The Ukrainian government has responded angrily and vowed never to surrender after Pope Francis said the country should have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia.

“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on social media on Sunday.

Politicians and commentators in Europe expressed outrage after the pontiff gave an interview in which he appeared to stay silent on Russia’s crimes as aggressor in the invasion and placed the onus on Ukraine to make peace.

An Agent for Russia?The Double Life of Former Wirecard Executive Jan Marsalek

It’s the middle of summer in Nice, and the Mediterranean is lapping gently against the walls of the quay. A man with shortly trimmed dark hair in a black suit and a radiant white shirt is striding briskly toward a cutter. A second man is carrying his case. An attractive woman – tall and blond, her summer dress fluttering in the wind – is pacing on the aft deck of the Poseidon III, laughing nervously. Her name is Natalya Zlobina, and she is the Russian lover of Jan Marsalek, one of the most-wanted men in Europe.

The scene, recorded by a camera at the Port of Nice, becomes a bit blurry. The man in the black suit climbs down a ladder to the Poseidon III and greets the woman with a kiss. She laughs; he seems annoyed. Now, it’s possible to recognize his face, well-known these days from the wanted posters plastered on the walls of train stations and airports: It is Jan Marsalek himself, the former COO of Wirecard, which was once listed on Germany’s blue-chip stock index, the DAX. He has been on the run since June 2020.

Haiti’s capital ‘under siege’ as armed gangs attack key infrastructure

Residents of Haiti’s capital scrambled for safety on Saturday following the latest spasm of gang violence, with a UN group warning of a “city under siege” after armed attackers targeted the presidential palace and police headquarters.

Criminal groups, which already control much of Port-au-Prince as well as roads leading to the rest of the country, have unleashed havoc in recent days as they try to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry as leader of the Western hemisphere’s poorest country.

On Saturday, dozens of residents were seeking safety in public buildings, with some successfully breaking into one facility, according to an AFP correspondent.

The unrest has seen 362,000 Haitians internally displaced — more than half of them children and some forced to move multiple times, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Saturday.

Germany’s RAF terrorism — an unresolved story

Left-wing terrorism once shook the Federal Republic of Germany. The Red Army Faction emerged from the radicalized student protest movement in the 1960s and ’70s.

Even today, talk of the Red Army Faction (RAF) often provokes a heated debate in Germany. The crimes of the RAF, said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) at the end of February, are “today still unmatched as examples of the dangers of left-wing extremism and left-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany.”

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the terrorist organization announced its dissolution. Nonetheless, there are those who are still grieving, victims who are still injured, RAF members who are still on the run — and many unanswered questions. At the end of February 2024, after many years without success, special police units began once again publicly tracking down the last prominent suspects involved in RAF terrorism.

13-year-old has eureka moment with science project that suggests Archimedes’ invention was plausible

Often called the father of mathematics, Archimedes was one of the most famous inventors in ancient Greece, with some of his ideas and principles still in use today.

But one fabled device has left scientists speculating on its existence for hundreds of years — the death ray. Now, a middle schooler may have some answers.

Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and a London Public Library award for his minuscule version of the contraption — a supposed war weapon made up of a large array of mirrors designed to focus and aim sunlight on a target, such as a ship, and cause combustion — according to a paper published in the January issue of the Canadian Science Fair Journal.