Europe

DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — Before the Russian missile struck the apartment building next door, Anna Kotova had moved closer to the window to take a congratulatory 19th birthday call from her sister.

Kotova’s boyfriend staggered into the kitchen after the explosion and found her covered in blood. The blast at the neighboring building blew out windows and doors in her apartment, and a shard of glass had pierced one of the young woman’s eyes. Another just barely missed a major artery on her neck.

PARIS (AP) — A French nun who was believed to be the world’s oldest person has died a few weeks before her 119th birthday, the spokesperson for her nursing home in southern France said Wednesday.

Lucile Randon, known as Sister André, was born in the town of Ales, southern France, on Feb. 11, 1904. She was also one of the world’s oldest survivors of COVID-19.

Spokesman David Tavella said she died at 2 a.m. on Tuesday at the Sainte-Catherine-Laboure nursing home in the town of Toulon.

ZURICH (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met on Wednesday with her Chinese counterpart and pledged an effort to manage differences and “prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict” as the two nations try to thaw relations.

Yellen’s first face-to-face meeting with Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich is the highest-ranking contact between the two countries since their presidents agreed last November during their first in-person meeting to look for areas of potential cooperation.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The world is in a “sorry state” because of myriad interlinked challenges including climate change and Russia’s war in Ukraine that are “piling up like cars in a chain reaction crash,” the U.N. chief said at the World Economic Forum’s meeting Wednesday.

BROVARY, Ukraine (AP) — A helicopter carrying Ukraine’s interior minister and other government officials crashed Wednesday in a residential area near the capital of Kyiv, killing him and about a dozen other people, including a child on the ground, authorities said.

17 Jan 2023; MEMO: Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said the Kingdom was trying to find a path to dialogue with Iran as the best way to resolve differences, Reuters reports.

He said a decision by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to focus on their economies and development was a "strong signal to Iran and others in the region that there is a pathway beyond traditional arguments and disputes towards joint prosperity".

MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/: Russian ombudswoman Tatiana Moskalkova told TASS on Tuesday that she did not discuss prisoner-exchange issues with her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Luninets in Ankara.

GENEVA, January 17. /TASS/: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos did not directly answer a question as to whether his country will allow delivering its Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

"We are supporting Ukraine for as long as necessary with all the means that we can use," Scholz said, adding that the aim is to "avoid that this is going to be a war between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called for expediting the unblocking of traffic along the Lachin corridor, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday after his telephone conversation with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov.

MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced a draft bill to the State Duma which proposes to terminate the Statute of the Council of Europe and European conventions on the suppression of terrorism and protection of human rights with regards to Russia.

The document was published on the Duma’s electronic database on Tuesday.