Section: South China Morning Post (China)
Eight killed in fire at Tokyo Star hotel in Ukraine’s Odessa
Eight people were killed and 10 were injured in a hotel fire in Ukraine’s port city of Odessa early Saturday, emergency services said.The fire broke out at 1.34am (local time) in the southern city’s Tokyo Star hotel.Some 65 firefighters backed by 13 emergency vehicles put out the blaze three hours later.Emergency services said in a...
‘Nigerian pirates’ kidnap 17 Chinese, Ukrainian seamen off Cameroon coast
Nine Chinese and eight Ukrainian seamen were abducted on Thursday when two merchant vessels came under attack in Cameroonian waters, sources said on Friday.“Seventeen Chinese and Ukrainians were kidnapped … (of whom) nine (are) Chinese who were abducted on one of the ships,” an official in the port of Douala said.A Cameroonian security official,...
British scientists use grain from site of Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine to make ‘artisan’ vodka
What do you call vodka produced from grain grown in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster 33 years ago? Atomik, of course.British scientists say the alcohol is free of dangerous radioactivity and could be mass produced to help economic recovery in the blighted region around Chernobyl.The good, the...
Russia threatens ‘consequences’ after Ukraine seizes tanker amid high tensions over prisoner swap
Ukraine on Thursday seized a Russian tanker it said was used in a naval confrontation last November amid sensitive prisoner swap talks between the two countries who have been at loggerheads since 2014.Kiev’s SBU security service said it stopped the tanker, the Neyma, as it entered the port of Izmail in the southern Odessa region....
Ukraine election: comic-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky wants coalition talks with rock star after record score in parliamentary vote
Ukrainians gave their comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky a mandate to reboot the country’s politics on Sunday by handing his party a record score in parliamentary elections, exit polls showed.Zelensky’s Servant of the People party – named after the sitcom he starred in before his shock presidential win in April – took 43.9...
Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky proposes to swap filmmaker Oleg Sentsov for detained Russian journalist
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed on Friday exchanging a state news journalist detained by Kiev in return for Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov who is behind bars in a Russian Arctic prison.Russia and Ukraine are in the midst of sensitive prisoner exchange talks following the first phone call between Russian President Vladimir...
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17: five questions answered, five years on
Five years ago on Wednesday, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was blasted out of the sky over war-torn eastern Ukraine with the loss of all 298 people on board.The shooting down of the Boeing 777 travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has prompted sanctions against Russia, a series of international investigations and criminal charges.What...
Grenade attack hits Ukraine TV channel set to air Vladimir Putin documentary
A grenade launcher fired at the building of a Ukrainian television channel on Saturday after it announced plans to air a controversial documentary featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin.The attack at around 3:40am (local time), described as terrorism by officials, caused no injuries but damaged a sign on the facade of the offices of “112...
Chernobyl’s new US$1.7 billion radioactive dust shelter unveiled in Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday inaugurated a giant structure built to confine radioactive debris at the nuclear reactor that exploded in Chernobyl in 1986.The confinement structure for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s Reactor No 4 cost €1.5 billion (US$1.7 billion) to build, and the entire project cost €2.2...
Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky invites Russia’s Vladimir Putin for talks
Ukraine’s new president has proposed holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the conflict in the east and Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that he and Putin meet in Minsk, Belarus, adding he would like the leaders of the US, Britain, France and Germany to join the...
