Swiss food giant Nestlé is to fly baby formula from Switzerland and the Netherlands to the United States amid shortages there, a group spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The Swiss group will specifically import two brands of hypoallergenic milk, as the shortage has become an additional source of stress for parents of babies intolerant of cow’s milk protein.
“We prioritized these products because they serve a critical medical purpose,” the spokeswoman told AFP, confirming a press report.
The two brands are already imported: Gerber Good Start Extensive HA milk from the Netherlands, and Alfamino milk from Switzerland.
Faced with the shortage, Nestlé decided to airlift the milk “to help fill immediate needs,” said the group, which also has two factories in the United States producing infant formula.
Initially caused by supply chain problems and a shortage of workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the formula shortage worsened in February when an Abbott factory in Michigan closed after a recall of products suspected of causing the deaths of two babies.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released the milk but issued a “483” form alleging irregularities at the plant, Abbott said Friday, adding that it “immediately” began implementing corrective measures.
On Monday, Abbott reached an agreement with U.S. authorities to restart production at the plant.
The White House is in constant contact with the four major manufacturers — Nestlé, Reckitt, Abbott and Perrigo — to identify transportation, logistics and supplier barriers to increasing production.
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The U.S. State Department on Tuesday announced the launch of a new program to capture and analyze evidence of war crimes and other atrocities perpetuated by Russia in Ukraine, as Washington seeks to ensure Moscow is held accountable for its actions.
The State Department in a statement said the so-called Conflict Observatory will encompass the documentation, verification and dissemination of open-source evidence of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Reports and analyzes will be made available through the Conflict Observatory’s website.
U.S. President Joe Biden has hammered Russia over what he calls “major war crimes” committed in Ukraine, and has underscored his resolve to hold Moscow accountable for launching the largest land war in Europe since World War Two.
The Kyiv government has accused Russia of atrocities and brutality against civilians during the invasion and said it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes.
Russia denies targeting civilians and says, without evidence, that signs of atrocities were staged.
The U.S. State Department said the new program, which is being established with an initial $6 million investment, will analyze and preserve information, including satellite imagery and information shared on social media, so it can be used in ongoing and future accountability mechanisms.
“This new Conflict Observatory program is part of a range of U.S. government efforts at both national and international levels designed to ensure future accountability for Russia’s horrific actions,” the statement said.
A Ukrainian court held a preliminary hearing on Friday in the first war crimes trial arising from Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, after charging a captured Russian soldier with the murder of a 62-year-old civilian.
Russia has bombed cities to rubble and hundreds of civilian bodies have been found in towns where its forces withdrew since starting what it calls a special operation to demilitarize Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say it is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war.
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Також із 17 травня свою роботу в Києві планувало поновити посольство Індії
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Цього ж дня заявку на вступ до НАТО подала Швеція
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By JASON DEAREN, JULIET LINDERMAN and OLEKSANDR STASHEVSKYI
As she lay buried under the rubble, her legs broken and eyes blinded by blood and thick clouds of dust, all Inna Levchenko could hear was screams. It was 12:15 p.m. on March 3, and moments earlier a blast had pulverized the school where she’d taught for 30 years.
Amid relentless bombing, she’d opened School 21 in Chernihiv as a shelter to frightened families. They painted the word “children” in big, bold letters on the windows, hoping that Russian forces would see it and spare them. The bombs fell anyway.
Though she didn’t know it yet, 70 children she’d ordered to shelter in the basement would survive the blast. But at least nine people, including one of her students — a 13-year-old boy — would not.
“Why schools? I cannot comprehend their motivation,” she said. “It is painful to realize how many friends of mine died … and how many children who remained alone without parents, got traumatized. They will remember it all their life and will pass their stories to the next generation.”
Schools bombed
The Ukrainian government says Russia has shelled more than 1,000 schools, destroying 95. On May 8, a bomb flattened a school in Zaporizhzhia which, like School No. 21 in Chernihiv, was being used a shelter. As many as 60 people were feared dead.
Intentionally attacking schools and other civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Experts say wide-scale wreckage can be used as evidence of Russian intent, and to refute claims that schools were simply collateral damage.
But the destruction of hundreds of schools is about more than toppling buildings and maiming bodies, according to experts, to teachers and to others who have survived conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, in Syria and beyond. It hinders a nation’s ability to rebound after the fighting stops, injuring entire generations and dashing a country’s hope for the future.
In the nearly three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” have independently verified 57 schools that were destroyed or damaged in a manner that indicates a possible war crime. The accounting likely represents just a fraction of potential war crimes committed during the conflict and the list is updated daily.
In Chernihiv alone, the city council said only seven of the city’s 35 schools were unscathed. Three were reduced to rubble.
8000 reports, 500 suspects
The International Criminal Court, prosecutors from across the globe and Ukraine’s prosecutor general are investigating more than 8,000 reports of potential war crimes in Ukraine involving 500 suspects. Many are accused of aiming deliberately at civilian structures like hospitals, shelters and residential neighborhoods.
Targeting schools — spaces designed as havens for children to grow, learn and make friends — is particularly harmful, transforming the architecture of childhood into something violent and dangerous: a place that inspires fear.
A geography teacher, Elena Kudrik, lay dead on the floor of School 50 in the eastern Ukrainian town of Gorlovka. Amid the wreckage surrounding her were books and papers, smeared in blood. In the corner, another lifeless body — Elena Ivanova, the assistant headmaster— slumped over in an office chair, a gaping wound torn into her side.
“It’s a tragedy for us … It’s a tragedy for the children,” said school director Sergey But, standing outside the brick building shortly after the attack. Shards of broken glass and rubble were sprayed across the concrete, where smiling children once flew kites and posed for photos with friends.
A few kilometers away, at the Sonechko pre-school in the city of Okhtyrka, a cluster bomb destroyed a kindergarten, killing a child. Outside the entrance, two more bodies lay in pools of blood.
Valentina Grusha teaches in Kyiv province, where she has worked for 35 years, most recently as a district administrator and foreign literature instructor. Russian troops invaded her village of Ivankiv just as school officials had begun preparations for war. On Feb. 24, Russian forces driving toward Kyiv fatally shot a child and his father there, she said.
“There was no more schooling,” she said. “We called all the leaders and stopped instruction because the war started. And then there were 36 days of occupation.”
They also shelled and destroyed schools in many nearby villages, she said. Kindergarten buildings were shattered by shrapnel and machine-gun fire.
Proving intent difficult
Despite the widespread damage and destruction to educational infrastructure, war crimes experts say proving an attacking military’s intent to target individual schools is difficult. Russian officials deny targeting civilian structures, and local media reports in Russian-held Gorlovka alleged Ukrainian forces trying to recapture the area were to blame for the blast that killed the two teachers there.
But the effects of the destruction are indisputable.
“When I start talking to the directors of destroyed and robbed institutions, they are very worried, crying, telling with pain and regret,” Grusha said. “It’s part of their lives. And now the school is a ruin that stands in the center of the village and reminds of those terrible air raids and bombings.”
UNICEF communications director Toby Fricker, who is currently in Ukraine, agreed. “School is often the heart of the community in many places, and that is so central to everyday life.”
Teachers and students who have lived through other conflicts say the destruction of schools in their countries damaged an entire generation.
Syrian teacher Abdulkafi Alhambdo still thinks about the children’s drawings soaked in blood, littered across the floor of a schoolhouse in Aleppo. It had been attacked during the Civil War there in 2014. The teachers and children had been preparing for an art exhibit featuring student work depicting life during wartime.
The blast killed 19 people, including at least 10 children, the AP reported at the time. But it’s the survivors who linger in Alhambdo’s memory.
“I understood in (their) eyes that they wouldn’t go to school anymore,” he said. “It doesn’t only affect the kids who were running away, with shock and trauma. It affects all kids who heard about the massacre. How can they go back to school? You are not only targeting a school, you’re targeting a generation.”
Jasminko Halilovic was only 6 years old when Sarajevo, in present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina, was besieged. Now, 30 years after the Bosnian war ended, he and his peers are the ones still picking up the pieces.
Halilovic went to school in a cellar, as many Ukrainian children have done. Desperately chasing safety, the teachers and students moved from basement to basement, leaning chalkboards on chairs instead of hanging them walls.
Halilovic, now 34, founded the War Childhood Museum, which catalogs the stories and objects of children in conflict around the world. He was working in Ukraine with children displaced by Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Donbas region when the current war began. He had to evacuate his staff and leave the country.
“Once the fighting ends, the new fight will start. To rebuild cities. To rebuild schools and infrastructure, and to rebuild society. And to heal. And to heal is the most difficult,” he said.
Alhambdo said he saw firsthand how the trauma of war influenced the development of children growing up in Aleppo. Instilling fear, anger and a sense of hopelessness is part of the enemy strategy, he said. Some became withdrawn, he said, and others violent.
“When they see their school destroyed, do you know how many dreams have been destroyed? Do you think anybody would believe in peace and love and beauty when the place that taught them about these things has been destroyed?” he said.
Alhambdo stayed in Aleppo and taught children in basements, apartments, anywhere he could, for nearly 10 years. Continuing to teach in spite of war, he said, is an act of defiance.
“I’m not fighting on the front lines,” he said. “I’m fighting with my kids.”
After the attack on School 50 in Gorlovka, shattered glass from blown-out windows littered the classrooms and hallways and the street outside. The floors were covered in dust and debris: cracked ceiling beams, slabs of drywall, a television that crashed down from the wall. A cell phone sat on the desk next to where one of the teachers was killed.
In Ukraine, some schools still standing have become makeshift shelters for people whose homes were destroyed by shelling and mortar fire.
What often complicates war crimes prosecutions for attacks on civilian buildings is that large facilities like schools are sometimes repurposed for military use during war. If a civilian building is being used militarily, it is a legitimate wartime target, said David Bosco, a professor of international relations at Indiana University whose research focuses on war crimes and the International Criminal Court.
The key for prosecutors, then, will be to show that there was a pattern by the Russians of targeting schools and other civilian buildings nationwide as a concerted military strategy, Bosco said.
“The more you can show a pattern, then the stronger the case becomes that this was really a policy of not discriminating between military and civilian facilities,” Bosco said. “(Schools are) a place where children are supposed to feel safe, a second home. Obviously shattering that and in essence attacking the next generation. That’s very real. It has a huge impact.”
As the war grinds on, more than half of Ukraine’s children have been displaced.
In Kharkiv, which has undergone relentless shelling, children’s drawings are taped to the walls of an underground subway station that has become not only a family shelter but also a makeshift school. Primary school-age children gather around a table for history and art lessons.
“It helps to support them mentally,” said teacher Valeriy Leiko. In part thanks to the lessons, he said, “They feel that someone loves them.”
Millions of kids are continuing to go to school online. The international aid group Save the Children said it is working with the government to establish remote learning programs for students at 50 schools. UNICEF is also trying to help with online instruction.
“Educating every child is essential to preventing grave violations of their rights,” the group said in a statement to the AP.
On April 2, Grusha’s community outside Kyiv began a slow reemergence. They are still raking and sweeping debris from schools and kindergartens that were damaged but not destroyed, she said, and taking stock of what’s left. They started distance learning classes, and planned to relocate children whose schools were destroyed to others close by.
Even with war still raging, there is a return to normal life including schooling, she said.
But Levchenko, who was in Kyiv in early May to undergo surgery for her injuries, said the emotional damage done to so many children who have experienced and witnessed such immense suffering may never be fully repaired.
“It will take so much time for people and kids to recover from what they have lived,” she said. The kids, she said, are “staying underground without sun, shivering from siren sounds and anxiety.”
“It has a tremendously negative impact. Kids will remember this all their life.
This story is part of an ongoing investigation from The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” that includes the War Crimes Watch Ukraine interactive experience and an upcoming documentary
Stashevskyi reported from Kyiv, Dearen from New York and Linderman from Washington. Associated Press reporters Erika Kinetz in Chernihiv and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.
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Ethiopia has expelled The Economist’s correspondent from the East African country, accusing him of taking a “misguided approach” to journalism, the weekly magazine said Monday.
The British magazine defended the work of its correspondent as “professional, unbiased and often courageous” while confirming an Ethiopian government statement on Friday ordering his expulsion.
“On May 13th Ethiopia’s government withdrew the press accreditation of Tom Gardner, The Economist’s correspondent in Addis Ababa,” the magazine said in a statement. The correspondent was given 48 hours to leave the country.
“The stated reason for Mr Gardner’s expulsion was that he had a ‘mistaken approach’ to reporting, and that he had in some unspecified way failed to live up to the professional ethics expected of a journalist,” The Economist said.
On Friday, Ethiopia’s media authority published, on Twitter, a letter addressed to Gardner announcing the withdrawal of his press accreditation and inviting the magazine to nominate a new correspondent to the country.
In May 2021, the Ethiopian authorities expelled The Times correspondent Simon Marks.
The Economist statement said that Gardner had visited Tigray, a northern region that has been plagued by armed conflict between the federal government and rebels since 2020.
“His reporting from Ethiopia, including on the conflict in the northern region of Tigray, has been professional, unbiased and often courageous,” the magazine said.
Earlier this month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Ethiopia to free two journalists that it said had been charged with “outrages against the constitution” and faced a possible death sentence.
Days before that, the head of Ethiopia’s Human Rights Commission, Daniel Bekele, issued a statement on World Press Freedom Day, voicing concern after the arrest by Ethiopian police of another journalist, Gobeze Sisay, a critic of the government.
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«Наша допомога на місці буде концентруватися на захисті від радіації, управлінні відходами та ядерній безпеці»
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За його словами, призупинення переговорів спричинили три головні причини.
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Напередодні уряд країни формально затвердив намір подати заявку на членство в Північноатлантичному Альянсі
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
1:50 a.m.: Retired Russian Col. Mikhail Khodaryonok said on state television Monday thatthe Ukrainian armed forces “is able to arm a million people,” and that Ukrainians “intend to fight until the last man,” according to a translation provided by the BBC’s Francis Scarr.
“Let’s look at the situation as a whole from the overall strategic position,” Khodaryonok says. “Don’t engage in sabre-rattling with missiles in Finland’s direction. It actually looks quite amusing. After all, the main deficiency of our military-political position is that, in a way, we are in full geopolitical isolation, and that, however much we would hate to admit this, virtually the entire world is against us. And it’s that situation that we need to get out of.”
1:30 a.m.: In its Intelligence Update, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense predicts Russia is “likely to continue to rely heavily on massed artillery strikes as it attempts to regain momentum in its advance in the Donbas.”
12:30 a.m.: After weeks of fighting, Ukraine appears to have surrendered the Mariupol steel complex, according to The New York Times.
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У ніч на вівторок після оголошення повітряної тривоги у Львові було чутно вибухи
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President Joe Biden on Monday thanked Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for his country’s “moral leadership” in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the two held talks at the White House about the ongoing conflict.
The visit by Mitsotakis comes as he was in Washington to mark a COVID-delayed commemoration of the bicentennial of the start of the Greek War of Independence, a more than eight-year-long struggle that led to the ouster of the Ottoman Empire. The president and first lady Jill Biden hosted Mitsotakis and his wife, Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis, later Monday at a White House reception to mark the bicentennial.
But the celebratory moment was overshadowed by the most significant fighting on the continent since World War II, and as Biden seeks to keep the West unified as it pressures Russia to end the war.
“We are now facing united the challenge of Russian aggression,” Mitsotakis said at the start of his meeting with Biden. The prime minister added that the U.S.-Greek relationship was at an “all-time high.”
As Europe looks to wean itself off Russian energy, Mitsotakis has pushed the idea of Greece becoming an energy hub that can bring gas from southwest Asia and the Middle East to Eastern Europe.
A new Greece-to-Bulgaria pipeline — built during the COVID-19 pandemic, tested and due to start commercial operation in June — is slated to bring large volumes of gas between the two countries in both directions to generate electricity, fuel industry and heat homes.
The new pipeline connection, called the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria, will give Bulgaria access to ports in neighboring Greece that are importing liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and also will bring gas from Azerbaijan through a new pipeline system that ends in Italy. Russia announced last month it was cutting off natural gas exports to Bulgaria and Poland over the countries’ refusal to pay in rubles.
The Oval Office meeting with Biden also comes after Greece, a fellow NATO nation, last week formally extended its bilateral military agreement with the United States for five years, replacing an annual review of the deal that grants the U.S. military access to three bases in mainland Greece as well as the American naval presence on the island of Crete.
Mitsotakis has expressed support for Finland and Sweden seeking membership in the NATO defense alliance, a development welcomed by much of the 30-nation group with the notable exception of Tukey, which remains locked in a decades-old dispute with Greece on sea boundaries and mineral rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday again voiced some objections to accepting Finland and Sweden, accusing the two countries of supporting Kurdish militants and others whom Turkey considers to be terrorists.
“Neither country has an open, clear stance against terrorist organizations,” Erdogan said at a joint news conference with the visiting Algerian president. “We cannot say ‘yes’ to those who impose sanctions on Turkey, on joining NATO, which is a security organization.”
Mitsotakis, in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, expressed optimism that Turkey, in the end, won’t hold up Finland and Sweden’s bid to join NATO and addressed speculation that Erdogan might use the moment to win concessions from the Biden administration on weapons sales or other matters.
“This is not really the right time to use a NATO membership (application) by these two countries to bargain” for other issues,” he said.
In addition to his address to Congress, Mitsotakis is scheduled Tuesday to be honored at a luncheon hosted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and will meet with members of the Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
your ad hereThe European Union again failed to agree to an oil embargo against Russia Monday as part of a sixth package of sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Hungary remains a key holdout, demanding a high price for greenlighting the package.
Signs of exasperation against Hungary emerged at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels — including from Ukraine’s top envoy Dmytro Kuleba, who was invited to the talks. An oil embargo against Russia, he said, was essential.
“It’s clear who’s holding up the issue,” Keleba said. “But time is running out because every day, Russia keeps making money and investing this money into the war.”
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis also expressed frustration.
“Now, unfortunately, we are — the whole union is being held hostage by one member state which cannot help us find a consensus.”
The EU needs unanimous agreement from its 27 members to push through each set of sanctions. Until now, that’s happened. An oil embargo would be the toughest sanction so far—hurting Moscow’s ability to finance the war.
It would also hit some European countries highly dependent on Russian energy. But Hungary — already considered an EU maverick on other issues — is especially putting on the brakes. Reports say Budapest wants hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, and possibly more, to transition from Russian oil imports.
EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said the conversations with Hungary were largely technical. He offered no timeline for coming to an agreement. Still, some EU members are hopeful that a breakthrough is only days or weeks away.
“One thing is clear — I think it’s clear for everyone in the council: We have to get rid of the energy dependency of the European Union with respect to oil, gas and coal coming from Russia,” Borrell said.
Borrell said the war in Ukraine has tested the bloc in key ways, not just the conflict itself. But it is also testing Europe’s energy resiliency as it unwinds its dependency on Russian supplies — and its very legitimacy.
your ad hereЕлізабет Борн змінює на посаді голови французького уряду Жана Кастекса
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Мер Львова Андрій Садовий просить жителів міста залишатися в укриттях
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Заходи з порятунку оборонців, які залишаються на території «Азовсталі», тривають
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