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Ukraine, Russia hold new talks aimed at ending the fighting
The first face-to-face talks in two weeks between Russia and Ukraine began Tuesday in Turkey, raising flickering hopes of progress to end to a war that has ground into a bloody campaign of attrition.
Ahead of the talks in Istanbul, the Ukrainian president said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and is open to compromise over the contested eastern region of Donbas — comments that might lend momentum to negotiations. But he warned the “ruthless war” continued and that Ukrainians were paying with their lives for the West's hesitancy on imposing tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the two sides gathered for talks that they had a “historic responsibility” to stop the fighting.
“We believe that there will be no losers in a just peace. Prolonging the conflict is not in anyone’s interest,” Erdogan said, as he greeted the two delegations seated on opposite sides of a long table. Also in the room was Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club and a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been playing an unspecified mediating role.
Read:New round of talks aims to stop the fighting in Ukraine
Putin’s aim of a quick military victory has been thwarted by stiff Ukrainian resistance — but still hopes were not high for a breakthrough. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, reflecting skepticism among Ukraine's Western allies, said she thought the Russian president was “not serious about talks.”
In fighting that has devolved into a back-and-forth stalemate, Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, a key suburb northwest of the capital, Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday. But he warned that Russian troops were regrouping to take the area back.
“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation. “This is a ruthless war against our nation, against our people, against our children.”
Earlier talks between the sides, held in person in Belarus or by video, failed to make progress on ending the more than month-long war that has killed thousands and driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes — including almost 4 million from their country.
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of joining NATO, which Moscow sees as a threat. Zelenskyy indicated over the weekend he was open to that, saying Ukraine was ready to declare its neutrality, but he has stressed that the country needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.
As well as Irpin, Ukrainian forces also seized back control of Trostyanets, south of Sumy in the northeast, after weeks of Russian occupation that has left a landscape devastated by war.
Arriving in the town Monday shortly afterward, The Associated Press saw the bodies of two Russian soldiers lay abandoned in the woods and Russian tanks lay burned and twisted. A red “Z” marked a Russian truck, its windshield fractured, near stacked boxes of ammunition. Ukrainian forces piled atop a tank flashed victory signs. Dazed residents lined up amid charred buildings seeking aid.
It was unclear where the Russian troops went, under what circumstances they fled and whether the town will remain free of them. In his overnight address, Zelenskyy emphasized the situation remains tense in Ukraine’s northeast around Kharkiv, the nearest large city, and other areas, as he pressed Western countries to do more to support Ukraine, including levying harsher sanctions on Russia and providing more weapons.
“If someone is afraid of Russia, if he or she is afraid to make the necessary decisions that are important to us, in particular for us to get planes, tanks, necessary artillery, shells, it makes these people responsible for the catastrophe created by Russian troops in our cities, too,” he said. “Fear always makes you an accomplice.”
But the returned presence of Ukrainian forces in Trostyanets was a relief for a country hoping that Russian forces are pulling back as they encounter fierce resistance.
Read:UN chief wants Ukraine humanitarian cease-fire
Putin’s ground forces have become bogged down because of the stronger-than-expected Ukrainian resistance, combined with what Western officials say are Russian tactical missteps, poor morale, shortages of food, fuel and cold weather gear, and other problems.
In response, Russia appeared to be concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years, the official said.
While that raised a possible face-saving exit strategy for Putin, it has also raised Ukrainian fears the Kremlin aims to split the country, forcing it to surrender a swath of its territory. Still, Zelenskyy's comments that he was open to compromise on the region indicated a possible path for negotiations.
In other developments:
— Russia has destroyed more than 60 religious buildings across the country in just over a month of war, with most of the damage concentrated near Kyiv and in the east, Ukraine’s military said in a post Tuesday. It said the Orthodox church – the country’s majority religion – was the most affected but that mosques, synagogues, Protestant churches and religious schools were also destroyed.
— Bloomberg News said it has suspended its operations in Russia and Belarus. Customers in both countries won't be able to access any Bloomberg financial products and trading functions for Russian securities were disabled in line with international sanctions, it said. Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged $40 million, meanwhile, in support for Ukrainians and refugees.
— U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched an effort to achieve a humanitarian cease-fire that would allow aid to be brought in and people to move around safely.
In the besieged southern port of Mariupol, the mayor said half the pre-war population of more than 400,000 has fled, often under fire, during weeks of shooting and shelling.
Alina Beskrovna, who escaped the city in a convoy of cars and made it to Poland, said desperate people are melting snow for water and cooking on open fires despite the risk of bombardment, "because if you don’t, you will have nothing to eat.”
“A lot of people are just, I think, starving to death in their apartments right now with no help," she said. "It’s a mass murder that’s happening at the hands of the Russians.”
Protest in India's capital on 2nd day of nationwide strike
Hundreds of workers marched with the red flags of the labor unions and chanted anti-government slogans in India’s capital on Tuesday as part of a two-day nationwide strike that began Monday.
The demonstration was held at Jantar Mantar, an area of New Delhi close to Parliament that is often used for protests. Protesters said economic policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government were hurting workers and the country's vast unorganized sector.
“Modi government has only one point, that it wants to hide its economic criminality under the garb of communalism and religion,” said Swadesh Dev Roye, a top official with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.
Read: Indian LOC: Fund disbursement nearly doubles in one year
About a dozen labor unions that organized the strike want the government to provide universal social security coverage for workers in the vast unorganized sector, hike the minimum wage under a flagship employment guarantee program and scrap a new labor law that gives employers greater leeway in setting wages and working hours. The demonstrators included contract health workers who wore protective robes and demanded increased wages and regulation of their services.
Strikers are also demanding that the government halt plans of privatization of some public-sector banks and the sale of public assets.
Modi’s government says privatizing some state-owned banks would overhaul the banking industry and that asset sales would help raise money to spur economic growth.
The two-day strike was felt nationwide, and essential services related to banking, transportation, railways and electricity were impacted in several states.
Read:After 2 years, India resumes int'l flights
Elsewhere in the country, protests were held in eastern West Bengal state where demonstrators stopped trains at several locations. In southern Kerala, where the state government led by the opposition Communist Party of India backed the protest, streets were empty and shops shuttered.
India’s economy has bounced back after experiencing a major blow during the first two years of the pandemic. But many jobs have disappeared, with unemployment rising to 8% in December.
Civilian Army leader led child porn ring, risked US security
David Frodsham was a top civilian commander at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan when he “jokingly” asked an IT technician for access to YouPorn, the video-sharing pornographic website.
During his time in the war zone, Frodsham told one woman that he hired her because he “wanted to be surrounded by pretty women,” and routinely called others “honey,” “babe,” and “cougar” before he was ordered home after the military verified multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
“I would not recommend placing him back into a position of authority but rather pursuing disciplinary actions at his home station,” wrote one commanding officer when recommending that the Army order Frodsham to leave his post at Bagram Airfield and return to Fort Huachuca, a major Army installation in Arizona, according to a U.S. Army investigative file obtained by The Associated Press.
But when Frodsham returned to his home station in fall 2015, he rejoined the Network Enterprise Technology Command, the Army’s information technology service provider, where he had served as director of personnel for a global command of 15,000 soldiers and civilians, according to his Army resume.
By spring of the following year, he was arrested in Arizona for leading a child sex abuse ring that included an Army sergeant who was posting child pornography to the internet. Among the victims was one of Frodsham’s adopted sons
Frodsham pleaded guilty to sex abuse charges in 2016 and is serving a 17-year sentence. But records reviewed by the AP show that the U.S. Army and the state of Arizona missed or ignored multiple red flags over more than a decade, which allowed Frodsham to allegedly abuse his adopted son and other children for years, all the while putting national security at risk.
The state permitted Frodsham and his wife, Barbara, to foster, adopt and retain custody of their many children despite nearly 20 complaints, and attempted complaints, of abuse, neglect, maltreatment and licensing violations. Meanwhile, the Army gave Frodsham security clearances and sensitive jobs at a time when his illicit sexual practices made him vulnerable to blackmail.
“He would have been an obvious target of foreign intelligence services because of his role and his location,” said Frank Figliuzzi, the former assistant director of counterintelligence for the FBI. “Fort Huachuca is one of the more sensitive installations in the continental United States. People with security issues should not be there.” In addition to NETCOM, where Frodsham worked, Fort Huachuca is home to the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, according to its website.
Public relations officials at Fort Huachuca confirmed that Frodsham was a program manager for NETCOM before he was arrested on child sex abuse charges. They declined to say whether Frodsham was disciplined after returning from Afghanistan, or whether the Army ever considered him a security risk.
Frodsham, former Sgt. Randall Bischak and a third man not associated with the Army are all serving prison terms for the roles they played in the child sex abuse ring. But the investigation is continuing because Sierra Vista police believe additional men took part.
Now, the criminal investigation is spilling over into civil court, where two of Frodsham’s adopted sons have filed separate lawsuits against the state for licensing David and Barbara Frodsham as foster parents in a home where they say they were physically and sexually abused throughout their lives.
A third adopted son is expected to file suit Tuesday in Arizona state court in Cochise County, said attorney Lynne Cadigan, who represents all three. In the latest complaint, 19-year-old Trever Frodsham says case workers missed or overlooked numerous signs that David and Barbara Frodsham were unfit parents. These included a 2002 sex abuse complaint filed with local police by one of the Frodshams’ biological daughters against an older biological brother, and the fact that David and Barbara Frodsham were themselves victims of child sex abuse.
Trever’s allegations echo those featured in an earlier lawsuit filed by his older biological brother, Ryan Frodsham, and one filed by Neal Taylor, both of whom were also adopted into the Frodsham household.
In an interview with the AP, Ryan Frodsham said his adoptive father began sexually abusing him when he was 9 or 10 years old and the abuse continued into his teens, when David Frodsham began offering his son’s sexual services to other men. “Makes me throw up thinking about it,” Ryan said.
In his lawsuit, Ryan Frodsham said the state was informed that David and Barbara Frodsham were physically abusing their children “by slapping them in the face, pinching them, hitting them with a wooden spoon, putting hot sauce in their mouths, pulling them by the hair, bending their fingers back to inflict pain, forcing them to hold cans with their arms extended for long periods time,” and refusing to let them use the bathroom unless the door remained open. In his AP interview, Ryan said Barbara never sexually abused him but walked into the room where David was abusing him at least twice.
“She knew what was going on,” he said.
The two lawsuits already filed by the adopted sons and related legal filings also say investigators with the Department of Child Safety and case workers with Catholic Community Services, which subcontracts foster and adoption work from the state, failed to effectively follow up on 19 complaints and attempted complaints regarding the Frodsham home spanning more than a decade.
Read: Pentagon may need more budget funding to help Ukraine
The complaints began in 2002, when the Frodshams applied for their foster care license, and continued until 2015, when David Frodsham was charged with disorderly conduct and driving drunk with children in his car, prompting the state to suspend their license indefinitely and remove all foster children from their home, although the charges were later dismissed.
Five months later, the Army deployed Frodsham to Afghanistan, where he was ordered back to Arizona after only four months of service.
REPORTS FELL ON DEAF EARS
The lawsuits say the Frodshams’ adopted children attempted to report their own physical and sexual abuse without success.
For instance, Neal Taylor’s lawsuit says he attempted to report that David Frodsham was sexually abusing him in two phone calls to his case manager, both of which he placed from school.
The first time, the case manager reported the call to Neal’s adoptive mother, who “interrogated” him and “proceeded to punish” him, according to his lawsuit. The second time, the case manager refused to meet with him unless he disclosed the reason for his call over the phone, because he would have had to drive 90 minutes from Tucson to Sierra Vista for a private meeting.
Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit and the related legal filings say he reported repeated alleged physical abuse by Barbara Frodsham to Sierra Vista police when he was 12 years old after running away from home. Police photographed several bruises, returned him to Barbara Frodsham, and reported the incident to the state Department of Child Safety. Despite the photographs and a police report, a case worker who met with Ryan five weeks later found his allegations “unsubstantiated.”
Arizona Department of Child Safety spokesman Darren DaRonco declined to answer specific questions about the lawsuits. He instead sent an email outlining the state’s procedures for screening prospective foster and adoptive parents. “Despite all of these safeguards, people are sometimes able to avoid detection,” DaRonco said, “especially if a person has no prior criminal or child abuse history.”
Yet David and Barbara Frodsham have both said they were abused as minors.
In their written application to become foster parents, Barbara Frodsham indicated that neither she nor her husband had been sexually victimized. But in recent pretrial testimony for Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit, she said she would have revealed her abuse if she had been asked by a state investigator as part of the licensing process.
David Frodsham, for his part, told a probation official after his guilty plea that he had been abused as a teenager.
Many child welfare experts believe people with a history of child sexual abuse are more likely to abuse children in their own households and should be questioned to ensure they’ve overcome their trauma before being allowed to provide foster care.
Arizona’s child welfare case workers “did not know how to interview and, therefore, they didn’t get candid answers from the Frodshams,” said Kathleen Faller, an expert witness retained in Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit. In pretrial testimony, Faller also said the state should not have granted the Frodshams’ foster care license.
Barbara Frodsham, who divorced David following his guilty plea, did not return multiple telephone calls from the AP, and did not respond to detailed questions left on her voice mail. At the time of her husband’s sentencing, she was working at Fort Huachuca as a personnel specialist, according to law enforcement records. A spokeswoman at Fort Huachuca said she still holds the position.
Attorneys for the state and the other defendants are seeking to have the cases dismissed, based in part on state law that grants immunity to state employees for mistakes or misjudgments committed in the course of their work. The law does not provide immunity for “gross negligence,” which the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor are alleging.
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The state also says all the complaints about the Frodsham children and the Frodsham home were properly handled.
CHILD SEX ABUSE RING
The Frodsham case started as child sex abuse investigations often do: with an undercover Homeland Security agent lurking in a chat room favored by child pornographers. The Philadelphia-based agent, using the Kik messaging app, ran into someone calling himself “Pup Brass” who was posting videos and photos labeled “pedopicsandvidd.”
Kik offers users a degree of anonymity but it stores IP addresses, which help identify a device’s connection to the internet and can help identify the device’s owner. According to a Sierra Vista police probable cause statement, federal and local law enforcement agents using the IP address and other information — some gleaned from social media accounts — soon determined that “Pup Brass” was Sgt. Randall Bischak.
When they raided his home, seizing computers, cell phones, tablets and CDs holding child pornography, Bischak confessed that he’d been having sex with a 59-year-old man he called “Dave” and his teenage son. In at least one instance Bischak had secretly recorded the sex on video. He also told investigators that he and Frodsham discussed having sex with small children and that Frodsham had supplied him with at least one of the “little ones.”
Thomas Ransford, who specializes in child sex abuse cases for the Sierra Vista police, was no stranger to Frodsham. In the mid-2000s, he served as a military police officer at Fort Huachuca when Frodsham was director of Training, Plans, Mobilization and Security. “So, I knew him. I was familiar with him, attended meetings with him,” Ransford recalled. He also knew that Frodsham’s foster kids were always in trouble.
When Ransford first questioned Frodsham he denied everything. “He was pompous, like he was the smartest guy in the room,” Ransford recalled. Then Ransford played the video Bischak had secretly taken of himself having three-way sex with Frodsham and his adopted son, Ryan, and Frodsham began to acknowledge his crimes.
Ryan Frodsham also initially denied his father had abused him. “Ryan appeared very defensive of his father and did not want to implicate him in any misconduct,” Ransford wrote in a probable cause statement.
But when Ransford showed him a compromising photograph seized from Bischak’s cell phone, Ryan began to open up. Over the course of several months, Ransford said, Ryan identified others he said were part of his father’s child sex abuse ring, fueling the continuing investigation.
“There’s others we’re aware of,” Ransford said. “It’s open.”
The Frodsham child sex abuse ring is part of a cluster of sex abuse cases that have come to light in Cochise County, Arizona, over the last several years, including several involving U.S. Border Patrol agents, two of whom worked at the Naco, Arizona, Border Crossing. Among them:
— John Daly III. A year ago, authorities arrested the recently retired Border Patrol agent after DNA evidence led them to suspect him in at least eight rapes, and to consider whether he is the so-called East Valley rapist, who terrorized women outside Phoenix throughout the 1990s. Prosecutors in Maricopa and Cochise counties have charged him with multiple counts of sexual assault and kidnapping. Daly, who is being held without bail, has pleaded not guilty.
— Dana Thornhill. A year ago, Thornhill was sentenced to a 40-year prison term after pleading guilty to years of sexually abusing his two children. Thornhill was charged following a stand-off with police in which he holed up in a local church. At the time, Thornhill was the chaplain at the Naco Border Crossing.
— Paul Adams. In 2017, Adams was charged with raping his two daughters, one of whom was just 6 weeks old; taking videos of the sexual assaults; and posting them on the Internet. Adams, who took his own life before standing trial, was also stationed at the Naco Border Crossing.
Ransford believes the cluster of cases should be attributed to good police work and effective prosecution, which give victims and others the confidence to report child sex abuse. “People report because they know something’s going to be done about it,” he said.
But Cadigan, the attorney representing the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor, wonders whether child sex abuse in southern Arizona is on the rise. “Law enforcement has been very effective, and I appreciate their efforts, but I’ve been taking these cases for 30 years and I’ve never been so busy,” she said.
A SCANDAL-PLAGUED DEPARTMENT
The physical and sexual abuse allegedly endured by the Frodsham brothers and Neal Taylor occurred at a time when Arizona’s child welfare system was embroiled in scandal. In 2013, officials revealed that what was then the Department of Protective Services had a backlog of more than 6,500 abuse and neglect complaints it had never investigated.
The revelation prompted then-Gov. Jan Brewer to dissolve the entire department and create a new Cabinet-level office called the Department of Child Safety. “It is evident that our child welfare system is broken, impeded by years of operational failures,” said Brewer, a Republican.
Underlying the scandal were deep budget cuts to family support services, leading to soaring abuse and neglect complaints and what an auditor general’s report would later refer to as “unmanageable workloads, staff turnover and the limited experience of some CPS supervisors and newly hired investigators.”
In 2014, an analysis produced for the state Legislature showed that the increase in workloads in Arizona during the decade that ended in 2012 was greater than in any other state but one. It also showed that the response time for abuse and neglect complaints ballooned from 63 hours to nearly 250 hours, between 2009 and 2012.
In its defense against Ryan Frodsham’s lawsuit, the state is trying to exclude any mention of the department’s troubled past. “There is no evidence that the types of problems that led to the dissolution of CPS has any relation to or impact on his case,” the state said in a pretrial motion.
But David and Barbara Frodsham were licensed as foster parents in 2002, at the dawn of what was perhaps the department’s most troubled period, and formally adopted the three men going to court about a decade later, shortly before the system collapsed. “The jury is entitled to the full picture,” lawyers for Ryan Frodsham said.
In his AP interview, Ryan Frodsham said he filed his lawsuit for one reason: “I want the state to admit what it did was wrong.”
Pentagon may need more budget funding to help Ukraine
The Pentagon may have to ask Congress for additional money to support Ukraine’s battle against Russia’s invasion, including to replenish America’s arsenal for weapons sent to Kyiv, officials said.
Rolling out the Defense Department’s $773 billion request for fiscal 2023, Pentagon leaders said Monday the budget was finalized before the invasion so it has no specific money for the war. Congress approved a $13.5 billion emergency funding package in early March.
The leaders said it was too early to predict how quickly Ukrainian forces will use up the weapons and ammunition already being provided, and how much the U.S. will need to replace what it sends to Ukraine, such as Stinger and Javelin missiles or body armor and other equipment.
“We’ll have to look at this again, probably in the summer, to be prepared for some of the more difficult options,” said Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord. “In the initial phases, at least, obviously we have been running through that drawdown at a fairly high rate. So, were that to continue, yes, we probably would need to address that again in the future.”
Read: New round of talks aims to stop the fighting in Ukraine
Despite the war in Europe, McCord said the U.S. still views China as America’s top challenge.
“We did not feel that what’s happening today altered the picture that China is the No. 1 issue to keep our eye on,” he said. “Obviously, you can draw your own conclusions about Russia’s performance on the battlefield.”
As the war enters its second month, the U.S. has been sending troops, aircraft and other weapons to NATO’s eastern flank, where nations worry they may be Russia’s next targets. The Pentagon said the budget recognizes that Russia is an “acute threat,” and the totals include more than $5 billion to provide support to European allies and increase America’s ability to work with them.
The budget also invests heavily in high-tech weapons and capabilities needed to counter China, Russia and other adversaries. The programs range from hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence to cyber warfare and space-based missile warning and defense systems.
The 2023 budget plan includes a 4.6% pay hike for the military and for Defense Department civilians — the largest raise in 20 years. And it provides $479 million to expand sexual assault prevention, treatment and judicial programs, including the hiring of about 2,000 personnel, including counselors and prosecutors.
The department also is seeking $1 billion to continue efforts to shut down the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in Hawaii that leaked petroleum into Pearl Harbor’s tap water. The money is in addition to $1 billion already allocated, and will help pay for remediation of the site, ongoing needs of the affected families, litigation costs and the development of alternative fuel locations for the U.S. military in the region.
Read: UN chief wants Ukraine humanitarian cease-fire
Nearly 6,000 people, mostly those living in military housing at or near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam were sickened, seeking treatment for nausea, headaches, rashes and other ailments. And 4,000 military families were forced out of their homes.
The budget includes $34.4 billion to accelerate modernization of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, largely following the path set by the Obama administration and continued by former President Donald Trump.
One of the few changes was a decision by the Biden administration to eliminate plans for a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile. That program, started by Trump and criticized by many Democrats as overkill, was in the early stages of research and development.
Other cuts are proposed in the budget including the decommissioning of several ships, a reduction in the number of F-35 fighter jets purchased in 2023 compared with earlier plans, and an effort to phase out the Air Force’s A-10 attack aircraft. Congress has repeatedly overruled efforts to cut the A-10 in the past.
Hong Kong’s COVID toll leads some to eco-friendlier coffins
Hong Kong’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak has cost about 6,000 lives this year – and the city is now running out of coffins.
Authorities have scrambled to order more, with the government saying 1,200 coffins had reached the city last week with more to come.
Space constraints make cremation a common burial practice in the densely populated island territory off the Chinese mainland, and the coffins typically are wood or wood substitutes.
To answer the shortage of them due to the COVID-19 toll, some companies are offering alternatives such as an environmentally friendly cardboard coffin.
LifeArt Asia has cardboard coffins made of recycled wood fiber that can be customized with designs on the exterior. In its factory in Aberdeen, a southern district of Hong Kong, up to 50 coffins can be produced a day.
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CEO Wilson Tong said there is still some resistance to using caskets made of cardboard. “(People feel that) it’s a little bit shameful to use so-called paper caskets. They feel that this is not very respectful to their loved ones,” Tong said.
But he noted the company has designs that can reflect religion or hobbies and the coffin can even have a personalized color. “So it gives more than enough sufficient choices to the people, and so that they can customize the funeral and offer a more pleasant farewell without the fear of death.”
The company says its cardboard coffins, when burned during the cremation, emits 87% less greenhouse gas compared to those made of wood or wood substitutes. Each LifeArt coffin weights about 10.5 kilograms (23 pounds), and can carry a body that weights up to 200 kilograms (441 pounds).
Hong Kong has reported about 200 deaths daily on average over the past week as many elderly residents who were unvaccinated die from COVID-19. The surge has put a strain on mortuaries, and refrigerated containers are being used to temporarily store bodies.
Amid the rising toll, non-profit Forget Thee Not, which advises people on their choices for last rites, bought 300 cardboard coffins and caskets to either send to hospitals or give to families who need them.
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“We have been promoting environmental-friendly and personalized funerals. Now we see that Hong Kong needs more coffins. There are not enough coffins for the bodies in our hospitals,” said Albert Ko, a board director at Forget Me Not.
Ko said some of the elderly who discussed their last rites with the organization have been open-minded and welcoming to the idea of eco-coffins.
“We hope to take this opportunity to contribute as well as promote eco-coffins,” he said.
New round of talks aims to stop the fighting in Ukraine
Another round of talks aimed at stopping the war in Ukraine is scheduled for Tuesday as the fighting looks increasingly like a stalemate on the ground, with the two sides trading control of a town in the east and a suburb of the capital.
Ukrainian forces retook Irpin, northwest of Kyviv, from Russian troops, who were regrouping to take the area back, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday as he sought to rally the country.
“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” Zelenskyy said in his nighttime video address to the nation. “We can’t express our emotions now. We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”
Ahead of the talks, to be held in Istanbul, the Ukrainian president said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and is open to compromise on the fate of the Donbas, the contested region in the country’s east.
As fighting raged throughout the country, the mayor of Irpin, which has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, said that the city had been “liberated” from Russian forces.
A senior U.S. defense official said the U.S. believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments, said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.
The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for the past eight years.
Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was gaining control of the Donbas.
While that suggested a possible face-saving exit strategy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it also raised Ukrainian fears that the Kremlin intends to split the country in two and force it to surrender a swath of its territory.
Meanwhile, a cyberattack knocked Ukraine’s national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline. The chief of Ukraine’s state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed “the enemy” without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off from telephone, internet and mobile service so that coverage could continue for Ukraine’s military.
Also Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region was hit by a missile attack, the governor said. It was the second attack on oil facilities in the region near the Polish border.
In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians back in other sectors.
In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the capital, Associated Press reporters saw the carcass of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago.
Ukrainians claim to retake ground ahead of latest talks
Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken a Kyiv suburb and an eastern town from the Russians in what is becoming a back-and-forth stalemate on the ground, while negotiators began assembling for another round of talks Tuesday aimed at stopping the fighting.
Ahead of the talks, to be held in Istanbul, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country is prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and is open to compromise on the fate of the Donbas, the contested region in the country’s east.
The mayor of Irpin, a northwestern Kyiv suburb that has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting near the capital, said Monday that the city has been “liberated” from Russian troops.
Zelenskyy warned that Russian forces are trying to regroup after losing the area.
Also read: UN chief wants Ukraine humanitarian cease-fire
“We still have to fight, we have to endure,” the president said late Monday in his nighttime video address to the nation. “We can’t express our emotions now. We can’t raise expectations, simply so that we don’t burn out.”
Irpin gained wide attention after photos circulated of a mother and her two children who were killed by shelling as they tried to flee, their bodies lying on the pavement with luggage and a pet carrier nearby.
A senior U.S. defense official said the U.S. believes the Ukrainians have also retaken the town of Trostyanets, south of Sumy, in the east.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence assessments, said Russian forces largely remained in defensive positions near the capital, Kyiv, and were making little forward progress elsewhere in the country.
The official said Russia appeared to be de-emphasizing ground operations near Kyiv and concentrating more on the Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for the past eight years.
Late last week, with its forces bogged down in parts of the country, Russia seemed to scale back its war aims, saying its main goal was gaining control of the Donbas.
While that suggested a possible face-saving exit strategy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, it also raised Ukrainian fears that the Kremlin intends to split the country in two and force it to surrender a swath of its territory.
Also read: Ukraine refugees near 4 million. Will exodus slowdown last?
Meanwhile, a cyberattack knocked Ukraine’s national telecommunications provider Ukrtelecom almost completely offline. The chief of Ukraine’s state service for special communication, Yurii Shchyhol, blamed “the enemy" without specifically naming Russia and said most customers were cut off from telephone, internet and mobile service so that coverage could continue for Ukraine’s military.
Also Monday, an oil depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region was hit by a missile attack, the governor said. It was the second attack on oil facilities in the region near the Polish border.
In recent days, Ukrainian troops have pushed the Russians back in other sectors.
In the city of Makariv, near a strategic highway west of the capital, Associated Press reporters saw the carcass of a Russian rocket launcher, a burned Russian truck, the body of a Russian soldier and a destroyed Ukrainian tank after fighting there a few days ago. In the nearby village of Yasnohorodka, the AP witnessed positions abandoned by Ukrainian soldiers who had moved farther west, but no sign of Russian troops.
And on Friday, the U.S. defense official said the Russians were no longer in full control of Kherson, the first major city to fall to Moscow’s forces. The Kremlin denied it had lost full control of the southern city.
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine drop any hope of joining NATO, which Moscow sees as a threat. Zelenskyy, for his part, has stressed that Ukraine needs security guarantees of its own as part of any deal.
Over the weekend, Zelenskyy said he is ready to agree to neutrality. He also said that “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt,” while suggesting at the same time that compromise might be possible over “the complex issue of Donbas.”
The Ukrainian leader has suggested as much before but rarely commented so extensively. That could create momentum for the talks, for which the Russian delegates arrived in Istanbul on Monday, Turkish media reported.
Still, it was not clear how a compromise on the Donbas would square with maintaining Ukraine's territorial integrity.
UN envoy: Sudan could face economic and security collapse
The U.N. envoy for Sudan warned Monday the east African nation is heading for “an economic and security collapse” unless it addresses the political paralysis following October’s military coup and moves toward resuming a civilian-led transition.
Volker Perthes told the U.N. Security Council that the military’s “violent repression” of protests against the coup is continuing and the absence of a political agreement on returning to a transitional path has already led to a deteriorating economic, humanitarian and security situation in the country.
The coup upended Sudan’s democratic transition after a popular uprising forced the military to remove autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
Also read: UN chief wants Ukraine humanitarian cease-fire
Near-daily street protests demanding a return to civilian rule have been met by a crackdown on protesters that has killed 80 people, mostly young men, and injured over 2,600 others, according to a Sudanese medical group. Western governments and world financial institutions suspended their assistance to Sudan in order to pressure the generals to return to civilian-led government.
Perthes said the United Nations, the African Union and the eight-nation east African regional group called the Intergovernmental Authority in Development have agreed to join efforts to facilitate Sudanese-led political talks.
The aim, he said, is a “return to constitutional order and (a) transitional path, with an empowered civilian-led government to steer the country through the transitional period and address the critical priorities.”
To give these talks a chance of succeeding, he said, “favorable conditions must be created” including an end to violence, ensuring the right to demonstrate peacefully, the release of political detainees, and “a firm commitment” to phase out the military’s current state of emergency in the country.
He said women demonstrators have been subjected to violence and intimidation by members of the security forces and 16 women have reportedly been raped during protests in the capital of Khartoum as of March 22, though the figure could be higher due to under-reporting.
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Perthes said that over the last two weeks, the three organizations have been working on a common approach and consulting key Sudanese parties. He said many of them “have emphasized the urgency of the situation and the need for a speedy yet sound resolution” a view he shares.
“We expect to start an intensive phase of talks in the next couple of weeks, fully recognizing that this will be during the (Muslim) holy month of Ramadan,” Perthes said. “We anticipate that the stakeholders will participate in the month’s spirit of peace and forgiveness.”
The U.N. envoy said that “the stakes are high” and the aspirations of the Sudanese people “for a prosperous, civilian-led, democratic future are at risk.”
“Unless the current trajectory is corrected, the country will head towards an economic and security collapse, and significant humanitarian suffering,” he said.
There have been disturbing reports of increased tensions among Sudan's different security forces, Perthes added. This has sparked concerns in some quarters “that if a political solution is not found, Sudan could descend into conflict and divisions as seen in Libya, Yemen or elsewhere, in a region already beset by instability,” he said.
Perthes also warned that the combination of conflict, economic crisis and poor harvests “will likely double the number of people facing acute hunger in Sudan to 18 million people by September 2022.”
In the absence of a political solution, he said, crime and lawlessness are rising and intercommunal conflicts in the vast western Darfur region have intensified, with farmers forced off their land by violent attacks, villages burned, and homes looted.
UN chief wants Ukraine humanitarian cease-fire
The United Nations chief has launched an initiative to immediately explore possible arrangements for “a humanitarian cease-fire in Ukraine” in order to allow the delivery of desperately needed aid and pave the way for serious political negotiations to end the month-long war.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday he asked Undersecretary-General Martin Griffiths, the head of the U.N.’s worldwide humanitarian operations, to explore the possibility of a cease-fire with Russia and Ukraine. He said Griffiths has already made some contacts.
Also read: Ukraine refugees near 4 million. Will exodus slowdown last?
The 193-member U.N. General Assembly, by an overwhelming majority of about 140 nations, has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Ukraine twice -- on March 2 and on March 24 -- and Guterres told reporters he thinks “this is the moment” for the United Nations “to assume the initiative.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the secretary-general said there has been a “senseless loss of thousands of lives,” displacement of 10 million people, systematic destruction of homes, schools, hospitals and other essential infrastructure, “and skyrocketing food and energy prices worldwide.”
Also read: Ukraine pleads for help, says Russia wants to split nation
Ukraine refugees near 4 million. Will exodus slowdown last?
A slowdown for good or a temporary lull during the storm of war?
While the number of refugees who have flooded out of Ukraine nears 4 million, fewer people have crossed the border in recent days. Border guards, aid agencies and refugees themselves say Russia’s unpredictable war on Ukraine offers few signs whether it’s just a pause or a permanent drop-off.
Some Ukrainians are sticking it out to fight or help defend their country. Others have left their homes but are staying elsewhere in Ukraine to wait and see how the winds of war will blow. Still others are elderly or ill and need extra help moving anywhere. And some remain, as one refugee put it, because “homeland is homeland.”
In the first two weeks after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, about 2.5 million people in Ukraine’s pre-war population of 44 million left the country to avoid the bombs and bloodshed. In the second two weeks, the number of refugees was roughly half that.
The total exodus now stands at 3.87 million, according to the latest tally announced Monday from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. But in the previous 24 hours, only 45,000 people crossed Ukraine’s borders to seek safety, the slowest one-day count yet, and for four of the last five days the numbers have not surpassed 50,000 a day. In contrast, on March 6 and March 7, over 200,000 people a day left Ukraine.
“People who were determined to leave when war breaks out fled in the first days,” explained Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for the Polish border guards.
Even if the exodus is easing, there’s no understating the scope of it.
UNHCR says the war has triggered Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, and the speed and breadth of refugees fleeing to countries including Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia — as well as Russia — is unprecedented in recent times. Poland alone has taken in 2.3 million refugees and Romania nearly 600,000. The United States has vowed to take in 100,000.
Even the devastating 11-year war in Syria, source of the world’s biggest refugee crisis, didn’t force out so many people so fast.
“We hope that hopefully the trend of new arrivals will decrease. But I don’t think there’s any guarantee of that until there’s a political solution” to the war, said Alex Mundt, UNHCR’s senior emergency coordinator in Poland.
READ: Ukraine refugees’ hopes of return wane after a month of war
The International Organization for Migration has also estimated that more 6.5 million people in Ukraine have been driven from their homes by the Russian invasion but remain displaced inside the country, suggesting that a large pool of potential refugees still awaits. IOM said another 12 million people are believed to be trapped in places where fighting has been intense, or don’t want to leave.
“Sadly, there are a lot of people who are not able to leave, either because transportation routes have been cut off or they just don’t have the means arrive to safety in the neighboring countries,” IOM spokesman Jorge Galindo told The Associated Press in Medyka, a Polish border town.
Jewish groups have begun an effort to bring frail Holocaust survivors out of Ukraine, but each person requires a team of rescue workers to extract such refugees.
“Now I’m too old to run to the bunker. So I just stayed inside my apartment and prayed that the bombs would not kill me,” said 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Tatyana Zhuravliova, a retired doctor who was relocated to a nursing home in Germany last week.
Michalska, the Polish border guard spokeswoman, suggested that many Ukrainians who have already fled have left the areas most affected by the fighting, and future battles could determine whether civilians in other areas decide to leave.
“We cannot exclude that there will be more waves of refugees in the future,” Michalska said by phone.
Aid agencies are not letting up in their efforts, helping those who have already gotten out of Ukraine and preparing in case new surges of refugees arrive.
At the border post in Medyka, Poland, shopping trolleys filled with luggage still rattle down a small path leading from passport control, through a village of aid tents to buses waiting to carry Ukrainian refugees to a nearby town.
“Maybe people are waiting it out, to see if their city will get attacked or not,” said Alina Beskrovna, 31, who fled the devastated, besieged southeastern city of Mariupol. She and her mother left the city five days ago but even to get to the border they had to cross 18 checkpoints: 16 Russian and two Ukrainian.
She alluded to new Russian airstrikes over the weekend near Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, which has been a key refuge for Ukrainians fleeing after the invasion ordered by Russian President Vladmir Putin.
“Putin is very unpredictable. And judging from what happened in Lviv two days ago, I think it will not stop in my region, it will not stop at Ukraine,” she said. “It will go further, so the world should prepare for more waves to come.”
Oksana Mironova, a 35-year-old refugee from Kyiv, said: “It is not getting any better — definitely not. We would like to believe it will improve, but unfortunately we need to escape.”
Yet even in the face of Russian airstrikes that obliterate apartment buildings, shopping malls and schools, the pull of home remains strong.
Olena Vorontsova, 50, fled the capital of Kyiv.
“Many people just do not want to leave their homes, because homeland is homeland,” she said