27 APRIL 2014

Ø  A terminally-ill teenager has broken all records on the JustGiving fundraising website by breaking the $ 4.2 million mark today in donations to charity. Stephen Sutton, 19, was diagnosed with bowel cancer at 15, but despite surgery, the cancer spread, and doctors concluded it was incurable. He has smashed his original target of raising £ 10,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust, though he feared he might not live to see the 1 million pounds mark achieved.

Ø  The United States and its allies have agreed to ramp up pressure on Russia over Ukraine as Kiev’s military crackdown on pro-Russian protesters in the east has stalled. In a joint statement            the G -7  said they would “move swiftly” on new sanctions against Russia, which “has taken no concrete actions” to implement the Geneva agreement on defusing the Ukraine crisis. U.S. President Barack Obama had a conference call with European leaders in an effort to marshal their support for broader sanctions against Russia, but their joint statement said the new sanctions would be “targeted,” that is, targeting individuals, rather than sections of the Russian economy. Moreover, the sanctions will not necessarily be identical. A senior U.S. official said each G7 country will determine itself which targeted sanctions they will impose. The official said U.S. sanctions could come as early as Monday.

Ø  Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has ordered all U.S. military officers to leave the country by the end of the month and cancelled a security cooperation programme with the Pentagon.

Ø  Barack Obama on Saturday became the first sitting U.S. President in nearly a half-century to visit Malaysia, where an official said he immediately expressed solidarity over the frustrating effort to find missing flight MH370. Mr. Obama is on a four-nation tour through Asia intended to underscore his “rebalance” of U.S. attention towards the strategic Asia-Pacific and to push stalled negotiations on a regional trade pact that would cement his legacy in the region.