Global finance leaders will tally the economic damage from Russia’s war in Ukraine on Friday as they meet on the conflict’s first anniversary with some voicing concerns that more sanctions on Moscow would disrupt a modest improvement in growth.

The war in Ukraine dragged into its second year on Friday, with no end in sight to a conflict launched by Russia that has killed tens of thousands of people, flattened cities and towns, forced millions to flee and brought a Cold War chill to global ties.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had not yet seen a Chinese plan for ending Russia’s war on Ukraine but that he would welcome talks with Beijing.

U.S. President Joe Biden nominated former Mastercard Inc (MA.N) CEO Ajay Banga to lead the World Bank.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi held talks with President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials in Moscow this week amid speculation that the two sides would discuss a Chinese plan to bring about peace in Ukraine after almost a year of the war.

The United Nations overwhelmingly isolated Russia on Thursday, marking one year since Moscow invaded Ukraine by calling for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace” and again demanding Moscow withdraw its troops and stop fighting.

Health authorities in China said the country’s COVID-19 epidemic has “basically” ended, but it is not completely over as it found seven imported cases of the highly-transmissible XBB.1.5 variant since Jan. 8.

Turkey has stepped up plans to house victims of the devastating earthquake which struck its border region with Syria, the interior minister said, as the combined death toll in the two countries crept towards 50,000.

Egianus Kogoya, the dreadlocked rebel behind the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot this month in the highlands of Indonesia’s Papua region, is at the vanguard of an increasingly dangerous and media-savvy insurgency for independence.

The New Zealand government today said it would hold a ministerial inquiry into the use of land for forestry due to damage caused during extreme weather events like the cyclone that struck 10 days ago.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia will maintain increased attention on boosting its nuclear forces in an address to mark Thursday’s Defender of the Fatherland public holiday and a day before the first anniversary of his invasion of Ukraine.

An earthquake of about 7.2 magnitude occurred in Tajikistan at around 8:37 a.m. (0037 GMT), at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), Chinese state television CCTV reported on Thursday， citing the China Earthquake Networks Center.