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U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres walks with security personnel as his visits Borodyanka, a town outside Kyiv, Ukraine, that was devastated by a Russian attack and occupation on Thursday. Russia sent a deadly attack into Kyiv as Guterres visited. Sergei Supinsky | AFP via Getty Images

U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres had recently met in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he was on a high-profile visit to Ukraine's capital but those circumstances weren't enough to prevent Russia from launching a deadly attack on a residential area of Kyiv while Guterres visited the capital city Thursday night.

Ukrainian officials are calling the attack a "postcard from Moscow" and an insult to the United Nations.

Five Russian missiles hit Kyiv "immediately" after Guterres and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finished a meeting, Zelenskyy said. It was an intentional affront to the global diplomat, he added.

"This says a lot about Russia's true attitude to global institutions," Zelenskyy said Thursday night. "About the efforts of the Russian leadership to humiliate the U.N. and everything that the organization represents."

Guterres arrived in Ukraine after meeting with Putin on Tuesday, hoping to de-escalate the war and guarantee humanitarian aid for civilians whose lives have been upended by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday, Guterres toured the ruined town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, which was bombed and occupied. For him, it evoked the evil and absurdity of war.

"I must say what I feel. I imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black," Guterres said. "I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed. So, the war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil."

Guterres also spoke about the need to respect international law and about being at "ground zero" remarks that later took on a chilling aspect after Russia sent a new attack into the capital.

"It is a war zone, but it is shocking that it happened close to us," Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the U.N.'s humanitarian office, told Agence France-Presse.

Before Thursday's strike on the heart of Kyiv, attacks on Ukraine's capital had mostly halted.

The Russian military says it used "high-precision long-range air-based weapons" to destroy buildings related to the Artem rocket and space enterprise in Kyiv. But a visit to the scene found that the most visible damage was to an apartment building nearby. The building stands next to a factory that makes missile parts, but also vacuum cleaners.

Rebar hung down like strands of hair from the bottom three stories of the towering apartment building. Officials say the residence was hit by a cruise missile that came out of Russian-controlled Crimea and knocked out the bottom. One person, a journalist, was killed in the attack, and nine people were injured.

The journalist was Vira Hyrych, who worked with U.S. government broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Ukraine and who lived in the building. The news outlet confirmed her death, saying her body was found under wreckage in the 25-story structure Friday morning.

Hyrych was also mourned by the Israeli Embassy in Ukraine, which said she formerly worked there. Radio Liberty said she worked in Ukraine's TV industry before landing a job in Radio Svoboda's Kyiv bureau four years ago.

The perception of the attack as an intentional slight was heightened by one of Guterres' main goals: to negotiate humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave Mariupol. People in that besieged port city, he said, "need an escape route out of the apocalypse."

As for what comes next in Ukraine, military experts see the Russians making a big push in eastern Ukraine and trying to seize control of the south. Analysts expect the Russians to engineer sham independence referendums in cities and towns so that Putin can present the invasion as a success to his domestic audience back home.

Ukraine's leaders have already said they'll reject the results of any such referendums.

Nobody expects a negotiated solution to end the war anytime soon including Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"They don't know how to stop this war right now, because both sides still hope that they can, or will, be able to win this war."

As Guterres visited Kyiv's ravaged suburbs on Thursday, he said that Ukraine's people are suffering the most.

"This horrendous scenario demonstrates something that is unfortunately always true,"

Wherever there is war, the highest price is paid by civilians, @antonioguterres said today after visiting towns around Kyiv impacted by the war. pic.twitter.com/aL2LHrDqT6

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Why Russia's rocket attack on Kyiv is seen as an insult to the U.N. - Houston Public Media

MogadishuSomalias first-ever all-women media unitlaunches today, providing a space where women media professionals can work with real decision-making authority and fully free from harassment.

The unit is staffed and managed entirely by women with full editorial independence and will produce stories for TV, radio and online media. One editor and five journalists will decide what issues to cover and how, with a mix of hard news and in-depth features that focus on the stories they think need telling.

Called Bilan, which means bright and clear in Somali, the unit is funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and will be hosted inside the Dalsan Media Groups offices in Mogadishu, with content distributed through Dalsans existing platforms and also pitched to international outlets worldwide.

For too long, Somali women journalists have been treated as second class citizens and Somali news has ignored the stories and voices of half the population; now we are in charge of the boardroom and the narrative, said Nasrin Mohamed Ibraham, who is taking up the post of Bilans Chief Editor.Some people might not like the fact that I play football and lead a media team. But nobody will ever change my mind.

As a women-only media house we are going to be able to bring taboo subjects into the open. Our sisters, mothers and grandmothers will talk to us about issues they never dare speak about with men, said Fathi Mohamed Ahmed,Bilan's Deputy Editor.

In interviews conducted by UNDP over the last six months, women journalists have reported being harassed not just on the streets but even inside their own offices. They are often denied training opportunities and promotions, and when a woman does reach a position of authority, she is often ignored while more junior figures get to call the shots. News coverage reflects this, with a lack of programming on issues that are seen as primarily affecting women, including childcare, domestic abuse and equal political representation.

We hope this will be a game changer for the Somali media scene, opening up new opportunities for women journalists and shining a light on new subjects that have been ignored, particularly those that are important for women, said Jocelyn Mason, UNDPs Resident Representative in Mogadishu.

UNDP will also provide a long-term programme of training and mentoring, bringing in some of the biggest names in Somali and international journalism, including the BBCs Lyse Doucet and Razia Iqbal, Channel 4s Lyndsey Hilsum and Al Jazeeras Mohammed Adow, as well as creating opportunities to engage with women journalists working in similarly challenging environments around the world to exchange ideas and offer mutual support.

I believe Bilan will be a game-changer for me and for women in Somalia. I hope it will give us the freedom and safety to do a different kind of journalism beyond the usual diet of politics and conflict, said Bilan's journalist Naciima Saed Salah.

Even though I am young, I am ready to leave my family in Baidoa and move to Mogadishu to work for Bilan. I want to highlight the problems women face in my region, especially in terms of political representation, said journalistShukri Mohamed Abdi.

To develop the next generation of Somali women journalists, the unit will offer six-month internship opportunities for the best final-year women journalism students at two universities in Mogadishu.

For more information and to arrange interviews:

Robert Few, Head of Communications, UNDP Somalia:robert.few@undp.org+252 61 41 25 046

Ilyas Ahmed, Communications Analyst, UNDP Somalia:ilyas.abukar@undp.org+ 252 61 55 43 476

To pitch stories or discuss media partnerships with Bilan:

Nasrin Mohamed Ibraham, Chief Editor of Bilan:nadarwww@gmail.com+252 61 54 34 281

Quotes, bios, photos and video from Bilans women journalists:

(Full bios, photos and videoare available here)

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Somalia's first all-women media team puts women journalists in control of the news agenda - United Nations Development Programme

While Spotifys Car Thing device isnt exactly pointless, it certainly has a narrow use case as we detailed in our recent review. Now, Spotify Car Thing is picking up its first major update with the ability to answer phone calls, control other apps, and more.

Rolling out now, this new update for Spotify Car Thing is adding four key new features, most notably with the ability to answer incoming phone calls on your device. Outside of any form of navigation, the ability to see incoming calls on Car Thing has been one of the biggest glaring flaws of the Spotify device. As pictured below, incoming calls will show the contacts name and phone number, as well as touch targets to answer or reject the call.

Meanwhile, Spotify is also allowing the device to gain control over other media apps, beyond just Spotify. If you use background play on a video from YouTube, or perhaps a podcast from Pocketcasts or Google Podcasts, Spotify Car Thing will now be able to control that playback on its Now Playing screen.

Rounding out the update, the device is adding an add to queue button on songs/albums on the touchscreen, as well as with a long-press of the dial and a new voice command too. Personalized playlists are also being added to Car Thing. The full changelog follows:

Spotify says the update is rolling out now to Car Things owners paired to iPhone, but the update wont be available until a later date for those paired to Android devices for some reason.

You can read our full review of Car Thing here.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

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Spotify Car Thing update adds the ability to control other media apps, answer phone calls - 9to5Google

SHANGHAI, April 14 (Reuters) - President Xi Jinping has said that China must stick to its strict "dynamic COVID clearance" policy while the global pandemic remains very serious, promising those enduring lockdowns that persistence will win out in the end.

China's zero-COVID policy has put millions of people into lockdown and has had a growing impact on the world's second-largest economy, in contrast with other countries that have thrown off restrictions even though the virus is still spreading.

"We must persist putting people above all, life above all ... We must adhere to scientific precision, to dynamic zero-COVID," Xi said during a visit to the southern island of Hainan on Wednesday, state media reported.

Register

"The current global pandemic is still very serious, and we cannot relax the prevention and control work. Persistence is victory."

The coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Wuhan's lockdown in early 2020 heralded a Chinese policy that significantly limited the spread of the virus for most of the next two years.

But new outbreaks of the fast-spreading Omicron variant began flaring early this year.

The epicentre of China's battle with COVID is now the financial hub of Shanghai where most of its 25 million residents are under lockdown.

Shanghai authorities said on Thursday the daily tally of new asymptomatic cases had risen again, to 25,146 compared with 25,141 a day earlier. Symptomatic cases rose to 2,573 from 1,189.

But raising hopes for a shift in policy, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a guide on home quarantining on its social media page on Wednesday.

Under China's tough rules, even people with asymptomatic or very mild cases must go into quarantine at centralised facilities, where many people have complained about poor conditions.

The CDC's guide on quarantine at home - in a well-ventilated room stocked with masks, sanitizer and other gear - raised hopes that the rule for quarantine at state facilities might be relaxed.

But when asked by a social media user in an online comment about who might be eligible for home quarantine, the CDC referred to the old rules.

Authorities in Shanghai also gave no hint of any change in strategy at a Thursday briefing.

An official said that cases in the city continued to rise despite the lockdown in part because of a backlog with test results and also because transmission between family members was still going on.

Register

Reporting by David Kirton;Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China's Xi says sticking to tough COVID curbs will bring victory - Reuters

Myria Georgiou, LSE, and Marek Troszyski, Collegium Civitas, Warsaw recently travelled across the routes followed by many Ukrainian refugees: from the Poland-Ukraine borders to Polish cities and towns. Here, they recount their observations and findings about the nature of the border in wartime.

Conducting research at a wartime border is anything but ordinary. Yet, after an intense week of travel and engagement with its Polish and Ukrainian actors, the border reveals itself as somehow ordinary, peculiarly expansive, and fundamentally contradictory. The border, we repeatedly recorded in our encounters with volunteers, activists, refugees and authorities, is much more than a line separating the two countries. Instead, it expands across the pathways of refugees journeys where we observed the many contradictory responses to their flight.

Following the routes that many refugees take once they escape immediate danger, we travelled from the Ukrainian border town of Yavoriv () through the Polish crossing points of Medyka and Budomierz, and into the border city of Przemyl and regional capital of Lublin. We then followed the pathways that bring so many into Warsaws train stations, and eventually peripheral Polish towns and villages, such as those of Wieliszew. Across these and many other Polish territories, more than two million refugees from Ukraine have now found, at least temporarily, shelter. As we followed the refugee routes into European territories, what became apparent is that in many ways the border is shaped through media representations and social media connectivities.

In our research, we recorded at least three contradictory and competing dimensions of the borders communicative architecture: control and exceptionalism, philanthropy and post-humanitarianism, but also, solidarity and resistance.

Control and exceptionalism: In these conditions of humanitarian emergency, we came across the most paradoxical condition of the national borders: on the one hand, we saw them becoming porous with refugees and humanitarians crossing between Ukraine and Poland all the time, and on the other, we experienced these borders as digitally rigid systems of control and exceptionalism. Specifically, when we crossed between the two countries as part of a humanitarian mission, we were reminded that, crisis or not, the border is now a digital border of inflexible passport checks and use of transnational databases that decide who can cross and who cant. Our wait at the check-points was long but incomparable to humanitarian medics experience: while they cross from Poland into Ukraine to take care of the sick and the injured on a daily basis, the medical convoys still have to spend many hours thorough long passport and vehicle controls. Every day. Inflexible border governance has become most ordinary across the west, especially as it is increasingly digitally controlled through drones, thermal cameras, databases. Ordinary even at war.

The control that states impose on the territorial border is nothing new, but there is a particularity in this case that brings racial exceptionalism and conditional hospitality together. In fact, the most striking element of the wartime border we witnessed in Poland was its exceptionalism. While the Polish government has been welcoming Ukrainian refugees, it has continued to use its military and information power to push back the victims of others wars, such as those in Syria and Afghanistan, who remain trapped at the Belarus-Polish border. From imposing no-go zones around that other border so that media and activists have no access to information, all the way to aggressive campaigns on state media that present those seeking refuge there as merely male, non-white, and threatening migrants, the Polish government fundamentally divides those seeking refuge into good and bad migrants. Yet, even this state of exceptionalism is not simple. Even good migrants are subjected to the impossible nationalist doctrine of the border (as, for example, reflected in the Polish Minister of Educations announcement that Ukrainian children in the countrys schools will need to write their school exams in Polish, as the government has no intension to introduce privileges).

Philanthropy and post-humanitarianism: Along, and partly against, the structures of state control, we observed the unimaginable scale and extent of humanitarian support for those arriving in Poland: a scale and level of fast response which is hard to not admire. After all, the country received more than two million refugees within four weeks. No formal structures of reception were in place for weeks and citizens were acting as fist response to incredible levels of need. In many cases they still do. Even now, numerous volunteer-organised warehouses across villages, towns and cities which we visited receive vast humanitarian supplies of all kinds, which are then effectively distributed to refugees in Poland or sent to those in need in Ukraine. Again and again, volunteers told us how they set up social media accounts or used their personal ones to organise the collection and distribution of such provisions, social media which have brought together local volunteers but also supporters from across the world. Many of them still cannot believe the local and global level of response to those simple and amateur social media campaigns.

While the level of effective and digitally mediated volunteerism is incredible, the values and experiences behind it vary enormously. Some of the volunteers we met told us how their preconceptions for the previously suspicious neighbours have been replaced by solidarity towards those in need. Others, such as the members of an impressive border village humanitarian campaign, told us how important it is to support the neighbouring country suffering from the Russian invasion. Yet, Ukrainians are still not to be trusted, they also told us, adding that they only trust their Polish compatriots to deliver humanitarian help across the border. Some others, among those with the best of intentions, saw Ukrainians as refugees like no other (i.e., victims of Russian aggression; neighbours; white) who deserve hospitality. Many refused to talk about the future challenges of refugee arrivals. For most, questions of long-term settlement and integration were quickly dismissed. For them, this is a crisis of the here and now.

Solidarity and resistance: Alongside acts of philanthropism and exceptional benevolence, we also witnessed activism of solidarity, which has stubbornly defied the border regimes attempts to divide good and bad migrants. Such is the case of the grassroots Homo Faber in Lublin that uses its social media to demand long-term strategies of welcome and resettlement, including refugee housing, and that of Grupa Granica that campaigns for indiscriminatory welcome of all refugees, no matter where they come from. And we witnessed the incredible activism of the local and international networks of solidarity that converge in the Folkowisko Embassy of Freedom. This is an impressive grassroots initiative at the border town of Cieszanw, which brings together doctors, activists, volunteers from across the world; day in day out, they generate from the ground-up actions that vary from book collections for Ukrainian refugee kids (Books not Bombs) to humanitarian and medical support delivered to cities across Ukraine.

The most important actors of the border, of course, are refugees themselves. Over the last few weeks, Ukrainian refugees have been appearing on our screens as victims of violence and uprooting. As often is the case with media representations of war, refugees appear as silent victims, or people who only speak of their suffering. During our research, we met many of those who, while having experienced trauma and violent uprooting, resisted being defined either through silent suffering, or through the wests benevolent philanthropism. Among those we met, two women told us that they were eager to get a job, knowing perhaps how conditional and ephemeral state support is. A young man showed us his Instagram profile that looked like any other teenagers social media profile, reminding us how he, like so many other young people, sought ordinariness under conditions of precarity and uprooting. At least in appearance.

These are only some of our many observations across the ever-expanding border. Listening to the people who are living the war and its consequences, and observing practices of control but also of struggle, we were again and again reminded of how the stories we tell of refugees and of humanitarianism often simplify the agency and the politics of the border. The border that we saw in its visible and invisible structures and expressions is a site of violence, of liminality, but also of resistance and agency.

Note: This research was conducted within the project Migrants. Analysis of media discourse on migrants in Poland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Albania and the Czech Republic (MAD), financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange as part of the International Academic Partnerships programme (no. PPI / APM / 2018/1/00019 / DEC / 1).

This article givesthe views of the authors and does not represent the position of theMedia@LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Photography credit: Marek Troszyski

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The communicative architecture of the wartime border: Control, hope and solidarity - London School of Economics