Europe

MOSCOW/KIEV, April 1 (Xinhua) -- A fire broke out at an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod after two Ukrainian military helicopters attacked the fuel storage facility, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod Region, said Friday.

Hours later, spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Olexandr Motuzyanyk said he does not confirm or deny the information about Ukraine's involvement in the fire at the oil depot in Russia's Belgorod, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

(AP) --- A fiery explosion rocked a Russian fuel depot near the border around dawn Friday, and Moscow said Ukraine had attacked the facility, but Kyiv denied any involvement. There was no independent confirmation of details about the incident.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopters had entered Russian airspace “at an extremely low altitude” and attacked the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Friday made a historic apology to Indigenous Peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools and said he hoped to visit Canada in late July to deliver the apology in person to survivors of the church’s misguided missionary zeal.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine resumed Friday, as another desperate attempt to rescue civilians from the shattered and encircled city of Mariupol failed and Russia accused the Ukrainians of a cross-border helicopter attack on a fuel depot.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said a fiery raid on Russian soil by two helicopter gunships left two people wounded, though state oil company Rosneft denied anyone was hurt.

Kyiv, Apr 1 (AP) Russian troops left the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site early Friday after returning control to the Ukrainians, authorities said, as eastern parts of the country braced for renewed attacks and Russians blocked another aid mission to the besieged port city of Mariupol.

Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received significant doses of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that.

Kyiv, Apr 1 (AP/PTI) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has stripped two generals of their military rank.

Zelenskyy said something prevented them from determining where their homeland was and they violated their military oath of allegiance to the Ukrainian people.

According to Zelenskyy, one of the generals had headed internal security at the SBU, the main intelligence agency.

31 March 2022; MEMO: The United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously voted on Thursday in favour of a Resolution on ensuring accountability and achieving justice in Palestine.

37 countries voted in favour of the resolution and 7 abstained, while 3 countries voted against the Resolution.

01 April 2022European Union antitrust regulators, on Friday, scrapped their investigation into Qatar Energy after evidence they collected did not confirm their initial concerns, Reuters reported.

"Today's closure decision is based on a thorough analysis of all relevant evidence, including information received from Qatar Energy and the European gas importers," the European Commission said in a statement.

Last month, Reuters exclusively reported that the state-owned company was no longer in the EU crosshairs.

LONDON, March 31. /TASS/: Sanctions imposed by Western countries against Russia could lead to fragmentation of the global financial system and dilute the US dollar’s dominance in it, Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s first deputy managing director has warned.

The official considers that radical restrictive measures imposed by Western countries after the launch of Russia's special operation in Ukraine may contribute to the emergence of small currency blocs based on trade between certain groups of states.

MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/: Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who became the first special correspondent aboard the International Space Station (ISS) representing TASS news agency, is retiring from the team of Russian cosmonauts, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center said in a statement on Thursday.

"Today, on March 31, 2022, Alexander Misurkin is on his last official day of work at the cosmonaut training center," the statement reads. "He is wrapping up his career as part of the Roscosmos [the Russian Space Agency] team of cosmonauts."