The French Finance and Economy Ministry in Paris was partially evacuated briefly on Thursday following a false bomb alert, a police official said, adding that staff are now returning to work.

The alert and evacuation took place while French President Emmanuel Macron was presenting his election program to French and international reporters in another part of Paris.

"A bomb alert for the finance ministry was received and a partial evacuation ordered. Investigations have shown that it was a false alert and staff are now returning to work," a police official said.

BFM television reported that around 20 people had been evacuated./ REUTERS 

An Ecuadoran toad breaks its silence after 100 years –and does not croak but tweet!

Ecuadoran biologist Jorge Brito was trekking through the forest when he heard what he thought was the chirp of a cricket. What he found changed a century of scientific belief.

"At first I thought it was some sort of cricket out there vocalizing, but then I paid attention," said Brito, from Ecuador's national biodiversity institute.

It was, in fact, a type of brown toad with rough skin called Rhinella festae that has a prominent nose and had been considered mute since it was first discovered 100 years ago.

"While it did not inflate its vocal sack, you could see a small flicker" on its chin, said Brito. He caught it and took it to a laboratory to study with his colleague Diego Batallas. "The first time I heard it, I said: Wow, that's not the sound of a toad, it's like a little bird," Batalla told Agence French-Presse (AFP).

The toad, which measures between 45 and 68 centimeters (18 to 27 inches) in length, lives in the mountainous Ecuadoran regions of Cutucu and Condor, extending over the border into the Amazonian region of Peru.

The discovery was first reported in February in Neotropical Biodiversity magazine, where Brito and Batallas described the sound made by the toad.

"It is the first time this unique song of the Rhinella festae has been recorded and it's surprising because it shouldn't sing," Batallas told AFP.

The toad does not have the vocal sack that allows most amphibians to amplify their calls so that they can be heard up to one kilometer away. "The fact that this species can sing (without the vocal sack) makes it unique," added Batallas, who used to sing in a choir.

Batallas said that the faint sound emitted by the Rhinella festae demonstrates that some species of amphibians could have evolved in such a way, perhaps as an anti-predator measure, as to "not need their song to be heard very far away."

In the case of the Rhinella festae, it emits a sound like a greeting, whereas other species of toad croak as part of a mating ritual or as a warning.

"It's a very subtle sound and very difficult to hear in nature."

Ecuador has registered 658 different species of amphibians, of which 623 are toads or frogs and almost 60% of those are at risk or in danger of disappearing.

Only Brazil and Colombia have more species of amphibians than Ecuador./AFP

NASA's next-generation moon rocket is starting out its journey from assembly to launch as it sets out on a highly anticipated, slow-motion ride to its launch pad in Florida ahead of the final round of tests that will determine how soon the spacecraft can fly.

Rollout of the towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top marks a key milestone in U.S. plans for renewed lunar exploration after years of setbacks, and the public's first glimpse of a space vehicle more than a decade in development.

The process of moving the 5.75-million-ton, 32-story-tall SLS-Orion spacecraft out of its Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral was scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. EDT (9 p.m. GMT), weather permitting.

The megarocket – standing taller than the Statue of Liberty – will be slowly trundled to Launch Pad 39B on a giant crawler-transporter, a 6.5-kilometer (4-mile) journey expected to take about 11 hours. The spectacle will be carried live on NASA Television and the space agency's website.

Forecasts on Wednesday called for favorable conditions along Florida's Atlantic coast.

The rollout, paving the way for NASA's uncrewed Artemis I mission around the moon and back, was delayed last month by a series of technical hurdles the space agency said it has since resolved as teams readied the rocket for the launch pad.

"We are in very good shape and ready to proceed with this roll on Thursday," Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director, said earlier in the week as she briefed reporters on NASA's progress.

Once secured at the pad, the SLS-Orion ship is to be prepared for a critical pre-flight test called a "wet dress rehearsal," which will begin on April 3 and take about two days to complete.

Engineers plan to fully load the SLS core fuel tanks with super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellant and conduct a simulated launch countdown – stopping seconds before the rocket's four R-25 engines would ignite – in a top-to-bottom evaluation of the entire system.

From Apollo to Artemis

The outcome will determine when NASA will attempt its first launch of the rocket and capsule combination, a mission designated Artemis I. The SLS-Orion constitutes the backbone of the Artemis program, aimed at returning astronauts to the moon and establishing a long-term lunar colony as a precursor to eventual human exploration of Mars.

The U.S. Apollo program sent six manned missions to the moon from 1969 to 1972, the only crewed spaceflights yet to reach the lunar surface. Artemis, named for the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, seeks to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon, among others.

But NASA has several steps to take before it gets there, starting with a successful Artemis I flight, planned as an uncrewed journey 64,374 kilometers (40,000 miles) beyond the moon and back. NASA has said it was reviewing potential launch windows in April and May, but the timeline could slip depending on the results of the dress rehearsal.

Eight or nine days after those tests are completed and the propellant is drained from the rocket, the ship will be rolled back to the assembly building to await the setting of a launch date.

NASA announced in November that it would aim to achieve its first human lunar landing of Artemis as early as 2025, preceded at some unspecified date by a crewed Artemis flight around the moon and back.

Both of those missions, and others to follow, will be flown to space by the SLS, which surpasses the Apollo-era Saturn V as the world's largest, most powerful launch vehicle, and the first exploration-class rocket built by NASA for human spaceflight since Saturn V./REUTERS

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has delayed Europe's plan to search for signs of life on Mars, with the European Space Agency announcing Thursday that it will no longer be attempting to send its first rover to the red planet this year.

If cooperation on the mission cannot be resumed with Roscosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, then it's likely to be 2026 or 2028 before the ExoMars rover is blasted off toward Mars, the agency added.

Previous plans to launch the probe with Russia this September are now “practically impossible but also politically impossible," said the agency's director, Dr. Josef Aschbacher.

“This year, the launch is gone."

The agency had previously said that the mission was “very unlikely" because of Russia's war against Ukraine. The decision to suspend cooperation with Roscosmos was taken by ESA’s ruling council, at a meeting this week in Paris.

“We deeply deplore the human casualties and tragic consequences of the aggression towards Ukraine,” an ESA statement said. “While recognizing the impact on scientific exploration of space, ESA is fully aligned with the sanctions imposed on Russia by its member states.”

Because of their respective orbits around the sun, Mars is only readily reachable from Earth every two years. The earliest next launch window would be 2024. But if sanctions on Russia haven't been lifted by then, enabling cooperation with Roscosmos to resume, then that window could be missed, too.

Unpicking Russia's imprints on the rover mission and replacing Russian components with parts from elsewhere will take time. The rover itself, named Rosalind Franklin and equipped with a drill, is European but has some Russian components.

Its landing platform, Kazachok, is Russian, but has some European instruments, too.

The rover is intended to be the first to search for signs of life at depths up to 2 meters (6 feet) below the Martian surface, where they could be well preserved, if they exist.

The ExoMars mission has already been pushed back from 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic and the need for more tests on the spacecraft.

The mission was to have blasted off on a Russian Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan in September, and had been scheduled to land on the red planet some nine months later.

Already on Mars are NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed in February 2021, and China’s first Mars rover, Zhurong, named after the Chinese god of fire./AP

Another American has died as a result of Russia's war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday.

Blinken did not identify the victim, nor did he provide any circumstances that led to the death. The development comes after journalist Brent Renaud was killed on Sunday. At least two other American journalists have been injured in the war-torn country.

Local authorities in the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv said in a Facebook post that an American citizen was killed during Russia's "heavy artillery attack on unarmed civilian residents of the city."

Russia began its war against Ukraine on Feb. 24. It has drawn international condemnation, led to sweeping financial sanctions and export controls on Moscow, and spurred an exodus of global firms from Russia.

At least 780 civilians have been killed and 1,252 injured in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, according to the United Nations, which emphasizes that the true number is likely much higher.

More than 3.2 million people have also fled to neighboring countries, according to U.N. figures./aa

Around 30,000 people have fled Mariupol amid the continued Russian attack on the key Ukrainian port city, local authorities announced Thursday, adding that they were "clarifying information on victims" of the shelling of a theater sheltering civilians a day prior.

Mariupol's city hall said on Telegram that "around 30,000 people have left on their transport," adding that 80% of residential housing had been "destroyed." It said it was "clarifying information on victims" of the theater shelling.

On Wednesday, Ukraine accused Russia of bombing a theater in Mariupol where hundreds were taking shelter, despite a sign saying "DETI" – or children in Russian – etched out in the ground on either side of the building.

The city hall said on Thursday that a swimming pool also sheltering civilians – "mostly women, children and the elderly" – had also been shelled.

It said that "an average of 50 to 100 air bombs are dropped on the city per day."

Officials described the situation as "critical," estimating that around 350,000 residents are hiding in shelters and basements in the city.

They added that the Ukrainian army is "continuing to heroically hold the defence of Mariupol and repel enemy attacks" and that troops are fighting "for every street."

The strategic port city on the Azov Sea has been under heavy Russian shelling for days and cut off from food and other vital supplies.

It is only possible to leave the city by private car, with authorities saying that around 6,500 cars left the city in the last two days.

Many struggle to get out amid a communications blackout.

Ukraine says more than 2,000 people have died in Mariupol so far./FP

Approximately 130 survivors were reportedly found alive and rescued on Thursday from a theater bombed by Russia in Ukraine's besieged city of Mariupol.

More than 1,000 civilians had been sheltering in the Mariupol theater struck on Wednesday, according to Mayor Vadim Boychenko.

"People are coming out alive!" Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Taruta wrote on Facebook on Thursday, after rubble began being cleared.

Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other for the incident, with the Ukrainian side saying it was a deliberate Russian bombing, and Russia accusing the Ukrainian nationalist Azov regiment of the attack.

Conditions are dire in Mariupol, which is blocked on all sides by Russian forces, preventing food, water or medicines from reaching the local population.

Private cars are now being allowed out of the port city, Boychenko said earlier on Thursday, after some 6,500 cars had left in the last two days while the city was under fire.

According to Kyiv, more than 6,000 residents of Mariupol had left the city in 24 hours, including 2,000 children.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, meanwhile, local authorities reported that dozens more had died in Russian attacks.

"In the last 24 hours alone, 53 bodies of our citizens murdered by the Russian aggressor have arrived at the city's morgues," the head of the military administration, Vyacheslav Chaus, wrote on Telegram.

He said that further negotiations were planned on a possible escape corridor.

In the capital, at least one person was killed and three injured when debris from an intercepted missile hit a high-rise building in the east of the city overnight, local authorities said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented the deaths of at least 780 civilians in Ukraine since Russian troops invaded three weeks ago, it announced, with 58 children and young people among the victims.

The office had also verified information about 1,252 wounded people. Actual casualty numbers are thought to be far higher.

Across Ukraine, an overall nine humanitarian corridors were intended to be set up on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, but previous planned evacuation attempts have repeatedly failed.

Negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow were continuing online, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

"Our delegation is making great efforts and showing far more willingness than our Ukrainian counterparts," he added, arguing that Russia's conditions were "extremely clear."

He rejected media reports on the possibility of direct talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that these were "not correct."

The Financial Times daily reported Wednesday that a 15-point plan was being drafted, topped with Moscow's demand for Ukrainian neutrality and demilitarization, as well as Kyiv's insistence that Russian troops withdraw.

The Kremlin also hit back at U.S. President Joe Biden's claim that Putin is a "war criminal," with Peskov calling the assertion "unacceptable and unforgivable."

Russia further rejected an order from the International Court of Justice to halt the use of military force in Ukraine.

On Friday, Biden is due to hold a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss "Russia’s war against Ukraine" and other issues, the White House said in a statement.

Relentless Russian shelling hit houses in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv overnight, the government in Kyiv said, adding that there was an unknown number of casualties.

The Russian "occupiers" had also destroyed a school and a cultural center in the town of Merefa, it said.

The Ukrainian army reported heavy explosions in the southern Kherson region, which has been under Russian control since the early days of the war.

The army warned that electricity, water and gas supplies were facing increasing disruptions across much of the country and that shortages of food and medicine were a growing concern.

In Luhansk meanwhile, separatist leaders said the Ukrainian army had shelled four settlements in the self-declared republic, Russian news agency Tass reported. The information could not be independently verified./ GERMAN PRESS AGENCY

Turkey has evacuated 15,196 citizens since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, adding that more were on the way.

In a message he posted on Twitter on Wednesday, Çavuşoğlu said 159 more citizens from Lviv, Chernivtsi, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro departed for Turkey on buses and minibuses amid evacuation efforts.

The foreign minister noted that Turkey has provided border-crossing assistance to some 4,965 people.

Meanwhile, 25 Meskhetian Turks evacuated from Ukraine arrived in Bursa province.

Welcomed by the provincial migration authority staff, the group settled in the Halime Hatun dorm in the Nilüfer district.

“Many tanks passed by the village we lived in. We felt the earth move as they passed and we were forced to flee,” Alik Yusufov told Anadolu Agency (AA), as he thanked Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for helping them.

Feriddin Muhammedov, another Meskhetian Turk who arrived in Bursa, also thanked Turkey for taking care of them and saving them.

Previously, Meskhetian Turks, most of whom are Turkish citizens, were brought from Ukraine in groups in 2015 and settled in the Üzümlü district of Erzincan, upon the instruction of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and some of them returned to Ukraine afterward. After the Russian invasion began, they returned to their homes in the Üzümlü district of the eastern province of Erzincan after a five-day journey organized by the Foreign Ministry. The Meskhetian Turks were welcomed by their relatives.

In 1944, they were expelled from their homeland – the Meskheti region of Georgia – by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in an attempt to remove Turks from the shores of the Black Sea. They faced discrimination and human rights abuses before and after deportation. During that period, they migrated mainly to three countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. However, some experienced another migration in 1989 when ethnic clashes started in Uzbekistan, and they traveled to eastern Ukraine in 1990. Some of them have seen three deportations in their lives, while the others have endured two separations.

Çavuşoğlu noted that Turkey has been coordinating evacuation efforts with Ukraine and Russia.

Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine on Feb. 24, more than 2.5 million people have fled to other countries, with some 2 million more displaced within the country.

At least 564 civilians have also been killed and 982 others injured in Ukraine, according to U.N. estimates./DS

The Bank of England raised its key interest rate for the third time in four months on Thursday, pushing ahead faster than other central banks in tackling a global wave of inflation that is set to accelerate in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The bank boosted its key rate to 0.75% after the war pushed oil prices to a 13-year high earlier this month. It comes a day after the U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark short-term rate to 0.25% to tame the worst inflation since the early 1980s.

The Bank of England, which voted 8-1 in favor of the increase, said the invasion of Ukraine has sparked "large increases” in prices for energy and other commodities and is likely to worsen supply chain problems that have disrupted shipments of many raw materials. The bank said it now expects inflation to last longer and peak at a higher rate than it did before the war.

"Global inflationary pressures will strengthen considerably further over coming months, while growth in economies that are net energy importers, including the United Kingdom, is likely to slow,” the bank said in a statement.

The Bank of England began raising rates in December amid concern about rising consumer prices as the world began to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, increasing demand for energy and raw materials needed by industry. It raised interest rates for the second time to curb surging prices on February.

Consumer price inflation accelerated to an annual 5.5% in January, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Bank of England expected inflation to peak at around 7.25% in April, more than three times its target of 2%. The bank said Thursday that it now expects inflation to accelerate to about 8% by the end of June and that it could rise further later this year.

Central banks in other countries may soon catch up to the Bank of England on interest rate hikes. The Federal Reserve signaled that it may raise rates six more times this year.

European Central Bank kept rates unchanged but last week announced an early exit from its economic stimulus efforts in a bid to combat record inflation in the 19 countries that use the euro./AP

World Health Organization (WHO) Europe branch launched an event on health and migration to discuss strategic priorities for health and migration beyond 2022 in Istanbul Thursday. Health ministers and representatives from 53 member states of the organization participated in the event.

In a video message to the meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the pandemic has again exposed the global system's injustices and flaws.

"We hope that inequalities in the global system, particularly in health and security, can be eliminated as soon as possible," Erdoğan said in his message. "For a more peaceful, more stable, and fairer world, it's clear we need to learn from our mistakes," he added. "It's impossible to achieve sustainable development goals and universal health coverage in a world that ignores the health of refugees and migrants," he stressed, adding that he values the WHO's efforts to develop a new action plan on migration and health in the European region. "I hope this meeting, which is taking place in an environment where 3 million people have been added to the 85 million refugees in only three weeks, will pave the way for fresh ideas and new solution proposals," Erdoğan said.

Noting that the pandemic has had a "more devastating impact" on vulnerable groups, particularly refugees and irregular migrants, he said: "Refugees' access to basic health care services, which is severely limited in many countries, has unfortunately been hampered in this process."

Erdoğan underlined that Turkey has never hesitated to "share all means at its disposal with those in need while providing high-quality health care services to its citizens." "During the darkest days of the pandemic, we provided medical equipment and critical material support to 160 countries and 12 international organizations that requested assistance from us," he said.

Turkey has provided 3.1 million inpatient treatment services to its "Syrian brothers and sisters," as well as 96.7 million outpatient services through its health care facilities, he said.

"We have performed 2.6 million surgeries and administered a total of 8.7 million vaccine doses in our hospitals under our national vaccination rollout scheme," he said, noting the establishment of 185 migrant health centers in 29 of the country's 81 provinces.

"We're gradually delivering the 15 million doses of vaccines pledged during the third Turkey-Africa partnership summit to our African brothers and sisters," he added. "Meanwhile, we are trying to meet demands for our domestic vaccine, Turkovac, as much as we can," he added.

Speaking at the same meeting, Health Minister Fahrretin Koca expressed his pleasure at the meeting being held in Turkey, the country hosting the largest number of refugees globally, according to the United Nations. He stressed the need to increase cooperation on the health needs of migrants. "This problem is a problem for all of us. Common problems require common solutions," Koca said. "Today, this burden carried by some countries is essentially a conscientious burden for all of us, for all of humanity. The way to deal with problems is to analyze the causes well." Koca added that it was "among our primary duties to increase our cooperation" on migrants' health needs and "follow a common path" regardless of whether a nation is a transit or destination country.

For his part, Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, praised Turkey for its work in refugee health care and said it led them to choose Turkey "for non-discriminatory provision of health services to all refugees, not only Syrians." Kluge said their meeting aimed to build a new vision for refugee health and turn the migration issue into an opportunity rather than a pressure on host societies. Kluge highlighted that without considering migrant health, it was impossible to achieve sustainable development goals.

Margaritis Schinas, European Union commissioner for Promoting the European Way of Life, says they faced a new health crisis with the war in Ukraine and a new flow of migrants to the European Union area in a video link to the event.

"European Union took measures against under these unprecedented circumstances and we are trying to support those fleeing the war. We are working for unconditional, immediate residence for them, for their access to employment," he said. Schinas highlighted that migrant health once again came to the fore with the war in Ukraine. "How do people continue staying there while hospitals are bombed?" he said. Schinas emphasized the need for continued international support and solidarity, noting demands for the opening of humanitarian corridors by WHO. He said that the world should be aware of the health care needs of millions of "frail" migrants./aa