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What they wore: Amish Country exhibit spotlights sex abuse
Clotheslines with billowing linens and long dresses are a common sight on the off-grid farms of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, home to the nation’s largest Amish settlement. For many tourists they’re as iconic a part of Amish Country’s bucolic scenery as the rural lanes and wooden bridges.
But for two days in late April, a clothesline with a different purpose was strung in a small indoor exhibit here. Hanging from it were 13 outfits representing the trauma of sexual assault suffered by members of the Amish, Mennonite and similar groups, a reminder that the modest attire they require, particularly of women and girls, is no protection.
Each garment on display was either the actual one a survivor wore at the time they were assaulted or a replica assembled by volunteers to match the strict dress codes of the survivor’s childhood church.
One was a long-sleeve, periwinkle blue Amish dress with a simple stand collar. The accompanying sign said, “Survivor Age: 4 years old.”
Next to it was a 5-year-old’s heavy coat, hat and long, hunter green dress, displayed above sturdy black shoes. “I was never safe and I was a child. He was an adult,” a sign quoted the survivor as saying. “No one helped me when I told them he hurt me.”
There was also an infant’s onesie.
“You feel rage when you get a tiny little outfit in the mail,” said Ruth Ann Brubaker of Wayne County, Ohio, who helped put the exhibit together. “I didn’t know I could be so angry. Then you start crying.”
The clothes on display represented various branches of the conservative Anabaptist tradition, which include Amish, Mennonite, Brethren and Charity. Often referred to as the Plain churches, they emphasize separation from mainstream society, church discipline, forgiveness and modest dress, including head coverings for women.
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It was part of a larger conference on awareness of sexual abuse in the Plain churches held April 29-30 at Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola and sponsored by two advocacy organizations: A Better Way, based in Zanesville, Ohio, and Safe Communities, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Hope Anne Dueck, the executive director of A Better Way and one of the exhibit’s organizers, said many survivors report being told things such as “If you had been wearing your head covering, then you probably wouldn’t have been assaulted,” or “You couldn’t have been dressed modestly enough.”
“And as a survivor myself,” Dueck said, “I knew that that was not the truth.”
“You can be harmed no matter what you’re wearing,” she said. Those who contributed to the exhibit “were wearing what their parents and the church prescribed, and wearing them correctly, and were still assaulted.”
The exhibit was based on similar ones that have been staged at college campuses and elsewhere in recent years called “What Were You Wearing?” They show a wide range of attire with the aim of shattering the myth that sexual assault can be blamed on what a victim had on.
Current and former members of plain-dressing religious communities — not just the Anabaptists but others such as Holiness, an offshoot of Methodism with an emphasis on piety — agreed last year that it was time to hold their own version.
“At the end of the day, it was never about the clothes,” said Mary Byler, a survivor of child sexual abuse in the Amish communities where she grew up. Byler, who founded the Colorado-based group The Misfit Amish to bridge cultural gaps between the Amish and the wider society, helped to organize the exhibit.
“I hope it helps survivors know that they’re not alone,” she said.
Survivors were invited to submit their outfits or descriptions of them. All but one provided children’s attire, mostly girls and one boy, reflecting their age when they were assaulted. The lone adult outfit belonged to a woman who was raped by her husband shortly after giving birth, Dueck said.
Organizers plan to have high-quality photos made of the clothes to display online and in future exhibits.
Plain church leaders have acknowledged in recent years that sexual abuse is a problem in their communities and have held seminars to raise awareness.
But advocates say they need to do more, and that some leaders continue to treat abuse cases as matters of church discipline rather than as crimes to be reported to civil authorities.
Dozens of offenders from Plain church affiliations have been convicted of sexually abusing children in the past two decades, according to a review of court files in several states. Several church leaders have been convicted for failing to report abuse, including an Amish bishop in Lancaster County in 2020.
Researchers and organizers at the conference said they are surveying current and former Plain community members to gather concrete data on what they believe is a pervasive problem.
But the display made a powerful statement on its own, said Darlene Shirk, a Mennonite from Lancaster County.
“We talk about statistics ... but when you have something physical here, and because the dress is from the Plain community, it shouts, ‘Look, this is happening in our community!’” she said.
Advocates say that in the male-led Plain churches, where forgiveness is taught as a paramount virtue, people are often pressured to reconcile with their abusers or their children’s abusers.
Byler said that in the 18 years since she reported her sexual assaults to civil authorities, she has heard more stories of abuse in the Plain churches than she can count. Survivors are often isolated from their communities and met with “very victim-blaming statements,” she said.
“Child sexual assault and sexual assault is something that happens ... inside of communities from every walk and way of life,” Byler said.
Workers' rights, collective bargaining essential for global recovery: ILO
After two years of Covid lockdowns and amid increasing pressures on the classic "9 to five" business model – from zero-hours contracts to telework – voluntary negotiations known as collective bargaining had proved their worth, according to the International Labour Organization’s Director-General Guy Ryder.
"Workers want to keep their heads above the water, as prices rise, as they are right now, and they want to ensure workplace safety and secure the paid sick leave that has proved so critical over the last two years," he told journalists in Geneva Thursday.
"Employers for their part have welcomed agreements that have allowed them to retain skilled and experienced workers so that they could restart, recover and rebound."
Ryder added: "The higher the percentage of employees covered by collective agreements, the lower the wage inequality. And the more equality and diversity there is likely to be in the workplace."
According to a new report by the UN agency, over one in three employees in 98 countries now have their wages, working hours and other professional conditions set by collective agreements.
But there is a considerable variation across countries, the ILO said, ranging from over 75 percent of workers having a collective agreement in many European countries and Uruguay, to below 25 percent, in around half the countries where data was available.
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At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, ILO's Social Dialogue Report 2022 indicated that collective bargaining agreements had helped protect people's jobs and income.
"Collective bargaining has played a crucial role during the pandemic in forging resilience by protecting workers and enterprises, securing business continuity, and saving jobs and earnings," Ryder said, noting that joint accords had also helped allay the concerns of millions of workers by boosting occupational safety and health in the workplace, together with paid sick leave and healthcare benefits.
Flexible working arrangements and leave provisions were negotiated so that workers, particularly women, could balance work with additional care responsibilities relating to school closures or sick family members, he said. "And workers on temporary work had their contracts extended or converted to permanent ones so that they could maintain their earnings."
After two years of upheaval in the workplace caused by the coronavirus, post-pandemic collective agreements have now evolved to reflect the new realities of working from home and other "hybrid" work practices, the ILO director-general said.
Sri Lanka leader declares emergency amid protests
Sri Lanka’s president declared a state of emergency on Friday amid widespread public protests demanding his resignation over the country’s worst economic crisis recent memory.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has issued a decree declaring a public emergency effective Friday.
Sri Lanka is near bankruptcy having announced that it is suspending repayment of its foreign loans and its usable foreign currency reserves plummeting below $50 million. It has $7 billion foreign loan repayments this year out of $25 billion to be repaid by 2026.
Rajapaksa’s announcement comes as protesters demonstrate near Parliament while others continue to occupy the entrance to the president’s office, demanding Rajapaksa and his powerful ruling family to quit, holding them responsible for the economic crisis.
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Similar protests have spread to other locations, with people setting up camps opposite the prime minister’s residence and other towns across the country.
For several months, Sri Lankans have endured long lines to buy fuel, cooking gas, food and medicine, most of which come from abroad. Shortages of hard currency have also hindered imports of raw materials for manufacturing and worsened inflation, which surged to 18.7% in March.
As oil prices soar during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Sri Lanka’s fuel stocks are running out. Authorities have announced countrywide power cuts extending up to 7 1/2 hours a day because they can’t supply enough fuel to power generating stations.
FAO records small drop in global food prices in April
After reaching an all-time high in March amid repercussions from the war in Ukraine, world food prices decreased slightly last month, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Friday.
The FAO Food Price Index averaged 158.2 points in April, down 0.8 percent from the surge in March, but remained nearly 30 percent higher than in April 2021.
The Index tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of food commodities, and the decrease was led by a slight decline in the prices of vegetable oils and cereals.
The small decrease in the index is a welcome relief, particularly for low-income food-deficit countries, but still, food prices remain close to their recent highs, reflecting persistent market tightness and posing a challenge to global food security for the most vulnerable, said Máximo Torero Cullen, FAO chief economist.
The Vegetable Oil Price Index registered a 5.7 percent drop in April, shedding almost a third of the increase in March.
Demand rationing pushed down the prices for palm, sunflower, and soy oils, the FAO said, while uncertainties surrounding export availability from Indonesia – the world's leading exporter of palm oil – contained further declines in prices on the international market.
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The FAO Cereal Price Index declined by 0.7 points in April, due to a 3.0 percent decline in world maize prices.
Wheat prices rose 0.2 percent, strongly affected by the continued blockage of ports in Ukraine. The country, together with Russia, accounts for some 30 percent of global wheat exports.
Other factors behind the increase included concerns over crop conditions in the US, though tempered by larger shipments from India and higher-than-expected exports from Russia.
Meanwhile, international rice prices increased by 2.3 percent, bolstered by strong demand from China and the Near East.
The FAO also released updated forecasts for world cereal supply and demand which indicate that although stocks are rising, trade is likely to decline this year.
Global wheat production is predicted to grow to 782 million tonnes, which incorporates an expected 20 percent decline in harvested area in Ukraine as well as declines due to drought in Morocco.
The FAO said the Sugar Price Index rose 3.3 percent in April, mainly due to higher ethanol prices and concerns over the slow start of the 2022 harvest in Brazil, the world's largest sugar exporter.
The FAO Meat Price Index reached a new record high last month, increasing by 2.2 percent as prices rose for poultry, pig and bovine meat.
Poultry costs were affected by disruptions to exports from Ukraine and rising avian influenza outbreaks in the northern hemisphere.
The Dairy Price Index also jumped by 0.9 percent, driven by what FAO described as "persistent global supply tightness," with milk output in Western Europe and Oceania continuing to track below seasonal levels.
The UN agency reported that world butter prices rose the most, influenced by rising demand associated with the current shortage of sunflower oil and margarine.
7.7 million people displaced inside Ukraine
Humanitarian needs continue to rise in war-torn Ukraine where an estimated 7.7 million people are now internally displaced, UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said Thursday.
He was addressing the International Donor Conference for Ukraine in Warsaw co-hosted by Poland and Sweden, in cooperation with the Presidents of the European Commission and the European Council. The conference raised a reported $6.5 billion.
According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, more than 5.7 million people have now fled across Ukraine's borders seeking shelter, in the two and a half months since the Russian invasion on February 24.
In a tweet, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said in his briefing at the conference, that he had stressed priorities for the millions of refugees and internally displaced, the importance of cash programmes, shelter and accommodation, and protection of the vulnerable.
World Food Programme (WFP) chief David Beasley, also addressed the conference, following the announcement by the UN emergency food relief agency that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, to scale up cash transfers to half a million people across Ukraine.
The agreement will support people displaced by the war and expand the assistance already provided to 170,000 people through cash assistance.
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Since the beginning of April, the WFP has transferred nearly $11 million in local currency, to more than 170,000 people In Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv and other cities. Those eligible are receiving between $75 and $225 per month, depending on family size.
Cash allows people to buy the items and services that they consider most important. It is extremely useful to families with a variety of needs in a volatile environment, when they may be moving locations.
Every dollar spent by a family in Ukraine is directly injected into the local economy, said the WFP.
Meanwhile, UN independent human rights experts together with the coordinator of the international non-governmental group known as the Global Protection Cluster issued a statement Thursday, highlighting the "appalling" humanitarian situation facing millions in Ukraine.
"Multiple forms of gender-based violence are being reported such as sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual violence, including conflict-related sexual violence. Women and girls on the move – at border crossing points or transit and collective centres and in bomb shelters – experience particularly high insecurity and risk of violence, including trafficking in persons," they said.
"Numerous families have been separated during displacement, and unaccompanied and separated children are particularly vulnerable to the risks of trafficking, violence, abuse and exploitation."
They also expressed deep concern over the plight of older people and those with disabilities in the war zone.
"Many of them are still in conflict zones because of mobility limitations or reliance on others for care and face challenges in accessing bomb shelters or safe areas. We are especially concerned about those persons with disabilities, including children, living in institutions for persons with disabilities who face barriers to access humanitarian assistance and evacuation on an equal basis with others."
Virus found in pig heart used in human transplant
Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harbored an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man’s death.
A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise — viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection.
Also read: US man who got 1st pig heart transplant dies after 2 months
But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people.
Because some viruses are “latent,” meaning they lurk without causing disease, “it could be a hitchhiker,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed Bennett’s transplant, told The Associated Press.
Still, development is under way of more sophisticated tests to “make sure that we don’t miss these kinds of viruses,” added Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the university’s xenotransplant program.
The animal virus was first reported by MIT Technology Review, citing a scientific presentation Griffith gave to the American Society of Transplantation last month.
For decades, doctors have tried using animal organs to save human lives without success. Bennett, who was dying and ineligible for a human heart transplant, underwent the last-ditch operation using a heart from a pig genetically modified to lower the risk that his immune system would rapidly reject such a foreign organ.
The Maryland team said the donor pig was healthy, had passed testing required by the Food and Drug Administration to check for infections, and was raised in a facility designed to prevent animals from spreading infections. Revivicor, the company that provided the animal, declined to comment.
Griffith said his patient, while very ill, had been recovering fairly well from the transplant when one morning he woke up worse, with symptoms similar to an infection. Doctors ran numerous tests to try to understand the cause, and gave Bennett a variety of antibiotics, antiviral medication and an immune-boosting treatment. But the pig heart became swollen, filled with fluid and eventually quit functioning.
Also read:In 1st, US surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient
“What was the virus doing, if anything, that might have caused the swelling in his heart?” Griffith asked. “Honestly we don’t know.”
The reaction also didn’t appear to be a typical organ rejection, he said, noting the investigation still is underway.
Meanwhile doctors at other medical centers around the country have been experimenting with animal organs in donated human bodies and are anxious to attempt formal studies in living patients soon. It’s not clear how the pig virus will affect those plans.
FDA restricts J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine due to blood clot risk
U.S. regulators on Thursday strictly limited who can receive Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine due to the ongoing risk of rare but serious blood clots.
The Food and Drug Administration said the shot should only be given to adults who cannot receive a different vaccine or specifically request J&J’s vaccine. U.S. authorities for months have recommended that Americans get Pfizer or Moderna shots instead of J&J’s vaccine.
FDA’s vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks said the agency decided to restrict the vaccine after taking another look at the data on the risks of life-threatening blood clots and concluding that they are limited to J&J’s vaccine.
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“If there’s an alternative that appears to be equally effective in preventing severe outcomes from COVID-19, we’d rather see people opting for that,” Marks said. “But we’ve been careful to say that-- compared to no vaccine-- this is still a better option.”
The problem occurs in the first two weeks after vaccination, he added: “So if you had the vaccine six months ago you can sleep soundly tonight knowing this isn’t an issue.”
The FDA authorized J&J’s shot in February last year for adults 18 and up.
The vaccine was initially considered an important tool in fighting the pandemic because it required only one shot. But the single-dose option proved less effective than two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Moderna and Pfizer shots over J&J’s because of its safety issues.
As of mid-March, federal scientists had identified 60 cases of the side effect, including nine that were fatal. That amounts to 3.23 blood clot cases per 1 million J&J shots. The problem is more common in women under 50, where the death rate was roughly 1 per million shots, according to Marks.
Marks said the FDA spent extra time analyzing the problem to be sure it wasn’t connected to a separate issue, such as women taking birth control medications that raise their risk of clotting.
The J&J vaccine will carry a starker warning about potential “long-term and debilitating health consequences” of the side effect.
Under the new FDA instructions, J&J’s vaccine could still be given to people who had a severe allergic reaction to one of the other vaccines and can’t receive an additional dose. J&J’s shot could also be an option for people who refuse to receive the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, and therefore would otherwise remain unvaccinated, the agency said.
A J&J spokesman said in an emailed statement: “Data continue to support a favorable benefit-risk profile for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in adults, when compared with no vaccine.”
Also read: In reversal, FDA puts brakes on COVID shots for kids under 5
The clotting problems first came up last spring, with the J&J shot in the U.S. and with a similar vaccine made by AstraZeneca that is used in other countries. At that time, U.S. regulators decided the benefits of J&J’s one-and-done vaccine outweighed what was considered a very rare ri sk — as long as recipients were warned.
COVID-19 causes deadly blood clots, too. But the vaccine-linked kind is different, believed to form because of a rogue immune reaction to the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines because of how they’re made. Clots form in unusual places, such as veins that drain blood from the brain, and in patients who also develop abnormally low levels of the platelets that form clots. Symptoms of the unusual clots include severe headaches a week or two after the J&J vaccination — not right away — as well as abdominal pain and nausea.
The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company announced last month that it didn’t expect a profit from the vaccine this year and was suspending sales projections.
The rollout of the company’s vaccine was hurt by a series of troubles, including manufacturing problems at a Baltimore factory that forced J&J to import millions of doses from overseas.
Additionally, regulators added warnings about the blood clots and a rare neurological reaction called Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Pfizer and Moderna have provided the vast majority of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. More than 200 million Americans have been fully vaccinated with the companies’ two-dose shots while less than 17 million Americans got the J&J shot.
Defenders inside Ukrainian steel mill refuse to surrender
Ukrainian fighters battling Russian forces in the tunnels beneath Mariupol’s immense steel plant refused to surrender in the face of relentless attacks, with the wife of one commander saying they had vowed to “stand till the end.”
The battle, in the last Ukrainian stronghold of the strategic port city reduced to ruins by the Russian onslaught, appeared increasingly desperate on Thursday.
“They won’t surrender,” Kateryna Prokopenko said after speaking by phone to her husband, a leader of the steel plant defenders. “They only hope for a miracle.”
Also read:‘Seemed like goodbye’: Mariupol defenders make their stand
She said her husband, Azov Regiment commander Denys Prokopenko, told her he would love her forever.
“I am going mad from this. It seemed like words of goodbye,” she said.
The bloody battle came amid growing speculation that President Vladimir Putin wants to present the Russian people with a battlefield triumph — or announce an escalation of the war — in time for Victory Day on Monday. Victory Day is the biggest patriotic holiday on the Russian calendar, marking the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany.
Some 2,000 Ukrainian fighters, by Russia’s most recent estimate, were holed up in a maze of tunnels and bunkers beneath Mariupol’s sprawling Azovstal steelworks. A few hundred civilians were also believed trapped there.
“There are many wounded (fighters), but they are not surrendering,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Thursday in his nightly video address. “They are holding their positions.”
He said the attack was preventing the evacuation of remaining civilians.
“Just imagine this hell! And there are children there,” he said “More than two months of constant shelling, bombing, constant death.”
The Russians managed to get inside with the help of an electrician who knew the layout, said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry.
“He showed them the underground tunnels which are leading to the factory,” Gerashchenko said in a video posted late Wednesday. “Yesterday, the Russians started storming these tunnels, using the information they received from the betrayer.”
The Kremlin denied its troops were storming the plant.
The fall of Mariupol would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, allow Russia to establish a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops to fight elsewhere in the Donbas, the eastern industrial region that the Kremlin says is now its chief objective.
Capt. Sviatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, pleaded on Ukrainian TV for the evacuation of civilians and wounded fighters from the steelworks, saying soldiers were “dying in agony due to the lack of proper treatment.”
The Kremlin has demanded the troops surrender. They have refused. Russia has also accused them of preventing the civilians from leaving.
Also read:Russia pounds Ukraine, targeting supply of Western arms
The head of the United Nations said another attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol and the plant was underway. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “We must continue to do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes.”
More than 100 civilians were rescued from the steelworks over the weekend. But many previous attempts to open safe corridors from Mariupol have fallen through, with Ukraine blaming shelling and firing by the Russians.
Meanwhile, 10 weeks into the devastating war, Ukraine’s military claimed it recaptured some areas in the south and repelled other attacks in the east, further frustrating Putin’s ambitions after his abortive attempt to seize Kyiv. Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting village by village.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Russian forces are making only “plodding” progress in the Donbas.
The head of Britain’s armed forces, Chief of the Defense Staff Adm. Tony Radakin, said Putin is “trying to rush to a tactical victory” before Victory Day. But he said Russian forces are struggling to gain momentum.
On Thursday, an American official said the U.S. shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of a Russian flagship before the mid-April strike that sank it, one of Moscow’s highest-profile failures in the war.
The U.S. has provided “a range of intelligence” that includes locations of warships, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said the decision to target the missile cruiser Moskva was purely a Ukrainian decision.
Fearful of new attacks surrounding Victory Day, the mayor of the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk urged residents to leave for the countryside over the long weekend and warned them not to gather in public places.
And the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, a key transit point for evacuees from Mariupol, announced a curfew from Sunday evening through Tuesday morning.
Mariupol, which had a prewar population of over 400,000, has come to symbolize the misery inflicted by the war. The siege of the city has trapped perhaps 100,000 civilians with little food, water, medicine or heat.
As the battle raged there, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russian bombardment Thursday hit dozens of Ukrainian military targets, including troop concentrations in the east, an artillery battery near the eastern settlement of Zarozhne and rocket launchers near the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Five people were killed and dozens injured in shelling of cities in the Donbas over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said, with shells hitting schools, apartments and a medical facility.
Ukrainian forces said they made some gains on the border of the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv and repelled 11 Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas.
The war has devastated the country’s medical infrastructure, Zelenskyy said in a video link to a charity event in the U.K. Nearly 400 health care facilities have been damaged or destroyed, he said.
“There is simply a catastrophic situation regarding access to medical services and medicines,” in areas occupied by Russian forces, he said. “Even the simplest drugs are lacking.”
With the challenge of mine-clearing and rebuilding after the war in mind, Zelenskyy announced the launch of a global fundraising platform called United24.
At the same time, Poland hosted an international donor conference that raised $6.5 billion in humanitarian aid. The gathering was attended by prime ministers and ambassadors from many European countries, as well as representatives of nations farther afield and some businesses.
In addition, a Ukrainian cabinet body began to develop proposals for a comprehensive postwar reconstruction plan, while Zelenskyy also urged Western allies to put forward a program similar to the post-World War II Marshall Plan plan to help Ukraine rebuild.
Official: US gave intel before Ukraine sank Russian warship
The U.S. says it shared intelligence with Ukraine about the location of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva prior to the strike that sank the warship, an incident that was a high-profile failure for Russia's military.
An American official said Thursday that Ukraine alone decided to target and sink the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet using its own anti-ship missiles. But given Russia's attacks on the Ukrainian coastline from the sea, the U.S. has provided “a range of intelligence” that includes locations of those ships, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration has ramped up intelligence sharing with Ukraine alongside the shipment of arms and missiles to help it repel Russia's invasion. The disclosure of U.S. support in the Moskva strike comes as the White House is under pressure from Republicans to do more to support Ukraine's resistance and as polls suggest Americans question whether President Joe Biden is being tough enough on Russia.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion in February, the White House has tried to balance supporting Ukraine, a democratic ally, against not doing anything that would seem to provoke a direct war between Putin and the U.S. and NATO allies. As the war has gone on, the White House has ramped up its military and intelligence support, removing some time and geographic limits on what it will tell Ukraine about potential Russian targets.
READ: Russia loses warship, says attacks on Kyiv will increase
The official who spoke Thursday said the U.S. was not aware that Ukraine planned to strike the Moskva until after they conducted the operation. NBC News first reported on the American role in the sinking of the ship.
Speaking earlier Thursday after a New York Times report about the U.S. role in supporting Ukraine's killing of Russian generals, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said American agencies "do not provide intelligence on the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield or participate in the targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military.”
“Ukraine combines information that we and other partners provide with the intel that they themselves are gathering and then they make their own decisions and they take their own actions," Kirby said.
SpaceX brings 4 astronauts home with midnight splashdown
SpaceX brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, capping the busiest month yet for Elon Musk’s taxi service.
The three U.S. astronauts and one German in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast, near Tampa, less than 24 hours after leaving the International Space Station. NASA expected to have them back in Houston later in the morning.
NASA’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer, embraced the seven astronauts remaining at the station, before parting ways.
“It’s the end of a six-month mission, but I think the space dream lives on,” Maurer said.
SpaceX brought up their U.S. and Italian replacements last week, after completing a charter trip to the station for a trio of businessmen.
That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month. Musk’s company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years, since it started ferrying astronauts for NASA. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.
READ: SpaceX launches 4 astronauts for NASA after private flight
“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed at splashdown. “Thanks for flying SpaceX.”
“That was a great ride,” replied Chari, the capsule commander. As for the reintroduction to gravity, he noted: “Only one complaint. These water bottles are super heavy.”
The newly returned astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort who dropped by in April, opening up NASA’s side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.
On the down side, they had to contend with a dangerous spike in space junk after Russia blew up a satellite in a missile test in mid-November. More than 1,500 pieces of shrapnel spread across Earth's orbit for years to come.
While the war in Ukraine has caused tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the astronauts have stood by their Russian crewmates, and vice versa. Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow also continued to cooperate as always, according to NASA officials.
As he relinquished command of the space station earlier this week, Marshburn called it “a place of peace” and said international cooperation would likely be its lasting legacy. Russian Oleg Artemyev, the new commander, also emphasized the “peace between our countries, our friendship” in orbit and described his crewmates as brothers and sisters.
Up there now are three Russians, three Americans and one Italian.
It was Marshburn’s third spaceflight, and the first for the three returning with him. Chari and Barron’s next stop could be the moon; they are among 18 U.S. astronauts picked for NASA’s Artemis moon-landing program. Two others in that elite group are now at the space station.