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Reuters

Ukraine

THE World Health Organization (WHO) has called for humanitarian access to Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol, and said over 90 attacks on health services had been confirmed in the war.

Speaking at a press conference in Lviv on Thursday, WHO regional director for Europe Hans Kluge lamented that while health assistance had reached many “affected areas”, some were out of reach.

Located in a strategic southeastern spot between Russia-occupied Crimea and pro-Russian separatist regions in Ukraine’s east, Mariupol has been the scene of some of the fiercest assaults by Moscow’s forces.

Residents have spoken of utter devastation and dire conditions. The city’s population has shrunk from 400 000 before the conflict to around 120 000.

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Russia

ROSCOSMOS has decided to proritise the launches of military satellites, the head of the Russian space agency said this week.

“Given the turbulent situation around the country, we have decided that we should basically push forward the launches of space apparatuses in the interests of the Defence Ministry,” Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Roscosmos said at a meeting with a council of experts, and posted on his Telegram channel.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket with a military satelite was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters.

According to Rogozin, the EU and the US now openly send information from its satellites to the Ukrainian military, including the co-ordinates of Russian troops. | Sputnik

Oil reserves

RICH countries will tap an additional

120 million barrels of oil from emergency reserves in a bid to calm crude prices that have soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said this week.

The move includes 60 million barrels to be released by the US. Last week, US President Joe Biden announced a record release of US oil on to the market – one million barrels every day for six months, or a total of more than 180 million barrels.

The 30 other members of the IEA also agreed to tap their emergency oil reserves again but did not disclose by how much.

Cybercrime

TWO of the most prominent US cybersecurity companies have struck a deal to work more closely, extending a trend of co-operation among companies and government agencies battling sophisticated spying operations, ransomware and the potential for disruptive or destructive hacker attacks amid rising global conflict.

Mandiant, which is best known for leading investigations of breaches such as the ransomware attacks, will begin deploying protection tools from CrowdStrike as it advises customers on their defences and responds to incidents. |

The Washington Post