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Your Friday Briefing: Russia Doubles Up


Good Morning. We cover Russia’s escalating bombing campaigns, WHO’s revised Covid deaths, and the sandstorms ravaging Iraq.

Russian forces tried to destroy last pocket of resistance According to the estimates of the Ukrainian authorities, at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, Ukraine, about 200 civilians met with the fighters.

A Ukrainian commander said “heavy, bloody battles” were fought in the facility’s underground labyrinth of bunkers and fallout shelters. A city official said Russian forces found their way into the complex when a former worker showed them tunnels they could use to enter. Russia also bombed key points along the eastern front, launch a missile in the strategic city of Kramatorsk.

The attack came days before the May 9 holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. capture Mariupol, A powerful symbol for President Vladimir PutinIt would allow Moscow to achieve a major victory before its military celebrations.

Ukraine is still strong despite suffering serious injuries. Ukrainian forces recaptured several villages Officials said it had circumnavigated the eastern city of Kharkov, pushing the Russians about two dozen miles away from the city, putting civilian areas that had been bombarded for weeks out of reach of Russian artillery. Here are the live updates.

Mariupol: Russian bombing of a theater in the coastal city in March killed about 600 peopleThe Associated Press found that the death toll reported so far is nearly double.

Energy: Despite requests from Western governments, India buy russian oil at a low price. Europe Russia struggles to replace gas between climate concerns and political disagreements.

Strategy: US intelligence helped Ukraine kill russian generalsAccording to American officials. Ukrainian officials said they had killed about 12 front-line generals, a number that stunned military analysts.

Other updates:


WHO found this about 15 million more people died more than would normally be expected during the first two years of the pandemic.

A global panel of experts said most were victims of Covid-19, but some died as the pandemic made it difficult to get medical care for ailments like heart attacks.

The number of virus deaths before the countries’ reports was six million. The new report offers a surprising look at how the death toll reported by many governments drastically understates the true cost of the pandemic.

Detail: In 2021, the overall death toll was 18 percent higher than usual – an extra 10 million people – as new and more infectious variants caused fluctuations in countries that had fend off previous outbreaks.

Background: Data has been available since January, but India halts their release after objecting to the methodology. WHO estimates that about one-third of worldwide excess deaths – 4.7 million – occur there. The Indian government counts only 481,080 excess deaths by the end of 2021.

Here latest updates and maps Pandemic.


This seventh sandstorm in recent months It swept Iraq on Thursday. More than 5,000 people were treated for respiratory problems and at least one died, according to the country’s health ministry.

This year, the sandstorm dam also halted flights and limited driving visibility. (Watch a video from Baghdad here.)

A geoarchaeologist in Iraq, Prof. Jaafar Jotheri expects the two sandstorms that struck Iraq nearly 20 years ago to increase to 20 this year. Climate change is partly to blame.

He also said that the mismanagement of surface and groundwater in the region – combined with disturbances from farming and human movement in the deserts – has exacerbated the problem.

What’s next: Climate change will likely exacerbate the challenges Iraq faces, such as water shortages after low rainfall and rising temperatures.

Cost: In 2016 the UN said: $13 billion gross domestic product It was lost every year due to dust storms in the Middle East and North Africa.

Mexican authorities thought they had found a contemporary crime scene when they discovered dozens of skulls in 2012. Now, archaeologists think they were their victims. victim killings Instead of the losses from the gang war more than 1000 years ago.

Peatlands are some of the world’s most effective carbon reservoirs.

But for decades, humans have been drying up long-neglected lands, pushing about two billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, allowing them to burn. Five percent of our greenhouse gas emissions each year come from the peatlands we convert from carbon sinks to sources.

But peatlands can be restored. And a fast fashion billionaire in Scotland sees an opportunity: Given generous subsidies, repairing the country’s damaged land can be a multi-million dollar business.

The experiment shows that profit motives can be exploited to keep carbon in the ground. But it could also point to peatlands becoming a luxury good for wealthy investors seeking seemingly virtuous assets, making land much more expensive for people already living in Scotland.



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