Mountain View (United States) (AFP) – After five years of construction, Google opened its new Bay View Campus to workers this week. Scaled with solar panels, the building stands at 1.1 million square feet, next to corporate housing and the Googleplex. The company is currently embracing a hybrid model between work-from-home and in the office but expects its new campus to quickly fill by a growing workforce.
Bangkok (AFP) – Thai prisoners clean Bangkok’s congested drains for the first time in two years. Pre-pandemic convicts volunteer to clear the sewers of Thailand’s capital, earning time off their sentences. But fears of spreading the virus meant the grubby work has been done by city authorities and workers, until now.
Manila (AFP) – Philippines’ Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa said Wednesday it was “business as usual” for Rappler, despite an order for the news site she co-founded to shut down. “We continue to work, it is business as usual,” Ressa told reporters.
Kremenchuk (Ukraine) (AFP) – “It’s terrible beyond words. How many people were there. Rush hour, people were returning from work,” says a Kremenchuk resident. Dozens were injured and many are still missing after the strike set off a blaze inside a shopping centre in Kremenchuk on Monday. The Russian army claimed Tuesday it had hit a nearby weapons depot with the explosion sparking the blaze at the shopping centre, which according to Moscow was “not operational” at the time.
Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – “The Russian missile hit this very object, purposefully. Obviously, that was the order. It is obvious that Russian assassins received such coordinates for this missile. They wanted to kill as many people as possible in a peaceful city, in a regular shopping mall,” says Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. He adds that the total number of Russian missiles that have hit Ukrainian cities is 2,811.
Elmau Castle (Germany) (AFP) – France’s President Emmanuel Macron says he will not use the description of a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Russia, when asked about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for Russia to be branded as such. “We don’t need any qualification whatsoever to carry these sanctions” against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, he says.
Kremenchuk (Ukraine) (AFP) – Images published by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine show rescue workers clearing rubble at the Amstor shopping centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, after a Russian missile strike left 16 people killed and 59 wounded, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
Amman (AFP) – CCTV images released on Jordanian state TV al-Mamlaka show the moment a large cylinder plunged from a crane on a moored vessel in Jordan’s Aqaba port, causing a violent explosion of yellow gas which killed 10 people and injured more than 200.
Sloviansk (Ukraine) (AFP) – While some farms near the frontline in eastern Ukraine have been abandoned due to the fighting, shepherds Valentyna Gakova and her husband are still looking after their goats in Sloviansk.
Elmau Castle (Germany) (AFP) – The G7 stands “closely and steadfastly with Ukraine” after the strike on a shopping centre in the centre of the country, says Olaf Scholz at the final press conference of the G7 summit. of Olaf Scholz
Buenos Aires (AFP) – Dozens of women march to the United States embassy in Buenos Aires to protest the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the right to abortion.
Hong Kong (AFP) – Ahead of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China, AFPTV speaks to the city’s former chief executive Leung Chun-ying. Leung, whose administration faced down the Umbrella Movement, says the crackdown over the last three years was “not an overkill”. Echoing Beijing, Leung describes the implementation of One Country, Two Systems as a success, and says that the arrangement might continue beyond its 50-year term — calling July 1, 2047 “a non-event”. DURATION: 01:22
