Five foetuses have been discovered in a Washington home reportedly belonging to an anti-abortion activist, police say. Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) group and describes herself as a “Catholic anarchist”. Police said they were investigating a “potential bio-hazard material” when the foetuses were found. Ms Handy was separately indicted on Wednesday for forcing entry into an abortion clinic in 2020. She was photographed outside the address on Wednesday as investigators removed items from the basement in bags and coolers. She told local news outlet WUSA9 that “people would freak out when they heard” what was inside the containers being seized. Washington police said they could not confirm if the home where the foetuses were found was in fact Ms Handy’s. However, two law enforcement officials told the Washington Post that the house was where Ms Handy was arrested and had lived or stayed.(BBC)…[+]

The producer of the Oscars has said he prevented Will Smith from being “physically removed” from the ceremony because “Chris Rock did not want that”. Will Packer said he had been told the bosses of the organising academy had planned to have the actor ejected after he slapped the comedian on stage. “I had not been a part of those conversations,” Packer said. “So, I immediately went to the Academy leadership that was on site and I said, ‘Chris Rock doesn’t want that’.” Packer told ABC’s Good Morning America, in his first interview since the incident, that he had he had told academy bosses: “Rock has made it clear that he does not want to make a bad situation worse.”He added: “That was Chris’s energy. His tone was not retaliatory. His tone was not angry.(BBC)…[+]

The Kremlin has hit back after French actor Gerard Depardieu accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “crazy, unacceptable excesses” in Ukraine. Depardieu said the Russian people were not responsible for their president’s behaviour. Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the actor probably did not completely understand the situation in Ukraine and offered to explain it. Depardieu left France for tax reasons and took Russian citizenship in 2013. He received his Russian passport from President Putin in person in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

At the time, the actor and the president shook hands and hugged each other, with Depardieu describing Russia as “a great democracy”. In 2015, Ukraine banned him from entering the country for five years after he supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Despite this, the actor denounced the war in Ukraine shortly after it began in February and called for negotiations.(BBC)…[+]

The head of French military intelligence, Gen Eric Vidaud, is losing his job after failing to predict Russia’s war in Ukraine, reports say. Seven months after he took on the role, one report said he was blamed for “inadequate briefings” and a “lack of mastery of subjects”. The US correctly assessed that Russia was planning a large-scale invasion, while France concluded it was unlikely. Gen Vidaud was blamed for that by France’s military chief, a source said. However, the military source told AFP news agency that his job was to provide “military intelligence on operations, not on premeditation”. As Gen Vidaud’s service concluded that Russia had the means to invade Ukraine, the source said that “what happened proves him right”. When contacted by the BBC, a military spokesman said French armed forces chief Gen Thierry Burkhard had no comment to make.(BBC)…[+]

Fresh efforts are under way to evacuate civilians trapped by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a convoy of 45 Ukrainian buses was on its way to the besieged southern city. She said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had confirmed that Russia had agreed to open a humanitarian corridor to Mariupol. Tens of thousands of civilians remain there after weeks of bombardment. Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said the United Nations refugee agency and the Red Cross would assist in the evacuation of civilians. The evacuation was initially planned for Thursday, but the Red Cross has since told Reuters that for logistical and security reasons, the evacuation will now happen on Friday. It said a ceasefire would allow people to travel westwards to Zaporizhzhia via the Russian-controlled port of Berdyansk. A spokesperson for the ICRC said its teams were ready to help get civilians out of Mariupol from Friday, but only if all parties agreed on the terms.(BBC)…[+]

Chris Rock has made his first public appearance since Will Smith slapped him during Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony. Hosting the latest leg of his US tour in Boston, the comic told fans that he is “still processing what happened”. Rock, who was greeted with a standing ovation by fans, also denied some reports in US media that he had spoken to Smith since the incident. It comes as the Oscars organisers revealed that Smith was asked to leave after hitting Rock, but refused. Smith refused to leave Oscars after slap – Academy. Smith slapped the comedian after he made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, a result of the hair-loss condition alopecia. “How was your weekend?” Rock jokingly greeted the crowd at his show at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre, before saying he did not plan to address the incident at length. The 57-year old, who is currently starring in his “Ego Death” tour of the US, told fans that he had written the “show before all this nonsense happened,” but promised to address the incident in the near future. “I’m still kind of processing what happened, so at some point I’ll talk about that,” Rock said. “And it’ll be serious and it’ll be funny, but right now I’m going to tell some jokes.” He also denied claims made by some, including by rapper P. Diddy, that the pair had cleared the air following the show. “I haven’t talked to anyone, despite what you heard,” Rock said.(BBC)…[+]

Schools in 23 countries, with 405 million pupils, are still partially or fully closed because of Covid, the United Nations Children’s Fund says. The charity, Unicef, estimates 147 million children have missed at least half of their in-person schooling. Some vulnerable children, especially girls, have not returned to those schools that have reopened. Unicef executive director Catherine Russell says children are “the hidden casualties of the pandemic”. While children have been less vulnerable to the most serious health effects of coronavirus, their lives have been turned upside down by the school closures of the pandemic. In March 2020, 150 countries around the world completely shut their schools, with partial closures in a further 10. Two years later, 19 still have some of their schools closed. In a further four – the Philippines, Honduras, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in the South Pacific – at least 70% remain shut, the proportion Unicef categorises as full closure.(BBC)…[+]

The governor of Ukraine’s Chernihiv region says there is no let-up in attacks by Russia, despite its pledge to reduce military activity there. The governor, Viacheslav Chaus, told the BBC that he did not believe Russia’s promise. “We’ve already seen that there wasn’t even a single time when their military forces kept their word,” he added. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators made no “breakthroughs” in Tuesday’s peace talks, the Kremlin has said. “What is positive is that the Ukrainian side has at least started to specifically formulating and putting on paper what it is proposing. Until now we had not managed to achieve that,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “As regards the rest, we cannot, put it this way, at present state there have been any breakthroughs, anything very promising,” he said, adding that a lot of work was still to be done.(BBC)…[+]

Shanghai’s Covid lockdown has left thousands scrambling to stock up on supplies, while others quarantine in their offices to keep business running. After weeks of isolated compound lockdowns, the city of 25 million has been split into two. Earlier this week those living in Shanghai’s eastern half were told to stay home, with the western half due to enter a lockdown on Friday. The move comes as the city battles a surge in Omicron Covid cases. The city has reported around 20,000 Covid-19 infections since 1 March, registering more cases in four weeks than in the previous two years of the pandemic. China’s zero-Covid strategy has been increasingly challenged by the highly infectious Omicron variant. Officials in China’s cosmopolitan financial capital had earlier attempted to keep the city running by limiting lockdowns to select neighbourhoods or buildings. But on Sunday authorities announced a mass lockdown that saw the city being split along the Huangpu River. Residents living in the Pudong area, on the river’s eastern bank, were told to stay at home for four days starting on Monday. Puxi, on the western bank, will enter lockdown on Friday. Mass testing is also being carried out to screen all of Shanghai’s residents for the virus.(BBC)…[+]

Russia has announced it will “drastically reduce” military combat operations in two key areas of Ukraine “to boost mutual trust” in peace talks. The decision to scale back operations around the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv is the first sign of tangible progress in talks since Russia invaded on 24 February. Ukraine has proposed neutrality in exchange for security guarantees. Russia launched the invasion to stop Ukraine joining the Nato alliance. Russian officials said peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, had moved to a practical stage. Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin, who was taking part in the talks, told Russian TV that as “Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status and security guarantees” had progressed, the defence ministry had taken the decision to cut its operations dramatically in the two areas to “create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and for the signing of the aforementioned agreement”. While Russia is focusing on capturing areas of eastern Ukraine and a southern land corridor to Crimea, its military assault on Kyiv has been bogged down for weeks.(BBC)…[+]