March 21, 2022

*) Ukraine says no question of surrendering city of Mariupol Kiev has rejected a Russian ultimatum to surrender the besieged southern city of Mariupol. Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk dismissed the early morning deadline, saying Moscow should instead allow hundreds of thousands of trapped Mariupol residents to escape. "We can't talk about surrendering weapons," Vereshchuk said, "we have already informed the Russian side about it." The announcement followed Russia’s demand for Ukrainian forces to lay down their arms in the besieged city. *) No agreement reached to evacuate Mariupol civilians Staying in Ukraine, an agreement has been reached on creating eight humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from besieged Ukrainian towns and cities. However, the city of Mariupol was not among them, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. Vereshchuk said efforts to reach Mariupol with humanitarian supplies continued to fail. *) US to declare Rohingya repression in Myanmar a ‘genocide’ Washington is set to declare that Myanmar’s years-long repression of the Rohingya Muslim population is a genocide. The designation does not in and of itself portend drastic new measures against Myanmar’s military-led government. But it could lead to additional international pressure on the government. More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a clearance operation. *) Pakistan lawmakers to vote on motion to oust PM Imran Khan next week Pakistan's parliament will convene next week to take up a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan. The lower house speaker's office said that the vote will take place on March 25. An alliance of opposition parties filed the motion against Khan this month, saying he had lost his parliamentary majority after over a dozen defections from his party, raising the risk of political turmoil. And, finally… *) Motor racing Leclerc wi