>“We believe the prerequisite for meaningful diplomacy and real peace is a stronger Ukraine, capable of deterring and defending against any future aggression,” Blinken said in a speech in Finland, which recently became NATO’s newest member and shares a long border with Russia.

>Ho Chi Minh City has seen daily electricity consumption set four new records in less than one month due to extreme weather, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Power Corporation (EVN HCMC).

>The death toll from Cyclone Mocha is estimated at least 60 on Tuesday in Myanmar with many deaths reported around Sittwe, the Rakhine State capital.

Damn imagine the comments on Twitter. This is gonna be sooo bad. Twitter is going to die.

When China abruptly relaxed its stringent zero-Covid policy in December last year, people who were stuck and returned to Beijing found cameras fixed right outside their apartment doors. They are now being watched at work, on the streets, on public transportation, when they leave their homes and when they return. The Chinese government says that many of these cameras are being installed as part of their “digital health code”.

When a missile strike far from any frontlines killed 23 people this week, including a baby boy, and injured nine more, it would have been inexplicable were it not for the fact that Russian forces have for years directed attacks on civilians as a weapon of war. To the military that bombed schools and hospitals in Syria, and tried to freeze Ukrainians from their homes this winter, the bombed residential apartments might have looked like a convenient target.

Increment of non-performing mortgages for homebuyers at 12 of China’s listed banks surged 13.2 times last year from the year before as economic pressures make it harder for people to repay their loans.

The most famous former footballer from Ukraine, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2004 and the Europen Champions League with Milan before he also coached his country at Euro 2020, tells about his visits at hospitals in his homeland, and his push to raise funds for victims like the 6-year old Maryna, the first child in Ukraine to receive a prosthetic limb after her leg was blown off by a Russian missile.

[meduza.io/en/news/2023/04/28/r…](https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/04/28/russia-stops-reporting-official-oil-and-gas-extraction-data)

Though most of Russia’s attacks were intercepted, at least 17 people were killed in the city of Uman, including two children when a missile hit a residential building. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted: “Missile strikes killing innocent Ukrainians in their sleep, including a … child, is Russia’s response to all peace initiatives.”

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/665423

France, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have expressed dismay after China’s ambassador in Paris questioned the sovereignty not only of Ukraine, but all the former Soviet Republics including the Baltic states. Lu Shaye’s remarks in a TV interview late on Friday raise fresh questions about the faith the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has placed in China to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine. And so did Ukraine unsurprisingly: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/23/ukraine-slams-china-envoys-absurd-remarks-on-ex-soviet-nations

Taiwan’s foreign affairs minister Joseph Wu said his country is shoring up international support and focusing on military reforms to be “as ready as possible” for such an attack, which could come at any time as China displays increasingly “provocative and expansionist” behaviour.

Many Ukrainian children are deported to Russian 'military patriotic education camps', according to investgators. “They’re taught how to handle firearms, they’re given the Russified version of [...] history, and are basically placed through very vigorous social programming and indoctrination,” a researcher says.

Britain says any intimidation of foreign nationals by China or other states on its soil is unacceptable as it responded to a media report about a secret Chinese police station.

The opposition news site reported on Thursday that in the latest edition of the fourth-grade textbook 'The World Around Us' several references to Kyiv and Ukraine have been erased. "It's hugely problematic when a textbook simply has no information about a country. A child grows up without any knowledge about this country, it would be much easier for them to believe the TV," an employee of the Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) publishing house, which is responsible for the textbook changes, says.

Two former fighters gave interviews to an exiled human rights activist who runs the website Gulagu.net, which reports on corruption and torture in Russia. Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev describe their actions in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, including executing 60 wounded prisoners, some of whom were Russian soldiers who refused to continue fighting.

He was a freedom fighter and #India’s first Education Minister, but any mention of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad has been deleted from a revised political science textbook published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT).