, to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
It was painted by the British street artist on a demolished wall in the town of Borodianka, north-west of Kyiv, where many buildings were reduced to rubble by Russian aircraft at the start of the invasion.

Emmanuel Macron has said China’s engagement in peace in  is a 'good thing'.
The French president told reporters that he would visit  in early April, in part to seek Beijing’s help with ending the war

More than 60 protestors gathered outside a noodle shop where security experts say operatives conduct surveillance against dissidents in the Chinese community.