MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Friday expelled 10 Romanian diplomats in response to similar expulsions by Bucharest. Moscow’s foreign ministry added that it rejected Romanian attempts to blame Russia for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. In a separate statement, the ministry said a member of the Bulgarian embassy was also being expelled. The moves are part of a series of tit-for-tat expulsions by Russia after more than 300 of its diplomats were kicked out of European capitals in the wake of its military campaign in Ukraine.

 

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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society has identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions, but officials expect that figure to grow exponentially as research continues. The dark history of Native American boarding schools — where children were forced from their families, prohibited from speaking their languages and often abused — has been felt deeply across Indian Country and through generations.

 

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CHICAGO (AP) — One person was killed and 10 were injured in two shootings on Chicago’s South Side in the space of six hours, a spasm of gun violence on the hottest day of 2022 so far, serving as a warning that the city is entering the warmest and deadliest time of year. Chicago and other U.S. cities reported dramatic spikes in homicide totals last year; Chicago’s 797 homicides in 2021 — its highest toll for any year in a quarter century — eclipsed Los Angeles’ tally by 400 and the total in New York by nearly 300.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths has exceeded two million in Europe, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe said on Thursday. The cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the region has surpassed 218 million, and 2,003,081 COVID-19-related deaths have been reported. “While this number is devastating, it represents a fraction of the overall deaths directly and indirectly associated with COVID-19, as the WHO’s report on excess mortality during the pandemic has shown,” the office said in a statement.

 

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LONDON (AFP) - The United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) disagreed over how to fix Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol problem. London said it “will have no choice but to act” if the EU does not show the “requisite flexibility” over the protocol. In a telephone call with European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said her country’s overriding priority was to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland and that the protocol had become the greatest obstacle to forming a Northern Ireland Executive, according to a UK government press release.