| |  |  | The Reuters Daily Briefing | Tuesday, April 26, 2022 by Linda Noakes | Hello Here's what you need to know. Musk's Twitter takeover is greeted with cheers and fears, Ukraine prepares war crimes charges, and Beijing tests 20 million people for COVID | | | | | Today's biggest stories  The Ukraine Defense Consultative Group meeting in Ramstein, Germany, April 26, 2022. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach RUSSIA AND UKRAINE AT WAR Russia accused NATO of engaging in a proxy battle that created a serious risk of nuclear war as Washington convened its allies at a German air base to pledge the heavy weapons Ukraine needs to achieve victory.
With Russian forces having been forced back from Kyiv and now attempting a new advance in Ukraine's east, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin welcomed officials from more than 40 countries to Ramstein, headquarters of U.S. air power in Europe.
The U.S. State Department used an emergency declaration for the first time during the Biden administration to approve the potential sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine to help the country defend itself.
Moldova's president convened an urgent security meeting after two blasts damaged Soviet-era radio masts in the breakaway region of Transdniestria, where authorities said a military unit was also targeted. The Moldovan authorities are sensitive to any sign of growing tensions in the unrecognized Moscow-backed sliver of land bordering southwestern Ukraine.
Three Russian pilots suspected of bombing civilian buildings in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions are among at least seven Russian military personnel that Kyiv is preparing war crimes charges against, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office told Reuters.
Here's what you need to know about the conflict right now
|  A Twitter logo is seen outside the company's headquarters in San Francisco, April 25, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Barria BUSINESS Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion cash in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person. From weed joke to agreed deal: we go inside the buyout and look at the secretive funding behind it.
HSBC has shelved plans for fresh stock buybacks this year after reporting an unexpected hit to its capital, as a cocktail of rising inflation, geopolitical drama and economic weakness dented its prospects. Meanwhile, UBS rode strong trading income to post its best first-quarter net profit in 15 years.
Shipping group Maersk, often seen as a barometer for global trade, cautioned the container market may normalize in the second half of the year, even as it raised full-year guidance driven by high container freight rates.
United Parcel Service reported a rise in quarterly adjusted profit as the parcel delivery company raised prices amid an ongoing boom in e-commerce package shipments.
After decades of ups and downs, British carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda is charting a more efficient and profitable way forward, leaning on technology from shareholder Mercedes-Benz to make the costly leap to electric vehicles.
Computers using light rather than electric currents for processing, only years ago seen as research projects, are gaining traction and startups that have solved the engineering challenge of using photons in chips are getting big funding.
|  People line up during a mass testing for COVID-19 in the Haidian district of Beijing, April 26, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
WORLD
Three-quarters of Beijing's 22 million people lined up for COVID-19 tests as authorities in the Chinese capital raced to stamp out a nascent outbreak and avert the debilitating city-wide lockdown that has shrouded Shanghai for a month.
North Korea will speed up development of its nuclear arsenal, leader Kim Jong Un said while overseeing a huge military parade that displayed intercontinental ballistic missiles and other weapons, state media reported.
Turkish philanthropist Osman Kavala was jailed for life without parole after he was convicted of trying to overthrow the government by financing protests, in a case that Europe's top court and Western powers say is politically motivated. Kavala had been in jail for 4-1/2 years without a conviction and denied the charges he faced.
The leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland said the Dublin government must start planning for the possibility of a referendum that could result in a united Ireland. Michelle O'Neill was speaking to Reuters ahead of May 5 local elections in the British-run province that could see the nationalist party become the largest in the devolved government for the first time.
When a dozen suspected Islamist militants from a neighboring country were spotted riding motorcycles through the W National Park in northern Benin armed with AK-47 assault rifles, park rangers snapped into action. Here's how anti-poaching forces are entering the fray in West Africa's battle with militants.
U.S.
A New York judge held former President Donald Trump in contempt of court for not producing documents subpoenaed in the state attorney general's civil probe of his business practices, and ordered Trump to be fined $10,000 per day until he complies.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider President Joe Biden's bid to rescind a hardline immigration policy begun under Trump that forced tens of thousands of migrants to stay in Mexico to await U.S. hearings on their asylum claims.
Biden will issue the first pardons of his term today, part of a series of steps aimed at shoring up his record on crime and racial justice in an election year. He will pardon three people and commute, or reduce, the sentences of 75 more, most of them convicted of non-violent drug crimes.
A Texas appeals court granted a stay of execution for a woman whose conviction of killing her toddler 15 years ago has come under doubt because of new evidence. The Court of Criminal Appeals granted the stay two days before the scheduled execution by lethal injection of Melissa Lucio.
Actor Johnny Depp concluded his testimony in the defamation case he filed against ex-wife Amber Heard, saying he was the victim of domestic violence in their relationship and was "broken" by the time their marriage fell apart.
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