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London, Mar 21 (PTI) The UK government today drew a comparison between Russia hosting the football World Cup 2018 and Adolf Hitler using the 1936 Olympics to glorify his Nazi ideology in Germany. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson was giving evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on the escalating diplomatic row with Moscow over the poisoning of a former Russian spy with a deadly nerve agent. He agreed with one of the members of the committee on a comparison between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the former German dictator....

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev, commander of the 8th General Army of the Southern Military District of Russia’s Armed Forces, had been killed. The statement did not say where he died but ex-presidential candidate adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said he was killed when Ukrainian forces struck an airfield in Chornobayivka, in Kherson region, Interfax Ukraine reported. The news was reported by the Kyiv Independent and a number of Western outlets....

Volker—who resigned from his role abruptly last week—testified to Congress this week about his involvement in Trump’s efforts to solicit Ukrainian interference in the 2020 election. Volker provided an 11-page written opening statement setting out his role and his reaction to efforts by Trump and Giuliani to pressure the Ukrainian government—led by new President Volodymyr Zelensky—to investigate allegations of corruption against 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter....

He is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian refugees, hold another meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda and deliver a “major” speech on Saturday. “He will also have the opportunity to meet with Ukrainian refugees and with American humanitarians who are there trying to help feed and respond to the material needs of the refugee population in Warsaw,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Friday. Biden will then deliver an address before returning to the United States....

Peace negotiations began within days of the February 24 invasion but were undermined from the start by wildly different demands, espionage and battlefield developments. By April, all talks had collapsed, with Kyiv increasingly outraged by emerging evidence of Russian atrocities in parts of occupied Ukraine. Both Kyiv and Moscow acknowledge that a negotiated settlement will likely be needed to end the conflict. But the two sides appear to be living in different, and contradictory, realities....

Russia annexed the southern region of Crimea in 2014. Russian-backed separatists and forces, as well Ukrainian soldiers, have since been fighting in the eastern region of Ukraine. In an interview Sunday on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, the Ukrainian leader said it would be worth meeting for face-to-face peace talks with his Russian counterpart, acknowledging that they won’t agree on everything but might agree on a ceasefire. Talks so far between the two sides have failed to yield a peace agreement, although there have been some humanitarian corridors agreed upon allowing citizens to evacuate....

While the current crisis appears localized in Eastern Europe, Russia is the world’s largest country. It maintains bases across a wide span of regions including the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Arctic and the Pacific. Beyond its borders, Russia also has Mediterranean military installations in Syria and on the steppes of Central Asia, but its homeland positions alone span enough territory to severely raise the stakes if troops were ordered to prepare for potential combat....

Rodion Miroshnik, a representative of the Moscow-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) said on Saturday that about 300 to 400 Ukrainian soldiers “are now blocked” at the Azot chemical plant. He said on his Telegram channel that “contact has been established with militants” and negotiations were underway to evacuate the nearly 500 civilians he said are in the plant’s bomb shelter. The head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, said on Thursday that Ukrainian soldiers were “forcibly holding” hundreds of residents of Severodonetsk in the plant, according to state news agency Tass....

The Feldman Ecopark zoo shared a video of the rescue on Facebook, taken by the worker who drove the animals out of the city. From the driver’s seat of his van, the man grinned while updating community members on the rescue, before panning to show the three tapirs on a bed of hay behind him. The video was later reposted on Twitter, where it has been viewed 1.2 million times....

Researchers say the “touchscreens of the future” could be made from the new “nano thin” material, which is 1,000 times thinner than current touchscreen technology. A paper detailing the research from scientists at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) was published in the journal Nature Technology Friday. The new material was produced by converting indium-tin oxide film, commonly used in current touchscreens, from 3D to 2D using liquid metal chemistry....

Bisping (26-7), one of the more colorful characters in MMA, is now 36 and may be looking at a must-win on Saturday if he is to stay relevant in the middleweight division. Since an easy win over Jason Miller in 2011, The Count has been trading wins and losses. He is coming off a nice win over C.B. Dollaway in April and has been pretty reliable against this level of competition throughout his career, including wins also over solid middleweights like Cung Le, Alan Belcher and Brian Stann....

Machida-Rockhold is the headliner of one of the best cards, from top to bottom, the UFC has ever put on. Since debuting in the UFC back in 2013 with a KO-loss to Vitor Belfort, Rockhold (the former Strikeforce middleweight champion) has been on quite a roll, reeling off three straight wins all by stoppage. The last was an impressive submission win over always-tough veteran Michael Bisping. Rockhold (13-2) has an aggressive style but will need to be a little more cautious against the dangerous striker Machida....

While last weekend’s show in Austin, Tex. had a few pairings with amorphous stakes on the line, things are much clearer when it comes to this weekend’s four-pack of main card matchups. Here’s a look at what’s at stake on the UFC on FOX: Emmett vs. Stephens main card. MORE: UFC pound-for-pound rankings — GSP, McGregor nowhere to be found Mike Perry vs. Max Griffin This is probably do or die for Griffin, who enters Saturday’s main card opener coming off a unanimous decision loss and sporting a 1-2 record in the UFC....

According to Malata, PPV events featuring ‘The Notorious One’ have totalled 11,595,429 PPV buys at an average of 1,449,428. Providing details, Malata wrote on Twitter- Chisanga Malata’s tweet came as a follow-up to an earlier post regarding pay-per-views headlined by Jon Jones. According to Malata, Jones’ recent Twitter rant about deserving better pay has some legitimacy. Revealing details of PPV events featuring the former UFC light heavyweight champion, Malata wrote on Twitter-...

Alain Giresse’s men came into the game needing a win to stand any chance of progressing to the knockout stages, but as it turned out they would have crashed out regardless of their result after Egypt beat Ghana in the pool’s other game. Neither goalkeeper had a save to make in a first half which saw the two teams - who had both failed to score in each of their first two games - struggle to cope with extreme wet conditions....

The clips, shared on the Telegram messaging app by Kyiv-based Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, show missiles being intercepted midair. The head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, said in a Telegram post that Russia fired seven missiles at Dnipro on Tuesday morning. “This morning’s missile attack on the region: Our ’neighbor’ launched seven ‘friendly’ missiles at us!” wrote Reznichenko. “Six of them were shot down by our military—over the city of Dnipro and the Synelnyky district....

Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories reported the discovery Wednesday in a statement, providing further information on alleged Russian war crimes. The report comes roughly a month after Ukrainian officials jubilantly announced a counteroffensive had succeeded in pushing Russian forces out of northeast and southern regions of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have reclaimed more than 6,000 square kilometers (2,316 square miles) from Russia since early September. Ukrainians in these areas have suffered alleged human rights abuses under occupying Russian forces and many residents remain missing....

On Monday, the Verkhovna Rada used its verified Telegram channel to express gratitude to Taipei, after hundreds gathered to protest Moscow’s actions in the Taiwanese capital over the weekend. “From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has been supported by distant Taiwan,” wrote the Rada. “The struggle for the future of Ukraine continues, and we are grateful for the support from around the world! The world is with us, because the truth is behind us!...

The drones can fit in the palm of one’s hand and are described by The Debrief news site as the “smallest operational military micro-drone in the world,” measuring about 4 inches by 1 inch from tip to tail with a 4-inch rotor span, and weighing 16 grams. They are manufactured by U.S.-based Teledyne FLIR but built at a facility in Norway. This Norwegian-British drone package costs 90 million Norwegian kroner, or about $9....