Author: www.newsworldbird.com

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has meant a return to the economic weapon he loves best: Tariffs. In his latest salvo against China, the president has raised levies on nearly all Chinese imports, in some cases up to a punishing 245%, excluding only a few politically-sensitive categories like smartphones and pharmaceuticals.
Trump’s message has been blunt: “We’re going to have a deal with China. And if we don’t, we’re going to have a deal anyway, because we will set a certain target, and that’s going to be it.”
China has responded with its own tariffs of up to 125% on American goods.. “China does not want to fight, but it is not afraid to fight,” warned Lin Jian, a foreign ministry spokesperson. The country’s deputy consul in New York, Ma Xiaoxiao, accused the US of “unreasonable demands” and insisted China “will fight to the end… for world order and justice.”
The big picture

China’s GDP Growth To Be Hit

Zoom in: The India pivot

As American ports grow hostile and European partners cautious, China is discovering that its once-unshakable export machine now needs new markets. Enter India, a country with which China has shared more tensions than trade affection in last few years
The 2020 border clash in Ladakh left bilateral relations bruised and bloody. India responded with Press Note 3, a regulation that subjects any investment from countries sharing a land border to government scrutiny-read: China. Since then, Chinese tech and electronics firms have found it nearly impossible to expand in India, with many projects stalled or blocked.
Also Read | India in a good spot, China in big trouble: Mark Mobius warns market likely to get even shakier on Trump’s tariff moves
And yet, something curious is happening. Chinese companies, once adamant about holding controlling stakes in joint ventures, are now bending over backwards to comply with Indian terms.
Two of China’s top industrial players are leading the shift, a report in the Economic Times said. Haier, ranked third in India’s electronics market, is in talks to sell a 51-55% stake in its Indian operations. A year ago, it was only willing to part with 26%.

India Is Less Exposed To Trade War

Shanghai Highly, a major compressor manufacturer, has revived its joint venture with Tata-owned Voltas, now willing to settle for a minority stake – a far cry from its earlier 60% demand, rejected under India’s Press Note 3 rules.
Haier is also exploring private equity deals, while Highly has struck a technology-only partnership with PG Electroplast, allowing production without equity involvement.
“There is a complete change in attitude,” Rajesh Agarwal of Bhagwati Products told the ET. “Chinese companies don’t want to lose business since India is a big market, and there is scope for exports under the tariff regime. The icing on the cake is the PLI scheme.”
China’s climbdown is happening on India’s terms. But the rules have evolved – not softened.
As per the ET report, India is now clearing joint ventures if:

“This is forced flexibility,” said one Indian electronics executive. “They want access to India’s booming middle class – and more crucially, a backdoor into US markets through Indian manufacturing.”
What they’re saying
Chinese ambassador Xu Feihong, in an interview with The Times of India, acknowledged that “China and India are partners rather than rivals,” echoing the diplomatic tone struck by President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi during a meeting in Kazan last year.
“China has never imposed mandatory restrictions on the export of relevant equipment or the travel of personnel to India,” Xu said. Xu called for mutual respect and fair treatment, noting, “We hope India will take China’s concerns in the economic and trade field seriously, provide a fair, transparent, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises.”
Xu’s olive branch comes amid a broader Chinese charm offensive across Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visits to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia have aimed to shore up political ties-and find new markets—as the US blockade tightens. Even the European Union is planning a summit in Beijing this July, though with more skepticism than optimism.
What’s next

Also Read | Elon Musk’s Tesla eyes India to diversify its global supply chain; in talks with CG Semi, Micron
At the same time, the Indian government is preparing for high-level trade talks with Washington, hoping to carve out a bigger role for Indian exporters as US firms shift away from China. India is moving quickly to capitalize on the moment:

Elephant Trumps Dragon- for now
India’s exports to the US rose 11.6% last year to $86.5 billion, even as smartphone imports from China plunged 70%. At the same time, India’s trade deficit with China widened to nearly $100 billion—driven by its dependence on Chinese electronic components.

iPhones Key Driver of Export Growth to US

This interdependence is shaping a delicate detente. India cannot afford to fully decouple from Chinese inputs, and China cannot afford to lose a market as promising and geopolitically neutral as India. The dance is awkward, but it is underway.
The bigger risk is time. Vietnam, Thailand and Mexico are all vying for the same manufacturing shift, and many of them already have better infrastructure or fewer political landmines. If India hesitates, it may miss its window. If China overreaches, it may find even this limited welcome revoked.
The bottom line
Cut off from the US consumer, Chinese firms are playing by India’s rules. For India, the calculus is clear: Accept Chinese tech, but not Chinese control.
As global supply chains get redrawn under Trump’s tariffs, the world’s two biggest neighbors – long wary and watchful – are inching toward a functional coexistence. Not because they trust each other. But because, right now, they need each other.
In the words of Ambassador Xu: “The key to sustainable, healthy, and stable development of China-India relations is to correctly view each other’s development and strategic intentions.”
For now, the Dragon is learning to dance with the Elephant – one joint venture at a time.
(With inputs from agencies)

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His ascension to the papacy heralded many firsts.

Francis was the first Pope from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere. Not since Syrian-born Gregory III died in 741 had there been a non-European Bishop of Rome.

He was also the first Jesuit to be elected to the throne of St Peter – Jesuits were historically looked on with suspicion by Rome.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, was the first Pope to retire voluntarily in almost 600 years and for almost a decade the Vatican Gardens hosted two popes.

Many Catholics had assumed the new pontiff would be a younger man – but Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina was already in his seventies when he became Pope in 2013.

He had presented himself as a compromise candidate: appealing to conservatives with orthodox views on sexual matters while attracting the reformers with his liberal stance on social justice.

It was hoped his unorthodox background would help rejuvenate the Vatican and reinvigorate its holy mission.

But within the Vatican bureaucracy some of Francis’s attempts at reform met with resistance and his predecessor, who died in 2022, remained popular among traditionalists.

Determined to be different

From the moment of his election, Francis indicated he would do things differently. He received his cardinals informally and standing – rather than seated on the papal throne.

On 13 March 2013, Pope Francis emerged on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.

Clad simply in white, he bore a new name which paid homage to St Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century preacher and animal lover.

He was determined to favour humility over pomp and grandeur. He shunned the papal limousine and insisted on sharing the bus taking other cardinals home.

The new Pope set a moral mission for the 1.2 billion-strong flock. “Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he remarked.

His last act as head of the Catholic Church was to appear on Easter Sunday on the balcony of St Peter’s Square, waving at thousands of worshippers after weeks in hospital with double pneumonia.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936 – the eldest of five children. His parents had fled their native Italy to escape the evils of fascism.

He enjoyed tango dancing and became a supporter of his local football club, San Lorenzo.

He was lucky to escape with his life after an initial and serious bout of pneumonia, undergoing an operation to remove part of a lung. It would leave him susceptible to infection throughout his life.

As an elderly man he also suffered from pain in his right knee, which he described as a “physical humiliation”.

The young Bergoglio worked as a nightclub bouncer and floor sweeper, before graduating as a chemist.

At a local factory, he worked closely with Esther Ballestrino, who campaigned against Argentina’s military dictatorship. She was tortured, her body never found.

He became a Jesuit, studied philosophy and taught literature and psychology. Ordained a decade later, he won swift promotion, becoming provincial superior for Argentina in 1973.

Accusations

Some felt he failed to do enough to oppose the generals of Argentina’s brutal military regime.

He was accused of involvement in the military kidnapping of two priests during Argentina’s Dirty War, a period when thousands of people were tortured or killed, or disappeared, from 1976 to 1983.

The two priests were tortured but eventually found alive – heavily sedated and semi-naked.

Bergoglio faced charges of failing to inform the authorities that their work in poor neighbourhoods had been endorsed by the Church. This, if true, had abandoned them to the death squads. It was an accusation he flatly denied, insisting he had worked behind the scenes to free them.

Asked why he did not speak out, he reportedly said it was too difficult. In truth – at 36 years old – he found himself in a chaos that would have tried the most seasoned leader. He certainly helped many who tried to flee the country.

He also had differences with fellow Jesuits who believed Bergoglio lacked interest in liberation theology – that synthesis of Christian thought and Marxist sociology which sought to overthrow injustice. He, by contrast, preferred a gentler form of pastoral support.

At times, the relationship bordered on estrangement. When he sought initially to become Pope in 2005 some Jesuits breathed a sigh of relief.

A man of simple tastes

He was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and then became Archbishop.

Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 2001 and he took up posts in the Church’s civil service, the Curia.

He cultivated a reputation as a man of simple tastes, eschewing many of the trappings of a senior cleric. He usually flew economy and preferred to wear the black gown of a priest – rather than the red and purple of his new position.

In his sermons, he called for social inclusion and criticised governments that failed to pay attention to the poorest in society.

“We live in the most unequal part of the world,” he said, “which has grown the most, yet reduced misery the least.”

As Pope, he made great efforts to heal the thousand-year rift with the Eastern Orthodox Church. In recognition, for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the Patriarch of Constantinople attended the installation of a new Bishop of Rome.

Francis worked with Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists and persuaded the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to join him to pray for peace.

After attacks by Muslim militants, he said it was not right to identify Islam with violence. “If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence too,” he declared.

Politically, he allied himself with the Argentine government’s claim on the Falklands, telling a service: “We come to pray for those who have fallen, sons of the homeland who set out to defend their mother, the homeland, to claim the country that is theirs.”

And, as a Spanish-speaking Latin American, he provided a crucial service as mediator when the US government edged towards historic rapprochement with Cuba. It is difficult to imagine a European Pope playing such a critical diplomatic role.

Traditionalist

On many of the Church’s teachings, Pope Francis was a traditionalist.

He was “as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II… on euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, the right to life, human rights and the celibacy of priests”, according to Monsignor Osvaldo Musto, who was at seminary with him.

He said the Church should welcome people regardless of their sexual orientation, but insisted gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.

There were warm words in favour of some kind of same-sex unions for gay couples, but Francis did not favour calling it marriage. This, he said, would be “an attempt to destroy God’s plan”.

Shortly after becoming Pope in 2013, he took part in an anti-abortion march in Rome – calling for rights of the unborn “from the moment of conception”.

He called on gynaecologists to invoke their consciences and sent a message to Ireland – as it held a referendum on the subject – begging people there to protect the vulnerable.

He resisted the ordination of women, declaring that Pope John Paul II had once and for all ruled out the possibility.

And, although he seemed at first to allow that contraception might be used to prevent disease, he praised Paul VI’s teaching on the subject – which warned it might reduce women to instruments of male satisfaction.

In 2015, Pope Francis told an audience in the Philippines that contraception involved “the destruction of the family through the privation of children”. It was not the absence of children itself that he saw as so damaging, but the wilful decision to avoid them.

Tackling child abuse

The greatest challenge to his papacy, however, came on two fronts: from those who accused him of failing to tackle child abuse and from conservative critics who felt that he was diluting the faith. In particular, they had in mind his moves to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to take Communion.

Conservatives also adopted the issue of child abuse as a weapon in their long-running campaign.

In August 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the US, published an 11-page declaration of war. He released a letter describing a series of warnings made to the Vatican about the behaviour of a former cardinal, Thomas McCarrick.

It was alleged that McCarrick had been a serial abuser who attacked both adults and minors. The Pope, Archbishop Viganò said, had made him a “trusted councillor” despite knowing he was deeply corrupted. The solution was clear, he said: Pope Francis should resign.

“These homosexual networks,” the archbishop claimed, “act under the concealment of secrecy and lie with the power of octopus tentacles… and are strangling the entire Church.”

The ensuing row threatened to engulf the Church. McCarrick was eventually defrocked in February 2019, after an investigation by the Vatican.

During the Covid pandemic, Francis cancelled his regular appearances in St Peter’s Square – to prevent the virus circulating. In an important example of moral leadership, he also declared that being vaccinated was a universal obligation.

In 2022, he became the first Pope for more than a century to bury his predecessor – after Benedict’s death at the age of 95.

By now, he had his own health problems – with several hospitalisations. But Francis was determined to continue with his efforts to promote global peace and inter-religious dialogue.

In 2023, he made a pilgrimage to South Sudan, pleading with the country’s leaders to end conflict.

He appealed for an end to the “absurd and cruel war” in Ukraine, although he disappointed Ukrainians by appearing to swallow Russia’s propaganda message of having been provoked into its invasion.

And a year later, he embarked on an ambitious four-country, two-continent odyssey; with stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore.

In recent months, Francis had struggled with his health. In March 2025, he spent five weeks in hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to the throne of St Peter determined to change it.

There will be some who would have preferred a more liberal leader, and critics will point to his perceived weakness in confronting the institution’s legacy of clerical sexual abuse.

But change it, he did.

He appointed more than 140 cardinals from non-European countries and bequeaths his successor a Church that is far more global in outlook than the one he inherited.

And, to set an example, he was the no-frills Pope who elected not to live in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – complete with Sistine Chapel – but in the modern block next door (which Pope John Paul II had built as a guest house).

He believed anything else would be vanity. “Look at the peacock,” he said, “it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth.”

He also hoped he could shake up the institution itself, enhancing the Church’s historic mission by cutting through internal strife, focusing on the poor and returning the Church to the people.

“We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world,” he said shortly after his election.

“If I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn Church, I would choose the first.”

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Pope Francis’s last public appearance was for an Easter Sunday blessing at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square.

It had been unknown at the time if the pontiff would join the service following his discharge from hospital last month, after five weeks of treatment for an infection that led to double pneumonia.

He has died at the age of 88.

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What next after the death of Pope Francis?

Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, after 12 years as spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

His death has set in motion the centuries-old process of electing a new Pope.

What does the Pope do?

The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. Roman Catholics believe he represents a direct line back to Jesus Christ. He is considered a living successor to St Peter, who was chief among Christ’s initial disciples, the Apostles.

That gives him full and unhindered power over the entire Catholic Church and makes him an important source of authority for the world’s roughly 1.4 billion Catholics.

While many Catholics often consult the Bible for guidance, they can also turn to the teachings of the Pope, which govern the Church’s beliefs and practices.

About half of all Christians worldwide are Roman Catholics. Other denominations, including Protestants and Orthodox Christians, do not recognise the Pope’s authority.

The Pope lives in Vatican City, the smallest independent state in the world. It is surrounded by the Italian capital, Rome.

The Pope does not receive a salary, but all his travel costs and living expenses are paid for by the Vatican.

What happens when the Pope dies?

A papal funeral has traditionally been an elaborate affair, but Pope Francis recently approved plans to make the whole procedure less complex.

Previous pontiffs were buried in three nested coffins made of cypress, lead and oak. Pope Francis has opted for a simple wooden coffin lined with zinc.

He has also scrapped the tradition of placing the Pope’s body on a raised platform – known as a catafalque – in St Peter’s Basilica for public viewing.

Instead, mourners will be invited to pay their respects while his body remains inside the coffin, with the lid removed.

Francis will also be the first Pope in more than a century to be buried outside the Vatican.

He will be laid to rest in the Basilica of St Mary Major, one of four major papal basilicas in Rome.

A basilica is a church which has been granted special significance and privileges by the Vatican. The major basilicas have a particular connection to the Pope.

Who chooses the new Pope?

The new Pope has to be chosen by the Catholic Church’s most senior officials, known as the College of Cardinals.

All men, they are appointed directly by the Pope, and are usually ordained bishops.

There are currently 252 Catholic cardinals, 138 of whom are eligible to vote for the new Pope.

The others are over the age of 80, which means they cannot take part in the election, although they can join in the debate over who should be selected.

How is the Pope chosen and what is the conclave?

When the Pope dies (or resigns, as in the rare case of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013), the cardinals are summoned to a meeting at the Vatican, followed by the conclave, as the election is known.

During the time between the Pope’s death and the election of his successor, the College of Cardinals governs the Church.

The election is held in strict secrecy inside the Sistine Chapel, famously painted by Michelangelo.

Individual cardinals vote for their preferred candidate until a winner is determined, a process which can take several days. In previous centuries, voting has gone on for weeks or months. Some cardinals have even died during conclaves.

The only clue about how the election is proceeding is the smoke that emerges twice a day from burning the cardinals’ ballot papers. Black signals failure. The traditional white smoke means the new Pope has been chosen.

How is the decision about the new Pope made public?

After the white smoke goes up, the new Pope normally appears within an hour on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.

The senior cardinal participating in the conclave will announce the decision with the words “Habemus Papam” – Latin for “we have a Pope”.

He will then introduce the new Pope by his chosen papal name, which may or may not be his original given name.

For example, Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but he chose a different name for his papacy in honour of St Francis of Assisi.

Who can become the Pope?

In theory, any Roman Catholic man who has been baptised can be considered for election to become Pope.

In practice, however, the cardinals prefer to select one of their own.

When the Argentine-born Pope Francis was chosen at the previous conclave in 2013, he became the first pontiff ever to hail from South America, a region that accounts for roughly 28% of the world’s Catholics.

But historical precedent suggests the cardinals are far more likely to pick a European – and especially an Italian.

Of the 266 popes chosen to date, 217 have been from Italy.

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Pope Francis, who died Monday (April 21, 2025) aged 88, will go down in history as a radical pontiff, a champion of underdogs who forged a more compassionate Catholic Church while stopping short of overhauling centuries-old dogma.

Pope Francis passes away: LIVE Updates

Dubbed “the people’s Pope”, the Argentine pontiff loved being among his flock and was popular with the faithful, though he faced bitter opposition from traditionalists within the Church.

The first pope from the Americas and the southern hemisphere, he staunchly defended the most disadvantaged, from migrants to communities battered by climate change, which he warned was a crisis caused by humankind.

But while he confronted head-on the global scandal of sex abuse by priests, survivors’ groups said concrete measures were slow in coming.

From his election in March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was eager to make his mark as the leader of the Catholic Church.

Also read: Many firsts of Pope Francis

He became the first pope to take the name Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century mystic who renounced his wealth and devoted his life to the poor.

“How I would like a poor church for the poor,” he said three days after his election as the 266th pope.

He was a humble figurehead who wore plain robes, eschewed the sumptuous papal palaces and made his own phone calls, some of them to widows, rape victims or prisoners.

Pope Francis says Church must ‘seek forgiveness’ for child sexual abuse

The football-loving former archbishop of Buenos Aires was also more accessible than his predecessors, chatting with young people about issues ranging from social media to pornography – and talking openly about his health.

Pope Francis always left the door open to retiring like his predecessor Benedict XVI, who in 2013 became the first pontiff since the Middle Ages to step down.

After Benedict died in December 2022, Pope Francis became the first sitting pope in modern history to lead a papal funeral.

He suffered increasingly poor health, from colon surgery in 2021 and a hernia in June 2023 to bouts of bronchitis and knee pain that forced him to use a wheelchair.

His fourth hospitalisation, of more than a month for bronchitis in both lungs, was his longest, raising speculation he might step down.

What is the legacy behind the ‘papal’ ring?

But he brushed off talk of quitting, saying in February 2023 that papal resignations should not become “a normal thing”.

In a 2024 memoir, he wrote that resignation was a “distant possibility” justified only in the event of “a serious physical impediment”.

Kissed prisoners’ feet

Before his first Easter at the Vatican, he washed and kissed the feet of prisoners at a Rome prison.

It was the first in a series of powerful symbolic gestures that helped him achieve enthusiastic global admiration that eluded his predecessor.

For his first trip abroad, Pope Francis chose the Italian island of Lampedusa, the point of entry for tens of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe, and slammed the “globalisation of indifference”.

Many firsts of Pope Francis

He also condemned plans by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term to build a border wall against Mexico as un-Christian.

After Trump’s re-election, Pope Francis denounced his planned migrant deportations as a “major crisis” that “will end badly”.

In 2016, with Europe’s migration crisis at a peak, Pope Francis flew to the Greek island of Lesbos and returned to Rome with three families of asylum-seeking Syrian Muslims.

Also read | Pope says Trump’s planned deportations would be ‘calamity’

He was also committed to inter-faith reconciliation, kissing the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in a historic February 2016 encounter, and making a joint call for freedom of belief with leading Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb in 2019.

Pope Francis re-energised Vatican diplomacy in other ways, helping facilitate a historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, and encouraging the peace process in Colombia.

And he sought to improve ties with China through a historic – but criticised – 2018 accord on the naming of bishops.

Climate appeal

Experts credited Pope Francis with having influenced the landmark 2015 Paris climate accords with his “Laudato Si” encyclical, an appeal for action on climate change that was grounded in science.

He argued that developed economies were to blame for an impending environmental catastrophe, and in a fresh appeal in 2023 warned that some of the damage was “already irreversible”.

An advocate of peace, the pontiff repeatedly denounced arms manufacturers and argued that in the myriad of conflicts seen around the globe, a Third World War was underway.

Also read | Climate change and its human causes cannot be denied, papal document says

But his interventions were not always well received, and he sparked outrage from Kyiv after praising those in war-torn Ukraine who had the “courage to raise the white flag and negotiate”.

In his modest rooms in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta guesthouse, Pope Francis dealt with stress by writing down his problems in letters to Saint Joseph.

“From the moment I was elected I had a very particular feeling of profound peace. And that has never left me,” he said in 2017.

He also loved classical music and tango, stopping off once at a shop in Rome to buy records.

‘Who am I to judge?’

Pope Francis’s admirers credit him with transforming perceptions of an institution beset by scandals when he took over, helping to bring lapsed believers back into the fold.

He will be remembered as the pope who, on the subject of gay Catholics, said: “Who am I to judge?”

He allowed divorced and remarried believers to receive communion, and approved the baptism of transgender believers as well as blessings for same-sex couples.

But he dropped the idea of letting priests marry after an outcry, and despite nominating several women to leading positions inside the Vatican, he disappointed those who wanted women allowed to be ordained.

Critics accused him of tampering dangerously with tenets of Catholic teaching, and he faced strong opposition to many of his reforms.

In 2017, four conservatives cardinals made an almost unheard of public challenge to his authority, saying his changes had sown doctrinal confusion among believers.

But his Church showed no inclination to relax its ban on artificial contraception or opposition to gay marriage – and he insisted that abortion was “murder”.

Pope Francis also pushed reforms within the Vatican, from allowing cardinals to be tried by civilian courts to overhauling the Holy See’s banking system.

He also sought to address the enormously damaging issue of sex abuse by priests by meeting victims and vowing to hold those responsible accountable.

He opened up Vatican archives to civil courts and made it compulsory to report suspicions of abuse or its cover-up to Church authorities.

But critics say his legacy will be a Church that remains reluctant to hand paedophile priests over to the police.

‘Raised on pasta’

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born into an Italian emigrant family in Flores, a middle-class district of Buenos Aires, on December 17, 1936.

The eldest of five children, he was “born an Argentine but raised on pasta”, wrote biographer Paul Vallely.

From 13, he worked afternoons in a hosiery factory while studying to become a chemical technician in the mornings. Later he had a brief stint as a nightclub bouncer.

He was said to have liked dancing and girls, even coming close to proposing to one before, at age 17, he found a religious vocation.

Pope Francis later recounted a period of turmoil during his Jesuit training, when he became besotted with a woman he met at a family wedding.

By then he had survived a near-fatal infection that resulted in the removal of part of a lung. His impaired breathing scuppered his hopes of becoming a missionary in Japan.

He was ordained a priest in 1969 and appointed the provincial, or leader, of the Jesuits in Argentina just four years later. His time at the helm of the order, which spanned the country’s years of military dictatorship, was difficult.

Critics accused him of betraying two radical priests who were imprisoned and tortured by the regime.

No convincing evidence of the claim ever emerged but his leadership of the order was divisive and, in 1990, he was demoted and exiled to Argentina’s second-largest city, Cordoba.

Then, in his 50s, Bergoglio is seen by most biographers as having undergone a midlife crisis.

He emerged to embark on a new career in the mainstream of the Catholic hierarchy, reinventing himself first as the “Bishop of the Slums” in Buenos Aires and later as the pope who would break the mould.

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The death of Pope Francis on Monday (April 21, 2025) sets in motion centuries-old traditions which will culminate in the election by cardinals of a new pontiff. This includes a nine-day mourning period, an elaborate burial, and the election of a new leader for the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis death LIVE updates

At the end of the process, a Pope will be selected in a high-stakes election dramatised in the Oscar-nominated thriller “Conclave,” with progressive and conservative cardinals vying for control of an institution with a billion followers globally.

Here we explains what happens in the Vatican City, where the College of Cardinals gathers to elect a new pope.

Pope Francis, first Latin-American to head the Catholic Church, passes away at 88

Confirmation of Pope’s death

The Camerlengo (Cardinal Chamberlain) – currently Kevin Joseph Farrell, a 77-year-old American of Irish origin, – officially confirms Pope’s death, traditionally by tapping his head three times with small silver hammer and calling out his name.

Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell
| Photo Credit:
AFP

He will become the Vatican’s de facto administrator till a new Pope is elected.

End of Pope Francis’ reign

When a pontiff dies, his signet ring – known as the fisherman’s ring – is smashed, signifying the end of his reign. Papal apartments are sealed off and Vatican announces death to world.

Pope Francis’ signet ring – Fisherman’s Ring.

Mourning

Pope’s death triggers Novendiale – nine days of mourning. Italy will also declare national mourning. The Pope’s body will be dressed in papal vestments and brought to the Pope’s private chapel.

Pope Francis has asked not to be put on display atop catafalque in St. Peter’s Basilica, as customary. Instead, his body will be left inside casket, with lid off for visitors to pay their respects.

Meanwhile, the Vatican enters a transitional period called sede vacante (period between the death of a pope and the election of a new one), during which rule of church is temporarily handed over to College of Cardinals.

Burial

Funeral will be led by dean of College of Cardinals – currently Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Funeral of Pope usually takes place four to six days after his death and funeral rites in various churches in Rome will last nine days.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re leads a prayer service at St. Peter’s Square.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

Traditionally, pope is buried in the Vatican Grottoes, beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. But Pope Francis wants to be buried at Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, making him first pontiff to be interred outside Vatican in more than a century.

The Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the four papal basilicas in Rome.
| Photo Credit:
AFP

Popes are entombed in three interlocking caskets, made of cypress, lead and oak. Francis wishes to be buried in a single, zinc-lined wooden coffin. The coffin is closed the night before the funeral.

The Conclave

Two to three weeks after Pope’s funeral, the College of Cardinals will convene in the Sistine Chapel to hold a secretive process of electing new pope.

Cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel before the start of the conclave, at the Vatican, Tuesday, March 12, 2013.
| Photo Credit:
AP

When the cardinals meet, they gather in the Sistine Chapel. All cardinal electors must swear an oath of secrecy and vote by secret ballot. Camerlengo, who will preside over the ballot, will seal the Chapel. Only cardinals under age 80 are eligible to vote. They are not allowed to leave the conclave except in rare cases.

A two-thirds majority is needed to elect a new pope, and politicking is part of the process. After every vote, the ballot papers are burned in a stove, along with chemicals that produce a color, and the smoke is released through a chimney that can be seen from St. Peter’s Square. If no cardinal wins vote, ballots are burned to produce black smoke. The cardinals cast repeated votes until a two-thirds majority emerges. When a decision is reached, the smoke will be white.

Habemus Papam!

Once the Pope is chosen, the dean of the College of Cardinals asks the chosen successor if he accepts the role. After receiving an affirmative response, the dean then asks for the name he wishes to take as pope.

After he greets the Cardinals, he will move onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, from where a representative from College reads out Latin announcement: “Habemus papam” (We have a Pope). New Pope will step out to give first public address.

Sources: Vatican, Politico, Reuters, Graphic News

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Rows of trees were found chopped down across the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Sunday. Social media users shared photos of trees slashed with a chainsaw on South Grand Avenue and nearby areas, just before Earth Day.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the police department has no details about the incident. According to ABC 7, security guards at two different buildings in the area said surveillance footage showed an unidentified person on a bicycle carrying a chainsaw.
Images by users showed clean cuts at the base or midway up tree trunks, with some trees barely hanging by threads of bark. A Reddit user claimed that every tree between 1st Street and Wilshire Boulevard was affected. Photos show fallen trees at intersections including Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, and Broadway and Cesar Chavez Avenue.
Many of the targeted trees reportedly appear to be Indian laurel figs (Ficus microcarpa), known for their drought resistance and environmental benefits. Urban trees play a critical role in controlling stormwater runoff, improving air quality, cooling overheated areas, and supporting public health. A UCLA Luskin Center study found that shaded areas can reduce bodily heat stress by up to 30%.
City Council member Ysabel Jurado’s office told CBS News: “Our office is aware of the illegal tree cutting in DTLA and in close communication with LAPD as they investigate. Thank you to the community for bringing this to our awareness, this is exactly what co-governance in action looks like.”

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TAIPEI: A Chinese cruise ship sailed within just two nautical miles (3.7km) of Taiwan’s Hengchun Peninsula this week, prompting concern from observers and authorities about a possible “gray zone” tactic by Beijing, Taipei Times reported.
The incident was reported by Taiwan ADIZ, a civilian Facebook group that monitors Chinese military activity near Taiwan, which posted footage showing the vessel clearly visible from the shoreline in Pingtung County.
The ship was identified as the Gulangyu, a Bermuda-registered cruise vessel with a capacity of up to 1,800 passengers. Taiwan ADIZ noted that if fully occupied, the number of people on board would be roughly equivalent to a battalion-sized military unit.
“If such events become routine, they could pose a serious threat to Taiwan’s security,” the group wrote, pointing to the potential for such vessels to be repurposed in conflict scenarios.
Footage allegedly filmed by a passenger on board was later posted to Chinese social media, showing views of the Hengchun Peninsula overlaid with the message in simplified Chinese: “Taiwan is China,” reported Taipei Times.
Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling responded to the incident on Friday, saying the public should stay alert, calling it part of China’s broader “gray zone” strategy–coercive actions that stop short of armed conflict. She added that the government has launched a cross-agency mechanism to monitor maritime activity and would enhance coordination with the Maritime and Port Bureau and national security agencies.
Kuan said that after entering Taiwan’s territorial waters around 2pm on Wednesday, the Gulangyu was tracked by the Coast Guard Administration and later exited toward the northeast without altering its speed or course. The incident was believed to be a “united front” effort by Beijing, she added.
The government is developing a dedicated intelligence and tracking database for vessels operating in sensitive areas, including undersea cable zones, particularly those with Chinese capital or operating under flags of convenience, Taipei Times reported.
The coast guard is charged with monitoring such ships, while the Maritime and Port Bureau enforces the Regulations on the Administration of Innocent Passage of Foreign Vessels.

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US defence secretary Pete Hegseth has once again found himself in the eye of a political storm following revelations that he shared sensitive military details about a March airstrike on Yemen’s Houthi militants in a private Signal chat with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
The group, dubbed “Defense | Team Huddle,” comprised 13 individuals, including Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil, a Department of Homeland Security liaison at the Pentagon, New York Times reported. The chat reportedly contained specific information such as warplane launch times and strike packages, raising serious concerns about the handling of classified materials.

This disclosure follows an earlier incident where Hegseth shared similar sensitive information in another Signal chat that included top Trump administration officials and, mistakenly, a journalist. The Atlantic published the contents of that chat, revealing detailed operational plans for the Yemen strike, which experts assert would typically be classified at the highest levels. Hegseth had denied any wrongdoing, saying, “Nobody was texting war plans,” and attributing the reports to media bias.

10 things to know about Hegseth’s Signal chat leaks:

What Trump, White House had said earlier

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had described the Signal messaging thread as “a policy discussion, a sensitive policy discussion among high level cabinet officials and senior staff.” Defending the Secretary of Defense, she asked, “Do you trust the secretary of defense who was nominated for this role, voted by the United States Senate into this role, who has served in combat, honourably served our nation in uniform or do you trust Jeffrey Goldberg?”
When questioned about the thread, Trump distanced himself, saying he’s “not sure” whether the information shared was classified: “Well, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.” Trump added that Waltz had taken responsibility for the error, but dismissed Hegseth’s involvement: “How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it.”
The White House stated Trump had seen Hegseth’s texts. “It’s all a witch-hunt,” Trump said. While the National Security Council confirmed the thread’s authenticity, Leavitt posted: “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’”

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NEW DELHI: Om Prakash, former Director General and Inspector General of Police (DG & IGP) of Karnataka, was found dead under mysterious circumstances at his residence in Bengaluru’s upscale HSR Layout on Sunday. He was 68.
His body, lying in a pool of blood on the ground floor of his three-storied house, bore multiple injuries, raising suspicions of foul play. A weapon is believed to have been used in the assault. The police were alerted to the incident by his wife, Pallavi, and reached the scene around 4:30 pm.
Career of a veteran officer
Om Prakash was a 1981-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and a native of Champaran in Bihar. Holding a Master’s degree in Geology, he began his career as an additional superintendent of police in Harapanahalli, Ballari district.
Over the decades, he served in several key roles including SP of Shivamogga, Uttara Kannada, and Chikkamagaluru districts.
He held various postings in the state’s Lokayukta, the Criminal Investigation Department, and also served as DIG of Fire and Emergency Services.
He was appointed Karnataka’s DG & IGP on March 1, 2015, and served until his retirement on March 31, 2017.
Circumstances of death
Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash confirmed that a case is being registered based on a complaint filed by Prakash’s son. “There is physical assault. A weapon has been used. There is blood loss. We will get the details after further investigation,” he said.
While no arrests have been made so far, the officer added that the police have secured the building and are questioning family members, including Prakash’s wife and daughter.
When asked about the possible involvement of family members, the officer said, “These things will be known after the investigation. At this stage, not even the FIR has been registered. Once it is, we will be able to explain the whole incident.”
Motive and ongoing investigation
According to sources, the former top cop had reportedly expressed concerns to close associates about threats to his life. Police are also probing possible motives linked to property disputes within the family.
The body has been sent for autopsy, and forensic teams are assisting with evidence collection. Investigations are ongoing.

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JAMMU: Mashkoor, a groom in Jammu and Kashmir, walked to his wedding venue on Monday along with his procession after landslides triggered by heavy rainfall shut down the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway (NH 44).
The groom explained that they were forced to walk because of the heavy rainfall the previous day, which led to the road closure.
According to the groom, the group began their journey at 6 am, having parked their cars behind, and decided to continue the rest of the way on foot.
“It is my wedding day… This is the situation because of the heavy rainfall yesterday. We have to go on foot. We started travelling at 6 am. We parked our cars behind and now we will walk the rest of the way. We still have around 7-8 km more to walk. We would bring the bride the same way, as the roads are not cleared. We request the government to clear NH 44 as soon as possible…,” says Mashkoor, the groom who is on his way to his wedding on foot as the roads are blocked after landslides.
Mashkoor further mentioned that they plan to bring the bride back by the same route, as the roads remain uncleared.
The groom urged the government to clear NH 44 at the earliest possible opportunity.
Flash floods trigger highway closure
Road clearing activities are in progress on National Highway 44 in Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir.
In the early hours of Sunday, intense rainfall caused by cloudbursts led to flash floods and landslides in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ramban district.
The vital 250-kilometre Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, which serves as the sole all-weather connection between Kashmir and the rest of India, was rendered impassable. Numerous vehicles were stranded as debris from mountainsides blocked approximately twelve locations along the route between Nashri and Banihal.
Severe weather prompts school closures
Due to persistent severe weather conditions and predictions, Kashmir valley schools will suspend all classwork on Monday, April 21, announced Sakina Itoo, the education minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J-K).
The announcement follows ongoing heavy rainfall, cloudbursts and landslides affecting various regions of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in mountainous areas.
The Srinagar Meteorological Centre has issued a yellow alert or ‘watch’ for the majority of districts, with the exception of Jammu, Poonch, Kathua, Muzzafarabad and Mirpur.

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The United States slashing foreign aid risks piling pressure on already acute humanitarian crises across the globe, a World Health Organization official said Sunday (April 20, 2025), also warning against withdrawing from the U.N. agency.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has effectively frozen foreign aid funding, moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other programmes, and announced plans to leave the WHO.

Washington, which had long been the WHO’s biggest donor, did not pay its 2024 dues, and it remains unclear if the United States will meet its membership obligations for 2025

The agency, already facing a gaping deficit this year, has proposed shrinking its budget by a fifth, likely reducing its reach and workforce, according to an earlier AFP report citing an internal email.

“The WHO with its partners have a significant role in sustaining healthcare systems, rehabilitation of healthcare systems, emergency medical team training and dispatching, pre-placement of trauma kits,” Hanan Balkhy, the WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, told AFP.

“Many of these programmes have now stopped or are not going to be able to continue,” she said.

The funding cuts will likely hinder the ability to continue delivering robust aid to communities in desperate need of care.

The challenges of public health education in India

Ms. Balkhy cited the ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, and Yemen as areas where healthcare institutions and aid programmes were already under pressure before the funding shakeups.

In the Gaza Strip, where more than a year and a half of fighting has seen large swaths of the Palestinian territory reduced to rubble and few hospitals remain functioning, the public health situation is dire.

“The emergency medical team support, procurement of the medications and the rehabilitation of the health care facilities, all of that has been immediately impacted by the freeze of the US support,” said Ms. Balkhy.

In Sudan, the WHO is facing mounting issues amid a bloody civil war that has displaced millions, with several areas hit by at least three different disease outbreaks — malaria, dengue and cholera, according to Ms. Balkhy.

“We work significantly to identify emerging and re-emerging pathogens to keep the Sudanese safe, but also to keep the rest of the world safe. So it will impact our ability to continue to do surveillance, detection of diseases,” she added.

Despite low prevalence, USAID shutdown to affect HIV projects in various Indian pockets

A U.S. departure from the WHO will also undercut long established channels of communication with leading research facilities, universities and public health institutions that are based in the United States.

That in turn would likely prevent the easy sharing of information and research, which is pivotal to heading off global public health crises like an emerging pandemic, said Ms. Balkhy.

“These bacteria and viruses, number one, know no borders. Number two, they are ambivalent to what’s happening in the human political landscape.”

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The Democratic Republic of Congo government said it has suspended the political party of former President Joseph Kabila, days after his properties were raided by security services.

“This decision follows the overt activism” of Mr. Kabila, who was president for 18 years up to 2019 and who remains head of his People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), the interior ministry said in a statement dated Saturday (April 19, 2025).

PPRD activities “are suspended across all the national territory,” the statement said.

There was no immediate reaction from the party.

Current leader President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Mr. Kabila of preparing “an insurrection” and backing an alliance that includes the M23 armed group that is fighting government forces in eastern DR Congo.

Mr. Kabila (53) left the country before the last presidential election in 2023, according to a spokesman for his family.

But early April, in a message relayed by his staff, he said he would return at an unspecified date because the country was “in peril”. There are unconfirmed suggestions that he will arrive, or is already in, the eastern city of Goma.

The family spokesman said on Thursday (April 17, 2025) that security services mounted raids on Mr. Kabila’s main property, a farm east of the Kinshasa, and on a compound belonging to the family in the capital.

The interior Ministry statement accused Mr. Kabila’s party of keeping “a guilty, or even complicit, silence” over “the Rwandan war of aggression”.

Kinshasa, U.N. experts and several international powers have said M23 is backed by Rwanda, which denies the charge.

The armed group is at the centre of a new surge in conflict in eastern DR Congo, having taken the key cities of Goma and Bukavu.

The DR Congo ministry statement said Mr. Kabila has maintained an “ambiguous attitude” on the M23 rebellion, which he “has never condemned”.

It criticised the “deliberate choice” of Mr. Kabila “to enter the country through the city of Goma, under the control of the enemy”.

A separate statement from the country’s Justice Ministry said the chief prosecutor had been asked to start legal action against Mr. Kabila for “his direction participation” in M23.

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Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that Israeli air strikes since dawn on Sunday (April 20, 2025) have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children.

Israel resumed its aerial and ground assault on Gaza on March 18, reigniting fighting after a two-month ceasefire that had paused more than 15 months of war in the coastal territory.

“Since dawn today, the occupation’s air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency said.

In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five persons were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday (April 19, 2025) vowed to continue the war and bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’ demands.

“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement, rejecting calls from the militants to end the war and withdraw troops from Gaza.

Since Israel resumed its offensive last month, at least 1,827 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.

The overall death toll in the Gaza war has reached 51,201, the majority of them civilians, according to the Ministry, figures the U.N. considers reliable.

The war broke out after Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

During that attack, Palestinian militants abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held hostage in Gaza, including 34 the Military says are dead.

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The Israeli military has said “professional failures” led to the killing of 15 emergency workers in Gaza last month.

An inquiry into the incident by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) found a series of failings, including an “operational misunderstanding” and a “breach of orders”.

The deputy commander of the unit involved has been dismissed “for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief”.

A spokeswoman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the report was “invalid” as it “justifies and shifts the responsibility to a personal error in the field command when the truth is quite different”.

Fourteen emergency workers and a UN worker were killed on 23 March after a convoy of PRCS ambulances, a UN car and a fire truck came under fire by the Israeli military.

In a statement, the IDF said its troops opened fire believing they were facing a threat from enemy forces.

The IDF said its investigation found six of the casualties were Hamas members, and rejected that there had been summary executions.

It did not produce evidence for any affiliation to Hamas, despite the names of those killed being in the public domain.

The report said the incident took place in what it called a “hostile and dangerous combat zone”, and that the commander on the ground perceived an immediate and tangible threat after vehicles approached rapidly.

It blamed “poor night visibility”, which the IDF said meant the commander did not identify the vehicles as ambulances.

Another commanding officer “will receive a reprimand” for “his overall responsibility for the incident”, the report added.

Israel had originally claimed troops opened fire because the convoy approached “suspiciously” in darkness without headlights or flashing lights. It said movement of the vehicles had not been previously co-ordinated or agreed with the army.

But it later said that account was “mistaken” after a video found on the mobile phone of a medic who was killed showed the vehicles with their lights on and their emergency signals flashing.

The footage shows the vehicles pulling up on the road when shooting begins just before dawn.

The video continues for more than five minutes, with the paramedic saying his last prayers before the voices of Israeli soldiers are heard approaching the vehicles.

It also shows the vehicles were clearly marked and the paramedics wearing reflective hi-vis uniform.

The bodies of the 15 dead workers were buried in sand. They were not uncovered until a week after the incident because international agencies, including the UN, could not organise safe passage to the area or locate the spot.

The IDF also confirmed it was holding a PRCS medic it had detained following the incident. They did not confirm his name, but the International Committee of the Red Cross has previously named him as Assad al-Nassasra.

The Red Crescent and several other international organisations have previously called for an independent investigation into the incident.

The IDF’s decision to fire a commander and discipline another senior officer is not unheard of – the military dismissed two officers and took action against others after seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen were killed in April of last year.

Israel launched its first major operation in Rafah in May 2024, leaving large parts of it in ruins. Tens of thousands of people returned to what was left of their homes in the city during a recent two-month-long ceasefire.

Israel renewed its offensive in Gaza on 18 March after the first phase of the ceasefire deal came to an end and negotiations on a second phase of the deal stalled.

Israel launched its campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 51,201 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of breaching a 30-hour “Easter truce” that was announced by the Russian president on Saturday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Ukraine’s front line had been targeted “more than 2,000 times” since the start of Sunday. The BBC has not independently verified these figures.

In response, Russia’s defence ministry said it had “repelled” attempted assaults by Ukraine and accused Kyiv of launching hundreds of drones and shells, according to state media sources.

On Saturday, Putin said there would be an end to all hostilities from 16:00 BST on Saturday until 22:00 BST (midnight in Moscow) on Sunday. Kyiv said it would also adhere.

“For this period, I order all military actions to cease,” Putin said in his announcement.

“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions.”

However, in a post on X, Zelensky said there was a total of 1,355 cases of Russian shelling, 713 of which involved heavy weaponry according to a report from Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Earlier, Zelensky said Putin’s declaration of a truce amounted to a “PR” exercise and his words were “empty”. He also accused the Kremlin of trying to create “a general impression of a ceasefire”.

“This Easter has clearly demonstrated that the only source of this war, and the reason it drags on, is Russia,” the president said.

The Russian defence ministry insisted its troops had “strictly observed the ceasefire”.

The surprise “Easter truce” announcement came shortly after US President Donald Trump threatened to “take a pass” on brokering further Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

Ukraine had said it would be ready to extend the truce, which is due to come to an end at midnight local time tonight (22:00 BST).

There were mixed reactions about the 30-hour truce from Ukrainians attending Easter morning services in Kyiv and the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk on Sunday.

“I do not think this man [Putin] has anything to do with humanity,” 45-year-old lawyer Olena Poprych told Reuters news agency.

Meanwhile in Donetsk, where much of the city has been under Russian control since 2014, residents expressed similar distrust that Zelensky will stick to the terms of the ceasefire.

“I watched very closely his [Zelensky’s] reactions,” said Vladimir, who attended an Easter morning service in Donetsk. “There was nothing about the ceasefire… just some vague statements, not giving any confidence that we will not be shelled.”

On Sunday, the British government described the proposed ceasefire as a “one day stunt”, saying that the claimed truce involved “violations, including the killing and wounding of more innocent Ukrainians”.

The statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said that the truce fitted the “pattern of previous fake ceasefires” and instead called for a longer 30 day pause in the fighting, as proposed by Ukraine.

“As ever, we see no evidence that President Putin is seriously preparing for peace,” the FCDO statement said.

Both Russia and Ukraine accused each other of breaking the ceasefire. Putin announced a one-day ceasefire in Ukraine until midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT) on Sunday.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides.

The US has been directly talking to Russia as part of its efforts to end the war, but has struggled to make major progress.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full and unconditional ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

On Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was not “going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end”, as it had “other priorities to focus on”.

“We need to determine very quickly now – and I’m talking about a matter of days – whether or not this is doable,” he added.

“If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on.”

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Watch: Pope blesses crowd as Easter celebrated worldwide

Celebrations are taking place all around the world to celebrate Easter, the most important date in the Christian calendar.

The appearance of Pope Francis on Easter Sunday had been highly anticipated.

Last month, he was discharged from hospital after five weeks of treatment for an infection that led to double pneumonia.

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