Currently News Report

There are no shells exploding in Moscow. There are no foreign forces encircling the city. What Muscovites are experiencing now is nothing compared to the horrors in Ukraine. At first glance life here even looks normal. As usual, Moscow's Garden Ring is packed with traffic. Crowds are streaming from the metro station opposite me. In reality, though, little here could be described as normal. Normality ended on 24 February when Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine for his "Special Military Operation". I have experienced Communist Russia. I have lived through post-Soviet Russia. Now the world's largest country has metamorphosed again. Let me take you on a tour of "Special Military Operation Russia". I get in the car to drive to the supermarket. By force of habit, I switch on the radio. It's tuned to 91.2 FM - once the home of Radio Echo of Moscow. Echo was my favourite Russian radio station - a reliable source of news and information. But in recent...

A small plane has crashed on to a major road in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, killing at least six people. The aircraft was on its way from the capital to the south-eastern port town of Jacmel when it came down in the suburb of Carrefour. It injured several people on the ground. The pilot was one of those who initially survived but died of his injuries in hospital later. Officials said engine failure was to blame. The aircraft had sent a distress signal some 20 minutes after take-off, the country's civil aviation authority said. Prime Minister Ariel Henry expressed sympathy with "the families of the victims, who have been just plunged into the greatest desolation by this new tragedy". The impoverished country has been hit by a number of natural disasters in recent years which have caused extensive damage to the infrastructure and economy. Gang violence has also worsened in the wake of the political crisis following the assassination President Jovenel Moïse in July ...

The deadline of a Russian ultimatum demanding the surrender of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol has passed with no sign that the troops have complied. The final Ukrainian holdouts, reportedly accompanied by 1,000 civilians, have taken shelter in the city's massive Azovstal steel plant. Moscow's ultimatum comes as the local Ukrainian commander warned his troops can hold out for just "days or hours". But Kyiv says there is a tentative deal to rescue some civilians from the city. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, wrote on Facebook that women, children and the elderly would be allowed to leave Mariupol under the deal. The city's mayor, Vadym Boichenko, told national TV that Ukraine hopes to send 90 buses to evacuate about 6,000 people on Wednesday. He said around 100,000 people remain trapped in Mariupol. The Azovstal Iron and Steel Works - a massive, four sq-mile (10 sq km) plant in the south-east of the city - has become the last center of the Ukrai...

A suspected twin suicide bombing outside a boys' school in the Afghan capital Kabul has killed at least six people and wounded 11, officials say. The blasts happened at the Abdul Rahim Shahid high school in the Shia-dominated west of the city. The number of dead and wounded is likely to rise. A nearby tuition centre was also targeted in a grenade attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Islamic State militants have attacked the area in the past. Earlier, sources from Muhammad Ali Jinnah Hospital in Kabul told the BBC they had received four dead bodies and 19 injured people so far from the school attack. Students were leaving morning classes when the blasts happened, one witness told the AFP news agency. Photographs from the aftermath of the explosions show bloodstains on the ground alongside discarded notebooks. The area in which the attacks took place - Dasht-e-Barchi - has frequently been the target of attacks by the local branch of the Islamic State group because ...

China has reported the deaths of three people from Covid in Shanghai for the first time since the financial hub entered lockdown in late March. A release from the city health commission said the victims were aged between 89 and 91 and unvaccinated. Shanghai officials said only 38% of residents over 60 are fully vaccinated. The city is now due to enter another round of mass testing, which means a strict lockdown will continue into a fourth week for most residents. Until now, China had maintained that no-one died of Covid in the city - a claim that has increasingly come into question. Monday's deaths were also the first Covid-linked fatalities to be officially acknowledged by authorities in the entire country since March 2020. Firstly because, up to this point, it was a miraculous stretch of credulity to think that no-one in a city of almost 25 million people had succumbed to this wave of the virus. But second, and more importantly, we know that people HAVE already died after contrac...

Dozens of elderly patients at a hospital in Shanghai have died after contracting Covid-19, but official government figures claim no deaths in the city have been caused by the disease since 2020. The BBC has spoken to a hospital manager and had access to correspondence sent to relatives of patients who've died during the Omicron outbreak that is sweeping through China's biggest city. We've also had access to official documents that suggest at least 27 patients from a single hospital, who weren't vaccinated, have died from what it called "underlying health problems". Shanghai is enforcing a mammoth lockdown as authorities try to contain a new wave of the virus. Most of the city's almost 25 million population have been ordered to stay inside for three weeks. The BBC has previously reported evidence that authorities in Shanghai are struggling to deal with the outbreak. We spoke to a nurse and a health worker at Donghai Elderly Care Hospital who, between them, ...

Russia has banned Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other senior ministers from entering Russia over the UK's "hostile" stance on the war in Ukraine. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and 10 other senior politicians - mostly members of the Cabinet - have also been barred. Moscow said the decision had been made in retaliation to the UK's sanctions against it since it invaded Ukraine. In March, Moscow imposed a similar ban against US President Joe Biden. The full list is: Prime Minister Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary Liz Truss Defence Secretary Ben Wallace Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice Dominic Raab Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps Home Secretary Priti Patel The Chancellor Rishi Sunak Minister of Entrepreneurship, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng Minister of Digitalization, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries Minister for the Armed Forces James Heappey First Minister of Sc...