Burger King on Friday said that its business partner controlling approximately 800 restaurants in Russia has "refused" to suspend operations in the country.
Driving the news: "We contacted the main operator of the business and demanded the suspension of Burger King restaurant operations in Russia. They have refused to do so," David Shear, the president of Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King, said in a statement.
Ukraine's food supply chain is "falling apart" under stress from Russia's invasion, potentially undermining food security around the world, the United Nations warned on Friday.
Driving the news: The World Food Program said wheat shipments were largely on hold from both Russia and Ukraine, which combined account for 30% of the world's wheat trade.
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours on Friday in a video call that came as the U.S. tries to convince Beijing to distance itself from Russia's war in Ukraine.
Why it matters: It was the first call between the leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden "described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians," according to a White House readout of the call.
Driving the news: The ban comes as Western institutions crack down onRussian state-funded outlets that have long served as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin, Axios' Sara Fischer notes.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday that Russia is still committed to the International Space Station despite recent threats to end cooperation on the station from the head of its state-run space agency.
Why it matters: Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the space station and allow it to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled deorbit in protest of sanctions on Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly 6.5 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine since Russia's invasion, the UN migration agency wrote in a paper out Friday.
Driving the news: "The group agreed that the figures provided by IOM are a good representation of the scale of internal displacement in Ukraine — calculated to stand at 6.48 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine as of March 16th," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs wrote.
Latinos in the U.S.experienced a 40% spike in drug overdose death rates in 2020, according to a new study.
Why it matters: The large percentage increase for Latinos shows how the pandemic and isolation may have affected Hispanics, who experienced higher rates of COVID-19 deaths.
Hundreds of people are still trapped underneath a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, that was being used as a civilian shelter before it was bombed by Russian forces earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address on Friday.
The latest: Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's top human rights official, said 130 people had been rescued from the destroyed building as of Friday. That would represent only a small fraction of the over 1,000 people, including children, that city officials said were inside shelters beneath the theater at the time of the strike.
The International Energy Agency just unveiled ideas for quickly cutting oil demand at a time when Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine could bring substantial loss of Russian barrels from global markets.
Why it matters: The 10-point plan comes amid IEA warnings that the war could become the biggest supply crisis in decades as countries look to isolate Russia.
The top court in sports on Friday rejected a bid by Russia to temporarily block a ban on its soccer teams ahead of this month's World Cup qualifying matches.
Catch up fast: FIFA and UEFA last month suspended Russia's national teams and clubs from participation "until further notice" in response to Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Russian cruise missiles struck an airplane repair facility west of Lviv's international airport on Friday, Mayor Andriy Sadovy said, according to the New York Times.
Why it matters: Lviv, which is roughly 50 miles east of Poland's border, has served as a safe haven for people fleeing fighting and seen relatively little action before Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid issued a joint statement on Friday urging the Biden administration not to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps from the U.S. blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations.
Why it matters: Bennett and Lapid's statement was unusually strong in its criticism of the Biden administration, calling the proposed move "an insult to the victims."
The United Nations has recorded some 1,900 civilian casualties during Russia's invasion of Ukraine — with 52 children among 726 confirmed dead, a UN official told the Security Council on Thursday.
Driving the news: UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said the actual number of civilians killed from Feb. 24 to March 15 was "likely much higher."
U.S. officials have not seen American basketball star Brittney Griner since she was arrested in Moscow last month on drug charges because Russian authorities have repeatedly denied their requests, a State Department spokesperson told Axios Thursday night.
Driving the news: "We have repeatedly asked for consular access to these detainees and have consistently been denied access," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
An American citizen killed in a Russian attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv was identified by his family and Ukrainian officials on Thursday as James Whitney Hill.
Driving the news: The 67-year-old Minnesota native, known as Jimmy or Jim, "was waiting in a bread line with several other people when they were gunned down by Russian military snipers" on Wednesday, wrote his sister Cheryl Hill Gordon on Facebook. "His body was found in the street by the local police," she added.
Arnold Schwarzenegger debunked disinformation regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine in a now-viral video on Thursday, and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to put an end to the war.
