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Blinken and Austin to visit war-battered Ukraine, Zelensky says

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Anachenko from Chernihiv territorial defense

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Ukraine on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, in what would be the first high-level visit by Biden administration officials since the start of the Russian invasion.

Such a trip would underscore the administration’s emboldened approach to Ukraine in recent weeks, as President Biden has committed additional billions of dollars in weapons and equipment to Ukraine’s military. The Pentagon has also announced training exercises for select groups of Ukrainian officers on U.S.-made weapons systems.

It also highlights the continued disconnect, with Ukraine continuing to step up demands for more military and financial aid and the West’s pledges. “They should not come here with empty hands,” Zelensky warned, speaking from an underground subway station in Kyiv. “We are expecting specific things and specific weapons.”

“Come to us, we’ll be happy to see you. But please bring us the assistance, which we have discussed,” the Ukrainian president added. “That’s why the visit from the U.S. is very important.”

Heavy bombardment continued in several Ukrainian cities in the east of the country over the weekend as fighting appears poised to rage straight through the country’s observance of Orthodox Easter on Sunday despite international appeals for a cease-fire over the holiday.

On Saturday, Russian missile struck Odessa, a strategic southwestern port city that has seen fewer attacks during the war. At least eight people were killed, including a 3-month-old infant, Ukrainian officials said.

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The attacks hit two residential buildings and a military facility, Ukraine’s air force said, rocking a city where life had largely returned to normal after Russia narrowed its military campaign in recent weeks to focus on the eastern regions, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine for several years.

Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff for Zelensky, wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the number of casualties from Saturday’s barrage on Odessa is likely to rise. Zelensky later told reporters that Russian forces were “dirty scumbags” for carrying it out.

“The child was one month old when the war started,” he said. “What is even happening here?”

Two people were rescued from the rubble, and 86 were evacuated from a 16-story apartment building that was hit, Ukraine’s national emergency services office said. A video of the aftermath shared on social media and verified by The Washington Post showed large black plumes of smoke billowing from a tall building near a grassy area.

The Russian defense ministry asserted that its missile strikes had destroyed a logistics terminal in the city where foreign weapons were being stored. The Post could not independently verify that claim.

The strikes were an ominous reminder of a recent warning from a top Russian commander that forces intend to take “full control” of all of the southern port cities of Ukraine so that Russia could have a path to Ukraine’s western landlocked neighbor of Moldova, which has its own breakaway region, Transnistria, aligned with Russia. His comments were condemned by Moldova, where residents have worried since the beginning of the war they could be next in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.

The United States has allocated roughly $3.4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the war began in February and has intensified its shipments of weapons and equipment into the country over the past two weeks.

The donations include thousands of missiles that can be used against Russian military aircraft and artillery, long-range artillery cannons, helicopters, armored vehicles, radar defense systems, drones and anti-personnel mines, among other equipment.

The latest $800 million assistance package, announced Thursday, includes two drone systems.

But the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped about the timing and locations of its deliveries and has said that the Ukrainians control the destination of the weapons once they cross into the country.

More than two dozen nations have joined the effort to funnel military support to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February.

Numerous foreign dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, have visited Kyiv in recent months to show their support for Zelensky’s government. He announced Saturday that Britain would reopen its embassy in Kyiv, which diplomats had evacuated at the start of the invasion.

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Biden last month traveled to Poland and visited with Ukrainian refugees and U.S. service members stationed there.

Austin will also be hosting a summit in Germany in the coming days to build support for Ukraine’s defense and security needs, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, John Kirby, said Thursday.

The “Ukraine Defense Consultative Group,” which will meet at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Tuesday, will focus not just on Ukraine’s short-term military assistance needs and the latest battlefield assessments, but also take “a longer, larger view of Ukraine’s defense needs, going forward beyond the war that they’re facing right now,” Kirby said.

More than 20 countries have agreed to participate that meeting, Kirby said Friday.

But as nations including the United States dispatch heavy weaponry, some cracks are emerging in the coalition of allies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz cautioned that it was a “top priority” for NATO to “avoid a direct military confrontation between NATO and a highly armed superpower like Russia, a nuclear power.”

In an interview with Der Spiegel published Friday, Scholz said it was not “justifiable for Germany and NATO to become parties to the war in Ukraine.”

Scholz made the comments in response to several questions about the prospect of his country’s delivering heavy weapons to help Ukraine fight Russian attacks. He noted that Germany had already provided 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion) and delivered “defensive weapons,” antitank mines and antiaircraft equipment to Kyiv.

Horrors continue to emerge each day, especially from the bombed-out port city of Mariupol. Civilians evacuated from the city in recent days spoke of bodies in the streets and shelling so relentless that venturing above ground to find water was easily a death sentence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin this week declared Russia’s victory in the battle for Mariupol, even as Ukraine said a contingent of about 1,000 Ukrainian fighters and civilians remain holed up in the steel plant. Putin said in a rare televised address that he had ordered his troops not to storm the steel plant but to blockade it “so that even a fly could not get through.”

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko on Saturday said that Russian forces had again “thwarted” a coordinated attempt to evacuate civilians from the city.

Boychenko’s office wrote on Telegram that more than 200 people had planned to board buses outside a city shopping center, to evacuate to the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

That plan collapsed, Boychenko alleged, after Russian forces told some of those assembled that “there will be shelling,” and that the buses would only travel as far as Dokuchaevsk, a city currently under Russian control.

The Post was unable to independently verify this claim, or another from Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman who said this week that Russia had taken more than 300 Mariupol civilians, including 90 children, to Russia.

Evacuation plans and other efforts to establish humanitarian corridors in and out of Mariupol have routinely failed, amid relentless shelling and the Russian encirclement of the city, that has left residents largely cut off as food, water and medical supplies have dwindled.

A video released Saturday by Ukrainian forces at their last stronghold at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works plant in Mariupol appears to show a large number of civilians living in cramped conditions in an underground bunker, including women and children.

The video, if confirmed, would be the most extensive footage to date of life in the plant, where an unspecified number of Ukrainian civilians and fighters are said to be holding out against a much larger and better-equipped Russian forces. The video could not be independently verified.

“We want to go home. We want to see the sun,” said one child in the video, standing in a cramped underground shelter with other women and children, where belongings were suspended on lines above makeshift beds.

A woman in the video said her family had been hiding there since March 2. “My husband works here. So we came here with the whole family,” she said. “Grandmother and grandfather stayed at home.”

Other cities in Ukraine also came under heavy fire. Three people were killed and more than 20 people were wounded in the city of Kharkiv and the region as a result of more than 50 strikes from Russian forces on Saturday, a Ukrainian military governor said Saturday. Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, claimed that Russian forces “continue to fire on the civilian infrastructure of Kharkiv and the region.”

The United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet this week described Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine as a “horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians,” as the international human rights monitor has documented growing evidence of war crimes, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas and summary executions.

As Russia has withdrawn from northern cities near Kyiv, where earlier bombardments were heavy, the U.N. said satellite imagery has confirmed the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure there. Nearly 80 percent of the village of Horenka appeared to have been destroyed, Bachelet said.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres is slated to meet separately with both Putin and Zelensky next week in the latest diplomatic effort to mediate an end to the fighting.

Amid the continuing siege, Zelensky said Ukraine had appealed to Pope Francis to try to help civilians stranded in Mariupol.

During the Saturday news conference, Zelensky proposed that the pope help with negotiations to try “to unblock the humanitarian corridors” into and out of the city, echoing a proposal for the pope to visit the war-torn country.

“It is too early to tell, but we are waiting for him,” Zelensky told reporters. “We are waiting because he has a mission — a mission from God. He is trusted by a large number of people; I think this is important.”

THE WASHINGTON POST

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Google says it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

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In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added, “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

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Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

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“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

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‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

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