While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, April 15
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Emergency workers rescue an injured elderly man from a partially destroyed residential building in Ukraine's Sloviansk.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
Russian shelling kills at least eight, wounds 21, in Ukraine
Russian missiles hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk on Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding 21, the governor of Donetsk region said.
Mr Pavlo Kyrylenko told national television that seven Russian S-300 missiles had been fired at the city.
Mr Kyrylenko said there were “no fewer than seven spots hit” in Sloviansk, west of the city Bakhmut, site of the heaviest fighting on the Ukrainian front line.
The city lies in a part of the Donetsk region that is under Ukrainian control. It is close to territory occupied by Russia.
Putin paves way for new call-up as invasion drags on
AFP
The Kremlin introduced harsh new penalties for people who evade military call-up, adding to fears that the government is planning another mass mobilisation as the invasion of Ukraine drags into its second year.
President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed the law, which was rushed through Parliament earlier this week in 24 hours, according to the Tass state news service.
Under the new rules, the authorities can deliver military call-up notices both for conscripts and mobilised reservists online, and almost immediately bar the recipients from leaving the country.
Mike Pence booed at NRA gun gathering in US
Former vice-president Mike Pence, a possible White House contender, looked to move to the right of his former boss and 2024 Republican front-runner Donald Trump at the annual NRA conference on Friday, calling for armed officers at all schools and speedier executions of shooters.
But in a sign of the tough battle Mr Pence faces to win over Trump fans and secure the Republican presidential nomination, boos rang out in the vast Indianapolis conference room of the National Rifle Association, the country’s leading gun-rights advocacy group, as he walked onto the stage to deliver his speech.
“I love you too,” Mr Pence joked, before touting his gun rights credentials and vowing he would never let “liberal meddlers” win, hoping to draw a contrast with Mr Trump, who is accused by some firearms aficionados of failing to care deeply about gun rights.
Tearful Biden meets priest in Ireland who gave son last rites
AFP
US President Joe Biden broke down in tears on Friday after a chance meeting at an Irish church with the priest who performed the last rites on his son Beau, a priest who accompanied Mr Biden during the visit said.
Father Richard Gibbons, who led Mr Biden on a tour of the Catholic shrine of Knock, said he had not known that one of his colleagues, ex-US Army chaplain Father Frank O’Grady, had performed the sacrament until the president arrived.
Beau Biden, the president’s eldest son, died in the United States in 2015 from brain cancer.
Elephant Noor Jehan critically ill at Karachi Zoo after fall
AFP
Noor Jehan, a female elephant at Pakistan’s Karachi Zoo, is critically ill after falling into a pond on Thursday in a small enclosure.
Right after the fall, Four Paws, a global animal welfare organisation, recommended lifting 17-year-old Noor Jehan with a crane, ropes and belts.
She has since been lying visibly weak, with limited motion, on a mound of sand, propped up against the only tree inside the enclosure.
