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Russia-Ukraine War: 15 Latest Developments As Nigeria, Ghana Evacuate Citizens

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More than 660,000 people have fled Ukraine while around one million people are internally displaced, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Of the 660,000, at least 2, 090 are Nigerians, according to Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement on Wednesday.

Nigeria also announced that some of its stranded citizens following the Russian invasion would arrive in the country on Thursday via Max Air.

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Seventeen of the 500 Ghanaian students expected to be evacuated from Ukraine arrived home on Tuesday.

Nigeria’s minister of foreign affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said about 5,600 Nigerian students are in Ukraine and maybe a total of 8,000 Nigerian citizens in the country.

Here are the latest developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine:

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– Kharkiv fighting –
Russian paratroopers land in Ukraine’s second city amid heavy fighting. Ukrainian officials say a hospital has been attacked and the barracks of a flight school is on fire after an air strike.

“There are practically no areas left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet hit,” says Interior Minister official Anton Gerashchenko.

– Biden brands Putin ‘dictator’ –

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US President Joe Biden brands Vladimir Putin a “dictator” in his annual State of the Union address as he bans Russian aircraft from US airspace with Moscow facing economic and diplomatic isolation.

READ ALSO: Ukraine: Abramovich May Sell Chelsea, Three Bidders Ready -Report

– Cities pummelled –
Russia steps up its bombing campaign and missile strikes, hitting Kyiv’s main television tower, two residential buildings in a town west of the city and the city of Bila Tserkva to the south of the capital.

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– Kherson: Russia inside city –
Russian forces push into the besieged Black Sea city of Kherson in the south. Its port and railway station are now in Russian hands, its mayor says.

– Mariupol without power –
Russian attacks leave Mariupol, another Black Sea port further to the west without electricity.

– Civilians flee –
More than 677,000 people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, the UN’s refugee agency says, with the number rising rapidly.

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– UN court to hold war hearings –
The UN’s International Court of Justice says it will hold public hearings on March 7 and 8 over Ukraine’s allegations of “genocide” by Russia as the General Assembly votes on whether to order Russia to withdraw its troops.

– Independent media blocked –
Russia blocks an independent television channel and a liberal radio station, tightening a virtual media blackout on news of the war.

– Companies exit Russia –
A string of Western companies announce they are freezing or scaling back business with Russia, including Apple, three of the world’s largest shipping companies and energy firms Eni, ExxonMobil and Boeing.

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– Race for cash –
Russians race to withdraw cash after the introduction of capital controls and as the ruble hovers around record lows against the dollar.

READ ALSO: Five Killed In Russian Strike On Kyiv TV Tower

-Nord Stream 2 goes under –
Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 goes insolvent after Germany halts the gas pipeline following Moscow’s invasion. The European subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank also prepares to enter insolvency.

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– Oil price soars –Oil prices soar past $110 a barrel, despite the International Energy Agency members agreeing to release 60 million barrels from stockpiles.

– World Bank aid –
The World Bank prepares a $3-billion aid package for Ukraine, including at least $350 million in immediate funds.

PUNCH.

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UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

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UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

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READ ALSO:Badenoch Unveils Strict UK Immigration Plan, Targets 150,000 Yearly Deportations

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

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NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

READ ALSO:Badenoch Slams UK’s Palestine Recognition Decision As ‘Absolutely Disastrous’

Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

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In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

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King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

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King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

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The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

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Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

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READ ALSO:King Charles To Knight David Beckham For Football, Charity Work

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

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The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

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The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

READ ALSO:King Charles III To Visit Vatican Next Week

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

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Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

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Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

READ ALSO:Police Bust Child Trafficking Syndicate In Rivers, Rescue Babies

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

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Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

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It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP

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One Dies As Woman Trying To Kill Cockroach Sets House On Fire

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South Korean police have stated that a woman in her 20s set her apartment building on fire while trying to kill a cockroach with an improvised flamethrower.

Local media reports that the woman attempted to burn the insect using a lighter and a flammable spray, saying she had used the same method before. However, items in her home caught fire on Monday, spreading to other parts of the building.

Police in the northern city of Osan said they will seek an arrest warrant for the woman, who could be charged with accidentally starting a fire and causing death by negligence.

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READ ALSO:Lagos Fire Service Rescues Woman From 60-foot Well In Ikorodu

According to the BBC, one of the woman’s neighbours, a Chinese national in her 30s, died while trying to escape the blaze. The victim lived on the fifth floor of the building with her husband and their two-month-old baby.

When the fire broke out, the couple opened their window and called for help. They handed their baby to a neighbour on the adjacent block before attempting to escape. The husband managed to climb over, but the woman fell from the window. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead hours later.

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Police said they believed the couple tried escaping through the window because thick smoke from the fire had blocked the stairway.

READ ALSO:Senate Approves Life Imprisonment For Child Defilement Convicts

The building houses commercial shops on the first floor and 32 residential units from the second to fifth floors. Eight other residents also suffered from smoke inhalation.

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Using blowtorches or homemade flamethrowers to kill cockroaches has become a trend on social media. In 2018, an Australian man set fire to his kitchen while attempting to exterminate cockroaches with a similar device.

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