Today we'll be discussing some of the biggest stories including the increase in the use of executions and turkey saying the Greek prime minister doesn't exist as well as discussing a potential windfall tax in the UK, but first Russia tries to encircle Ukrainians in the east.

Exactly three months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have launched an assault aiming to encircle Ukrainian troops in the twin cities of Lysychansk and Severo Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. The governor of Luhansk said that the enemy has focused its efforts on carrying out an offensive in order to encircle the cities. The battle could prove crucial, as the twin cities are among the last parts of the Luhansk region still held by Ukrainian forces. The UK ministry of defense says there has been strong Ukrainian resistance from well-dug in defensive positions through Russia, though Russia has achieved some localized successes.

Current situation in Ukraine and what russia tries to do, liveuamap

News of a feud between Turkey and Greece may not come as a surprise to many people, but the latest rift has seen Turkish president Erdoğan declare that Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis quote no longer exists for him adding that he will cancel a planned summit and will never agree to have a meeting with the Greek leader. Erdoğan's comments were made in the wake of a visit to the United States by the Greek prime minister, who delivered a speech to congress during which he referred to the Turkish insurrection of Greek airspace and suggested that the US should no longer provide turkey with f-16 fighter jets. Erdoğan said this amounted to lobbying U.S. officials against turkey and violated an agreement not to involve third countries into the greco-turkish disputes. Greece responded by saying it would not get into a confrontation of statements.

Staying in Europe yesterday the European commission proposed keeping the EU's fiscal rules on the back burner for another year until the end of 2023. Under the stability and growth pact, EU member states have to ordinarily keep government deficits limited to 3 percent of GDP and government debt to 60 percent. During the pandemic that obviously wasn't possible, countries were forced to spend billions to prop up their economy, hence the rules were suspended. The question being when is it right to start reinforcing those rules the EU believes, not yet. Currently, 17 percent of countries are in breach of the three percent rule and five are in breach of the 60 percent rule. While the extension to the polls wasn't that unexpected not everyone's happy, Germany's finance minister urged countries not to use the continued suspension as an excuse for loose spending.

Amnesty International have released their annual report on the death penalty and according to their data the global use of the death penalty increased 20 percent in 2021 compared to the previous year. A minimum of 579 executions are known to have been carried out across 18 countries in 2021. Though amnesty notes they believe that significantly more people were put to death in countries including China, North Korea and Vietnam where state secrecy laws make it impossible to make an accurate estimate. The rise in executions was driven largely by Iran which executed at least 314 people, up from 246 in 2020 and Saudi Arabia which more than doubled its executions to 65. However, amnesty noted an underlying long-term trend towards reduced use of capital punishment. 2021's death toll was the second lowest after 2020 recorded since at least 2010.

Yesterday, Carl Racine, attorney general for the District of Columbia, sued Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder. Racine alleges that Zuckerberg directly participated in policies at Facebook that allowed Cambridge Analytica to compile data on US voters without their knowledge or consent. Importantly, Racine's suit is not against Facebook or even meta as a corporate entity, but against Zuckerberg himself. Under DC's consumer protection procedures act, company officials can be held personally liable for corporate wrongs if they knew about them at the time. The suit highlights that since 2012 Zuckerberg has been chairman of the board at Facebook and has a controlling stake in it. Facebook itself was fined 5 billion dollars by the FTC for violating consumers privacy following revelations about Cambridge Analytica's use of the platform. Meta declined to comment following the news.