Russian strikes wounded more than 30 people in Ukraine overnight, officials said yesterday, a day after Kyiv and Washington signed a landmark minerals deal.
Ukraine said it hopes the deal would pave the way for Washington to provide security pledges to the embattled country, which has been fighting a Russian invasion for more than three years.
“Twenty-nine people were wounded as a result of a nocturnal attack by the enemy,” on the industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram, adding that a 13-year-old boy was among the victims of the drone strike.
Photo: REUTERS, Stringer
“The Russians have struck the city’s civilian infrastructure. Residential buildings, a university, and an infrastructure facility have been damaged,” Fedorov wrote.
Two men were also wounded in a Russian drone attack in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, with fires breaking out at two locations, Governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s national railway company said its locomotive repair plant in Zaporizhzhia was “subjected to a massive attack” overnight, which sparked a fire that raged for hours. No injuries were reported.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said its air defenses destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, the majority over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014.
The latest barrage came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the minerals deal with the US offered “equal” benefits for both sides, even though the accord offered no concrete security guarantees for Kyiv.
The Ukrainian leader called on his country’s allies to ramp up “pressure on Russia to force it to be quiet and to negotiate.”
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
The China Coast Guard has seized control of a disputed reef near a major Philippine military outpost in the South China Sea, Beijing’s state media said, adding to longstanding territorial tensions with Manila. Beijing claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea and has waved away competing assertions from other countries as well as an international ruling that its position has no legal basis. China and the Philippines have engaged in months of confrontations in the contested waters, and Manila is taking part in sweeping joint military drills with the US which Beijing has slammed as destabilizing. The Chinese coast guard