Ukraine acknowledged yesterday that it was taking heavy losses in Russia’s assault in the east, but said Russia’s losses were even worse, as Nato warned the conflict could last years.

More than 3,000 refugees, migrants and asylum seekers died or went missing last year while trying to reach Europe via Mediterranean and

Russia’s most senior lawmaker yesterday said that Ukraine was effectively mortgaging itself to the United States by seeking to tap billions of dollars of weapons loans proposed by US President Joe Biden.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on the country’s military to “bolster up their strength in every way to annihilate the enemy”, state media reported yesterday,

Fresh clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound wounded 42 people on the last Friday of Ramadan, following weeks of violence at the flashpoint religious site.

By the year 2300, life in the oceans faces a mass die-off rivaling the great extinctions of Earth’s deep past if humanity fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a study in the journal Science said.

Russia fired two missiles into Kyiv on Thursday during a visit by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow pressed an assault in the east that drew new US pledges of military and humanitarian aid.

Ukraine accused Russia on Thursday of stealing grain in territory it has occupied, an act which it said increased the threat to global food security posed by disruptions to spring sowing and the blocking of Ukrainian ports during the war.

The fossils of three ichthyosaurs -- giant marine reptiles that patrolled primordial oceans -- have been discovered high up in the Swiss Alps, and include the largest ever tooth found for the species, a study said yesterday.

Russia yesterday warned the West that there would be a tough military response to any further attack on Russian territory, accusing the United States and its key European allies of openly inciting Ukraine to assault Russia.

The world lost an area of forest the size of the US state of Wyoming last year, as wildfires in Russia set all-time records and Brazilian deforestation of the

Britain yesterday denied it was over-reaching against Russia after Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said “the whole of Ukraine” must be liberated, indicating that Crimea must also be regained.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that Finland and Sweden would be embraced with open arms should they decide to join the 30-nation military organization and could become members quite quickly.

NATO is ready to maintain its support for Ukraine in the war against Russia for years, including help for Kyiv to shift from Soviet-era weapons to modern Western arms and systems, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said on Twitter that his Indonesian counterpart had invited him to attend the summit of Group of 20 (G20) major economies to be held in the Southeast Asian country later this year.

More than 20 people have been killed in an attack on Muslims in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar during the funeral of a Muslim elder, a local Islamic group said on Wednesday.

Russia said yesterday it had destroyed a large quantity of Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine, while halting gas supplies to EU and Nato members Poland and Bulgaria in a move Brussels branded attempted blackmail.

By February of this year, 58 percent of the US population -- more than 190 million people -- had been infected with Covid, according to an antibody survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published Tuesday.

Israeli air strikes near Damascus yesterday killed nine combatants, among them five Syrian soldiers, in the deadliest such raid since the start of 2022, a war monitor said.

Russia dramatically escalated its standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, cutting natural gas off to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria and threatening to disconnect even more nations. European leaders decried the move as “blackmail.”