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☆ Factbox: Who are the officials swept out in Ukraine's biggest shake-up of the war?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Max Hunder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERSKYIV, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A slew of high-level officials resigned or were dismissed from their posts on Tuesday in Ukraine's biggest internal shake-up since it was invaded by Russia on Feb. 24 last year. GOVERNOR OF DNIPROPETROVSK REGIONValentyn Reznichenko had served since 2015 as governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, the main wartime logistical and medical hub for Ukraine's eastern battlefront. He had already once been dismissed from the role by Zelenskiy in 2019 but reappointed in December 2020. TWO DEPUTY MINISTERS OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENTIvan Lukeria and Vyacheslav Nehoda were dismissed as deputy ministers of regional development. DEPUTY MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICYVitaliy Muzychenko was dismissed from his role as deputy minister for social policy.

☆ Japan's leader prioritizes arms buildup, reversing low birthrate
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Kishida’s government in December adopted key security and defense reforms, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from the country’s exclusively self-defense-only postwar principle. Japan says the current deployment of missile interceptors is insufficient to defend it from rapid weapons advancement in China and North Korea. Kishida said it’s a “drastic turnaround” of Japan’s security policy, but still remains within the limitations of its pacifist constitution and international law. This month, Kishida took a five-nation tour, including Washington, to explain Japan’s new defense plan and further develop defense ties with its ally the United States. Japan is the world’s third-biggest economy but living costs are high and wage increases have been slow.

Separately, a newspaper investigation published on Saturday accused the Defence Ministry of overpaying suppliers for food for its soldiers. If the humane approach doesn't work, we'll do it in line with martial law," he said. Before last year's invasion, fighting corruption was the principal theme for Zelenskiy, a political novice swept into power in a landslide in 2019 on a promise to clean up Ukraine's notoriously crooked institutions. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said measures would be announced this week. Several Ukrainian media outlets have reported that a number of cabinet ministers and senior officials could be sacked imminently as Zelenskiy tries to make the government more effective and streamlined.

☆ Zelenskiy honors Ukraine officials killed in helicopter crash
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

KYIV, Jan 21 (Reuters) - A tearful Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended a memorial service on Saturday to commemorate seven senior officials killed in a helicopter crash, a fresh blow to a nation already grieving its many war dead. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy and five other high-ranking ministry officials were killed on Wednesday when their French-made Super Puma helicopter plummeted amid fog into a nursery near Kyiv. Another seven people were killed, including one child, in the crash. [1/7] Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and first lady Olena Zelenska offer their condolences as they attend a memorial ceremony for Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy and officials who died in the helicopter crash near Kyiv, in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 21, 2023. Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, paid their respects to the victims' relatives inside the hulking Ukrainian House cultural centre in Kyiv.

☆ Ukraine’s Electric-Repair Crews Become Unlikely Wartime Heroes
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Alistair Macdonald | Photographs Joseph Sywenkyj For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The workers clambering over the charred remains of an electricity transformer at a Ukrainian power station are fighting on one of the war’s most important fronts: protecting Ukraine’s power grid. Russia has targeted Ukraine’s electricity supply with a blitz of drones and missiles, leaving businesses struggling and millions of people with sporadic heat and light in subzero temperatures.

☆ South Korea hints at compensating victims of Japan's colonial forced labour
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Hyonhee Shin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan said it has secured initial donations from steelmaker POSCO (005490.KS) totalling 4 billion won ($3.2 million). Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, Tokyo’s top spokesperson, declined to comment on Seoul’s compensation plan or its public hearing, saying they were domestic matters within South Korea. The foundation's chief, Shim Kyu-sun, said he would encourage South Korean companies to donate "from the perspective of social responsibility". National flags of South Korea and Japan are displayed during a meeting between Komeito Party members and South Korean lawmakers at Komeito Party's headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, July 31, 2019. Under the 1965 deal, South Korea was required to consider all pre-treaty compensation issues settled.

☆ What is the US getting in Ukraine for $100 billion?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Daniel L. Davis | Defense Priorities | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill with another $47 billion in aid for Ukraine. The question: does adding this Patriot battery represent a game-changer for Ukraine? A Patriot battery ordinarily operates as part of an integrated defense system which may include numerous US and NATO systems. As exposed in 2019 when the Saudi-operated Patriot system failed to stop a complex aerial attack from Iran, the system is not fool-proof even when operational. Air Force via APIncluding this most recent aid package, the US has spent over $100 billion on the war in Ukraine, which is $16 billion more than the entire Russian military budget for 2023.

☆ China's navy is showing off a huge new ship designed to carry other warships around
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Liu Zhen | South China Morning Post | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Yinmahu is a semi-submersible heavy-lift ship that could ferry equipment and damaged ships. Chinese state TV recently showed the ship doing various maneuvres but didn't reveal its specifications. Footage showed the Yinmahu's departure, submerging, ship loading, lifting and transporting. The Chinese navy's first heavy-lift vessel, the Donghaidao (hull number 868) is known to have entered service in 2015. The semi-submersible heavy-lift ship can carry vessels over 100,000 tonnes.

PARIS, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Senalia, operator of France's largest grain export terminal, aims to load 4.6 million tonnes of cereals in the 2022/23 season to June 30, up nearly 14% from 2021/22, supported by Chinese demand and war disruption to Black Sea trade, it said on Friday. France is the European Union's biggest grain supplier and its brisk wheat shipments have contributed to higher overall EU wheat exports so far this season. Flows from Russia and Ukraine have since recovered, though, helped by the creation of a wartime grain corridor from Ukrainian ports. Senalia loaded 4.05 million tonnes of cereals in the previous 2021/22 season, it said. Tonnage was more than halved in 2021/22 after Saint Louis Sucre, a unit of Germany's Suedzucker (SZUG.DE), ended a partnership.

"Right now the war in Ukraine is at a critical point," U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters. Germany would provide Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles, according to a joint statement on Thursday from Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. TRUCE PROPOSALUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected out of hand a Russian order for a truce over Orthodox Christmas starting at noon on Friday and ending at midnight on Saturday. The heaviest fighting of the war continues in eastern Ukraine, with the worst of it near the eastern city of Bakhmut. Ukraine says Russia has lost thousands of troops despite seizing scant ground in months of futile waves of assaults on Bakhmut.

☆ Biden signs law to help preserve Japanese American WWII incarceration camps
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Kimmy Yam | Kimmy Yam Is A Reporter For Nbc Asian America. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

A new law signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday will help memorialize the history of the U.S. government's incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The legislation, spearheaded by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, would reauthorize funds that help preserve the sites in which tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were detained, including Manzanar in California and Rohwer in Arkansas. “The internment of Japanese American citizens remains one of the darkest and most shameful periods in our history,” Schatz said in a statement about the law. More than 75 years ago, the U.S. government incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans in response to xenophobia and the wartime hysteria that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The findings served as the basis for the Civil Liberties Act, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, offering a formal apology for the mass incarceration, following a large-scale movement by the Japanese American community.

☆ The US relied on a secret force of Japanese-Americans to win World War II in the Pacific — while their families were locked up at home
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Katie Sanders | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

Japanese-American Nisei soldiers at US Army Military Intelligence Service language school. Not many people know that we had Japanese-Americans fighting the Pacific war. The very first Japanese language school was started by the Army a months before Pearl Harbor. A US Army Nisei soldier gives water to a child in Okinawa. US Army Nisei soldiers interrogating a Japanese prisoner of war.

☆ Poland says Germany refused talks on World War Two reparations
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WARSAW, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Germany has rebuffed the latest push by Poland's nationalist government for vast reparations over World War Two, saying in response to a diplomatic note that the issue was closed, the foreign ministry in Warsaw said on Tuesday. Poland estimates its World War Two losses caused by Germany at 6.2 trillion zlotys ($1.4 trillion) and has demanded reparations, but Berlin has repeatedly said all financial claims related to the war have been settled. "Germany does not pursue a friendly policy towards Poland, they want to build their sphere of influence here and treat Poland as a vassal state." In 1953, Poland's then-communist rulers relinquished all claims to war reparations under pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany, also a Soviet satellite, from any liabilities. In a joint press conference with Polish foreign minister Zbigniew Rau last October, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the pain caused by Germany during World War Two was "passed on through generations" in Poland but that the issue of reparations was closed.

☆ Ukraine's cities begin 2023 under attack from more Russian missiles and drones
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

We already know the sound of rockets, we know the moment they fly, we know the sound of drones. Ukrainian forces reclaimed the city in November after Russia's forces withdrew across the Dnieper River, which bisects the Kherson region. The Ukrainian forces have had the momentum for several months but we also know that Russia has mobilized many more forces. "We already know the sound of rockets, we know the moment they fly, we know the sound of drones. Couples participate in a traditional dance gathering in an underground mall on New Year's Day, 2023, in Kyiv, Ukraine.

☆ Russia's war in Ukraine shows why troops need to learn to put their phones away, top US Marine general says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Christopher Woody | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

To do that, younger troops will have to unlearn some habits, the Marine Corps' top general says. New Marine recruits turn in cell phones at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in October. Targeting cell phones has been a feature of the fighting between Russia and Ukraine since 2014. Ukrainians and foreign governments have eavesdropped on Russian troops using unsecured phones to talk to each other and to their families in Russia. A Marine records a Drum and Bugle Corps performance at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in March 2014.

☆ Former Pope Benedict was first pontiff to resign in 600 years
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Philip Pullella | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +14 min

[1/3] Pope Benedict XVI blesses a baby as he rides around St Peter's Square to hold his last general audience at the Vatican February 27, 2013. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File PhotoVATICAN CITY, Dec 31 - Former Pope Benedict, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pontiff in 600 years to resign, leaving behind a Catholic Church battered by sexual abuse scandals, mired in mismanagement and polarised between conservatives and progressives. Benedict, the first German pope in 1,000 years, had good relations with his successor, Pope Francis, but his continued presence inside the Vatican after he stepped down in 2013 further polarised the Church ideologically. Although he said he would remain "hidden from the world", Benedict did not live up to that promise and in retirement sometimes caused controversy and confusion through his writings. Ganswein's role as a middleman between Benedict and the cardinal was unclear, with many believing he had misled Benedict, the cardinal, or both.

☆ Privacy and crypto will likely lead tech policy under split Congress as hope for passing ambitious antitrust reforms dwindles
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

After what started as a hopeful year for tech policy, the 117th Congress is about to close out its term with many key efforts tabled. That's the case with privacy legislation, where a bill proposed this year gained bipartisan support, passing out of a House committee with a near-unanimous vote. The pair blamed the bills' failure to advance on intense lobbying efforts by the tech industry against them. One prominent bipartisan bill in the Senate would put the CFTC in charge. "But the importance of tech policy issues will still be strong."

☆ How Ukraine's Zelenskyy went from comedian to wartime hero
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Holly Ellyatt | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 14, 2022. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the cover of Time Magazine's 2022 "Person of the Year" edition. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Zelenskyy enjoys high approval ratings among Ukrainians for rallying both the country's forces and public on a daily basis. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 14, 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 14, 2022.

☆ Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a 'geopolitical earthquake' that defined 2022 and has transformed the world for years to come
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( John Haltiwanger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

An unthinkable, nightmare scenario was now a reality — the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II had begun. The war, which is still raging on, will continue to shape the world in the year to come and likely long after. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine represented a geopolitical earthquake, scrambling the entire chessboard of global politics," Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, told Insider. Some experts have warned that the nuclear dangers posed by the Ukraine war after are "far worse" than the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred 60 years ago this past October. Indeed, the global dimensions of the Ukraine war could make it an era-defining fight.

☆ Ukraine's parallel war on corruption to unlock door to West
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Dan Peleschuk | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +10 min

The activity reflects a parallel war Kyiv is waging against high-level graft, according to Reuters interviews with half a dozen Ukrainian anti-corruption monitors and officials. It had been repeatedly opened and closed for two years due to procedural errors and shortcomings, SAPO prosecutors said at the time of the hold-ups. New anti-corruption cases include a probe launched in October into a former tax chief suspected of taking more than $20 million in kickbacks. SAPO prosecutors, for instance, earn at least $2,500 per month, or six times more than the Ukrainian monthly average. Kateryna Butko, a civic activist serving on the SAPO selection committee, acknowledged that Ukraine's fight against graft is often plodding.

☆ Russia says 'quite old' U.S. Patriot missiles in Ukraine won't stand in its way
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington during which the Biden administration announced another $1.85 billion in military aid for Ukraine. Russia said that Ukraine acquiring Patriot missiles from the United States, announced during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Washington, would not help settle the conflict or prevent Moscow from achieving its goals. Though the Patriot air defence system is widely regarded as advanced, President Vladimir Putin dismissed it as "quite old", telling reporters Moscow would find a way to counter it. At the same time, he said Russia wants an end to the war in Ukraine and that this would inevitably involve a diplomatic solution. The Biden administration announced another $1.85 billion in military aid for Ukraine, including a Patriot system, as Zelenskyy began his visit.

[1/2] The U.S. Capitol is seen as Congress continues work on passing a $1.66 trillion government funding bill in Washington, U.S., December 21, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueWASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday will vote on a $1.66 trillion government funding bill that provides more money for Ukraine's defense, restricts the Chinese-owned TikTok app and reforms presidential election certification, a top Democrat said. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer said the lower chamber would not take up the legislation until Friday morning as it performed some final legislative actions to pass it. "As soon as we get the document ... we will proceed as quickly as possible," he said on the House floor. House Republicans wanted to delay negotiations on the full-year legislation until early next year, after they take the majority.

☆ Mr. Zelensky Goes to Washington
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

President Joe Biden (R) and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky walk down the Colonnade as they make their way to the Oval Office at the White House on December 21. Volodymyr Zelensky ’s visit to Washington on Wednesday is a symbolically important moment after 10 brutal months of war in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky, in his trademark fatigues, met President Biden at the White House and spoke to Congress. He has been a brave and charismatic wartime leader, and it is useful for Congress and the U.S. public to hear him in person. He thanked Americans for their support and sought more aid as the war moves into the harsh winter months.

Share this -Link copied'It's too much for me': Zelenskyy begins speech by thanking U.S. Zelenskyy began his remarks before a joint meeting of Congress at 7:40 p.m. "I think we share the exact same vision, that of a free, independent and prosperous Ukraine," Biden said. The Ukrainian president added that the soldier told him that "many (of) his brothers, this system saved." President Joe Biden holds a medal presented to him by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Share this -Link copiedPhoto: Zelenskyy shakes hands with Biden as he arrives President Joe Biden welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House.

☆ Zelensky Deserves More U.S. Support
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Volodymyr Zelensky ’s visit to Washington on Wednesday is a symbolically important moment after 10 brutal months of war in Ukraine. With his first trip abroad since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, the Ukrainian President is signaling how vital the U.S. is to his country’s survival, as Vladimir Putin attempts to bomb Kyiv into submission, and maybe the Stone Age. Mr. Zelensky, in his trademark fatigues, met President Biden at the White House and addressed Congress. He has been a brave and charismatic wartime leader, and his speech was eloquent in explaining that Ukraine is fighting for its independence as Americans once did. He thanked Americans for their support, and he sought more aid as the war moves into the harsh winter months.

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