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NEW YORK -- Police arrived by the thousands in their finest dress blues on Friday, as a light snow drifted under an overcast sky, to honour a fallen brother -- during the first of two funerals that again brought sorrow to the New York Police Department. Source

KYIV, UKRAINE -- Belarus' authoritarian leader on Friday advised exiled opposition activists to "come home, repent and kneel," while repeating a vague promise to step down if the people "make the decision" for him. President Alexander Lukashenko made the remarks in his yearly state of the nation address, seeking to underscore his grip on power after suppressing an unprecedented wave of mass protests against his rule. Source

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Moscow will not start a war in Ukraine, but warned that it wouldn't allow the West to trample on its security interests, amid fears it is planning to invade its neighbour. Source

BAGHDAD -- Six rockets struck Baghdad's international airport facility on Friday, damaging two commercial planes but causing no casualties, Iraq's military said in a statement. The rockets fired in the early morning landed on planes parked in a waiting area of Iraqi Airways, the country's national carrier, the statement said. Source

NAIROBI, KENYA -- More than a third of the people in Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region "are suffering an extreme lack of food," the United Nations World Food Program said in a new assessment of a region under a months-long government blockade. Source

LONDON -- Doubt about the timing and content of a key report into lockdown-breaching parties within the British government deepened Friday when police said they wanted parts of it to remain unpublished until they finish a criminal investigation. Source

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO -- Burkina Faso's new military leader said he was going to bring security and order back to the conflict-ridden nation and unite the country, but warned that betrayal wouldn't be tolerated by the new regime. Source

Student nurses joining the front lines of Alberta's strained health-care system during the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic are eager to help ease the pressure on provincial hospitals. "Every unit has a bit of a different plan for us but we're hoping it puts more bodies in the workforce," said Bobbie-Jo MacMillan, a fourth-year nursing student at the University of Calgary who is now employed in the initiative. Source

MOSCOW -- Russia's top diplomat said Friday that Moscow will not start a war in Ukraine but warned that it wouldn't allow the West to trample on its security interests, amid fears it is planning to invade its neighbour. Source

It took at least nine hard blows from an ax to smash the glass case in Dresden's historic Green Vault. Once the glass shattered, the two masked thieves grabbed 21 priceless diamond-studded artifacts and disappeared. Source