Afirm from central Turkey it turns out has been producing the ballistic protective equipment used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team since Russia launched its military campaign.

The fact emerged after Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank visited the Garanti Kompozit factory in Yozgat's organized industrial zone.

During his meeting with factory officials, Varank was told that the company had manufactured and sent helmets and vests for Zelenskyy and his team after receiving a special request in the first days of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

“They asked for 20 helmets and vests for Mr. Zelenskyy and his team, so we sent them, we were happy to see them on TV,” said Garanti Kompozit Manager Vedat Tüzer.

The company says it uses high-tech materials to produce various protective ballistic composite products, performance-enhancing clothing and equipment for military, professional and civilian use.

Varank highlighted that protective equipment has particularly come to the fore due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“In addition to the production of vital defense equipment that protects our security forces, the export of these products is very important for our country to show the point it has achieved in production,” Varank said.

“I am very pleased to have seen this point where the private sector has come in, especially in the defense industry. A lot of military equipment is manufactured in Yozgat and shipped to more than 50 countries of the world.”

At the same time, Tüzer said the company has been supplying nearly 80% of the ballistic helmets in Turkey since 2013.

Until 2013, these were usually supplied from U.S. or Israel-partnered foreign companies, with Tüzer saying purchases were made at prices around $1,900.

“We finished these. We supply our products both to Turkey and abroad.”/aa

At least 1,900 children under the age of 5 have died from malnutrition in Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region in the past year, according to a study conducted by regional health officials and seen by The Associated Press.

The deaths were recorded at health facilities across Tigray between June last year and April 1. Western Tigray, which is under the control of forces from the neighboring Amhara region, was not included in the survey.

A doctor involved in the study said the true number of child deaths from malnutrition is likely higher as most families cannot bring their children to health centers because of transportation challenges. Most hunger deaths go unrecorded, he said.

"Because we cannot access most areas, we do not know what is happening on the community level," said the doctor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. "These are simply the deaths we have managed to record in health facilities."

Since June, Tigray has been cut off from the rest of Ethiopia, when fighters from the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or TPLF, recaptured most of the region as federal forces withdrew.

Banking services, phone lines and road links are all down in the region, a situation the United Nations has said amounts to a "de facto blockade."

Ethiopian authorities insist there is no deliberate effort to target Tigrayan civilians. They have urged Tigrayan fighters to surrender.

According to U.N. figures, more than 90% of Tigray's 5.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 115,000 severely malnourished children.

Civil servants have not been paid in months. Many have run out of cash to buy food and other goods because banking services have been shut down. The children of families living in urban areas are especially at risk of malnutrition, as their parents don't have farmland to grow food, Tigrayan health officials say.

Around 700,000 people in Tigray are in the grip of "famine-like conditions" due to the obstruction of aid, U.S. officials estimate.

Ethiopia's federal government unilaterally declared a surprise "humanitarian truce" on March 24, an announcement it said would allow aid to flow into Tigray. But nearly one month later, only four convoys of around 80 food trucks entered the region.

"Literally nothing has changed," said an aid worker who recently visited Tigray. "We are just seeing a handful of trucks; these trucks are better than nothing but they are not going to feed the millions of people who need aid (in Tigray)."

An estimated 2,000 trucks of food must enter Tigray every week to meet the region's needs, a U.N. official said at a meeting in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, on Wednesday, according to the aid worker who attended. That's a sharp increase from the previous assessment of 600 a week. The aid worker also spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety concerns.

According to U.N. figures, just 3% of the vegetable seeds and 10% of the fertilizer required for the current planting season have reached Tigray, raising fears of a poor harvest that would deepen the region's hunger crisis.

Some health officials in Tigray say they simply don't have enough supplies to treat many patients they encounter. Some, who recently spoke to AP, said shortages are so dire that some patients' relatives must personally buy medicines from private pharmacies at inflated prices and bring them to the hospital before their family members can be treated.

According to estimates by international aid groups, tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war.

But there is little hope for peace talks as Ethiopian authorities have outlawed the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, effectively making its leaders fugitives on the run./AP

Netflix Inc. shares lost over a third of their value on Wednesday after the company reported its first drop in subscribers in a decade, leaving Wall Street questioning its growth in the face of fierce competition and post-pandemic viewer fatigue.

The streaming pioneer's shares fell 37% to $220.40 and were headed for their worst day in nearly 18 years if the losses hold. More than a dozen analysts rushed to temper their views on a stock that has been a red-hot market performer in the past few years.

"Netflix is a poster child for what happens to growth companies when they lose their growth," said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners in Pittsburgh.

"People buy growth companies because they think their cash flow is going to grow so they're paying ahead for anticipating that. When a stock like this tumbles, people looking for growth back away quickly."

Brokerage J.P. Morgan made the most aggressive move by halving its price target to $305 – well below the stock's median Wall Street target of $400.

"Near-term visibility is limited ... and there's not much to get excited about over the next few months beyond the new, much lower stock price," J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said.

Anmuth also slashed his estimate for 2022 net subscriber additions by half to 8 million.

The share slump could erase the stock's gain over the past two years, when its business thrived as new customers joined its platform to ride out the lockdowns.

In an effort to calm nerves, company executives told analysts on Tuesday they were looking to offer an advertisement-based tier over the next year or two and promised a crackdown on password sharing – a long-running problem for the service.

"We've got the full kitchen sink ... That might not be enough," said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

Netflix's rivals already have ad-driven versions or are considering one – HBO Max offers an ad-supported subscription, while Disney+ recently said it would launch an ad-based tier.

"We're left with a business in transition. Subscribers have slowed and we struggle to see a return to a pre-COVID net add cadence," Piper Sandler analyst Thomas Champion said in a note.

Demand for fresh and engaging content is also increasing, forcing Netflix and others to think about bigger budgets for production even as costs increase in an inflationary environment.

Netflix's bigger problem was consumers canceling their subscription due to inflation and post-pandemic user fatigue than its profitability or business model, said Peter Garnry, head of the equity strategy at Saxo Bank.

For the second quarter, Netflix has lined up new seasons of popular shows "Ozark," "Stranger Things" and "Grace and Frankie."

Needham, however, took a divergent view. The brokerage upgraded its rating on the stock to "hold" from "underperform," encouraged by the company's plans to add a low-priced advertising tier./Reuters

The PKK terrorist group’s Syrian offshoot, the U.S.-backed YPG, raided and burnt an office of the Syrian Kurdish National Council (ENKS), an opposition Kurdish group in Syria’s Hassakeh province on Wednesday.

In a statement, the ENKS said a YPG/PKK-linked group attacked the office of Syria’s Kurdistan Democrat Party (KDP-S), an affiliated political party, in al-Darbasiyah. After raiding the office, the terrorists threw Molotov cocktails to set it on fire, the statement said.

Neighbors nearby extinguished the fire and material damage has been reported in the office.

The YPG/PKK had attacked the ENKS office in al-Darbasiyah in December 2021 and its two offices and a media office in Qamishli on Sept. 28, 2021.

The YPG has long oppressed ENKS members, imprisoning them, shutting down offices and banning their political activities. Several Kurdish dissidents are still in prison due to their anti-YPG remarks.

The ENKS is a coalition of 10 Syrian Kurdish parties and is known to oppose the YPG after the group became more dominant in northern Syria. ENKS is also a part of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), a representative body of the Syrian opposition in Geneva talks since 2015.

The YPG has been kidnapping Kurdish politicians and important figures, who criticized them for a number of reasons. In addition, they collect ransom from local businesses. The YPG killed hundreds of political dissidents and its own members who they suspected to have lost belief in the organization./DS

Several websites came under a cyberattack by an Iraqi hacker group, local media reported Wednesday.

The ‘Israeli’ daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that they included one belonging to Israel’s Aviation Authority, Channel 9’s website and the website of the ‘Israeli’ Public Broadcasting Corporation (KAN).

The Aviation Authority’s website was out of service at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) as a result of the attack but its operating systems were not attacked.

The cyberattack was allegedly carried out by an Iraqi Shiite group that supports Iran dubbed the ALtahrea Team.

It was allegedly carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Iran's top military commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike on Jan. 3, 2020./aa

Germany will stop its oil imports from Russia by the end of the year, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced Wednesday after talks with her Baltic counterparts.

Baerbock made clear that Germany will completely phase out Russian energy imports.

"Phasing out coal by the end of the summer. We'll halve oil by the summer and zero it out by the end of the year," she said.

It will be followed by the exit from Russian gas supplies as part of a common European timetable, the minister added.

Baerbock strongly criticized the energy policy toward Russia under then German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Holding on to the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which has long been criticized by Central and Eastern Europeans, was fatal, according to Baerbock.

"Instead of Nord Stream, there could have been, and actually should have been, a Baltic Stream based on clean energy," she said.

"These were clear mistakes" which the new German government corrected, Baerbock said.

Merkel had long described Nord Stream 2 as a private sector project. After the change of government, her successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, did not initially distance himself from the project either.

With the start of the Russian war on Ukraine, however, Germany has put the certification of the pipeline on hold./aa

The growth outlook for the US has been clouded by the uncertainty created by recent geopolitical developments and rising prices, according to the Federal Reserve's Beige Book released on Wednesday.

Economic activity in the US has expanded at a moderate pace since mid-February, said the report prepared by responses of the Federal Reserve Bank's 12 districts.

"Inflationary pressures remained strong since the last report, with firms continuing to pass swiftly rising input costs through to customers," the report said.

Inflationary pressures are expected to continue over the coming months, it added.

"In multiple districts, contacts reported spikes in prices for energy, metals, and agricultural commodities following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and several noted that COVID-19 lockdowns in China had worsened supply chain disruptions," read the report.

It underlined that employment rose moderately as demand for workers continued to be strong across most districts and industry sectors./aa

The US Treasury Department designated a Russian bank, an oligarch and a virtual currency mining company on Wednesday for allegedly evading sanctions imposed by Washington and its allies for the war in Ukraine.

Commercial bank Transkapitalbank, a global network led by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, and virtual currency mining company, Bitriver, were singled out as part of the designations by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

"Treasury can and will target those who evade, attempt to evade, or aid the evasion of U.S. sanctions against Russia, as they are helping support Putin’s brutal war of choice," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson in a statement.

"The United States will work to ensure that the sanctions we have imposed, in close coordination with our international partners, degrade the Kremlin’s ability to project power and fund its invasion," he added.

The Russian war on Ukraine prompted the US and its allies in the West to impose sweeping sanctions on Moscow.

At least 2,224 civilians have been killed and 2,897 injured in Ukraine in the war that started Feb. 24, according to UN estimates, with the true figure believed to be much higher.

More than 5 million Ukrainians have fled to other countries, with over 7 million more internally displaced, said the UN refugee agency./aa

The European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee approved on Wednesday a proposal requiring the same type of chargers for all portable electronic devices marketed in the EU.

The draft would make sure that consumers do not have to buy “a new charger and cable every time they purchase a new device and can use one charger for all of their small and medium-sized electronic gadgets,” the European Parliament wrote in a press statement.

Under the new rules, the USB-C charger would become the standard equipment for all smartphones, tablets, cameras, headphones, portable speakers, and handheld videogame consoles.

The law would imply a major change for the tech giant Apple which has insisted on its own charging port for iPhones despite the EU’s pressure.

“With half a billion chargers for portable devices shipped in Europe each year, generating 11,000 to 13,000 tons of e-waste, a single charger for mobile phones and other small and medium electronic devices would benefit everyone,” Maltese EU lawmaker Alex Agius Saliba, the rapporteur of the file, said.

The decision follows up on the legislative proposal presented by the European Commission last September and sets the European Parliament’s position that EU lawmakers will represent during the negotiations with EU member states.

The talks will start after the European Parliament’s plenary session officially adopts the position in May.

If the law is adopted, the new rules are expected to enter into force by 2026.

According to the European Commission’s calculations, the change would save €250 million ($271 million) for European consumers every year as they will not be obliged to buy unnecessary equipment, and the changes would also contribute to reducing e-waste.

In 2020, over 420 million mobile phones and other electronic portable devices were sold in the bloc./aa