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Yerevan — Thousands of Armenians staged an anti-government protest on Sunday, demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's resignation over territorial concessions to arch foe neighbor Azerbaijan. Protests erupted in the Caucasus nation last month after the government agreed to hand over to Baku territory it had controlled since the 1990s. The ceded area is strategically important for landlocked Armenia because it controls sections of a vital highway to Georgia. Armenian residents of nearby settlements say the move cuts them off from the rest of the country and accuse Pashinyan of giving away territory without getting anything in return. On Friday, in a key step toward normalizing ties between the rivals — who fought two wars over then-disputed Nagorno Karabakh region — Yerevan returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it seized decades ago. An AFP reporter said several thousand people flooded Yerevan's central Republic Square in a fresh protest spearheaded by charismatic archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a church leader from the Tavush region, where villages were handed over to Azerbaijan. "Our people want to change the bitter reality which was imposed on us," Galstanyan told the crowd, adding that fixing the volatile border with Azerbaijan "must only be carried out after a peace treaty is signed" with Baku. One of the demonstrators, 67-year-old Artur Sargsyan, said: "We demand an immediate resignation of Nikol [Pashinyan]." "I had fought in two wars with Azerbaijan and will not let him give away our lands." Pashinyan defended the territorial concessions as aimed at securing peace with Baku. But they sparked weeks of protests and demonstrators blocked major roads in an attempt to force him to change course. In a televised statement on Friday evening, he said resolving border disputes with Azerbaijan "is a sole guarantee for the very existence of the Armenian republic within its internationally recognized and legitimate frontier." Galstanyan is seeking to launch an impeachment process against Pashinyan, a former journalist who was propelled to power in the wake of peaceful street protests he led in 2018. The archbishop said on Sunday that he would renounce his clerical office to run for prime ministerial post, and called for snap parliamentary elections. "My spiritual service is above all possible posts, but I am ready to sacrifice it for the sake of change in this country," he told the cheering crowd. He then called on protesters to march toward Pashinyan's residence. Opposition parties would require the support of at least one independent or ruling party MP to launch the impeachment process and success would then hinge on at least 18 lawmakers from Pashinyan's own party voting to unseat the leader. Last year, Azerbaijan recaptured Karabakh in a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists who had held sway over the mountainous enclave for three decades. The region's entire Armenian population — more than 100,000 people — fled to Armenia in the aftermath.

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Geneva — The World Health Organization and STOP, a global tobacco industry watchdog, warn the tobacco industry is using a variety of manipulative tactics to hook a new generation of young people into becoming users of their addictive, toxic tobacco and nicotine products for life. “The terrible truth is that eight million people every year die from tobacco use. The single greatest cause for these deaths is a vast industry that works relentlessly to sell products that are essentially poison,” Jorge Alday, director of STOP at Vital Strategies, said at the recent launch of a new tobacco interference report, “Hooking the next generation.” Speaking in advance of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, Alday asserted that the tobacco industry’s products kill at least half of the people who use them, therefore, he said, “It has an endless need to replace its customers.” “From the perspective of a tobacco company, an addictive customer means a lifetime of profits. So, the younger someone gets hooked the more money they can make at the expense of that person’s health,” he said. The report shows that globally, an estimated 37 million children ages 13 to 15 use tobacco, and in many countries, the rate of e-cigarette use among adolescents exceeds that of adults. While significant progress has been made in reducing tobacco use, the report says the emergence of e-cigarettes and other new tobacco and nicotine products presents “a grave threat to youth and tobacco control.” “Studies demonstrate that e-cigarette use increases conventional cigarette use, particularly among non-smoking youth, by nearly three times,” it says. Ruediger Krech, director of health promotion at WHO, told journalists attending the global launch of the report last week that the industry is “exploiting digital and social media, delivery apps, and other innovative ways to reach our children. At the same time, they are continuing with old tricks such as giving away free samples to recruit a new generation as customers.” He said the use of child-friendly flavored e-cigarettes combined with sleek and colorful designs that resemble toys “is a blatant attempt” by tobacco and related industries “to addict young people to these harmful products.” “Currently, we have about 16,000 flavors that are very appealing to children and young people—fruity flavors, candy, bubble gum and vanilla ice-cream,” he said, noting that most adult tobacco users start their deadly habit when they are young. “Most of them have started before the age of 21. Then they stay tobacco or nicotine users for the rest of their lives,” he said. “That is alarming when we are now seeing that with these novel products, so many children and young people are taking up this nicotine use. “So, there is an urgency to act now to regulate those products, ban them if possible. But to be very, very serious about this,” he added. One of many youth advocates around the world taking a stand against “the destructive influence and manipulative marketing practices” of the tobacco and nicotine industry is Given Kapolyo of Zambia. She is the Global Young Ambassador of the Year with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, CTFK. “I totally agree with the sentiments shared already today that the industry continues to hook young people,” she said, speaking from the Zambian capital, Lusaka. “It is extremely sad here in Africa because they continue to target low-income communities because they know that these young people do not have access to information on just how deadly these products are. ... They tell young people that vaping is cooler, that electronic cigarettes are cooler, and they continue to hook young people as early as 10 years and 13 years old. “Their only interest is profits, and they want to hook young people while they are young, so they can have lifelong customers, which means more profits for them, without caring how many lives we are losing due to non-communicable diseases caused by tobacco abuse,” she said. The World Health Organization is urging governments to protect young people from taking up tobacco, e-cigarettes and other nicotine products by banning or tightly regulating them. Its recommendations include the creation of smoke-free indoor public places, bans on flavored e-cigarettes, as well as bans on marketing, advertising, and promotions, and the enactment of higher taxes. Authors of the reports say these measures work. They cite an example from the United States where research found that “more than 70 percent of youth e-cigarette users would quit if the products were only available in tobacco flavor.”

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Berlin — President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Germany Sunday for the first state visit by a French head of state in 24 years, a three-day trip meant to underline the strong ties between the European Union's traditional leading powers.  The visit was originally meant to take place last July but was postponed at the last minute due to rioting in France following the killing of a 17-year-old by police.  While Macron is a frequent visitor to Germany as Paris and Berlin try to coordinate their positions on EU and foreign policy, this is the first state visit with full pomp since Jacques Chirac came in 2000. Macron and his wife, Brigitte, are being hosted by Germany's largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The visit comes as Germany celebrates the 75th anniversary of its post-World War II constitution.  Steinmeier is holding a state banquet for Macron at his Bellevue palace in Berlin on Sunday evening before the two presidents travel on Monday to the eastern city of Dresden, where Macron will make a speech, and on Tuesday to Muenster in western Germany. The state visit will be followed later Tuesday by a meeting between Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and ministers from both countries at a government guest house outside Berlin.  Germany and France, which have the EU's biggest economies, have long been viewed as the motor of European integration though there have often been differences in policy and emphasis between the two neighbors on a range of matters.  That was evident earlier this year in different positions on whether Western countries should rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine. Both nations are strong backers of Kyiv.

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OKLAHOMA CITY — Powerful storms across Texas and Oklahoma obliterated homes and struck a highway travel center where drivers had rushed to take shelter, leaving thousands of people without power and a wide trail of damage Sunday. A sheriff said at least five people were dead in one rural community in Texas and many more were injured.  The destructive storms began Saturday night and included a tornado that overturned heavy recreational vehicles and shut down an interstate near Dallas. Officials said multiple people were transported to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in the Texas county of Denton but did not immediately know the full extent of injuries.  In neighboring Cooke County, Sheriff Ray Sappington told The Associated Press that the five dead included three family members who were found in one home near Valley View, a rural community near the border with Oklahoma.  "We do have five confirmed [dead], but sadly, we think that that number is probably going to go up," Sappington said. "There's nothing left of this house. It's just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe."  Forecasters had issued tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings for parts of both states, as some heat records were broken during the day in South Texas and residents received triple-digit temperature warnings over the long holiday weekend.  A tornado crossed into northern Denton County in Texas late Saturday and overturned tractor-trailer trucks, stopping traffic on Interstate 35, Denton County Community Relations Director Dawn Cobb said in a statement.  The tornado was confirmed near Valley View, moving east at 64 kph, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning for northern Denton County, Cobb said.  The storm damaged homes, overturned motorhomes and knocked down power lines and trees throughout the area including points in Sanger, Pilot Point, Ray Roberts Lake and Isle du Bois State Park, Cobb said.  People who suffered injuries in the storm were transported to area hospitals by ground and air ambulances, but the number of injuries in the county was not immediately known, Cobb said, while a shelter was opened in Sanger.  The fire department in the city of Denton, about 59.5 kilometers north of Forth Worth, Texas, posted on X that emergency personnel were responding to a marina "for multiple victims, some reported trapped."  The Claremore, Oklahoma, police announced on social media that the city about 28 miles (45 kilometers) east of Tulsa was "shut down" as a result of storm damage including downed power lines and trees and inaccessible roads.  Earlier Saturday night, the National Weather Service's office in Norman, Oklahoma, said via the social platform X that the warning was for northern Noble and far southern Kay counties, an area located to the north of Oklahoma City. "If you are in the path of this storm take cover now!" it said.  A following post at 10:05 p.m. said storms had exited the area but warned of a storm moving across north Texas that could affect portions of south central Oklahoma.  At 10:24 p.m., the weather service office in Fort Worth posted a message warning residents in Era and Valley View they were in the direct path of a possible tornado and to immediately seek shelter. The Forth Worth office continued to post notices and shelter warnings tracking the movement of the storm through midnight and separately issued a severe thunderstorm warning with "golf ball sized hail" possible.  The weather service office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, warned on X of a dangerous storm moving across the northeast part of the state through 2 a.m. and issued severe thunderstorm notices for communities including Hugo, Boswell, Fort Towson, Grainola, Foraker and Herd.  Excessive heat, especially for May, was the danger in South Texas, where the heat index was forecast to approach 49 degrees Celsius in some spots during the weekend. Actual temperatures will be lower, although still in triple-digit territory, but the humidity will make it feel that much hotter.  The region is on the north end of a heat dome stretching from Mexico to South America, National Weather Service meteorologist Zack Taylor said.  Sunday looks like the hottest day with record highs for late May forecast for Austin, Brownsville, Dallas and San Antonio, Taylor said.  Brownsville and Harlingen near the Texas-Mexico border already set new records Saturday for the May 25 calendar date — 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) and 38 degrees Celsius, respectively — according to the weather service.  April and May have been a busy month for tornadoes, especially in the Midwest. Climate change is heightening the severity of storms around the world.  April saw the United States' second-highest number of tornadoes on record. So far for 2024, the country is already 25% ahead of the average number of twisters, according to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman.  Iowa was hit hard last week, when a deadly twister devastated Greenfield. And other storms brought flooding and wind damage elsewhere in the state.  The storm system causing the severe weather was expected to move east as the Memorial Day weekend continues, bringing rain that could delay the Indianapolis 500 auto race Sunday in Indiana and more severe storms in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Kentucky.  The risk of severe weather moves into North Carolina and Virginia on Monday, forecasters said. 

MADISON, Wis. — Schuylar Jones, a globe-trotting American adventurer whose exploits drew comparisons to iconic movie character Indiana Jones, has died. He was 94. Jones' stepdaughter, Cassandra Da'Luz Vieira-Manion, posted on her Facebook page that Jones died on May 17. She said she had been taking care of him for the last six years and "truly thought he might live forever." "He was a fascinating man who lived a lot of life around the world," she wrote. Da'Luz Vieira-Manion didn't immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press on Saturday. Jones grew up around Wichita, Kansas. His younger sister, Sharon Jones Laverentz, told the Wichita Eagle that her brother had visited every U.S. state before he was in first grade thanks to their father's job supplying Army bases with boots. He wrote in an autobiography posted on Edinburgh University's website that he moved to Paris after World War II, where he worked as a photographer. He also spent four years in Africa as a freelance photographer. In his 1956 book "Under the African Sun," he tells of surviving a helicopter crash in a marketplace in In Salah, Algeria, the Wichita Eagle reported. After the helicopter crashed he discovered he was on fire; gale-force winds had reignited the ashes in his pipe. "Camels bawled and ran, scattering loads of firewood in all directions," Jones wrote. "Children, Arabs and veiled women either fled or fell full length in the dust. Goats and donkeys went wild as the whirling, roaring monster landed in their mist ... weak with relief, the pilot and I sat in the wreckage of In Salah's market place and roared with laughter." He later moved to Greece, where he supported himself by translating books from German and French to English. He decided to drive through India and Nepal in 1958. He said he fell in love with Afghanistan during the trip and later enrolled at Edinburgh to study anthropology. "He was more interested in the people and cultures he was finding than he was in photography and selling those," his son, archeologist Peter Jones, told the Wichita Eagle. After graduating he returned to Afghanistan and began study natives living in the country's remote eastern valleys. He parlayed that research into a doctorate at Oxford University and went on to become a curator and later director at that university's Pitt Rivers Museum. Upon retirement, he was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire award, one step below knighthood. Similarities between Jones and George Lucas' Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. character are striking. Aside from the name and the family business — Indy's father, Henry Sr., was an archaeologist, just like Schuyler Jones' son, Peter, are archeologists — they were both adept at foreign languages and wore brown fedoras. And like Indy, Schuylar Jones believed artifacts belonged in museums, Da'Luz Vieiria-Manion told the Wichita Eagle. Eric Cale, executive director of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, told the newspaper that Jones permanently donated his grandfather's artifacts to the museum. Jones wrote in his 2007 book "A Stranger Abroad" that he wanted to find the Ark of Covenant and donate it to a museum, which is exactly what Indy accomplished in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" — at least until the U.S. government seized the relic and hid it away again at the end of the movie. Pat O'Connor, a publisher who worked with Jones, told the newspaper that Jones had a "low tolerance" for slow-witted and pretentious people. "I've never met a man so talented and capable and at the same time approachable," O'Connor said. "But if you transgressed . . . by trying to present yourself as somewhat above your station intellectually, then that is the end." Jones wrote in "A Stranger Abroad" that he first heard of Indy in the 1980s when a museum director in Madras asked him if he was the real-life version. He wrote that he had no idea what she was talking about, but later thought the comparison was driving more students to attend his lectures at Oxford. Jones was married twice, first to Lis Margot Sondergaard Rasmussen, and then to Da'Luz Vieria-Manion's mother, Lorraine, who died in 2011. He later began a relationship with actress Karla Burns, who died in 2021, the Wichita Eagle reported. He is survived by his son, three daughters, a sister, six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild, the newspaper reported.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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SEOUL/TOKYO — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Chinese Premier Li Qiang agreed on Sunday to launch a diplomatic and security dialogue and resume talks on a free trade agreement, Yoon's office said. Yoon and Li held talks a day ahead of a summit with their Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, their first three-way talks in more than four years. Yoon told Li the two countries should work together not only to promote shared interests based on mutual respect, but also on regional and global issues to tackle common challenges, citing the Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas conflict and global economic uncertainties. "Just as Korea and China have overcome various difficulties together over the past 30 years and contributed to each other's development and growth, I hope to continue to strengthen bilateral cooperation even in the face of today's global complex crises," Yoon said at the start of the meeting, according to his office. Li told Yoon their countries should oppose turning economic and trade issues into political or security issues and should work to maintain stable supply chains, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. In recent years Chinese leaders and diplomats have frequently condemned the U.S. and its allies over export controls targeting its semiconductor industry by calling on these countries to stop "overstretching the concept of national security." Since 2021 Chinese companies and state entities have been increasingly cut off from ready access to the world's most advanced chips, many of them produced by South Korean tech giants like Samsung and SK Hynix. Li expressed hopes for continuing efforts to "build consensus and resolve differences" through "equal dialogue and sincere communications." At a separate meeting with Kishida, Yoon lauded progress on diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges with Japan, and they agreed to foster deeper ties next year when the two countries celebrate the 60th anniversary of normalizing relations, Yoon's office said. Practical cooperation The three neighbors had agreed to hold a summit every year starting in 2008 to boost regional cooperation, but bilateral feuds and the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the initiative. Their last trilateral summit was in late 2019. Yoon, Li and Kishida will adopt a joint statement on six areas including the economy and trade, science and technology, people-to-people exchanges and health and the aging population, Seoul officials said. Kishida also plans to meet Li separately on Sunday, NHK reported, citing the Japanese government, and, according to the broadcast, is expected to raise a Chinese ban of Japanese seafood imports and Taiwan, among other topics. Speaking with reporters before departing for Seoul, Kishida said he would seek "open and frank" discussions and hoped to foster future-oriented practical cooperation by revitalizing the trilateral process. At the talks with Li, Kishida said he would like to "firmly confirm the direction of the mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests and constructive and stable Japan-China relations". The summit comes as South Korea and Japan have been working to mend ties frayed by historical disputes while deepening a trilateral security partnership with the United States amid intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry. China has previously warned that U.S. efforts to further elevate relations with South Korea and Japan could fan regional tension and confrontation. Seoul and Tokyo have warned against any attempts to forcibly change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, while Beijing on Tuesday criticized a decision by South Korean and Japanese lawmakers to attend Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te's inauguration. The summit might not bring a major breakthrough on sensitive issues but could make progress in areas of practical cooperation like people-to-people exchanges and consular matters, officials and diplomats said.  

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Aid trucks entered Gaza from southern Israel on Sunday through a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But was unclear if humanitarian groups would be able to access the aid because of ongoing fighting in the area. Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza's main cargo terminal, after a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. But that crossing has been largely inaccessible because of fighting linked to Israel's offensive in the nearby city of Rafah. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid on the other side. The war between Israel and Hamas, now in its eighth month, has killed over 35,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80% of the population's 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine. Hamas triggered the war with its October 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year. Egypt's state-run Al-Qahera TV aired footage of what it said were trucks entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the Sinai Peninsula, which handles the delivery of aid from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, told The Associated Press that 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks are scheduled to be sent to Kerem Shalom on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if the U.N. was able to retrieve the aid from the Gaza side. Southern Gaza has been largely cut off from aid since Israel launched what it says is a limited incursion into Rafah on May 6. Since then, more than 1 million Palestinians have fled the city, with most having already been displaced from other parts of the besieged territory. Northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the U.N.'s World Food Program says famine is already underway, is still receiving aid through two land routes that Israel opened in the face of worldwide outrage after Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in April. A few dozen trucks have also been entering Gaza daily through a U.S.-built floating pier, but its capacity remains far below the 150 trucks a day that officials had hoped for. Aid groups say the territory needs a total of 600 trucks a day to meet colossal humanitarian needs. Stormy weather sent a strip of docking and a small U.S. military vessel ashore near the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on Saturday. The U.S. Central Command said four of its vessels were affected by rough seas with two of them anchoring near the pier off the Gaza coast and another two in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas' last remaining battalions and achieve its goal of "total victory" over the militants, who have recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military had already operated. Netanyahu faces growing pressure from the Israeli public to make a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, something Hamas has refused to do without guarantees for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have ruled that out. Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday after thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government and demand the return of the hostages. The protesters called for Netanyahu's resignation and demanded new elections. International pressure is also growing, as the war leaves Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage. Last week, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders. On Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah. The top United Nations court also said Israel must give war crimes investigators access to Gaza. Israel is unlikely to comply with the orders and has sharply condemned the ICC's move toward arrest warrants for its leaders. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.

KHARKIV, Ukraine — A Russian strike on a crowded DIY hardware store in Kharkiv killed 12 people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian prosecutors said on Sunday morning, the death toll rising as the country's second-largest city reeled from two attacks a day earlier. Two guided bombs hit the Epicentr DIY hypermarket in a residential area of the city on Saturday afternoon, Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on national television. The strikes caused a massive fire which sent a column of thick, black smoke billowing hundreds of meters into the air. Forty-three people were injured, the local prosecutors' office said, adding that 10 of the 12 dead had still not been identified. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said about 120 people had been in the hardware store when the bombs struck. "The attack targeted the shopping center, where there were many people - this is clearly terrorism," Terekhov said. In a post on the Telegram app, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Ihor Klymenko, said 16 people were still missing after the strike. The past week has seen an uptick in strikes on the city after Russian troops stormed across the border, opening a new front north of the city. Russia has bombarded Kharkiv, which lies less than 30 kilometers from its border, throughout the war, having reached its outskirts in a failed bid to capture it in 2022. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a plea to Ukraine's Western allies to help boost air defenses to keep the country's cities safe. French President Emmanuel Macron, writing on social media platform X, denounced the attack on the store as "unacceptable." A separate early evening missile strike hit a residential building in the center of the city of 1.3 million. The number of people wounded by that strike had climbed to 25 by Sunday morning. The missile left a crater several meters deep in the pavement at the foot of the building, which also housed a post office, a beauty salon and a cafe. Emergency workers ushered away residents of nearby apartment buildings. Some of the injured had blood on their faces. Just over the border, in Russia's Belgorod region, the regional governor said four residents died in Ukrainian attacks on Saturday. Firefighters battle blaze Andriy Kudinov, director of the suburban shopping center, told local media the hardware store was full of shoppers buying items for their summer cottages. It took 16 hours to fully extinguish the fire at the center, which had raged over an area of 13,000 square meters, Interior Minister Klymenko said. Rescuers, medics and journalists occasionally had to rush away from the scene of both strikes on the city and take cover on the ground, fearing another strike, as has occurred during several recent Russian attacks. Dmytro Syrotenko, a 26-year-old employee of the DIY center, described panicked  scenes. "I was at my workplace. I heard the first hit and ... with my colleague, we fell to the ground. There was the second hit and we were covered with debris. Then we started to crawl to the higher ground," said Syrotenko, who had a large gash on his face. Syrotenko told Reuters he was taken to safety by a rescue worker who helped him, several colleagues, and shoppers. Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, denounced the strike as "yet another example of Russian madness. There is no other way to describe it." "When we tell world leaders that Ukraine needs sufficient air defenses, when we say we need real decisive measures to enable us to protect our people, so that Russian terrorists cannot even approach our border, we are talking about not allowing strikes like this to happen," he said. Writing later on Telegram, Zelenskyy noted air raid alerts had been in effect in Kharkiv for more than 12 hours and 200 emergency workers and 400 policemen remained at the scene dealing with the aftermath of the attacks. Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, but thousands have been killed and injured during its 27-month invasion of Ukraine.

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Patuakhali, Bangladesh — Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis left their coastal villages Sunday for concrete storm shelters further inland as the low-lying nation prepared for the expected landfall of an intense cyclone, officials said. Cyclone Remal is set to hit the country and parts of neighboring India on Sunday evening, with Bangladesh's weather department predicting crashing waves and howling gales with gusts of up to 130 kph. Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades, but the number of superstorms hitting its low-lying, densely populated coast have increased sharply of late -- from one a year to as many as three -- due to the impact of climate change. "The cyclone could unleash a storm surge of up to 12 feet [4 meters] above normal astronomical tide, which can be dangerous," senior weather official Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik told AFP. Authorities have raised the danger signal to its highest level, warning fishermen against going to the sea and triggering an evacuation order for those in vulnerable areas. "Our plan is to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from unsafe and vulnerable homes to the cyclone shelters," the government's disaster management secretary Kamrul Hasan told AFP. The authorities have mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers to alert people to the danger. He said some 4,000 cyclone shelters have been readied along the country's lengthy coast on the Bay of Bengal. The state-run Bangladesh Meteorological Department said Cyclone Remal would make landfall Sunday between 6 p.m. and midnight (1200-1800 GMT). In addition to the villagers and fishermen, many of the multistory centers have space to shelter their cattle, buffaloes and goats, as well as their pets. "Some 78,000 volunteers have been mobilized to alert coastal people and evacuate the vulnerable people," Hasan said. Helal Mahmud Sharif, the chief government administrator of Khulna province, told AFP some 20,000 people had been evacuated to shelters in the most vulnerable coastal regions. Another 15,000 people and about 400 domesticated animals have been evacuated in the coastal Patuakhali and Bhola districts. On the low-lying Bhashan Char island, which is home to 36,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, 57 cyclone centers have been readied, deputy refugee commissioner Mohammad Rafiqul Haque told AFP. The country's three seaports and the airport in the second-largest city Chittagong were closed, officials said. 

MELBOURNE, Australia — The International Organization for Migration on Sunday increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea to more than 670. Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the U.N. migration agency's mission in the South Pacific island nation, said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday's landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes. "They are estimating that more than 670 people [are] under the soil at the moment," Aktoprak told The Associated Press. Local officials had initially put the death toll on Friday at 100 or more. Only five bodies and a leg of a sixth victim had been recovered by Sunday. Emergency responders in Papua New Guinea were moving survivors to safer ground on Sunday as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the country's Highlands, threatened the rescue effort. Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble 6-8 meters deep, Aktoprak said. "People are coming to terms with this so there is a serious level of grieving and mourning," he said. Government authorities were establishing evacuation centers on safer ground on either side of the massive swath of debris that covers an area the size of three to four football fields and has cut the main highway through the province. "Working across the debris is very dangerous and the land is still sliding," Aktoprak said. Beside the blocked highway, convoys that have transported food, water and other essential supplies since Saturday to the devastated village 60 kilometers from the provincial capital, Wabag, have faced risks related to tribal fighting in Tambitanis village, about halfway along the route. Papua New Guinea soldiers were providing security for the convoys. Eight locals were killed in a clash between two rival clans on Saturday in a longstanding dispute unrelated to the landslide. Around 30 homes and five retail businesses were burned down in the fighting, local officials said. Aktoprak said he did not expect tribal combatants would target the convoys but noted that opportunistic criminals might take advantage of the mayhem to do so. "This could basically end up in carjacking or robbery," Aktoprak said. "There is not only concern for the safety and security of the personnel, but also the goods because they may use this chaos as a means to steal." Longtime tribal warfare has cast doubt on the official estimate that almost 4,000 people were living in the village when a side of Mount Mungalo fell away. Justine McMahon, country director of the humanitarian agency CARE International, said moving survivors to "more stable ground" was an immediate priority along with providing them with food, water and shelter. The military was leading those efforts. The numbers of injured and missing were still being assessed on Sunday. Seven people including a child had received medical treatment by Saturday, but officials had no details on their conditions. Medical facilities were buried along with houses, several small businesses, a guest house, school and gas station, officials said. McMahon said there were other health facilities in the region, the provincial government was sending health workers and the World Health Organization was mobilizing staff. "There will be some support, but it's such a spread-out area that I think it will be quite a challenging situation," McMahon said. "The scale of this disaster is quite immense." While Papua New Guinea is in the tropics, the village is 2,000 meters above sea level where temperatures are substantially cooler. Papua New Guinea Defense Minister Billy Joseph and the government's National Disaster Center director Laso Mana were flying from Port Moresby by helicopter to Wabag on Sunday to gain a firsthand perspective of what is needed. Aktoprak expected the government would decide by Tuesday whether it would officially request more international help. The United States and Australia, a near neighbor and Papua New Guinea's most generous provider of foreign aid, are among governments that have publicly stated their readiness to do more to help responders. Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing nation with 800 languages and 10 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers. Marape has said disaster officials, the Defence Force and the Department of Works and Highways were assisting with relief and recovery efforts. Social media footage posted by villager Ninga Role showed people clambering over rocks, uprooted trees and mounds of dirt searching for survivors. Women could be heard weeping in the background.