Author: admin@primenews

In March 2022 invading Russian troops occupied the Ukrainian town of Bucha outside Kyiv, leaving a trail of death and destruction which shocked the world. Two years after their departure, the BBC’s Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford has gone back to see how its traumatised residents are trying to return to normal life. When Russian soldiers killed Ludmila’s husband, she had to wrap him in a blanket and bury him at the back of their garden. She then fled Bucha with her daughter. It was March 2022. The Russians had occupied the small town just outside Kyiv and taken over…

A new drone attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant has raised the risk of a “major nuclear accident”, the UN’s atomic watchdog has warned. Russia said Ukraine was behind the attack, which it said injured three people. Ukraine has denied involvement. The giant Russian-held nuclear plant, with six reactors, is on the frontline of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly warned against such attacks. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said Sunday’s drone strike was “reckless” and “a major escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers” facing the plant. The Zaporizhzhia plant, in southern Ukraine,…

A strong handshake generally makes a good first impression, but there is more to your grip than conveying confidence and trustworthiness. Science points to a stronger grip as an important key to overall strength and longevity. The strength of your handshake even indicates heart health, research has found. While it may seem like a small part of your body’s total strength, grip strength is a foundational component of physical fitness, linked to injury prevention, as well as a reliable benchmark for many aspects of health and functional independence as we age. Stronger grip muscles help stabilize wrists, reducing the risk of strains and injuries during…

Elon Musk has given up, restoring the “lords and peasants” blue checkmark system he once admonished and assailed as elitism. After insisting that journalists, celebrities and other notable users pay him $8 a month for Twitter’s once-coveted blue checkmark, the erratic billionaire has thrown in the towel, widely restoring blue badges to prominent accounts on the imperiled social media platform. A number of people — including yours truly — woke up on Thursday to learn that X had declared them “an influential member of the community” and, thus, would be giving them “a complimentary subscription to X Premium.” The message the company sent to those users…

Stocks have been tumbling this week. Investors are hoping the upcoming earnings season will help bring back this year’s banner rally. Analysts polled by FactSet expect first-quarter earnings of S&P 500 companies to grow 3.1% from the prior year. That would mark the third straight quarter of earnings growth. Full-year profits are expected to swell about 10.7%. All three major US indexes have notched repeated record highs this year after a gangbusters 2023, despite hot inflation data and hawkish Federal Reserve chatter forcing Wall Street to pull back its expectations for six interest rate cuts this year to three. Some…

On the surface, Thailand’s annual Songkran festival appears to be just one great big water fight. Every April, people young and old take to the streets all over the country, armed with plastic guns and water buckets, and engage in hours-long battles from morning till dusk. And while that’s certainly the most famous aspect of the celebrations, Songkran is filled with unique cultural traditions, making it an excellent time for travelers to visit. What exactly is Songkran? Songkran marks the start of the traditional Thai New Year and is usually celebrated from April 13-15, though some cities stretch out the…

For the past 50 years, the US unemployment rate has mostly been far above 4%, even rocketing to almost 15% during the pandemic. Yet in the turbulent period that followed lockdowns and other economic disruptions from the pandemic, it has stayed below the 4% level for more than two years. That remarkable streak could end on Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its March jobs report. February brought the unemployment rate within spitting distance of 4%, rising to 3.9% from 3.7% in January. And for March, it’s “very foreseeable” that the jobless rate could…

Two million Black+Decker steamers have been recalled after more than 80 reports of burn injuries, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday. The steamers can “expel, spray, or leak hot water during use,” the recall warned, which can injure the user. More than 500,000 of these steamers were already recalled in November 2022, but the recall expanded Thursday to include 1.6 million more. Since the original recall, there have been 317 reports of hot water expelling from the steamer. There have been 82 reports of burn injuries, seven of which were second-degree burns. The recall noted that 94 of the 317…

Samsung Electronics has said it expects to report a huge rise in its operating profit in the first quarter, offering hopes of a strong recovery after a dismal 2023. The South Korean tech giant estimates its operating profit to have increased to 6.6 trillion Korean won ($4.9 billion) in the January-to-March quarter, from the 0.64 trillion won reported a year earlier, according to an earnings guidance released on Friday. The forecast is higher than consensus estimates of 5.4 trillion won from FactSet. Sales are expected to have risen by more than 11% to 71 trillion won, the world’s biggest memory chip maker added. It…

Janet Yellen has kicked off her second visit to China as US treasury secretary with a warning of the risk to jobs and businesses posed by overproduction of certain goods in the world’s second largest economy. On Friday, her first full day of meetings in the southern megacity of Guangzhou, Yellen said she would address the oversupply of Chinese goods in key industries, such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels. The issue has quickly emerged as a major area of contention globally and in the run-up to November’s US presidential election. “Overcapacity isn’t a new problem, but it has intensified, and…