World News: 28 April 2023

Katy Perry loses trademark battle with Katie Perry
US pop sensation Katy Perry has lost a long-running legal battle after her company was found to have infringed the trademark of a Sydney-based designer.
Sydney woman Katie Jane Taylor, a self-described “Aussie battler”, sued the I Kissed A Girl singer in the Federal Court over the sale of clothes — including t-shirts and pyjamas — in Australia, claiming trademark infringement.

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Russia unleashes flurry of airstrikes on Ukraine
Russia fired more than twenty cruise missiles and two drones at cities across Ukraine. In Uman, a city 215 km south of Kyiv, two rockets hit a block of flats, killing at least 10 and wounding 17 others. Air raid sirens rang out around the capital in the first attack against the city in nearly two months, with Ukraine’s air force shooting down 21 out of 23 rockets and two attack drones.

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Sudan turmoil: Turkish evacuation plane shot at while landing outside Khartoum
The aircraft was landing at Wadi Seyidna airport north of Khartoum as part of efforts to evacuate Turkish citizens from the war-torn country. Turkey’s defence ministry said light weapons were fired at its C-130 evacuation plane. The Sudanese army earlier said that a member of the crew was wounded in the incident and fuel supplies were damaged. But the Turkish defence ministry later said no-one was harmed.

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Sri Lanka crisis: Central bank lays out extent of economic problems
The bank expects the economy to return to growth next year. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka forecasts that the economy will shrink by 2 percent this year but expand by 3.3 percent in 2024.
The prediction is more optimistic than the IMF, which forecasts a contraction in 2023 of around 3 percent and growth of 1.5 percent next year. The central bank’s report outlined how headline inflation reached almost 70 percent in September as fresh fruit, eggs and wheat prices more than doubled.

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BBC chief quits amid furor over role in Boris Johnson loan
The publicly funded national broadcaster has been under political pressure after it was revealed that Richard Sharp helped arrange the line of credit weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government’s recommendation.
The 800,000 pound ($1 million) line of credit came from wealthy Canadian businessman Sam Blyth, a distant cousin of Johnson's. It was facilitated by Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Conservative Party donor, who arranged a meeting between Blyth and the U.K.'s top civil servant to discuss Blyth's offer of financial help.

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French energy union threatens to cut power during Cannes Film Festival
As part of ongoing protests over president Emmanuel Macron’s hugely unpopular pension reforms, the Fédération National des Mines et de l’Enérgie has said it plans to pull the plug on several major events set to take place in France next month.
Several unions have pledged to keep fighting the pension reforms, which would see the retirement age in France increase by two years, to 64 by 2030, and the period workers need to make social security contributions to increase from 42 to 43 years by 2027 in order to draw a full state pension.

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