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Los Angeles Times
Putin refuses to waver on east Ukraine; Finland’s leaders endorse NATO bid
As Finland’s leaders dealt him a blow by announcing their support for joining NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his determination to maintain Moscow’s sway over eastern Ukraine as Russian missiles pounded the area.
Putin, in a message released by the Kremlin on Thursday, offered his support to Leonid Pasechnik, the head of pro-Russia separatists in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, part of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I am sure that through our joint efforts we will defend the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the Luhansk republic, Putin said, as his war on Ukraine began its 12th week.
The Guardian
Kremlin threatens retaliation after Finland leaders say it must join Nato
Finland must apply to join Nato “without delay” in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, its president and prime minister have said, signalling a historic shift in the country’s security policy that drew a blunt warning of retaliation from the Kremlin. […]
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, said on Thursday that western countries’ “proxy war with Russia” would “increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between Nato and Russia”.
Urging the west not to “lie to yourself and others” and “choke in the paroxysms of Russophobia”, Medvedev said such a conflict “always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war” and that this would be “catastrophic for everyone”.
BBC News
Russian soldiers seen shooting dead unarmed civilians
When Leonid Pliats and his boss were shot in the back by Russian soldiers, the killing was captured on CCTV cameras in clear and terrible detail. The footage, which was obtained by the BBC, is now being investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors as a suspected war crime.
It was the height of the fighting around Kyiv and the main roads into the capital were a battlefield, including around the bicycle shop where Leonid worked as a security guard.
But this was no firefight: the video clearly shows heavily armed Russian soldiers shooting the two unarmed Ukrainians and then looting the business.
The Washington Post
Inside Mariupol’s besieged steel plant, a symbol of bravery and terror
Holding fast to her infant son, Anna Zaitseva ran toward a pair of metal doors at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. It was the last Thursday of February, barely 24 hours after the start of the Russian invasion. In soon-to-be devastated Mariupol, the Kremlin’s bombs were already falling, some only yards away from their ninth-floor apartment.
They had driven that morning to a lot at the Soviet-era steel plant. One of Europe’s largest, it employed 10,702 people, including her husband. Now, for workers and their families, it was the shelter of last resort.
A commercial complex, Azovstal was also ideal for war. A network of tunnels rested beneath an industrial site twice as big as Washington’s National Mall. Its deep nuclear shelters, complete with old maps and radiation containment plans, dated to the Cold War. The bunker quality of the place also made it a perfect fortress for Ukrainian fighters — a brave and ultimately besieged force that her husband, a new metal worker at the plant, would soon join.
El País
The double tragedy of the evacuees of Chernobyl nuclear accident
On the map it’s Sukachi, but everyone here calls it Novi Ladizhichi (New Ladizhichi). The ‘old’ Ladizichi sits 18 kilometers away from the city of Chernobyl, home of the most famous nuclear accident in history which took place on April 26, 1986.
Volodimir Stekhun was then a child, dragged away from the old town to a new life. Now 42, Stekhun looks at the black rubble that remains from the brick house that he built in Novi Ladizhichi when he got married. The Russian army took over Chernobyl on February 23, the first day of the invasion of Ukraine this year. The house caught fire on February 26, apparently from the impact of a projectile.
“My family and I heard a strange sound and then the crack of the burning roof,” he tells EL PAÍS. “Neighbors helped us put [the fire] out with water. We took refuge in the basement, and about four or five hours later, the roof was on fire again. We couldn’t do much. We had a lot of water in the basement, but we could only carry it with buckets. We spent the night throwing buckets of water [on the fire], but it hardly did any good.” He points sadly to the house and adds, “Here you see the result”.
Having survived the 1986 accident, Stekhun says “the Russians are creating a tragedy here for the second time.”
Bloomberg
Ukraine Aid Delayed After GOP Senator Rand Paul Objects to Vote
The Senate was forced to postpone final passage of a $40 billion Ukraine aid package after Senator Rand Paul refused to allow the vote unless language he demanded was added. […]
Paul, a Kentucky Republican, ignored a plea from both Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian, to allow the chamber to vote on the bill this week.
Foreign Policy
Western Sanctions Are ‘Beginning to Bite’ Into Russia’s Military
U.S. and British officials believe that damaging international sanctions slapped on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine are hampering its ability to restock high-tech weapons, such as precision-guided munitions, though Russia still has plenty of conventional ammunition stocks at its disposal to continue to wage war.
[…] The Russian military burned through much of its stockpile of advanced weapons in the early days of the war; the United States believes Russia may have fired as many as 12 hypersonic missiles into Ukraine. U.S.-led export controls announced in late February sought to starve Russia of computer chips and semiconductors that could be used in advanced military equipment.
“Our sanctions and export controls were designed to deny Russia the critical inputs it needs to continue the war against Ukraine and to degrade its ability to project power in the future,” said Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department. “We have disrupted the Russian military supply chain and overall production, inhibited its defense sector from settling payments, and will continue to target Russia’s ability to restock, resupply, and rebuild.”
EuroNews
Brussels aims to circumvent Moscow's blockade of Ukrainian ports Access to the comments
Brussels is working to find solutions to end Russia's ability to block Ukraine's capacity to export goods.
Kyiv is Europe's biggest grain producer and one of the main suppliers to the Middle East and Africa. But Moscow's naval blockade of the Black Sea is making it nearly impossible to export all these goods across the sea.
The European Commission wants to circumvent this by asking key market players to urgently send lorries and trains that can help reduce the waiting time at the border, which is currently at an average of 16 days with a wait of 30 days at some borders.
Stars & Stripes
Number of acknowledged US airstrikes around the globe hits 15-year low
The number of declared U.S. military airstrikes around the world last year declined to the lowest total since 2006, a recent report by an international monitoring group said.
The civilian death toll from U.S. airstrikes also fell as a result of the end of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the report, which was published Tuesday by the London-based nonprofit group Airwars.
The U.S. Air Force launched 500 airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in 2021, compared with 915 such missions in 2020, public data from the service says.
UPI
Biden leads 2nd global COVID-19 summit: 'This pandemic isn't over'
At a virtual summit on Thursday to further global COVID-19 measures, President Joe Biden ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff to remember all the Americans who have died of the virus over the past two years -- a toll that he said now exceeds 1 million.
Biden and other world leaders participated in the second COVID-19 summit. The first was held last summer and produced key strategies to fight the outbreak."
This pandemic isn't over," Biden said at the event Thursday… For weeks, the president has been urging Congress to authorize more support funds. At the summit, he said lawmakers should take urgent and vital action and maintain critical life-saving supplies.
Politico
Jan. 6 investigation subpoenas McCarthy, Jordan, 3 other House Republicans
The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday subpoenaed five House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
The subpoenas target some of Donald Trump’s closest allies in the House, several of whom were engaged in numerous meetings and planning sessions amid the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. The move represents a sharp escalation in the select committee’s tactics after months of weighing how aggressively to pursue testimony from their own colleagues.
In addition to McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding member of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus who’s close to the GOP leader, the panel sent summons to Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). All five lawmakers have rejected investigators’ previous requests that they voluntarily testify.
The New York Times
Prosecutors Pursue Inquiry Into Trump’s Handling of Classified Material
Federal prosecutors have begun a grand jury investigation into whether classified White House documents that ended up at … Donald J. Trump’s Florida home were mishandled, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The intensifying inquiry suggests that the Justice Department is examining the role of Mr. Trump and other officials in his White House in their handling of sensitive materials during the final stages of his administration.
In recent days, the Justice Department has taken a series of steps showing that its investigation has progressed beyond the preliminary stages. Prosecutors issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration to obtain the boxes of classified documents, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
The Hill
Red states plan special sessions to target abortion
[…] GOP governors and state legislators are planning to hold special legislative sessions later this spring and summer to consider new measures to remove or restrict abortion rights, after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is expected to reverse the landmark decision half a century ago guaranteeing those rights. […]
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) have come under pressure from legislators to call new sessions. And in Florida, abortion rights opponents are ratcheting up pressure on lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
South Carolina’s state Senate agreed on Tuesday to come back to special session to take up new restrictions, though they have not yet said what those restrictions might be. The state House must now approve a similar resolution.
Omaha World-Herald
Ricketts to appoint new state senator before possible special session on abortion
Gov. Pete Ricketts said Thursday that he expects to name a replacement for Omaha State Sen. Rich Pahls before possibly calling a special session on abortion.
Pahls died April 27, not quite halfway through his term in office, leaving a vacancy in the Nebraska Legislature. By state law, the governor must appoint a replacement within 45 days. […]
Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers has said he would work with Ricketts to call a special legislative session on abortion if the court rules as anticipated.
NPR News
McConnell defends Supreme Court on abortion, says impact will be 'a wash' in midterms
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell defended the U.S. Supreme Court's potential move to issue rulings that are in conflict with a majority of Americans' views on abortion rights, telling NPR that is a feature of the system. […]
McConnell said the debate about abortion will shift to the states. Democrats are retooling their message for the November midterms to feature the impact of the conservative majority's leaked draft opinion setting aside legal protections for abortion services.
"I think it will be certainly heavily debated in state legislative and governor's races because the court will have, in effect, returned this issue to the political process. My guess is in terms of the impact on federal races, I think it's probably going to be a wash," McConnell said.
The Kansas City Star
Hundreds of Johnson County students walk out of class in support of abortion rights
Around 200 Blue Valley North High School students walked out of class on Thursday to protest the recently leaked Supreme Court draft decision on Roe v. Wade that could strip away the federal right to abortion.
The student-led protest gathered in front of the school to hear remarks from Kansas State Sen. Cindy Holscher. Student leaders from the group Students of Action read prepared speeches, passed out homemade pamphlets and distributed protest signs and water to their classmates. […]
“I think our generation is more active, we’re more riled up… because things are getting worse across the board in terms of racial issues and bodily autonomy,” said senior Ephren Taylor, another student organizer.
Al Jazeera
Taliban tightens gender segregation rules in Afghanistan’s Herat
Men and women dining out together or strolling in parks is now forbidden in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat, Taliban authorities have said.
The new restrictions follow last week’s order for women across Afghanistan to fully cover when in public and appeared to signal the Taliban’s tightening grip on power.
Riazullah Seerat, a Taliban official at the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Herat, said on Thursday that authorities “have instructed that men and women be segregated in restaurants”.
Restaurant owners had been verbally warned that the rule applied “even if they are husband and wife”, he said.
Houston Chronicle
Texas GOP passed voter fraud laws based on this small county race. Now no one wants to discuss it.
When the polls closed on the Democratic primary on March 6, 2018, Vik Verma was pleased. His work as election field director for Kasha Williams, a three-term Longview city council member seeking a Gregg County commissioner’s court seat, was paying off…
But as officials tallied an unusually large number of absentee ballots, the lead began to evaporate. By the time they finished, her opponent, Shannon Brown, had eked out a five-vote victory. Nearly half his total was mail-in ballots, whose use Texas law limits mainly to the elderly and disabled. Suspiciously, hundreds from the small precinct were from voters claiming to be disabled. […]
For Texas Republicans eager to portray an election system awash in fraud, Precinct 4 would provide a case study of what happened when the dog finally caught the car. […]
But something happened after the political spotlight was switched off. Three months ago, District Attorney Tom Watson quietly announced the defendants suspected of stealing an election had pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor each. None saw jail time.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
John Fetterman is president of the Pennsylvania Senate, but he doesn’t have a lot of friends amongst the senators.
As lieutenant governor, one of Fetterman’s few official duties is to preside over state Senate sessions in the body’s ornate chamber in Harrisburg. But not one Senate member, including the 20 Democrats from his own party, publiclysupports his campaign for U.S. Senate.
None of the 90 Democrats serving in the state House do either. And across the state, almost no elected officials have endorsed him.A rare exception isScranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who endorsed Fettermanon Wednesday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia seeks dismissal of Fair Fight voting rights case
Voting rights groups failed to prove in court that Georgia’s election policies disenfranchise voters, an attorney for the state told a federal judge Thursday, asking him to dismiss the case one month into a trial.
The move to throw out the voting rights case was the first opportunity for the defense to counter testimony against Georgia’s “exact match” voter registration policy, absentee ballot cancellation practices and registration errors.
The trial is the culmination of 3 1/2 years of litigation since allies of Democrat Stacey Abrams, led by the voting group Fair Fight Action, sued the state after her loss to Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 election for governor. […]
Lawyers for voting organizations responded that they had demonstrated systemic inaccuracies that hinder the registrations of new U.S. citizens and require ID verification for minor inconsistencies, such as names that include hyphens or apostrophes.
The Salt Lake Tribune
Here’s what a federal report says about the Native American boarding schools in Utah
A landmark report acknowledging the United States’ culpability in forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools — where an untold number died — should be considered only the “starting point” for helping Native families, said Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.
In the report released Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Interior identified 408 boarding schools that operated from 1819 to 1969 with federal support, across 37 states. It listed at least 53 burial sites at those schools. Seven schools in Utah were included, with three of them focused on enrolling Diné or Navajo students. (The Salt Lake Tribune created its own list of eight Utah schools in March, after examining hundreds of records.)
The boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native children into white culture, and typically banned them from speaking their language. Rules “were often enforced through punishment,” the Interior report said, “including corporal punishment such as solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; slapping; and cuffing.”
Vox
Two GOP judges just stripped social media companies of basic First Amendment rights
The conservative United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down a brief, unexplained order Wednesday evening that will throw the entire social media industry into turmoil if the Texas law at issue in this case is allowed to remain in effect.
The decision in NetChoice v. Paxton reinstates an unconstitutional Texas law that seizes control of the major social media platforms’ content moderation process, requiring them to either carry content that those platforms do not wish to publish or be so restrictive it would render the platforms unusable. This law is unconstitutional because the First Amendment prohibits the government from ordering private companies or individuals to publish speech that they do not wish to be associated with. […]
The Texas law prohibits a social media platform “that functionally has more than 50 million active users in the United States in a calendar month” from banning a user — or even from regulating or restricting a user’s content or altering the algorithms that surface content to other users — because of that user’s “viewpoint.”
Mongabay
‘The wheels came off’: South Africa court nixes coal mine extension
A South African judge has declared invalid the 2016 extension of a mining right to allow Tendele Coal Mining Pty. to expand one of the country’s largest coal operations.
Examining a trail of deficient public consultation procedures stretching back to 2013, Judge Noluntu Bam found that the owners of the Somkhele open-cast mine in KwaZulu-Natal province failed to obtain consent from affected communities as required by South African law.
“The wheels came off during the scoping exercise,” read the judgment, which found that the “attitude displayed by Tendele during the scoping phase of the application process [was] offensive.” Local residents opposed to Tendele had appealed its existing mining right, but the minister of minerals and energy, Gwede Mantashe, rejected that appeal in 2018. He will now have to reconsider it.
Reuters
Powell says Fed will fix inflation, calls price stability 'bedrock' of economy
Calling stable prices the "bedrock" of the economy, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday the U.S. central bank's battle to control inflation would "include some pain" as the impact of higher interest rates is felt, but that the worse outcome would be for prices to continue speeding ahead.
"We fully understand and appreciate how painful inflation is," Powell said in an interview with the Marketplace national radio program, repeating his expectation that the Fed will raise interest rates by half a percentage point at each of its next two policy meetings while pledging that "we're prepared to do more" if data turn the wrong way. […]
On the same day that the Senate confirmed him to a second four-year term as Fed chief in a bipartisan 80-19 vote, Powell also made the central bank's priorities clear. Above all else, "we can't fail to restore price stability," he said.
The Seattle Times
Glaciers on Olympic Peninsula projected to largely disappear by 2070
Hotter summers and wetter winters spell a precarious future for glaciers in the Pacific Northwest. This is especially true for those in low elevations, so much that, according to new research published last month, glaciers on the Olympic Peninsula could largely disappear by 2070.
While glaciers come in all shapes and sizes — and those at higher elevations are generally less affected by warming temperatures — the losses predicted in the study carry heavy implications for the region’s ecology, geography and climate as the planet continues to warm due to fossil fuel emissions.
The report, which was published in April in the Journal of Geophysical Research Earth Surface, relied on a combination of field observations, aerial photographs, maps and inventories to assess how glaciers have changed since the early 1980s and, beyond that, how they’ve reacted to environmental changes since they were first photographed by the U.S. Army in 1980.
AP News
‘Like an inferno:’ Western US burning at furious pace so far
Wildfires are on a furious pace early this year — from a California hilltop where mansions with multimillion-dollar Pacific Ocean views were torched to remote New Mexico mountains charred by a month-old monster blaze.
The two places could not be more different, but the elements in common are the same: wind-driven flames have torn through vegetation that is extraordinarily dry from years-long drought exacerbated by climate change.
As the unstoppable northern New Mexico wildfire chewed through more dense forest Thursday, firefighters in the coastal community of Laguna Niguel doused charred and smoldering remains of 20 large homes that quickly went up in flames and forced a frantic evacuation.
Ars Technica
Feast your eyes on the first image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way
At the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun. Scientists with the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration have now produced the first image of that black hole, showing that it has a ring structure. The collaboration made the announcement during a livestreamed press conference this morning from the European Southern Observatory's headquarters in Munich, Germany, as well as numerous other simultaneous press conferences around the world. Six papers about the research have been published in a special issue of The Astronomical Journal Letters.
In 1933, physicist Karl Jansky noticed a radio signal coming from somewhere in the constellation Sagittarius, near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which he dubbed Sagittarius A. Later research revealed that the source actually had several overlapping components, one of which (identified in 1974) was particularly bright and compact. It was named Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star). It's so named because (per co-discoverer Robert Brown) the radio source was "exciting," and in physics, the excited states of atoms are denoted with an asterisk. Physicists have been convinced since the 1980s that the central component of Sagittarius A*—and the source of all those radio emissions—was likely a supermassive black hole, similar to those thought to be at the center of most spiral and elliptical galaxies.