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After many Western companies left Russia in response to its aggression against Ukraine, Moscow opened the first of the restaurants that are meant to replace those of the American fast food giant McDonald’s. The rebranded Russian version — some call it a knockoff — aims not only to serve hamburgers but to affirm Russia’s self-sufficiency and defiance. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Moscow.
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British health officials have detected another 104 cases of monkeypox in England in what has become the biggest outbreak beyond Africa of the normally rare disease.

The U.K.’s Health Security Agency said Monday there were now 470 cases of monkeypox across the country, with the vast majority in gay or bisexual men. Scientists warn that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, is susceptible to catching monkeypox if they are in close, physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bed sheets.

According to U.K. data, 99% of the cases so far have been in men and most are in London.

In May, a leading adviser to the World Health Organization said the monkeypox outbreak in Europe and beyond was likely spread by sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium.

Last week, WHO said 1,285 cases of monkeypox had been reported from 28 countries where monkeypox was not known to be endemic. No deaths have been reported outside of Africa. After the U.K., the biggest numbers of cases have been reported in Spain, Germany and Canada.

WHO said many people in the outbreak have “atypical features” of the disease which could make it more difficult for doctors to diagnose. The U.N. health agency also said while close contact can spread monkeypox, “it is not clear what role sexual bodily fluids, including semen and vaginal fluids, play in the transmission.”

Meanwhile, countries in Africa have reported more than 1,500 suspected cases including 72 deaths from eight countries. Monkeypox is considered endemic in Central and West Africa.
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U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet says she will step down as high commissioner when her term ends in late August. She disclosed this information, without a detailed explanation, at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 50th session.

Following her review of global human rights developments to the council, Bachelet told journalists in Geneva that she was retiring for personal reasons. She said her decision has nothing to do with criticisms over a recent trip to China.

Human rights activists have criticized her for failing to condemn Beijing’s forced incarceration of nearly two million Uyghurs in Xinjiang during her visit.

Bachelet told the media that she had informed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres two months before she went to China that she would not be seeking a second term.

“He told me that he would love me to continue but I explained to him that because of personal reasons, I need to…I am not a young woman anymore and after a long and rich career, I want to go back to my country, to my family … After being so many years a minister, president, high commissioner, I think it is time. It is time to go back,” she said.

Previously, in her speech to the council, Bachelet addressed the barrage of criticism leveled at her. Bachelet said she had discussed specific human rights concerns with senior officials in China. These included government policies for countering terrorism, the protection of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and legal protection for women.

“I also raised concerns regarding the human rights situation of the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, including broad arbitrary detention and patterns of abuse, both in the VETC [Vocational Education and Training Centers] system and in other detention facilities. My office’s assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang is being updated. It will be shared with the government for factual comments before publication,” she said.

One critic was Rushan Abbas, founder and executive director of the Washington-based organization Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas recently said Bachelet made a “mockery” of the U.N. human rights office by adopting Beijing’s narrative. He called for her to resign, saying in a tweet she neglects her mandate and the U.N.’s founding principles.

Human rights activists have repeatedly demanded that Bachelet release her long-awaited report on China’s human rights abuses. The high commissioner said the report would be issued before she left office. Beijing denies the accusations of rights abuses.

In her lengthy presentation to the council, the high commissioner reported widespread violations were destroying and impoverishing the lives of countless millions of people in all regions of the world.

She focused on the war in Ukraine, which she said continued to destroy the lives of many, causing havoc and destruction. She noted the horrors inflicted on the civilian population would leave an indelible mark for generations to come.

She condemned Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, for arbitrarily arresting large numbers of antiwar protesters. She called the increase in censorship and restrictions on independent Russian media regrettable.

Asim Kashgarian contributed to this report.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces and those from Russia are fighting for “literally every meter” in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, while pleading to international partners that Ukraine “needs modern missile defense systems.”  

In his latest nightly video message, Zelenskyy said Russia’s “key tactical goal” has not changed, with Russian forces also pushing toward Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Slovyansk, to the west and southwest of Sievierodonetsk.

Zelenskyy’s adviser Mykahilo Podolyak tweeted Monday that “to end the war we need heavy weapons parity.”  He listed several categories of weapons, including 1,000 howitzers, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, 500 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles and 1,000 drones.

‘Contact Group of Defense Ministers meeting is held in Brussels on June 15,” Podolyak said. “We are waiting for a decision.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is convening the meeting at NATO headquarters.  A virtual meeting of the group last month drew representatives from 47 countries, NATO and the European Union. 

Austin said after the May talks that the group was “intensifying our efforts” and working to deepen coordination with Ukraine “so that Ukraine can sustain and strengthen its battlefield operations.”

Britain’s defense ministry said Monday that in recent days the battle around Sievierodonetsk “has continued to rage.”

The ministry said Russia’s ability to carry out river crossing operations will likely be one of the most important factors in the war in the coming months.

“To achieve success in the current operational phase of its Donbas offensive, Russia is either going to have to complete ambitious flanking actions, or conduct assault river crossings,” it said.

Russian forces bombarded a chemical plant sheltering hundreds of soldiers and civilians in Sievierodonetsk on Sunday, but the Luhansk regional governor said the plant remained under Ukrainian control.

Russia claims it already controls 97% of the Luhansk province. But capturing the industrial city of Sievierodonetsk, with a prewar population of 100,000, remains crucial to Moscow’s broader goal of controlling the eastern Donbas region, which encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.

Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Kyiv’s forces have been fighting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region since then.

Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the separatist-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, acknowledged, “Sievierodonetsk is not completely 100% liberated. So, it’s impossible to call the situation calm in Sievierodonetsk, that it is completely ours.”

Some information in this report came from Reuters and The Associated Press.  
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Amnesty International on Monday accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, saying attacks on Kharkiv, many using banned cluster bombs, had killed hundreds of civilians.  

“The repeated bombardments of residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv are indiscriminate attacks which killed and injured hundreds of civilians, and as such constitute war crimes,” the rights group said in a report on Ukraine’s second-largest city.   

“This is true both for the strikes carried out using cluster (munitions) as well as those conducted using other types of unguided rockets and unguided artillery shells,” it said.   

“The continued use of such inaccurate explosive weapons in populated civilian areas, in the knowledge that they are repeatedly causing large numbers of civilian casualties, may even amount to directing attacks against the civilian population.” 

Bombs and land mines

Amnesty said it had uncovered proof in Kharkiv of the repeated use by Russian forces of 9N210 and 9N235 cluster bombs and scatterable land mines, all of which are banned under international conventions. 

Cluster bombs release dozens of bomblets or grenades in mid-air, scattering them indiscriminately over hundreds of square meters (yards).  

Scatterable land mines combine “the worst possible attributes of cluster munitions and antipersonnel land mines,” Amnesty said. 

Unguided artillery shells have a margin of error of over 100 meters. 

The report, entitled “Anyone Can Die At Any Time,” details how Russian forces began targeting civilian areas of Kharkiv on the first day of the invasion on February 24. 

The “relentless” shelling continued for two months, wreaking “wholesale destruction” on the city of 1.5 million. 

“People have been killed in their homes and in the streets, in playgrounds and in cemeteries, while queueing for humanitarian aid, or shopping for food and medicine,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser. 

“The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives. 

“The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable.” 

‘She stood no chance’

Kharkiv’s Military Administration told Amnesty 606 civilians had been killed and 1,248 wounded in the region since the conflict began.   

Russia and Ukraine are not parties to the international conventions banning cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines. 

But, Amnesty stressed, “international humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons that are indiscriminate by nature.  

“Launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, constitutes war crimes,” it said.   

One of the witnesses Amnesty spoke to had survived cancer, only to lose both her legs in a Russian cluster bomb attack. 

Olena Sorokina, 57, was outside her building when flying shrapnel hit her. She lost one leg instantly and the other had to be amputated later. 

A neighbor with her was killed on the spot. The latter’s daughter said the shrapnel tore through the building.  

“Even if mum had been inside her home she would have been hit. She stood no chance in the face of such bombing,” she said. 

Amnesty investigated 41 Russian strikes that killed at least 62 people and wounded at least 196. It spoke to 160 people in Kharkiv over two weeks in April and May, including survivors, victims’ relatives, witnesses and doctors. 

Ukraine says it has launched more than 12,000 war crimes probes since the war began. 
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A pro-Russian separatist leader in eastern Ukraine said Sunday he would not alter the death sentences handed to two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army. 

“They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money. That’s why I don’t see any conditions for any mitigation or modification of the sentence,” Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist Donetsk region, which tried them, told reporters. 

Pushilin said the court had “issued a perfectly fair punishment” to the three fighters. 

He also accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of ignoring their fate and failing to contact the separatist authorities. 

Pushilin was speaking at a press conference attended by AFP in Mariupol, the capital of the breakaway area, as part of a trip organized by the Russian defense ministry to the battle-scarred Ukrainian city which was captured by Russian and separatist forces in May. 

On Friday, Johnson’s spokesman said he was “appalled” by the death sentences handed down to Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner and Moroccan Brahim Saadun. 

“It is clear they were Ukrainian armed forces members and are therefore prisoners of war,” and not mercenaries as the separatist authorities in Donetsk accuse them of being, the spokesman said. 

According to the families of Aslin and Pinner, the two men have been living in the country since 2018.

On Friday, the United Nations expressed concern over the death sentences handed down against the prisoners by pro-Russian rebels.
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As Russian tanks and trucks rumbled close to their village, a Ukrainian teenager and his father stealthily launched their small drone into the air.

Working as a team, they took bird’s-eye photos of the armored column moving toward Kyiv and pinpointed its coordinates, swiftly messaging the precious information to the Ukrainian military.

Within minutes, artillery batteries rained shells down on the invading forces, with deadly effect.

Andriy Pokrasa, 15, and his dad, Stanislav, are being hailed in Ukraine for their volunteer aerial reconnaissance work in the early days of the invasion, when Russian troops barreling in from the north made an ultimately failed attempt to take the capital and bring the country to its knees.

For a full week after the Feb. 24 invasion, the pair made repeated sorties with their drone — risking capture or worse had Russian troops been aware of their snooping.

“These were some of the scariest moments of my life,” Andriy recounted as he demonstrated his piloting skills for an Associated Press team of journalists.

“We provided the photos and the location to the armed forces,” he said. “They narrowed down the coordinates more accurately and transmitted them by walkie-talkie, so as to adjust the artillery.”

His father was happy to leave the piloting to the boy.

“I can operate the drone, but my son does it much better. We immediately decided he would do it,” Stanislav Pokrasa, 41, said.

They aren’t sure how many Russian targets were destroyed using information they provided. But they saw the devastation wrought on the Russian convoy when they later flew the drone back over the charred hulks of trucks and tanks near a town west of Kyiv and off a strategically important highway that leads to the capital.

“There were more than 20 Russian military vehicles destroyed, among them fuel trucks and tanks,” the father said.

As Russian and Ukrainian forces battled furiously for control of Kyiv’s outskirts, Ukrainian soldiers finally urged the Pokrasa family to leave their village, which Russian troops subsequently occupied.

With all adult men up to age 60 under government orders to stay in the country, the elder Pokrasa couldn’t join his wife and son when they fled to neighboring Poland.

They came back a few weeks ago, when Andriy had finished his school year.

“I was happy that we destroyed someone,” he said. “I was happy that I contributed, that I was able to do something. Not just sitting and waiting.”
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Air raid sirens wailed and one of the brides wore camouflage trousers as the Ukrainian army took a break from frontline fighting in the east to hold a double wedding Sunday.

Two young couples who met just months earlier while serving in the army tied the knot together Sunday in the small city of Druzhkivka, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from frontline zones where Ukrainian forces are battling Russian invaders.

The sun shone and soldiers carried bouquets in a brief interlude from heavy fighting as Russians intensify efforts to push out Kyiv’s forces in the east.

One of the brides, Khrystyna Lyuta, a 23-year-old contract soldier with the rank of private first class, wore camouflage trousers and army boots with a traditional red Ukrainian blouse embroidered with flowers.

“I’ve got used to this uniform,” she explained of her choice of outfit.

She met her husband Volodymyr Mykhalchuk, 28, just two months ago, when he was mobilized. They live around five kilometers from each other in the same southwestern Vinnytsia region but might never have met if it had not been for the war.

“War is war, but life goes on,” Lyuta explained their decision to marry.

“This was not a hasty decision,” said Volodymyr.

“The main thing is that we love each other and we want to be together.”

The other bride, Kristina (no last name given), 23, who works in the signal corps, opted for a traditional long white dress with red folk embroidery to marry Vitaliy Orlich, also 23, a sniper.

“I believe that this is about creating a new family — it doesn’t matter where it happens or how,” she said.

The grooms both wore soldiers’ uniforms.

The couples were set to return to serve in the war zone on the same day.

“I can’t give them free days as such. The only thing is that they won’t be on the frontline, they will stay in the rear,” the brigade’s commander Oleksandr Okhrimenko told AFP.

Neither couple had family present but they said relatives had been understanding.

Kristina said that her husband had spoken to her mother online and “she already calls him a son”.

The soldiers were from the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which has been fighting Russian-backed forces in Donbas since May.

The young couples married in front of a registry office, which had closed due to the war.

The quiet street had few cars and occasional trams. Sandbags were piled up in front of cafe and shop windows.

‘There’s no time’

The couples went through traditional rituals such as stepping together onto an embroidered towel, symbolizing togetherness.

The brigade’s chaplain gave them an Orthodox Christian blessing, flicking holy water and placing crowns on their heads, on the day of a major Church holiday, the Festival of the Holy Trinity.

The Priest in a khaki cassock, Yuriy Zdebskiy, told AFP that “it’s the first marriage in the brigade in wartime”, since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

“Now it’s wartime and there’s no time for big celebrations,” he said.

The infantry brigade’s commander, Okhrimenko, has the right to certify marriages under martial law.

He said the location for the weddings “was chosen primarily for security reasons”.

Druzhkivka is about 40 kilometers as the crow flies from three fronts, as Russian troop threaten the towns of Slovyansk to the northeast, Bakhmut to the east and Horlivka to the southeast.

Hours later, AFP reporters heard shelling and saw smoke rising as the two sides exchanged fire close to Bakhmut.

Even in relatively untouched Druzhkivka, shelling earlier this month tore apart private houses and crashed through the roof of a Baptist church in one street.

During the wedding, air raid sirens went off three times, an AFP reporter heard.

None of those attending reacted. Many war-hardened locals now ignore warnings to go to shelters unless there is an obvious threat.
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France’s ruling centrists and a new far-left alliance are neck-and-neck in the first round of legislative elections Sunday, with the far-right third in the lineup. Initial projections put the Ensemble or “Together” party of French President Emmanuel Macron and the left-wing NUPES coalition with just over a quarter of all votes apiece, amid record abstentions.

It’s hard to find a supporter of centrist President Emmanuel Macron and his party in a working-class neighborhood in northeastern Paris.

Martine Barratte, leaving a polling station with her husband and eight-year-old daughter, has just cast her ballot for a left-wing coalition and its leading force, Jean-Luc Melenchon.

“I’ve got big hopes…I wish a better world for my daughter. Social issues and ecology are linked together. I think Melenchon is the one because he’s got loads of teams around him. Men and women who think, who are looking forward to changing things, because we need to change,” she said.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, is not on the ballot. But he has managed to forge an unlikely alliance among normally squabbling leftist parties. If they win the majority of National Assembly or lower house seats, Melenchon hopes to force President Emmanuel Macron to choose him as prime minister.

Vianney Mosser voted for the leftist alliance, known as the New Ecological and Social Popular Union, or NUPES. Mosser says he doesn’t agree with everything on their platform. But he doesn’t want Macron to have an absolute majority.

Ahead of this first round, polls showed the NUPES and Macron’s centrist Ensemble or Together coalition neck-and-neck. The far right, which only has a few lower house seats, also stands to gain.

Analyst Lisa Thomas-Darbois, of the Paris-based Montaigne Institute research group, says both the far-right and the far-left want to be a real counter force to proposed and controversial reforms by Macron, who was reelected in April for a second five-year term.

Still a number of voters are underwhelmed with Macron. They backed him only to block his far-right presidential rival.

Retiree Ally Shetty is also voting for the leftist alliance. Shetty says she thinks they’d do a better job fighting unemployment. Her daughter, who has a master’s degree, can’t find work.

Macron and his party warn a far-left win could undermine key reforms and reduce France’s competitiveness. A recent poll shows that while most French want a political counter force to the president’s centrists in parliament, most do not want far-left leader Melenchon as prime minister.
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The first of dozens of restaurants taken over after the iconic fast-food chain McDonald’s pulled out of Russia has reopened in Moscow, under new ownership and a new name: Tasty and That’s It.

Owners of the new chain, whose name in Russian is Vkusno and Tochka, say initially 15 rebranded restaurants will reopen across Russia, with more to come in coming months.

Dozens of Russians lined up on Sunday at the famous Moscow location where McDonald’s first opened its doors 30 years ago to try out the new burgers and fries.

Oleg Paroyev, chief executive of the company taking over the McDonald’s facilities, said they planned to reopen 200 restaurants in Russia by the end of June and all 850 locations nationwide by the end of the summer.

“Our goal is that our guests do not notice a difference either in quality or ambience,” Paroyev was quoted as telling a news conference.

Paroyev said the new chain will keep its old McDonald’s interior but will remove any references to its old name.

The reopening of the fast-food outlets is seen as one test of whether and how Russia’s economy can withstand Western sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

At the time of its withdrawal from Russia, McDonald’s said it employed 62,000 workers across the country.

Information from AFP was used in this report.
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Legislation that Britain will unilaterally bring forward on Monday to scrap some of the rules that govern post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland will not break international law, minister Brandon Lewis said on Sunday.

“The legislation that we will outline tomorrow is within the law; what we are going to do is lawful and it is correct,” the Northern Ireland Secretary told Sky News.

When Britain left the EU, Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed a protocol that effectively left Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market and customs union to preserve the open border with Ireland specified in the Good Friday peace agreement.

Any unilateral move by London to override the treaty will inflame a simmering argument with the European Union.

Ireland’s Sinn Fein, the nationalist party that won a historic victory in the Northern Ireland Assembly election last month, said on Sunday Britain would “undoubtedly” break the law by imposing unilateral changes to the protocol.

Lewis said however the protocol needed to be changed because it was “fundamentally undermining” the Good Friday agreement.

He said it was disrupting the lives of people in Northern Ireland, was stopping government institutions functioning, and was not respecting the UK’s own internal market. 

Lewis declined to say how the protocol would be changed, but said the government would set out the legal basis on which it was bringing forward the legislation.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald said London could work with Dublin and Brussels to improve the application of the protocol.

“There is a willingness here, there is a willingness to engage by the European Commission, but the British government has refused to engage,” she told Sky News from Dublin.

“It has not been constructive, it has sought a destructive path, and is now proposing to introduce legislation that will undoubtedly breach international law.”
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In the outdoor gym on Venice Beach, the name given to an inviting stretch of sand on the majestic Dnieper River that courses through the capital of Ukraine, Serhiy Chornyi is working on his summer body, up-down-up-downing a chunky hunk of iron.

The aim of his sweat and toil isn’t to impress the girls in their bright summer bikinis. Working out is part of his contribution to Ukraine’s all-hands-on-deck war effort: The National Guardsman expects to be sent eastward to the battlefields soon and doesn’t want to take his paunch with him for the fight against Russia’s invasion force.

“I’m here to get in shape. To be able to help my friends with whom I’ll be,” the 32-year-old said. “I feel that my place is there now. … There is only one thing left: to defend. There is no other option, only one road.”

So goes Kyiv’s bitter summer of 2022, where the sun shines but sadness and grim determination reign, where canoodling couples cannot be sure that their kisses won’t be their last as more soldiers head to the fronts; where flitting swallows are nesting as people made homeless weep in blown-apart ruins, and where the peace is deceptive, because it’s shorn of peace of mind.

After Russia’s initial assault on Kyiv was repelled in the invasion’s opening month, leaving death and destruction, the capital found itself in the somewhat uncomfortable position of becoming largely a bystander in the war that continues to rage in the east and south, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has redirected his forces and military resources.

The burned-out hulks of Russian tanks are being hauled away from the capital’s outskirts, even as Western-supplied weapons turn more Russian armor into smoking junk on battlefronts. Cafes and restaurants are open again, the chatter and the chink of glasses from their outdoor tables providing a semblance of normalcy — until everyone scoots home for the 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, less constraining than it used to be when Kyiv had seemed at risk of falling.

Sitting on a lawn, savoring wine with friends one evening this week, Andrii Bashtovyi remarked that it “looks like there’s no war but people are talking about their friends who are injured or who are mobilized.” He recently passed his military medical check, meaning he could soon be thrown into combat, too.

“If they call me, I need to go to the recruiting center. I’ll have 12 hours,” said the chief editor of The Village online magazine, which covers life, news and events in Kyiv and other unoccupied cities.

Air raid alarms still sound regularly, screeching shrilly on downloadable phone apps, but they’re so rarely followed by blasts — unlike in pounded front-line towns and cities — that few pay them much mind. Cruise missile strikes that wrecked a warehouse and a train repair workshop on June 5 were Kyiv’s first in five weeks. Dog walkers and parents pushing strollers ambled unperturbed nearby even before the flames had been extinguished.

Many, but by no means all, of the 2 million inhabitants who Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said had fled when Russian forces tried to encircle the city in March are now returning. But with soldiers falling by the hundreds to the east and south, the surreal calm of Kyiv is laced with nagging guilt.

“People are feeling grateful but asking themselves, ‘Am I doing enough?'” said Snezhana Vialko, as she and boyfriend Denys Koreiba bought plump strawberries from one of the summer-fruit vendors who have deployed across the city, in neighborhoods where just weeks ago jumpy troops manned checkpoints of sandbags and tank traps.

Now greatly reduced in numbers and vigilance, they generally wave through the restored buzz of car traffic, barely glancing up from pass-the-time scrolling on phones.

With the peace still so fragile and more treasured than ever, many are plowing their energy, time, money and muscle into supporting the soldiers fighting what has become a grinding war of attrition for control of destroyed villages, towns and cities.

Trained as a chef and now working as a journalist, Volodymyr Denysenko brewed up 100 bottles of spicy sauce, using his home-grown hot peppers to enliven the troops’ rations. He dropped them off with volunteers who drive in convoys from Kyiv to the fronts, laden with crowdfunded gun sights, night-vision goggles, drones, medical kits and other badly needed gear.

“All Ukrainian people must help the army, the soldiers,” he said. “It’s our country, our freedom.”
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Penny Taylor used her induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame to call for the release of her former WNBA Phoenix Mercury teammate Brittney Griner, noting it’s been 114 days since the seven-time WNBA All-Star was detained.

“BG is our family,” Taylor said in asking President Biden’s help freeing Griner. “She’s yours too. The entire global sport community needs to come together to insist that she be a priority.”

The two-time Olympic gold medalist has been detained Feb. 17 after vape cartridges containing oil derived from cannabis were allegedly found in her luggage at an airport near Moscow.

Taylor also wished her wife, Diana Taurasi, a happy 40th birthday after playing Friday night in a Mercury win and then traveling to Tennessee to escort her to the induction ceremony. Taylor helped Australia win two Olympic silver medals in 2004 and 2008. She also won three WNBA titles in 2007, 2009 and 2014 and was a three-time All-Star.

“If you continue to work hard, you too may be up here,” Taylor said to Taurasi.

DeLisha Milton-Jones wrapped up her acceptance speech calling to bring Griner home. DePaul coach Doug Bruno noted Griner has been a big part of USA Basketball’s Olympic success.

“Brittney is a great human being,” Bruno said. “No one deserves what Britney’s going through. Enough is absolute enough. It’s time for the powers that be to bring Brittney home.”

Other inductees included Becky Hammon, Debbie Antonelli, Wayland Baptist star Alice “Cookie” Barron as a veteran player, Paul Sanderford who coached Western Kentucky to three Final Fours and coach Bob Schneider who ranked third all-time with 634 Division II victories.

The hall also honored Title IX as one of the Trailblazers of the Game award at its 50th anniversary. Barron, who flew to games between 1954-1957 with the Flying Queens literally flying to away games while the men traveled by bus, made a call to everyone listening.

“I want to implore all of us to keep a very close watch on Title IX,” Barron said. “The doors are open. We must never let them close.”

Milton-Jones, now head coach at Old Dominion, capped her four-year career at Florida as the 1997 Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and All-American. She led the Gators to four straight NCAA Tournament berths, including the Elite Eight in 1997.

The fourth overall pick in the 1999 WNBA draft played 17 seasons in the league. When she retired in 2016, she held the league record for most games played with 499 for Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Washington and San Antonio. She helped the Los Angeles Sparks win back-to-back WNBA titles in 2001 and 2002.

Milton-Jones also helped the U.S. win Olympic gold in 2000 and 2008, missing the 2004 Athens Games with an injury. She played in Spain, Italy, Turkey, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Republic. in 2005, she was interim coach of the Los Angeles Stars in the American Basketball Association, becoming only the second female to coach a men’s pro team.

Her family made T-shirts and visors to help her commemorate this moment, and Milton-Jones said this helped put Riceboro, Georgia, on the map.

Hammon couldn’t attend with her WNBA-leading Las Vegas Aces playing against the Sparks on Saturday night in Los Angeles.

Bruno has coached 36 seasons at DePaul with 24 NCAA Tournament berths. He also has helped win six gold medals with USA Basketball.
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Italian rescuers on Saturday found the bodies of seven people, including four Turkish and two Lebanese businessmen, who died when their helicopter crashed in a heavily forested, mountainous area in north-central Italy during a storm, authorities said.

Colonel Alfonso Cipriano, who heads an air force rescue coordination unit that led the search since Thursday, said rescuers were tipped off to the crash site after a mountain runner reported seeing what he thought was a part of the mangled chopper during an excursion on Mount Cusna on Saturday morning.

Air crews confirmed the site, and ground crews initially found five bodies, and then the other two, Cipriano told The Associated Press. The location was in a hard-to-reach valley and the chopper remains were hidden to air rescuers from the lush tree cover, but some branches were broken and burned, he said.

The helicopter disappeared from radar Thursday morning as it flew over the province of Modena in the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines. Electric storms had been reported in the area at the time, Cipriano said. The chopper was carrying seven people, including four Turkish citizens, two Lebanese and the Italian pilot, from Lucca to Treviso to visit a tissue paper production facility.

The two Lebanese were identified in Lebanon as Shadi Kreidi and Tarek Tayah, both executives at INDEVCO, an international manufacturing and industrial consultancy group. The two were said to be on a business trip.

Tayah’s wife, Hala, was killed two years ago in the massive explosion at Beirut’s port, which took the lives of more than 215 people and injured thousands. Their daughter, Tamara, who was 11 at the time, was one of the few victims who met French President Emmanuel Macron when he flew to Beirut following the blast, gifting him a pin shaped like the map of Lebanon made by her mother, a jeweler, and getting an emotional hug in return.

Tarek and Hala Tayeh had two other children besides Tamara.

The Turks on board worked for Turkish industrial group Eczacibasi, which said they were taking part in a trade fair.

Eczacibasi confirmed in a statement with “great pain and sadness” that its director of factories, director of hygienic papers at its Yalova province factory, director of investment projects and production director at its Manisa province factory had died in the crash and relayed their condolences.

The crash site was about 10 kilometers from where rescuers initially began searching based on the last cellular pings from the passengers’ phones. Cipriano said it might have taken hours more or even days to locate the site had it not been for the runner’s tip, given the difficult, lush terrain.
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The first highway bridge connecting China and Russia opened Friday, the first day of the 3-day Shangri-La Summit in Singapore. Construction of the bridge was completed two years back, but it remained unused because of the coronavirus pandemic.  

The timing of its opening is significant. Russia and China have come under severe criticism at the summit, and analysts say the bridge is a signal China can help Russia navigate economic sanctions.

The opening comes just one month after a railway bridge linking the two countries was inaugurated. The road bridge in northern China, called the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe Bridge, will carry vehicles across the Amur River. The toll bridge can accommodate 630 freight trucks, 164 buses and 68 other vehicles daily, the Moscow Times reported.

Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev, who attended the inauguration ceremony by video link, made it apparent the bridge has political and diplomatic significance apart from trade.  

Hu said China is ready to meet Russia halfway, and the bridge’s opening will help to achieve the goal of mutual connectedness.  

Even after the invasion of Ukraine, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to raise their mutual trade from $147 billion in 2021 to $250 billion in 2024.

The two countries also plan to establish a cross-border economic cooperation zone near the bridgehead “to facilitate comprehensive cooperation” and promote the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership, according to CCTV, the official broadcaster in China.

But both the road and railway bridges will be used to a limited extent because China has not fully lifted restrictions it imposed on transportation, among the other business segments.

Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said that the opening of the road bridge would increase bilateral trade between Russia and China. “Today marks the start of stable daily transport links between our countries,” Yekaterina Kireeva, the Amur region’s senior economic development official, told Interfax, the Russian news agency.

The road and railway bridges were built as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative. Russia had been reticent about allowing large-scale Chinese investments under the program. But after the Ukraine invasion, Moscow changed its stance and invited Chinese companies to invest in infrastructure.

 
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The European Union should kick off accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania to finally fulfill its pledge to integrate the Western Balkans, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday on the second day of a tour to the region.

Speaking in Skopje, Scholz said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made it important for Europe to stand together and he praised North Macedonia’s support of sanctions on the Kremlin.

“It’s very important to bring a new dynamic into this process,” Scholz said in a news conference with North Macedonian Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski.

“I will advocate that the next steps happen.”

Supporters of the EU accession of Albania and the countries that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars of the 1990s say it will ease regional tensions, counter growing Russian and Chinese influence and raise living standards.

Four — Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania — already have candidate status although the latter two have not started accession talks. The overall process has stalled in recent years amid doubts about the wisdom of further EU enlargement.

Kovacevski underscored the “many difficult reforms” North Macedonia had undertaken in order to join the 27-member bloc, including changing its name to comply with Greek objections.

The current main obstacle is a dispute with Bulgaria over history and language.

Scholz, who has fashioned himself as a mediator during his Western Balkans trip, is set to travel onwards to Sofia on Saturday where he will hold talks with Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov.

The chancellor has made the Western Balkans’ EU accession, in order to ease growing regional tensions and counter Russian and Chinese influence, a foreign policy priority.

On Friday, he visited Serbia and Kosovo, which declared independence from Belgrade in 2008, where he urged the leaders to reach an agreement normalizing relations.
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Ukrainian and international officials are warning of a possible cholera outbreak in the Russian occupied besieged city of Mariupol.

Britain’s Defense Intelligence agency, from its Twitter account Friday, said Russia is having trouble supplying basic services to the territories it is occupying, including sanitation, safe drinking water and medical supplies. They said there have been isolated cases of cholera already reported in the city.

Those reports reinforce comments made earlier in the week by an aide to Mariupol’s mayor made on Ukrainian television. Petro Andryushchenko said the humanitarian situation in Mariupol is getting worse every day. He said drinking water had been contaminated by decomposing garbage and corpses, increasing the risk of a cholera outbreak.

His specific claims could not be independently verified, but the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Europe regional director, Hans Kluge, speaking at a news briefing last month in Kyiv, issued a warning about the potential for a cholera outbreak in occupied areas, where water and sanitation infrastructure is damaged or destroyed.

At that same briefing, WHO’s emergencies coordinator for Europe described Mariupol’s hygienic situation as a “a huge hazard” and said they received “information that there are swamps actually in the streets, and the sewage water and drinking water are getting mixed.”

The WHO says cholera is an extremely serious disease caused by eating or drinking food or water that is contaminated with the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. It can cause severe acute watery diarrhea with severe dehydration. It affects both children and adults and can kill within hours if untreated.

Russian forces bombarded Mariupol for weeks, and Ukrainian officials estimate 90% of the city was destroyed.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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Armed with a bright smile and a fistful of campaign flyers, Sarah Legrain works her way through the Curial market in northeastern Paris’ 19th arrondissement, where shoppers banter and bargain in North African Arabic.

She accepts a slice of watermelon from a vendor, and chats with a veiled Tunisian mother. A man in a white track vest politely rebuffs her overture but other shoppers pause to listen to her arguments for a more socially minded, greener France.

Five years ago, the 36-year-old high schoolteacher narrowly lost her bid for a seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament, representing one of the city’s poorest and most ethnically diverse districts.

Today, Legrain is confident she will win, as part of a new far-left alliance aimed at upending centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s second term, in two-round legislative elections that start Sunday.

“People feel abandoned by the politicians, they struggle to pay their rent and feed their children,” Legrain said of the 19th, a neighborhood that includes both well-kept middle-class homes and projects covered in peeling paint. “I’m saying, we can turn the page. We can redistribute wealth another way.”

Recent polls find Legrain’s leftist alliance narrowly leading the race with more than a quarter of intended voters — just ahead of Macron’s Ensemble, or “Together” coalition.

While Macron’s centrists may ultimately win the largest number of National Assembly seats, the left-wing New Ecological and Social Popular Union, or NUPES, threatens to steal the president’s majority, making it difficult for him to push through tough reforms.

“The most probable scenario right now is that nobody gets a real majority,” said analyst Lisa Thomas-Darbois of the Montaigne Institute, a Paris-based think tank.

“If that happens, in my opinion, we’ll have a situation in which the government’s entire agenda will be blocked,” she added.

A political coup and discontent

Powering the NUPES is septuagenarian firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon and his France Unbowed party, which pulled a rare coup last month in uniting the country’s diverse and often squabbling left, from the Communists to the center-left Socialists, for the first time in years.

Anger and disenfranchisement are also driving the NUPES rise in places like the 19th, analysts say, where voters feel Macron’s presidency has left them behind. Despite Macron’s April reelection, voter abstention was high, and many French only backed him to block the far right.

“We’ve had to live with five years of Macron, leaving him in power would be a nightmare,” said 32-year-old city hall worker Samy Bouhaka.

“I’m voting NUPES. On social and environmental issues, it’s the only party that really represents us,” he said.

Legrain, a France Unbowed candidate, ticks off other factors behind the resurgent left: anger at Macron’s efforts to raise the retirement age to 65 from 62, intensifying inflation with the war in Ukraine, a perceived lack of support for hospitals, and unpopular education reforms.

“What I saw in my five years of teaching is the scorn toward the country’s young people,” said Legrain, a teacher in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a working-class, immigrant-heavy Paris suburb that has seen youth rioting over police violence in recent years.

“France is really divided between those who have won with Emmanuel Macron in terms of purchasing power and better living standards, and those who haven’t experienced these gains,” said analyst Thomas-Darbois. “These French will seek the political extremes.”

A polarized France?

Also on the rise is support for the far-right National Rally party, projected to capture up to 50 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats — an all-time high. But that dwarfs the far left’s possible win of nearly half of the overall total.

If that happens, France Unbowed leader Melenchon wants to force Macron to choose him as prime minister, an unlikely but not impossible outcome.

It would not be the first time France has seen a “cohabitation” government, with a president and prime minister from different parties. But few have been so politically polarized.

Beyond opposing many of Macron’s domestic reforms, Melenchon is skeptical of the European Union and hostile to NATO, sharply breaking with France’s globalist leader, although his positions are not shared by other key members of the NUPES alliance. The left-wing bloc wants to freeze prices for basic goods, increase the minimum wage and impose tougher environmental policies.

Dozens of economists recently signed a petition defending the NUPES economic program. Others dismiss it as unrealistic.

Hours before the first round, the outcome of these legislative elections is up for grabs.

Polls find more than a quarter of voters are undecided. Experts fear a high abstention rate.

“Left or right, they always promise a lot before the elections, but once they’re elected, we get nothing at all,” said health care worker Juliette Schubler, after chatting with Legrain at the market.

Another shopper, retiree Alain Fainac, had made up his mind.

“I’m voting Macron,” said Fainac of the president’s party. “He’s not fantastic. But France is a difficult country to govern.”
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Britain’s plan to fly asylum seekers 6,000 kilometers to Rwanda faces a last-minute legal challenge.

The first flight is scheduled to leave June 14, carrying up to 100 migrants. However, a group of non-governmental organizations and refugee campaigners have launched a legal case at the High Court in London to seek an injunction blocking the flight. A decision is expected in coming days.

Among the plaintiffs is Clare Moseley, the founder of the charity Care4Calais. “People come from Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran. They are all terrified. They have all fled their home countries due to absolutely terrible circumstances. A number of them have suffered extreme torture or trafficking,” Moseley told Reuters.

Deadly journey

So far this year, more than 10,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats or inflatable dinghies to reach Britain. The route takes them across the busiest shipping lane in the world. Dozens of people have died attempting the crossing, including small children.

Britain says the flow has to stop. Earlier this year British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed a five-year deal, which would see up to 30,000 migrants forcefully deported to Rwanda, where they would be processed through Rwanda’s asylum system. Patel said it would act as a deterrent to migrants hoping to cross the channel.

Britain agreed to pay Rwanda an initial $149 million and cover the operational costs of the plan, estimated at between $25,000 to $35,000 per migrant.

‘Island country’

“Every country has a different approach to migration issues and challenges. We in the United Kingdom are very unique. We are an island country. We’ve also faced flows of literally over 20,000 people in the last calendar year, coming to our country through dangerous routes and dying in the channel, but also dying in the Mediterranean,” Patel told reporters May 19.

“We’re a government along with our partners, the government of Rwanda, finding new, innovative solutions to global problems,” Patel added.

The migrants would be housed in converted houses and hostels in Rwanda.

“At some point once their status has been fixed, they will have to go and live with other Rwandans. But they will be free. They will not be prisoners,” Rwandan government spokesperson Alain Mukurarinda told Associated Press May 19.

“We have the experience of welcoming refugees and we Rwandans have also experienced this situation of being a refugee. So, if there is a way to solve this problem by saving lives, I don’t think Rwanda could not accept,” Mukurarinda added.

U.N. Criticism

However, the policy has been widely criticized, including by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “UNHCR understands the frustration of the UK government on that and is not in favor of channel crossing, of course. We think there’s more effective ways and more humane ways to address this,” Larry Bottinick, a senior legal officer at the UNHCR, told the Associated Press.

Critics say the policy breaches international refugee conventions, to which Britain is a signatory. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the judge will rule in the migrants’ favor, says immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, author of the book Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System.

“States shouldn’t breach treaties that they’ve signed up to in good faith, but if you’re an individual who’s relying on that treaty, it doesn’t mean that you can just say, ‘well it’s a breach of international law, therefore you can’t do it to me.’ There’s got to be some domestic UK law that you rely on because those treaties don’t automatically become part of British law,” Yeo told VOA.

Fair hearing

Lawyers for the migrants argue they could be denied a fair hearing in the Rwandan asylum system. Separately, lawyers are also arguing that specific individuals scheduled to be on the flight should not be sent to Rwanda.

“So it could be somebody who’s been a victim of trafficking for example. It could be somebody who has been wrongly assessed as being an adult, and actually they say they’re a child. It could be somebody who’s got a serious illness,” Yeo said.

Some of the migrants could also argue that they would face discrimination in Rwanda – for example, if they are from the LGBTQ+ community. “Apparently there’s no anti-discrimination laws, there are reports that some people have been denied access to the asylum system on that basis,” Yeo added.
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A years-old piece of draft legislation that seeks to criminalize the spread of disinformation is moving toward a vote in the Turkish parliament. The bill is being met with deep concern by media rights groups across the country.

If passed, the so-called “disinformation” law put forward by ruling majority parliamentarians would carry a sentence of up to three years in prison for the spread of fake new or disinformation as defined by government officials.

Newly drafted proposals are laid out across 40 articles, including some that would target social media users and regulate digital media. If passed, the bill would consider digital media outlets as conventional media and subject them to the same rights and regulations as print and broadcast outlets, including the eligibility to apply for press cards and provisions around access to state advertising revenue.

Skeptics of the proposed law say the bill could be used to pressure digital media before the upcoming elections in Turkey. The next presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 2023, but the opposition parties are calling for snap elections, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected.

“We are concerned that if this bill becomes law before the elections, it will be used as a tool of silencing,” Faruk Eren, head of the press union of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, told VOA. “There are vague terms such as ‘fake news and false news’ in the bill. The government already calls every news that disturbs it [a] ‘lie’ or ‘unfounded.’ Now they will try to silence the digital media by using this law.”

The proposal’s signatories, however, say that the bill is needed to protect people from “slander, insults, smears, defamation, hatred and discrimination.” They also argue that such regulations on disinformation are enforced by Western countries, including the United States and European countries.

“Similar regulations are being implemented in Europe,” Mahir Unal, parliamentary group deputy chairman for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said in a nationally televised interview.

Turkey already has a poor record for media rights, ranking 149 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders’s (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, where No. 1 is freest. In the report, Paris-based RSF describes Turkey as a country in which “all possible means are used to undermine critics.”

More press cards, more potential violations

Some observers call parts of the bill a step in the right direction for press freedoms in Turkey, such as granting digital reporters eligibility to apply for press cards, which have been a controversial issue in Turkey.

RSF and the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists say the Turkish government has politicized the press card issuance process — which has been run by the presidential communications directorate since 2018 — and discriminated against independent journalists.

“One of the most important regulations in this proposal is considering digital media as conventional media and enabling them to apply for press cards,” Mustafa Gokhan Teksen, an Ankara-based lawyer, told VOA. “This would provide the opportunity of job security for journalists in digital media.”

On the other hand, Teksen said other articles in the bill propose new offenses in the Turkish penal code.

Yaman Akdeniz, a cyberlaw professor at Istanbul Bilgi University, thinks that subjecting digital and conventional media to the same guidelines looks good on paper but, in reality, it comes with specific punitive regulations.

“Not only will decisions to block access and remove content be sent to news websites, but also there will be applications like rebuttal in the press law,” Akdeniz told VOA.

Another section seen as troubling by media rights analysts is Article 29, which allows for jail sentences of up to three years for those who “disseminate misleading information to the public” that disturbs public order and “creates fear and panic.”

The proposed article includes language referring to Turkey’s foreign and domestic security, along with issues of public order and health.

Akdeniz is concerned that Article 29 defines the violations too broadly, such that the language could be exploited against dissidents, media outlets and journalists if the bill becomes the law.

“We are entering a period where we will see more self-censorship due to the expansion of a pre-existing environment of fear with vague definitions,” Akdeniz said. “We will see that investigation of crime will be opened against media outlets because of their coverage, and journalists will be prosecuted for disinformation crimes.”

Social media

The bill also recommends restrictions and penalties for social media companies and individual users deemed to have spread disinformation, with expanded sentences for those who do so anonymously.

Under Article 34, social media companies will be required to appoint representatives holding Turkish citizenship and residing in the country. The representatives will be required to follow legally binding content removal requests and hand over personal data about users. Failure to do could result in “bans, fines and even prison sentences for international companies.”

Akdeniz says that a separate social media law passed in 2020 paved the way for Article 34.

“Back then, [critics of the law warned] social media platforms, ‘Don’t open offices in Turkey; if you give [the Turkish government] an inch, it will take a yard.’ Now, this looks like it is happening,” Akdeniz said.

If the bill becomes the law, Akdeniz said, “social media platforms that do not comply with these regulations would be punished” and possibly face state-backed bandwidth restrictions.

Article 22 covers access to state advertising revenue, including the Press Advertising Agency’s powers to issue penalties and control the appeals process.

Critics say a proposal in Article 22 that allows advertising penalties to be issued without trial, regardless of the appeals process, is particularly threatening for opposition newspapers.

The proposed bill, which passed parliament’s digital media commission with minor changes on June 2, is currently being examined by the justice commission.

The bill is expected to go up for a vote later this month.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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Russia and China on Friday unveiled the first road bridge between the two countries as Moscow pivots to Asia amid its confrontation with the West over Ukraine.

The kilometer-long bridge over the Amur River links the far eastern Russian city of Blagoveshchensk with Heihe in northern China.

The construction of the bridge was completed two years ago but its inauguration was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

During a ceremony in Blagoveshchensk on Friday, the bridge opened to freight traffic, with the passage of the first trucks greeted by fireworks.

Consisting of two traffic lanes, the bridge cost around 19 billion rubles ($328 million), according to official figures. 

Once bitter foes during the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have over the past years ramped up political and economic cooperation as both are driven by a desire to counterbalance what they see as US global dominance.

Trade between Russia and China, which share a 4,250-kilometre border, has flourished since the normalization of relations between the two giants in the late 1980s, but has always come up against the region’s lack of transport infrastructure. 
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The European Central Bank will raise interest rates next month for the first time in 11 years and add another hike in September, catching up with other central banks worldwide as they pivot from supporting the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic to squelching soaring inflation. 

The surprise move Thursday marks a turning point after years of extremely low interest rates but faces risks from weakening prospects for economic growth. Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent shock waves through the global economy, particularly as energy prices have soared and clobbered Europe, which relies on Russian oil and natural gas. 

“Russia’s unjustified aggression towards Ukraine continues to weigh on the economy in Europe and beyond,” bank President Christine Lagarde told reporters. The war is “disrupting trade, is leading to shortages of materials and is contributing to high energy and commodity prices.” 

The bank’s 25-member monetary policy council, which met in Amsterdam, said inflation had become a “major challenge” and that those forces had “broadened and intensified” in the 19 countries that use the euro currency. Consumer prices rose by a record 8.1% in May. The bank’s target is 2%. 

The ECB will first end its bond purchases that buoy the economy and then raise rates by a quarter-point in July. It left open the possibility that it would make a more drastic, half-percentage-point increase in September, saying that if the inflation outlook persists or deteriorates, “a larger increment will be appropriate.” 

The U.S. Federal Reserve raised its key rate by a half-point May 4 and has held out the prospect of more of those larger increases. The Bank of England has approved rate hikes four times since December. 

The bar to a half-point hike in September “has been set very low,” said Marc Ostwald, chief economist and global strategist at ADM Investor Services International. 

How far the bank will go after that is harder to tell, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING bank. 

“Simply put, the ECB just announced the end of a long era,” Brzeski said. “Whether this will also be the start of a new era of continuously rising interest rates, however, is still far from certain.” 

The prospect of rapid increases has sent shudders through stock markets, as higher rates would raise the returns on less risky alternatives to stocks and can make credit more expensive for businesses. Lagarde said, however, that the path of increases would be “gradual but sustained” after September. 

“High inflation is a major challenge for all of us,” the bank said in a policy statement. “The governing council will make sure that inflation returns to its 2% target over the medium term.” 

By raising its benchmarks, the bank can influence what financial institutions, companies, consumers and governments have to pay to borrow the money they need. So higher rates can help cool off an overheating economy. 

But higher rates can also weigh on economic growth, making the ECB’s job a delicate balance between snuffing out high inflation and not blunting economic activity. 

The ECB slashed its growth projection for this year to 2.8% from 3.7%. It raised its outlook for inflation, saying price increases would average 6.8% this year, up from 5.1% in its March forecast. 

The bank also increased its crucial inflation forecast for 2024 — to 2.1% from 1.9%. That is significant because it indicates the bank sees inflation as above target for several years, a strong argument for more rate increases. 

The euro’s exchange rate to the dollar jumped by almost a half-cent, to $1.076, after the decision. Higher rates can increase demand for investments denominated in a currency, boosting its exchange rate. The sudden jump indicates the bank had gone further than expected in announcing rate rises. 

An ECB’s move to attack inflation has raised concerns about the impact of higher interest rates on heavily indebted governments, most notably Italy. The bank announced no new support measures that could help such countries, saying only that it would respond with flexibility if some parts of the eurozone were facing excessive borrowing costs. 

The rate hikes end an era of persistently low rates that started during the global financial crisis, which broke out in 2008. The increases will start from record lows of zero for the ECB’s lending rate to banks and minus 0.5% on overnight deposits from banks. 
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Finland and Sweden’s bid to join NATO remains in question ahead of the alliance’s summit this month. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hardening his opposition on their joining, accusing the two countries of supporting terrorists. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Three foreign men have been sentenced to death by pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine who say the men fought for Ukrainian forces.

The two British citizens and a Moroccan were found guilty by a court that is not internationally recognized in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic of fighting for Ukraine and of being mercenaries and therefore not covered by traditional prisoner of war protections.

Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti, identified the three as Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner and Saaudun Brahim.

Pinner and Aslin surrendered to pro-Russian forces in the southern port of Mariupol in mid-April, while Brahim did so in mid-March in the eastern city of Volnovakha.

The three have a month to appeal the verdict or face a firing squad.

Two of the three are claiming to have lived in Ukraine since 2018 and should be considered “long-serving” members of the Ukrainian military.

Pro-Russian forces also hold Andrew Hill, a British fighter accused of helping Ukrainian forces, who is awaiting trial.

The UK Foreign Office condemned the sentences.

“We condemn the exploitation of prisoners of war for political purposes,” a spokesperson said. “They are entitled to combatant immunity and should not be prosecuted for participation in hostilities.”

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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