BitGou: Silence from Kyiv as Russia claims more than 1,700 surrender in Mariupol

Thursday, May 19, 2022

by Linda Noakes

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Tesla is cut from the S&P 500 ESG Index, how Turkey spoiled NATO's historic moment, and why monkeypox cases are spreading

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A service member of pro-Russian troops rides an armored personnel carrier escorting buses with service members of Ukrainian forces who have surrendered in Mariupol, Ukraine May 17, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

RUSSIA AND UKRAINE AT WAR

Moscow said that 1,730 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered in Mariupol over three days, including 771 in the past 24 hours, claiming a surrender on a far bigger scale than Kyiv has acknowledged since ordering its garrison to stand down.

The ultimate outcome of Europe's bloodiest battle for decades remained publicly unresolved, with no confirmation of the fate of the hundreds of Ukrainian troops who had held out in a vast steelworks at the end of a near three-month siege.

The Kremlin said Ukraine was showing no willingness to continue peace talks, but officials in Kyiv blamed Russia for the lack of progress.

Russia said it was expelling a total of 85 embassy staff from France, Spain and Italy in response to similar moves by those countries, highlighting the damage to relations with leading European Union members since it launched its war on Ukraine.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Sweden should not expect Turkey to approve its NATO bid without returning "terrorists", and Swedish and Finnish delegations should not come to Turkey to convince it to back their membership in the alliance. Here's how Turkey spoiled NATO's historic moment.

Here's what you need to know about the conflict right now

An electron microscopic image shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virus particles as well as crescents and spherical particles of immature virions, obtained from a clinical human skin sample in this undated image obtained by Reuters on May 18, 2022

U.S.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said it had confirmed a single case of monkeypox virus infection in a man who had recently traveled to Canada. Here's why monkeypox cases are spreading.

Pennsylvania's hotly contested U.S. Senate Republican primary between TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick is still undecided and could drag on into next week, with a possible recount looming.

President Joe Biden took steps to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States, invoking the Defense Production Act to help manufacturers obtain the ingredients needed to ramp up supply.

The teenager accused of killing 10 people in a live-streamed supermarket shooting in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, is due back in court in a case spurring a national conversation about the toxic mix of guns, hate and the internet.

Former President George W. Bush mistakenly described the invasion of Iraq as "brutal" and "unjustified" before correcting himself to say he meant to refer to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Bush made the comments in a speech during an event in Dallas, while he was criticizing Russia's political system.

WORLD

Biden will visit Japan and South Korea on his first Asian trip as U.S. president, carrying a clear message to China, advisers and analysts say - don't try what Russia did in Ukraine anywhere in Asia, and especially not in Taiwan. But North Korea's weapons test threat is casting a shadow over Biden's visit

More Shanghai residents were given the freedom to go out to shop for groceries for the first time in nearly two months as authorities set out more plans for exiting the city-wide COVID lockdown more fully.

North Korea is ramping up production of drugs and medical supplies including sterilisers and thermometers as it battles an unprecedented coronavirus outbreak, state media KCNA said.

Sri Lanka's central bank has secured foreign exchange to pay for fuel and cooking gas shipments that will ease crippling shortages, its governor said, as the prime minister said supplies had been locked in for at least a month.

Indians are cranking up air conditioning as they still work from home, while lights come back on in offices and factories with an end to COVID curbs, upending power demand patterns amid a heatwave and the country's worst blackouts in years. We explain India's power crisis.

BUSINESS

Heavy falls in European and Asian stock markets followed Wall Street's worst day since mid-2020, as stark warnings from some of the world's biggest retailers underscored just how hard inflation is biting. A rare double-whammy has hit investors this year - steep slumps for both stocks and bonds.

An S&P Dow Jones Indices executive told Reuters it has removed electric carmaker Tesla from the widely followed S&P 500 ESG Index because of issues including claims of racial discrimination and crashes linked to its autopilot vehicles, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded with harsh tweets including that "ESG is a scam".

Reckoning they have little to lose with prices so ridiculously low, South Korean speculators in recent days have piled into Luna, a cryptocurrency that lost 99.99% of its value last week after its paired stablecoin TerraUSD collapsed.

Deutsche Bank begins a new epoch as Chairman Paul Achleitner leaves after a rocky decade during which Germany's largest lender lost billions and saw its share price plummet.

TikTok has been conducting tests so users can play games on its video-sharing app in Vietnam, part of plans for a major push into gaming, people familiar with the matter said.