MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia has charged 680 Ukrainian officials, including 118 members of the armed forces and defense ministry with breaking laws governing the conduct of war, including the use of weapons against civilians, TASS news agency reported on Monday. According to the report, which quoted Russia’s chief public investigator, the Ukrainian officials were charged with the “use of prohibited means and methods of warfare”, referring to Article 356 of the Russian criminal code. Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, who reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, said that the charges include the use of weapons against the civilian population. He added that 138 of those people have been charged in absentia. Ukraine has also unveiled a number of criminal cases against members of Russia’s forces, including against the boss of the Wagner mercenary group. Both Ukraine and Russia have denied targeting civilians in the year-long war that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and turned cities to rubble.

 

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KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) -- The main border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan was closed on Monday, officials from the two sides said, and residents in the area reported the sound of gunfire near the normally bustling border transit point. It was not immediately clear if Afghan or Pakistani authorities closed the Torkham border crossing, near the Khyber Pass, but it comes after relations between Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and Pakistan have deteriorated sharply. Disputes linked to the 2,600 km (1,615 mile) border have been a bone of contention between the neighbors for decades. The Torkham border point is the main point of transit for travelers and goods between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan. Clashes on the border have occurred for years, during the two-decade rule of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government and since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. Clashes between Afghan and Pakistani security forces have also at times closed the second most important crossing between the two countries, at Chaman to the south.

 

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WELLINGTON (AFP) -- New Zealand said Monday it was likely to cost billions of dollars to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle as the national state of emergency was extended by another week. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed 11 people have so far died in the wake of the devastating flash flooding and high winds which lashed the North Island last week. Hipkins has warned the final death toll could rise, but the number of people who police were still looking to contact had fallen to about 2,300. The full extent of the cyclone’s destruction is becoming clearer, as highways, power and telecommunications are re-established. The raging torrent of floodwater the cyclone unleashed swept away or badly damaged homes, businesses, bridges and roads across New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson on Monday pledged NZ$300 million ($187 million) of relief. robertson warned the money pledged so far will only “scratch the surface” of the final figure needed, which he predicts will cost taxpayers “billions of dollars.” According to Hipkins, 15,000 North Island households remain without power, mostly in the east coast cities of Gisborne and Napier, where floodwaters poured into many homes.

 

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DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AFP) -- The death toll from avalanches that in recent days have hit Tajikistan, a small mountainous country in Central Asia, has risen to 19, authorities said Monday. “From February 15 to February 19, 200 avalanches, seven landslides and six rockfalls were recorded,” emergency services said in a statement. “19 of our citizens lost their lives in avalanches.” Tajikistan, the poorest of ex-Soviet nations in Central Asia, is vulnerable to natural catastrophes. Almost all of the victims lived in Upper Badakhshan (also called Gorno Badakhshan), an autonomous region bordering Afghanistan, China and Kyrgyzstan that’s surrounded by the Pamir Mountains, with peaks exceeding 7,000 meters. The isolated region represents around half of Tajik territory, but is home to only two percent of the nation’s 9.5 million population. President Emomali Rahmon has received condolence messages from leaders of ex-Soviet countries, as well as from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. 

 

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SAO PAULO (AP) — Heavy rain caused flooding and landslides that have killed 36 people in Brazil’s north Sao Paulo state, officials said Sunday, and the fatalities could rise. Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that 35 died in the city of Sao Sebastiao and a 7-year-old girl was killed in neighboring Ubatuba. The cities of Sao Sebastiao, Ubatuba, Ilhabela and Bertioga, some of the hardest hit and now under state of calamity, canceled their Carnival festivities as rescue teams struggle to find missing, injured and feared dead in the rubble. 

 

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -- An Australian university professor is among a group taken hostage in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the country’s prime minister said on Monday.  Armed criminals had demanded cash in return for releasing the captives, who included more than one foreign citizen, police said. The professor is an archaeologist who works for an Australian university and was on a field trip to Fogoma’iu village in the Mount Bosavi region, two sources with knowledge of the incident told Reuters. His companions - local researchers and a project manager - had also been taken hostage, they said.