KYIV: Russia attacked a village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region on Thursday, killing three people and injuring four more, including a child, prosecutors said.
The village of Rozkishne, about 25 km from the front line, was targeted by the strike, regional prosecutors said on Telegram.
According to preliminary data, Russian troops used the Smerch system to launch cluster munitions, prosecutors said.
Among the injured was a 14-year-old boy who was hospitalized. Four households, cars, and a gas pipeline were damaged in the attack, prosecutors added.
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Russian attack kills three, injures four in Ukraine’s eastern region
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Russian attack kills three, injures four in Ukraine’s eastern region
- The village of Rozkishne, about 25 km from the front line, was targeted by the strike
Thousands of doctors go on strike in England a week before the UK general election
- The five-day strike by junior doctors in the early years of their careers comes just a week before the UK general election
- Junior doctors have been locked in the pay dispute with the government since late 2022
LONDON: Thousands of doctors in England are staging their 11th walkout on Thursday in a long-running dispute with the government over pay and working conditions, disrupting hospital services just days before the UK general election.
The five-day strike by junior doctors — those in the early years of their careers — shines a spotlight on the troubles besetting the chronically underfunded National Health Service, Britain’s state-funded public health system, a topic that is a a top concern for voters going to the polls on July 4.
Junior doctors, who form the backbone of hospital and clinic care, have been locked in the pay dispute with the government since late 2022. They went on strike for six days in January — the longest in NHS history — and hospitals had to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations.
The latest strike begins Thursday and ends on Tuesday, just two days before voters cast their ballots to choose a new House of Commons.
The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, say their pay has dropped by a quarter over the last 15 years and have called for a 35 percent pay uplift. The union says newly qualified doctors earn about 15 pounds ($19) an hour — the UK minimum wage is just over 10 pounds an hour — though salaries rise rapidly after the first year.
Dr. Sumi Manirajan, deputy chair of the junior doctors committee at the union, said that years of underinvestment has resulted in young doctors leaving in droves to countries that offer better pay, with those left behind seriously overworked and underpaid.
“Doctors that I trained with in London, some of the best in the country, have left to go to New Zealand. And actually what it makes me think of is why am I not doing the same? I want to be valued for the work that I do,” she said.
Manirajan, who recently graduated and works in obstetrics and gynecology, added that she sees many women waiting for more than a year for routine procedures.
“These patients are in pain, and it hurts us to see us see these patients come in again and again with the same problem that we know we could treat if we had enough doctors,” she said.
The Conservative government says it gave the doctors pay raises of between 8.1 percent to 10.3 percent last year and said that it was a generous settlement. It maintained that authorities can’t make a pay offer during the preelection period but the union refused to call off the strikes.
Manirajan said that it was unfortunate that the government chose to call an election while knowing that the dispute was unresolved.
The medics’ union said it was ready to talk, and it has already had some discussions with the opposition Labour Party, which has a considerable lead in polls.
“It is difficult to comprehend how either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party can deliver on their manifesto commitment to recover NHS performance over the next Parliament without first ending the dispute,” said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at The King’s Fund think tank.
Rescuers seek to bring down bodies found on Japan’s Mount Fuji
- Police said Thursday the identities of the people, including gender or age, are still unclear
TOKYO: Three bodies were found inside a crater at the summit of Mount Fuji, Japan’s most famous mountain, with one of them already brought down from the slopes, police said Thursday.
The identities of the people, including gender or age, were not confirmed. An effort to bring back the two other bodies will continue Friday or later, depending on weather conditions, they said. A search was called off for Thursday because of forecasts for heavy rainfall.
It’s unclear whether the three people were climbing the 3,776-meter (12,388-foot) mountain together, as the bodies were found several meters apart.
The official climbing season had not yet started when the climbers entered the mountain from the Shizuoka Prefecture side.
Japanese media reports showed a vehicle with one of the bodies driving into a police station in Shizuoka Prefecture. The rescue team had been searching for a 53-year-old man for whom a missing person report was filed.
Separately, Kyodo News service said professional climber Keita Kurakami, 38, died in a hospital after being found by police while climbing Fuji from the Yamanashi Prefecture side of the mountain.
Fuji can be climbed from both Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures. The climbing season kicks in for Yamanashi starting July 1.
Mount Fuji, made famous in ukiyoe, or woodblock prints, of 18th and 19th Century Edo Era masters Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, is a popular tourist destination.
Experts warn it can get extremely cold, even in the summer, and proper gear, climbing boots and clothing are crucial. Trekkers are also at risk of altitude sickness if they ascend too quickly.
The picturesque Fuji has long been an iconic symbol of Japan, with its gracefully sweeping slopes and white icy cap that stand out amid tranquil lakes and rice fields.
As many as 300,000 people climb Fuji every year, and watching the sunrise from the mountaintop is coveted as a spiritual experience. But worries have been growing lately about overcrowding from the influx of tourists.
The town of Fujikawaguchiko in Yamanashi erected a large black screen along a sidewalk to block the view of Mount Fuji to discourage photo-snapping crowds.
Bolivian army leaders arrested after coup attempt
- Bolivia is deeply polarized after years of political instability
La Paz: Two Bolivian army leaders were arrested Wednesday after soldiers and tanks took up position in front of government buildings in what President Luis Arce called an attempted coup.
The troops and tanks entered Plaza Murillo, a historic square where the presidency and Congress are situated, in the afternoon, prompting global condemnation of an attack on democracy.
One of the tanks tried to break down a metal door of the presidential palace.
Surrounded by soldiers and eight tanks, the now-dismissed army chief General Juan Jose Zuniga said the “armed forces intend to restructure democracy, to make it a true democracy and not one run by the same few people for 30, 40 years.”
AFP reporters saw soldiers and tanks pulling back from the square shortly after. The uprising lasted about five hours.
Zuniga was captured and forced into a police car as he addressed reporters outside a military barracks later on Wednesday, footage on state television showed.
“General, you are under arrest,” Deputy Interior Minister Jhonny Aguilera told Zuniga.
A second senior military officer Juan Arnez Salvador, who was head of the Bolivian navy, was also arrested Wednesday night.
Salvador’s arrest was announced by Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo, who said that Zuniga and Arnez are “two military coup leaders who tried to destroy democracy and the institutionality of our country and failed.”
Speaking from a balcony of the government palace, Arce told hundreds of supporters that “No one can take away the democracy we have won.”
He had urged “the Bolivian people to organize and mobilize against the coup d’etat in favor of democracy,” in an earlier televised message to the country alongside his ministers inside the presidential palace.
He fired Zuniga and Salvador and swore in a new set of military leaders.
Before he was arrested, Zuniga told reporters that the president had told him to stage an uprising, in order to trigger a crackdown that would make him look strong and boost his sagging approval rating.
At a meeting Sunday, the general said, Zuniga asked Arce “so we bring out armored vehicles?” He said the president answered, “bring them out.”
Arce’s instructions were to “stage something to raise his popularity,” Zuniga said.
Former president Evo Morales wrote on social media platform X that “a coup d’etat is brewing” and urged a “national mobilization to defend democracy.”
Bolivia is deeply polarized after years of political instability and the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party is riven by internal conflict between supporters of Arce and his former mentor Morales.
Morales, who was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, was extremely popular until he tried to bypass the constitution and seek a fourth term in office in 2019.
The leftist and former coca union leader won that vote but was forced to resign amid deadly protests over alleged election fraud, and fled the country.
He returned after Arce won the presidency in October 2020.
Since then a power struggle has grown between the two men, and Morales has increasingly criticized the government and accused it of corruption, tolerating drug trafficking, and sidelining him politically.
Six months ago, the Constitutional Court disqualified Morales from the 2025 elections, however he is still seeking nomination as the MAS candidate.
Arce has not said whether he will seek re-election.
Zuniga appeared on television on Monday and said he would arrest Morales if he insisted on running for office again in 2025.
“Legally he is disqualified, that man cannot be president of this country again,” he said.
Since that interview, rumors have swirled that Zuniga was on the verge of being dismissed.
The US administration of Joe Biden said it was keeping a close eye on events in Bolivia and “calls for calm,” according to a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned” by events in Bolivia and called on all actors, including the military, to “protect the constitutional order and to preserve a climate of peace,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
Condemnations of the troop movements also poured in from across Latin America, with leaders of Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela calling for democracy to be respected.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X: “I am a lover of democracy and I want it to prevail throughout Latin America. We condemn any form of coup d’etat in Bolivia.”
The Organization of American States (OAS) said the international community would “not tolerate any form of breach of the legitimate constitutional order in Bolivia.”
North Korea says successfully tested multiple-warhead missile
- South Korea’s military had previously said the North’s test on Wednesday appeared to be of a hypersonic missile
- Acquiring multiple-warhead missile technology is an ultimate goal for nations seeking ICBM-level missiles to carry nuclear warheads
Seoul: North Korea successfully tested its multiple-warhead missile capability, state media said Thursday, as dozens more trash-laden balloons from Pyongyang landed in the South.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang ramping up weapons testing while bombarding the South with balloons full of trash it says are in retaliation to similar missives sent northwards by activists in the South.
The balloons briefly forced Seoul’s major hub Incheon Airport to close on Wednesday, and in response to the successive launches, South has fully suspended a tension-reducing military treaty and re-started propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts and live-fire drills near the border.
North Korea claimed it had “successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Thursday.
The “separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets” during the test, carried out the day before, it said.
“The test is aimed at securing the MIRV capability,” KCNA added, referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology — or the ability to fire multiple warheads on a single ballistic missile.
South Korea’s military had previously said the North’s test on Wednesday appeared to be of a hypersonic missile, but that the launch ended in a mid-air explosion.
More smoke than usual appeared to emanate from the missile, raising the possibility of combustion issues, the official said, adding it may have been powered by solid propellants.
According to KCNA, the test “was carried out by use of the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile within a 170-200 kilometer (105 to 124-mile) radius.”
“The effectiveness of a decoy separated from the missile was also verified by anti-air radar,” it said.
Acquiring multiple-warhead missile technology is an ultimate goal for nations seeking ICBM-level missiles to carry nuclear warheads, said Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
It appears the North is “testing such technology step by step over the long haul,” he told AFP.
“They appear to be making technological advancements in the early development stages of multiple-warhead missiles.”
For three consecutive days, North Korea has floated hundreds of trash-carrying balloons southward in a tit-for-tat propaganda campaign.
Seoul’s military said around 70 balloons had landed by Thursday morning, mainly in northern Gyeonggi province and the Seoul area, with the contents found to not be hazardous.
“The payload is about 10 kilograms (22 pounds), so there is a risk if the balloons descend rapidly,” it said, adding the military was ready to respond.
The response to the latest balloons “will be flexible depending on the strategic and operational situation. This depends on North Korea’s actions,” it added.
South Korea’s Marine Corps resumed live-fire exercises on islands near the western inter-Korean border on Wednesday, marking the first such exercises since the 2018 tension-reducing military deal with the North was fully suspended this month.
South Korea and the United States also staged joint air drills Wednesday involving around 30 aircraft, including Washington’s advanced stealth fighter jet, F-22 Raptor.
President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a US aircraft carrier on Tuesday that arrived in South Korea for joint trilateral military drills this week aimed at countering North Korean threats.
The drills, which run from Thursday to Saturday, involve Washington’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Tokyo’s guided missile destroyer JS Atago, and Seoul’s fighter jet KF-16s, among other assets.
Pyongyang has routinely criticized such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.
‘Dead city’: Russia swoops on Ukraine’s once-calm Toretsk
- Ukraine’s troops, already exhausted and outgunned, are being further stretched by new Russian attacks and advances
- The Kremlin is determined to capture the entire Donetsk region, which it claims is part of Russia
Toretsk, Ukraine: Compared to others in war-scarred east Ukraine, Galyna Poroshyna had been lucky to live in Toretsk, a mining town nestled in a relatively sleepy sector of the front line.
Then, suddenly, the Russian assaults began, and life in the town, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Donetsk city, deteriorated drastically.
As rockets and air strikes started raining down on shaken residents this month, Poroshyna and her neighbors sheltered in basements, emerging between barrages to assess the damage.
The Internet and electricity shut off. A shell landed near Poroshyna’s home. Ukrainian forces struggled to hold positions that had been under their control for months.
Like her mother and grandmother, the 63-year-old was born and raised in Toretsk. She married there. Her son was born and buried in the town after succumbing to an illness.
“This is the kind of bond that is very hard to break. I can’t leave and go away. I can’t,” the 63-year-old told AFP, breaking down in tears.
That Russia now has Toretsk in its sights underlines a worrying trend for Kyiv as the war grinds through its third year.
Ukraine’s troops, already exhausted and outgunned, are being further stretched by new Russian attacks and advances across the more than 1,000-kilometer front line.
Kyiv said the Russian onslaught came following a “protracted lull” in fighting. But the Kremlin is determined to capture the entire Donetsk region, which it claims is part of Russia.
Like many towns and cities in eastern Ukraine, Toretsk bore a different name during the Soviet era: Dzerzhinsk, after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder of the Kremlin’s secret police.
Poroshyna’s husband Oleskandr described it as a quiet industrial settlment — mines below ground, roses above and where around 12,000 regular people lived regular lives.
“It was a good town. Small, compact and always clean. A lot of people stayed here and got married,” he recounted.
When Russian forces invaded in 2022 that changed. First the water went, then gas, then heating, Poroshyna recounted.
“But it was okay. We survived somehow,” she said. “People get used to everything, even this.”
She and her husband described having taken peace in the town for granted, reminiscing over their favorite park and visiting restaurants and concerts.
The recent surge in Russian attacks had rendered their hometown a “dead, broken city,” she said.
Charred Soviet-era housing blocs ripped open by Russian bombardments dot Toretsk. Shelling echoes throughout its emptying streets. Black smoke rises over the horizon.
“Now the most important thing is human life, to survive,” she said. “To save even the memory of relatives. It is so painful when you can’t go to the cemetery.”
Oleksandr Bobryk, 41, was also born, raised, and lived his whole life in Toretsk. That was about to change.
His grocery store was ripped apart and his house destroyed in recent Russian strikes
He had already relocated his shop one year earlier from an area more exposed to Russian shelling. Now he was preparing to move again, maybe for good.
“Every day there are dozens of strikes. It’s very scary to be here. We’re leaving,” he said.
Bobryk didn’t know what would come next for him and his family after they fled the danger.
“We haven’t thought about it yet,” he told AFP.
After a spate of fresh attacks, the Donetsk governor this week urged residents to make the same decision.
“The best thing to do is to evacuate and not endanger your own life and health,” governor Vadym Filashkin said.
Holding back the Russian advances in the area was becoming “difficult,” a 30-year-old commander of a Ukrainian military unit deployed near Toretsk told AFP.
Russian forces had been dropping devastating guided aerial bombs, launching rockets and sending small sabotage teams forward, the serviceman, who goes by the name of Kurt, said.
Ukrainian forces had also botched a troop rotation, compromising their defense of the town, he added.
“Certain mistakes were made. The enemy analyzed and used them,” he said.
AFP journalists, who visited Toretsk several times as the Russian bombardments were picking up, saw Ukrainian fortifications had been readied behind the city.
Kurt was unconvinced as to their effectiveness.
“The defensive lines outside the city don’t mean anything,” he said, pointing out that Russia had captured other towns buttressed by such installations.
Poroshyna was sure she wouldn’t leave Toretsk, no matter how bad it got.
But she admitted she had no idea what her life would look like.
“God, it’s been 10 years of this kind of oppression,” the former kindergarten teacher said, referring to when Kremlin-backed separatists first took over swathes of the Donetsk region in 2014.
“You know, I don’t make predictions anymore.”
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