Month: July 2025

MOSCOW (TIP): A passenger plane crashed Thursday in Russia’s Far East, killing all 48 passengers and crew on board, officials said. The Angara Airlines flight disappeared from radar, and searchers later found the burning wreckage of the plane on a hillside south of its planned destination in Tynda, more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) east of Moscow, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said. Regional Gov. Vasily Orlov said in a statement that all 48 people aboard were dead, and announced three days of mourning in the Amur region over what he called a “terrible tragedy.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the crash.
Russia’s Interfax news agency said there were adverse weather conditions at the time of the crash, citing unnamed sources in the emergency services. Several Russian news outlets also reported that the aircraft was almost 50 years old, citing data taken from the plane’s tail number.
The Soviet-designed twin turbo prop plane had initially departed from Khabarovsk before making its way to Blagoveshchensk on the Russian-Chinese border and onwards to Tynda.
Images of the reported crash site circulated by Russian state media show debris scattered among dense forest, surrounded by plumes of smoke.
Orlov said rescuers had struggled to reach the site due to its remote location, 15 kilometers (9 miles) south of Tynda.
An earlier statement from the governor said that 49 people had been onboard the flight, but that number later was updated to 48. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
The transport prosecutor’s office in the Far East said in an online statement that the plane was attempting to land for a second time when it lost contact with air traffic control and disappeared from radars.
The authorities launched a probe on the charge of flight safety violations that resulted in multiple deaths, a standard procedure in aviation accidents.
Aviation incidents have been frequent in Russia, especially in recent years as international sanctions have squeezed the country’s aviation sector.

Gaza Strip (TIP): “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive. They are walking corpses.”
This was the haunting message from a UNRWA staff on the ground this morning, ” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.
In the heart of a war-ravaged enclave, the situation has spiraled into a catastrophic emergency.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), one in every five children in Gaza City is now malnourished, with the number growing by the day.
More than 100 people, most of them children have already died from hunger.
“UNRWA’s frontline health workers are now fainting on duty. They survive on a single, meager meal a day, often just lentils, if that. “When the caretakers collapse, so does the entire system,” Lazzarini said.
Children arriving at UNRWA clinics are skeletal, listless, and dangerously close to death. Without urgent nutritional treatment, they won’t survive, he said.
“This is not a crisis. It’s a collapse,” said the UNRWA official.
“Families are no longer coping ,they are breaking. Parents are too hungry to feed their children. They can’t even follow basic medical instructions. Their very existence is under threat.”
The agency said that it has 6,000 trucks loaded with food and medical supplies waiting in Jordan and Egypt. But they remain stalled as Gaza continues its freefall into famine.
“Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted & uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently condemned the “accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions” in Gaza.
“The last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. The United Nations chief “deplores the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition.”
“The Secretary-General notes that the intensification of hostilities in recent days comes as the humanitarian system is being impeded, undermined and endangered,” Dujarric said.
“A new evacuation order in parts of Deir el-Balah — home to tens of thousands — pushes people into more desperate conditions and further displacement and restricts the United Nations’ ability to deliver life-saving aid.” (AP)

KYIV (TIP): Russian attacks killed at least five people, including three members of a displaced family, in separate attacks across Ukraine’s war-scarred east, Ukrainian authorities said Thursday.
A couple and their 36-year-old son were killed in a village in the eastern Kharkiv region late Wednesday, local officials said, while two more women were killed in the Donetsk region Thursday.
Russia has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine more than three years into its invasion, even as the warring parties meet for ceasefire talks.
Donetsk regional officials issued blurred images of one of the bloodied women killed in Kostyantynivka, where a dozen other people were wounded. Russian forces are gradually encircling the industrial hub.
A strike later on Kharkiv city wounded 37 people, including a 10-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy and girl, the governor said.
A separate Russian drone and missile barrage wounded seven people overnight, including a child, in the central Ukrainian region of Cherkasy, emergency services said.
And in the southern port city of Odesa, a Russian drone attack wounded four people and badly damaged a famous market. Ukraine’s prime minister said some of the buildings targeted were UNESCO protected.
“Russia continues its terror and obstructs diplomacy, which is why it deserves full-scale sanctions responses, as well as our strikes on their logistics, their military bases, and their military production facilities,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media in response.
He said Russia had launched 103 drones — mainly Iranian-designed Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles — and four missiles.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike killed two women and wounded several others in the southern city of Sochi, regional authorities said.
The Russian defence ministry said its air defence systems had downed 39 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles mainly over southern regions of the country. (AFP)

KYIV (TIP): Opponents of a new law they say strips Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs of their independence called for a third straight day of street protests across the country on Thursday, despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s attempts to defuse the tension with promises of legislative safeguards. After meeting with the heads of Ukraine’s key anti-corruption and security agencies, Zelenskyy promised to act on their recommendations by presenting a bill to Parliament that strengthens the rule of law.
“And very importantly: all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address late Wednesday. Zelenskyy acknowledged the controversy triggered by the new corruption law, which also drew rebukes from European Union officials and international rights groups.
“It’s not falling on deaf ears,” Zelenskyy said of the complaints.
“We’ve analyzed all the concerns, all the aspects of what needs to be changed and what needs to be stepped up.”
However, he didn’t promise to revoke the law that he approved.
The legislation that was adopted this week, despite pleas for Zelenskyy to veto it, tightened government oversight of two key anti-corruption agencies. Critics said the step could significantly weaken the independence of those agencies and give Zelenskyy’s circle greater influence over investigations.
The protests haven’t called for Zelenskyy’s ouster. But the first major anti-government demonstrations since the war began come at a tough time for Ukraine in its three-year battle to thwart Russia’s invasion.
Russia’s bigger army is accelerating its efforts to pierce Ukraine’s front-line defenses and is escalating its bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Ukraine is also facing a question mark over whether the United States will provide more military aid and whether European commitments can take up the slack, with no end to the war in sight.
Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul for a third round of talks in as many months Wednesday. But once again the talks were brief and delivered no major breakthrough.
Zelenskyy had insisted earlier Wednesday that the new legal framework was needed to crack down harder on corruption. Fighting entrenched corruption is crucial for Ukraine’s aspirations to join the EU and maintain access to billions of dollars in Western aid in the war. “Criminal cases should not drag on for years without verdicts, and those working against Ukraine must not feel comfortable or immune from punishment,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russian planes dropped two powerful glide bombs on the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Thursday morning, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. At least 16 people were injured, including a 10-year-old girl who suffered an acute stress reaction, he said. The southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and Cherkasy in central Ukraine were also hit overnight, authorities said. The drone and missile strikes on the cities injured 11 people, including a 9-year-old, and damaged historic landmarks and residential buildings, officials said. (AP)