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Ukraine said their units have managed to stop Russian forces in Kharkiv, but Moscow said they would continue to advance.
Ukrainian forces fought to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kharkiv region, home to the second-largest city in Ukraine and located in the country's northeast. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the military sent reinforcements to the area. As Russia tries to gain ground near the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian soldiers do what they can to bring residents to safety, reports from Vovchansk say, just a few kilometers from the Russian border. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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French police killed an armed in individual who intended to set a synagogue in the northern city of Rouen ablaze, France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday.
"National police in Rouen neutralized early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city's synagogue," Darmanin said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.Local authorities that the man approached police armed with a knife and a crowbar. "It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock," Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said on X. He said that there were no victims besides the attacker. What do we know about the suspected synagogue attack? The Franceinfo broadcaster reported police were called to the scene early on Friday because smoke was billowing form the synagogue. Local authorities that the man approached police armed with a knife and a crowbar, after which he was shot dead by an officer. Franceinfo cited a police source as saying that a link between the fire and the armed man had not been established. "It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock," Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol said on X. He said that there were no victims besides the attacker. Rouen prosecutors said that they had opened investigations into the fire at the synagogue, as well as a separate probe into the circumstances of the death of the man killed by police. Anti-Semitic incidents in France Yonathan Arfi, who heads the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, condemned what he called an "attempt to intimidate all Jews" in a post on X. "Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the French Republic," he said. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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The German government revealed on Wednesday that it has expelled seven Ukrainian troops undergoing military training in the country for sporting Nazi symbols.
Berlin, however, attempted to downplay the potential threat posed by Ukrainian far-right nationalists to any future peace process between Kiev and Moscow. According to the German military’s estimates, “around 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers were trained by German and multinational units on German soil in 2023.” Under the European Union Military Assistance Mission Ukraine (EUMAM UA) established in November 2022, German instructors and those from several other member states have trained Ukrainian military personnel. In a reply to an inquiry made by the right-wing Alternative for Germany Party (AFD), the German government wrote that “within the framework of training for the Ukrainian armed forces conducted by the Bundeswehr, seven cases have been established where soldiers were wearing far-right extremist symbols.” The document further revealed that these troops had been removed from the course and sent home. Incoming Ukrainian military personnel are warned against the use of Nazi insignias on arrival, the German government said. The reply noted that Berlin “sees no threat to a possible peace process in Ukraine [posed] by Ukrainian extremist nationalists.” “It is Russia’s imperialism that underlies the illegal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and that threatens security in Europe,” the document said. Upon the launch of Russia’s military operation against the neighbouring state in February 2022, President Vladimir Putin listed the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of Moscow’s main goals. Russian officials have for years expressed concern over the growing role of far-right elements within the Ukrainian government and military. Moscow has also claimed that some units within Kiev’s army are made up almost exclusively of neo-Nazis. Ukraine’s glorification of WWII-era nationalist partisans who collaborated with Nazi Germany, as well as Ukrainian SS units, has also been condemned not only by Russia, but also neighbouring Poland. Despite these criticisms, monuments to honour these figures continue to be erected across Ukraine, with streets renamed after them in some cases as well. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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US President Joe Biden’s cabinet has made a major policy mistake by driving Russia and China into a strategic partnership,
Heritage Foundation fellow Michael Pillsbury said on Thursday. Pillsbury spoke to Fox and Friends as Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on his first foreign trip since inauguration. “To draw, to push together two nuclear powers, Russia and China, it’s really a blunder of the highest order,” he told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. According to Pillsbury, China spent much of the past 75 years in conflict with the Soviet Union, “so to see them come together like this to me is just shocking.” Pillsbury has helped Washington formulate its China policy since the 1970s. He held a variety of posts at the Pentagon and as a staff member for the US Senate, before settling at China-centric desks at the Hudson Institute and later at Heritage. It has long been a policy objective of Washington to keep China and Russia apart, starting with President Richard Nixon’s detente with Beijing in the 1970s. This policy was in effect as late as 2020, with President Donald Trump trying to use tariffs to pressure China into working with the US, noted Pillsbury. “This would never happen under Trump,” he said. “This was one of Trump’s goals never to allow this to happen.” When Kilmeade suggested that China “needs” the US and EU markets, so the West has leverage over Beijing, Pillsbury pointed out that this “simply isn’t happening under Biden.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also commented on the US attempts to split China away from Russia. In an interview on Thursday, he said that China was “strong enough” to resist the “brazen” attempts at pressure. China and Russia both “defend the principles of fairness and the democratic world order based on the multipolar realities and international law,” Putin said on Thursday, adding that relations between the two countries “are not aimed against anyone.” Putin described the Russo-Chinese cooperation as “one of the main stabilizing factors on the international stage.” Xi agreed, arguing that ties between Beijing and Moscow are a “model of relations between large powers and neighbouring states, characterized by mutual respect, trust, friendship and mutual benefit.” The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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For a small slice of San Francisco’s homeless population that struggles with severe alcohol addiction, nurses offer treatment not in a pill, but in a shot of vodka or a glass of beer.
It may sound counterintuitive, experts say, but it helps keep people off the streets and out of emergency rooms, jails — or the morgue. San Francisco set up a “managed alcohol program” four years ago as a way to care for vulnerable homeless people who drank excessive amounts of alcohol and were among the city’s highest users of emergency services. Since its creation, the program, which started out with 10 beds, has served 55 clients, according to officials from the Department of Public Health. The now 20-bed program, which costs about $5 million per year, operates out of a former hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin. Nurses dispense regimented doses of vodka and beer to participants at certain times of day based on care plans. Such programs don’t focus on sobriety, experts say, but rather on improving participants’ overall health while decreasing hospital stays and calls to police. But the city’s efforts came under scrutiny this week, after the chair of the board of a local non-profit that pushes abstinence shared posts on social media accusing the city of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on a program that gives booze to homeless people struggling with alcohol addiction. Adam Nathan, the CEO of an AI company and chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco’s advisory board, said on X that “providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn’t solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where’s the recovery in all of this?” The social media skirmish was the latest flare-up in an increasingly tense debate about San Francisco’s use of harm reduction, which focuses on cutting negative health effects of alcohol and drug use rather than requiring people to stop using. As homelessness and overdose deaths have continued to plague the city, critics have excoriated San Francisco’s attempts at harm reduction, saying they only enable addiction and despair. Abstinence groups such as the Salvation Army have ridiculed the city for spending public funds on initiatives that provide drug users with overdose-reversing drugs, clean needles and foil for methamphetamine and fentanyl consumption. Even Mayor London Breed in February said that harm reduction was “not reducing the harm” but “making things far worse.” That stance puts her at odds with her own public health department, which staunchly stands by harm reduction as an integral part of the agency’s system of care. Breed recently tried to open abstinence-only housing for formerly homeless people near Chinatown but scrapped the proposal amid neighbourhood backlash. “Are we just going to manage people’s addictions with our taxpayer dollars in perpetuity forever? It seems like that’s basically what we’re saying,” said Tom Wolf, who is in recovery for heroin addiction. “I think we should be spending that money on detox and recovery.” But Shannon Smith-Bernardin, a professor at the UCSF School of Nursing who helped create the managed alcohol programs in San Francisco and Alameda County, explained that the goal is to stabilize participants’ alcohol use “so they’re not binge drinking or stopping drinking and having seizures and then … start figuring out what’s next.” The program also offers participants medications and therapy to reduce alcohol cravings. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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If the British royal family was looking for a public relations win after Princess Catherine’s Photoshop fails, the unveiling of King Charles’ newest royal portrait was not it.
“I’m sorry, but this portrait looks like he’s in hell,” one person posted in comments under artist Jonathan Yeo’s and the royal family’s joint Instagram post revealing and explaining the image. “Without sounding rude this is the worst royal portrait I’ve ever seen,” another added. “It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” a third concluded. The painting, which stands at an impressive 2.6 by 2 metres (8½ by 6½ feet), was commissioned three years ago by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild of wool and cloth merchants that now focuses on philanthropy. The piece will hang at the gallery in Drapers’ Hall in downtown London, Yeo wrote. King Charles sat for four sessions with the artist, a trustee at the National Portrait Gallery who has painted Queen Camilla when she was duchess of Cornwall as well as Charles’ father, the late Prince Philip, albeit in much more flattering tones. Charles had a creative say in the project, suggesting the artist include the butterfly landing on his shoulder, doing double duty as a symbol of his commitment to the environment and to show his transformation as he ascended to the throne. “When I started this project, His Majesty The King was still His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and much like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s role in our public life has transformed,” Yeo wrote. “I do my best to capture the life experiences and humanity etched into any individual sitter’s face, and I hope that is what I have achieved in this portrait. To try and capture that for His Majesty The King, who occupies such a unique role, was both a tremendous professional challenge, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed and am immensely grateful for.” Despite his involvement in the project, King Charles was “initially surprised by the strong colour,” the artist told the BBC, and TikTok royals commentator @matta_of_fact noted that the king appeared to jump a bit when he pulled the cloth away to reveal the painting. The online opinions didn’t stop at hellfire, however. Allusions to the royal family’s bloody colonial past, Charles and Camilla’s infamous tampon scandal and the family’s current woes, including the king’s recent cancer diagnosis, ran rampant. But not everyone seemed bothered. Queen Camilla took one look at the painting, the BBC reported, and said, “Yes, you’ve got him”. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Putting British or other NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine would not make sense, but there are other ways of helping Kiev, British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has said.
Some officials in Kiev have proposed sending Western military veterans as civilian contractors to train Ukrainian soldiers inside the country in order to quickly raise enough brigades to offset battlefield losses. “I don’t want to step over that line that puts British, sort of, troops on the ground in Ukraine. I don’t think that makes sense to do. But what I do think is sensible is potentially moving training closer,” Shapps said on Wednesday, speaking to a Telegraph podcast about the situation in Ukraine. “There may be other models that we could look at. Not something I would want to go into in detail currently,” the defence minister added. He pointed out that the UK has already trained 65,000 Ukrainian soldiers since 2014, most of them since February 2022, and that London’s commitment to Kiev “is absolutely rock-solid.” Shapps admitted that the situation north of Kharkov is rather dire for the Ukrainian military and blamed it on “the civilized world” not paying attention. “I think the world took its eye off the ball,” Shapps told the Telegraph, but added, “I think it’s rescuable, at this stage.” According to Shapps, other “civilized” countries should follow the UK´s lead and send even more money to Kiev, to ensure that Ukraine has all the weapons, training and equipment it needs to defeat Russia. Earlier this week, Shapps told Times Radio that London saw “no sense at all” in persuading or “strong-arming” Kiev into accepting any peace conditions and “giving up some of their territory” to Moscow. Boris Johnson, who was the British prime minister at the time, made a similar argument during his visit to Kiev in April 2022, which was seen as crucial in persuading Ukraine to reject a proposed armistice with Russia and continue fighting. Shapps was appointed defence minister last August. Unlike his predecessor Ben Wallace, he has no military experience, having been a printing salesman before entering politics. He has served in a variety of cabinet posts under several Tory governments, from housing and transportation to Home Office and net zero. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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Putin and Xi meet in Beijing5/16/2024 Russian President Vladimir Putin is meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing during his state visit to China on Thursday.
It is Putin’s first foreign trip since he was sworn in for a fifth term as president earlier this month. The leaders shook hands outside the Great Hall of the People building on Tiananmen Square and listened to a military orchestra perform the two countries’ national anthems. They later posed for photographs and left for a meeting between the delegations. Putin is accompanied by multiple state ministers, who will participate in the negotiations on joint projects aimed at deepening bilateral ties. In an interview with Xinhua before the trip, Putin hailed the “unprecedented level of strategic partnership” between the two states. “Having lasted three quarters of a century, China-Russia relations have grown from strength to strength despite the ups and downs, and have stood the test of changing international landscape,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. “Steady development of China-Russia relations is … conducive to peace, stability and prosperity of the region and the world at large.” Russia and China have similar positions on the Ukraine conflict. Speaking to Xinhua, Putin praised Beijing for understanding “its root causes and global geopolitical significance.” China has refused to blame Russia for the tensions and instead condemned the expansion of NATO and Washington’s “Cold-War mentality.” The fighting between Russia and Ukraine entered its third year in February, with Kiev’s Western backers renewing their pledges to support Ukraine with money and weapons for “as long as it takes.” At the same time, tensions continue between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently described China as “the main country that is enabling Russia to conduct its war of aggression.” Beijing unveiled its 12-point roadmap to peace in Ukraine last year, emphasizing on diplomacy. “We should prioritize the upholding of peace and stability and refrain from seeking selfish gains,” Xi said last month, urging all sides to “cool down the situation and not add fuel to the fire.” Beijing also rejected Washington’s sanctions policy and trade war as a way to ensure a dominant position on the world stage. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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The Netherlands go Right5/16/2024 MPs from all four parties who have agreed to form a right-wing government voted in favour of the draft coalition plans on Wednesday evening, but there is still no confirmation of who will be prime minister.
All four parliamentary groupings – PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB – voted unanimously to accept the agreement, although there was unease among some MPs about forming an alliance with the far-right PVV. In addition, both immigration minister Eric van der Burg (VVD), and nitrogen and nature chief Christianne van der Wal (VVD) said publicly they are sorry that work they have put in for the outgoing cabinet will now be scrapped. The new government is set to repeal legislation to ensure refugees are spread fairly around the country, which Van der Burg battled to get accepted and was only recently passed in the senate. Furthermore, the outgoing government’s strategy for dealing with the problem of nitrogen-based pollution, which helped drive the growth of new coalition party BBB, is being overturned. “It was absolutely an emotional meeting,” party leader Dilan Yesilgöz said after the 24 VVD MPs agreed to back the deal. “And [the agreement] includes issues which impact on party members or which they disagree with.” The VVD was the last party to make its support for the coalition document public, some 30 minutes before the midnight deadline. The 25-page coalition plan, which highlights broad strategy but not detail, will be formally presented on Thursday but some of the measures the new cabinet plans to implement have already leaked out. The maximum speed on motorways will go back up to 130 kph. It was cut earlier to reduce nitrogen emissions. The own-risk element in healthcare, currently €385 a year, will be halved in 2027, the earliest date at which the cut can be implemented. Spending on the public broadcasting system NPO will also be cut by €100 million. Foreign workers The new government has also pledged to get tough on all forms of migration, and that will also include cuts in the number of people coming to the Netherlands to work. However, the four parties have also pledged to act in line with international treaties. Formal childcare will become much cheaper, RTL Nieuws reported, and value-added tax on hotel stays will be put back up to 21%. It was cut during the coronavirus epidemic to help support the travel industry. According to Nu.nl, work will also begin on setting up a constitutional court, one of the key demands made by NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt. MInisters Now an agreement has been reached, work will start on putting together a team of ministers, of which around half are expected to be independent of any party. The four parties agreed earlier they would form an “extra-parliamentary” or “business” cabinet and it will be up to ministers to flesh out how they intend to implement the new coalition strategy. All four leaders also agreed to stay in the lower house of parliament because Wilders, despite leading the biggest party in parliament, could not count on sufficient support from within the coalition to become prime minister as is customary. He is thought to have put forward former MP Ronald Plasterk, who kicked off the negotiations after the November election, for the job but said on Wednesday that discussion will take place later. Insiders say it will still take several weeks before the new ministerial team will pose for the traditional photograph with the king. The Blog Tags Widget will appear here on the published site.
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