Russia's air force accidentally bombs its own city - AP | Selected Articles Review - 9:10 AM 4/22/2023
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thenewsandtimes.com/ On 18 April 2023, Russian state media announced the cancellation of this year's Immortal Regiment 'Great Patriotic War' remembrance marches on 'safety' grounds. In reality, the authorities were highly likely concerned that participants would highlight the… twitter.com/i/web/status/164…
MOSCOW (AP) — When a powerful blast shook a Russian city near the border of Ukraine residents thought it was an Ukrainian attack. But the Russian military quickly acknowledged that it was a bomb accidentally dropped by one of its own warplanes.
Belgorod, a city of 340,000 about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the border, has faced regular drone attacks that Russian authorities blame on the Ukrainian military, but the explosion late Thursday was far more powerful than anything its residents had heard before.
Witnesses reported a low hissing sound followed by a blast that made nearby apartment buildings tremble and threw a car on a store roof. It left a 20-meter (66-foot) -wide crater in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard flanked by apartment buildings, shattering their windows, damaging several cars and injuring two residents. A third person was later hospitalized with hypertension.
Immediately after the explosion, Russian commentators and military bloggers were abuzz with theories about what weapon Ukraine had used for the attack. Many called for a powerful retribution.
But about an hour later, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that the explosion was caused by a weapon accidentally dropped by one of its own Su-34 bombers. It didn’t offer any further details, but military experts said the weapon likely was a powerful 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) bomb.
In Thursday’s blast, the weapon was apparently set to explode with a small delay after impact, to hit underground facilities.
Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said that local authorities decided to temporarily resettle residents of a nine-story apartment building near the blast while it was inspected to make sure it hadn’t suffered irreparable structural damage.
The explosion in Belgorod followed the crash of a Russian warplane next to a residential building in the port city of Yeysk on the Sea of Azov that killed 15 people. Yeysk hosts a big Russian air base with warplanes flying missions over Ukraine.
Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights have increased sharply during the fighting, so have the crashes and accidents.
image/png 700.pngTUMWATER, Wash. (AP) — The email went out to legal cannabis growers around Washington state, alerting them that another of their colleagues had gone under.
“Liquidation sale,” it said. Attached was a spreadsheet of items up for grabs: LED grow lights for $500 apiece. Rotary evaporators for hash oil, $10,000.
Across the Columbia River in Oregon, where the state’s top marijuana regulator recently warned of an “existential crisis” in the industry, it’s an open secret some licensed growers have funneled product to the out-of-state black market just to stay afloat.
California’s “Apple store of weed,” MedMen, is teetering with millions in unpaid bills, while the Canadian cannabis company Curaleaf has shuttered most of its cultivation operations in California, Oregon and Colorado.
Along the West Coast, which dominated U.S. marijuana production long before states began to legalize it, producers face what many call the failed economics of legal pot.
There is vast supply, thanks to great growing conditions and a wealth of expertise, but any surplus remains officially trapped within each state’s borders due to the federal ban on marijuana. Prices have plunged and producers have struggled.
“I’m at rock bottom,” said Jeremy Moberg, who owns CannaSol Farms in north-central Washington and, like many licensed growers, complains that the state’s 37% cannabis tax leaves virtually no profit margin for producers. “I’m tired of running a failing business.”
No one in the industry expects a fractured Congress to help out anytime soon by legalizing the drug, allowing pot businesses to deduct expenses or even just easing banking restrictions that frequently cut them off from loans or credit.
Instead, some are pinning their hopes, however faint, on President Joe Biden’s administration clearing the way for marijuana trade among states that have legalized the drug. That would allow the West Coast — with its favorable climate and cheap, clean hydropower for indoor growing — to help supply the rest of the country, they argue.
In Senate testimony last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will soon announce a new marijuana policy — one that would hew close to the “Cole Memorandum” of 2013, which made clear the feds would not interfere with state efforts to regulate marijuana as long as certain law enforcement priorities were met.
Drug policy experts say they do not expect the new policy to go as far as permitting interstate commerce.
Nevertheless, lawmakers in Washington state last week approved a “trigger bill” — modeled after ones already passed in Oregon and California — authorizing the governor to enter into interstate cannabis trade agreements should the feds allow it.
Twenty-one states have now legalized the recreational use of cannabis by adults. Sales just began in Missouri, are expected to begin in July in Maryland and totaled $300 million in the first year of New Mexico’s program.
How states have set up their markets has implications for how their industries are doing now — and how they might fare should businesses be allowed to sell out of state.
Washington and Colorado were the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. Many of the early regulations Washington adopted to keep the Justice Department at bay — including restricting the size of growing facilities and banning out-of-state investment — remain in place.
That has helped some smaller growers thrive. But it could hamstring those hoping to compete in an interstate marketplace alongside larger, more efficient producers from Oregon or California, who operate under fewer limits.
In Oregon, where sales began in 2015, large growers have achieved some economy of scale that could give them a leg up in a broader market. But in the meantime, the state’s oversupply is considered the nation’s worst.
In February, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission reported marijuana businesses were sitting on about 3 million pounds (1.36 million kilograms) of unused cannabis, as well as 75,000 pounds (34,000 kilograms) of concentrates and extracts.
Steve Marks, then the commission’s executive director, said Oregonians already buy as much weed as they can use. Federal inaction poses “an existential crisis” for Oregon’s industry, he warned.
“Cannabis in Oregon is like corn in Iowa,” said TJ Sheehy, an analyst for the commission. “If you put a box around Iowa and said you can only grow corn in Iowa to sell to Iowans, you’d have exactly the same dynamic.”
Contributing to the glut in Oregon and to a lesser degree in Washington is that the states licensed so many growers. The initial idea was to ensure enough supply for the legal market, bringing down prices to compete with the black market. Oregon, with a little over half of Washington’s population, has hundreds more licensed growers.
The oversupply has been terrific for cannabis consumers.
When legal sales began in Oregon, a pound of cannabis might have gone for $3,000 wholesale; today, that same pound might be $100 to $150, said Isaac Foster, co-founder of Portland Cannabis Market, a wholesale distributor.
In Washington, which has some of the highest cannabis taxes in the country, the prices consumers pay in pot shops are still cheaper than illicit weed. The state is raking in half a billion dollars a year in taxes, money it devotes to health care and government operations.
Three-quarters or more of cannabis users in Washington, Oregon and Colorado — all among the earliest legalization states — reported they bought marijuana products from legal retail outlets in 2021, according to the International Cannabis Policy Study, based at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
With such cheap prices, keeping the industry sustainable is a challenge.
Moberg, of CannaSol Farms, is down to seven employees — a drop from more than 30 in 2014 and 2015 as Washington’s pioneering industry launched amid tight supply and high prices.
With the spring planting season arriving, he already has three shipping containers full of weed, he says, including 75% of what he produced last season, and 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) still unsold from the year before that. His revenue last year was down by about half.
East Fork Cultivars, one of Oregon’s first licensed growers, has thousands of pounds (kilograms) of marijuana stashed, said co-founder Nathan Howard.
“We hope we can sell most of it to keep the lights on,” Howard said. “It’s a miracle that we’re still in existence.”
Oregon regulators know growers are suffering, but say they’ll be in a good position should the feds allow interstate commerce.
In one meeting with producers in southern Oregon, Paul Rosenbaum, then chair of the state’s cannabis commission, told them to hang on.
“You’re all staying in this game for one reason: that the federal government, whether it’s this term or next term, they are going to recognize marijuana on a 50-state basis,” he recalled telling them. “And southern Oregon is to marijuana what Bordeaux is to France.”
Industry insiders say legal growers generally want to supply the legal market, rather than risk their businesses and freedom should they get caught selling out the back door. But some have only hung on by getting product to the black market.
“They were either going to die or get creative,” said Tanner Mariani, head of sales for Portland Cannabis Market. “And a lot of people chose to get creative and ... found a way to get it from this market into the other side and then out of the state.”
Authorities have also contended with illegal farms operating under the guise of legality — notably in Oregon, where many have been financed by foreign cartels.
The arrival of legal, adult-use sales in 2018 in California — the nation’s largest pot producer and the world’s fourth-largest economy — was seen as a breakthrough that would help open the way for federal legalization.
But about two-thirds of California communities don’t allow legal marijuana activity, which helps the tax-free illegal market flourish.
A post-pandemic economy ushered in layoffs in a sector that already was strained. Hefty taxes, inflation and regulatory costs weigh on bottom lines, and a glut pushed wholesale prices to fire-sale levels. As in Oregon, it’s no secret some California growers have pushed legal product into illicit sales.
An analysis by cannabis investor Aaron Edelheit determined California’s legal market lost nearly one-quarter of its total growing area after the start of 2022 — “a wipeout,” he called it. With so many producers going under, wholesale prices have started to recover in California.
One of the state’s first licensees was Erik Hultstrom, who envisioned thriving in a green rush economy and began nurturing boutique buds in a steel-gated warehouse on the fringes of Los Angeles.
Five years later, he’s sold his license and hopes to contract with a large grower to sell bud under Hultstrom’s brand.
“I don’t know any companies that are really making money,” he said.
L.A. dispensary owner Gregory Meguerian said he folded a cultivation project: “You’ve got to know when you cut your losses.”
There have been predictions of an industry-wide collapse, but not everyone is concerned. Rob Sechrist, of the cannabis-only lender Pelorus Equity Group, described the market tumult as normal for an emerging industry.
“Every time somebody fails, market share goes to somebody else,” Sechrist said. “We have borrowers throughout the country and California that are doing extremely well.”
Indeed, cannabis distributor Nabis is opening a massive warehouse southeast of Fresno this month.
Some growers have found a happy medium.
Indoor grower Doc & Yeti Urban Farms, in Tumwater, Washington, produces about 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) of flower every year, which it sells to regular retail-store customers, said co-founder Joseph DuPuis. Brand loyalty has helped his team of 13 survive and profit, but he’d like to see Washington better prepare itself for a national market.
“If you can withstand the storm, you have a chance to come out to calmer seas and survive in this market,” DuPuis said.
___
Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon. Blood reported from Los Angeles. Thomas Peipert in Denver and Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, contributed.
image/jpeg 3000.jpegVice President Kamala Harris said the government ‘should not be telling’ women what to do with their bodies in an interview with Telemundo, hours before the Supreme Court blocked new restrictions on a widely-used abortion pill reut.rs/3orwmIO
The Kremlin is finding it difficult to maintain its rhetoric comparing its full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the Soviet fight against the Nazis during World War Two, British defense officials have said.
In its daily update, the U.K. Ministry of Defense (MOD) referred to the cancelation of this year's Immortal Regiment Great Patriotic War remembrance marches due to "safety" issues.
Instead, remembrance events will take place in other forms. These could include posting photos of relative military members on social media, on clothes, on cars, and on websites dedicated to the regiment.
But British defense officials said that the decision was taken because authorities were likely to be worried that the participants "would highlight the scope of recent Russian losses."
The Centers for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in February that Russia suffered more combat deaths in the first year of the war against Ukraine than in all of its wars since World War II combined. As well as the high troop losses, there is much anticipation over an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The decision to nix Immortal Regiment marches follows the cancelation of Victory Day events in the Russian oblasts of Belgorod and Kursk, as well as the occupied peninsula of Crimea.
Authorities said that the May 9 commemorations would not take place due to security concerns but there has been speculation that they were kiboshed because of a lack of tanks and equipment caused by the war.
British defense officials noted that the latest cancelation followed comments by Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin in which he publicly questioned whether there are actually any 'Nazis' in Ukraine.
"The Russian state is struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative that it uses to justify the war in Ukraine—that the invasion is analogous to the Soviet experience in the Second World War," Saturday's update said.
Putin has frequently used World War Two as a reference point for his own unjustified invasion in talking points repeated on Kremlin propaganda outlets. Russian authorities have continued "to unify the Russian public around polarising myths about the 1940s," the British MOD said.
Earlier this month, state news agency RIA Novosti reported that documents from FSB archives implicated the Nazis in the murder of 22,000 Polish nationals in the Katyn Massacre of 1940.
"In reality, FSB's predecessor agency, the NKVD, was responsible," the MOD noted, referring to how in 2010, Russia's State Duma had officially condemned Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for ordering the killings. Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment.
Russia’s security services are confiscating the passports of senior officials and state company executives to prevent overseas travel, as paranoia over leaks and defections spreads through President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine still raging, security officers have tightened travel requirements within the state sector, demanding the surrender of travel documents from some prominent figures and former officials, said several people familiar with the matter.
The increased pressure reflects deep suspicion in the Kremlin and FSB, the KGB’s successor agency, about the loyalty of Russia’s civilian elite, many of whom privately oppose the war in Ukraine and are chafing over its impact on their lifestyles.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, confirmed Russia had tightened the restrictions on foreign travel for some who work in “sensitive” areas. “There are stricter rules for this. In some places they are formalised and in some places they depend on a specific decision . . . about specific employees,” he told the Financial Times. “Since the start of the special military operation, more attention has been paid to this issue.”
Since Soviet times, Russian officials with access to mid-level state secrets have been required to leave their passports in a safe run by the “special department” embedded in their ministries and companies. But Russia’s security services rarely enforced the rules, according to former officials and executives.
This changed after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, when security services began warning against travel to countries such as the US or UK. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year restrictions were applied much more broadly and depend heavily on the whims of individual security officers embedded in state institutions, the people said.
For this reason security measures differ across state institutions, with some asking even medium-level figures to refrain from foreign travel and others giving senior officials blanket permission to travel abroad within reason.
Executives at one major state industrial company are banned from travelling more than two hours’ drive from Moscow without official permission, one of the people said.
In other cases, FSB officers have asked former officials who previously had access to state secrets to surrender their passports, and even some who never had access, said people familiar with the matter.
Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian central bank official, said passport restrictions had now expanded beyond individuals with security clearance.
“Now they are coming to certain people and saying, ‘please hand in your red civilian passports, because you have access to sensitive information for the motherland, so we want to control your movements’,” she said.
Russia’s security services have almost total leeway to interpret the rules under revisions to laws on state secrets, espionage and treason, said Prokopenko. She quit the central bank after the invasion last year and is now a visiting fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
“Basically any information can be deemed secret, so the embedded FSB officers start telling you that you have sensitive information. What is it? Why is it secret and who decides that? Nobody knows,” Prokopenko said.
Peskov said the decisions “depend on the specific area of work” of both the company and the individual. “They may be more or less sensitive,” he said.
The Kremlin has also made some efforts to extend the informal ban to more officials. Following a series of public scandals over leaked footage of MPs holidaying in Dubai and Mexico, Russia’s lower house of parliament in January required lawmakers to notify superiors about overseas work trips.
At least seven regions have issued strong recommendations against foreign travel to local officials, according to Russian newspaper Kommersant.
In February, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the notorious Wagner paramilitary group, called for a total ban on foreign travel for officials, as well as responsibility for their relatives’ “amoral behaviour, ostentatious displays of wealth, and misuse of luxury goods”.
Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has called for a total ban on foreign travel for officials © Prigozhin Press Service/APThe moves have come as discontent grows among the elite with the sputtering war effort and its impact on their lifestyles. Once able to spend their riches on mansions, yachts, and boarding schools for their children in the west, Russian officials and oligarchs are now chafing at being confined to countries not deemed “unfriendly”, several members of the elite told the FT.
That discontent spilled out into the open this week after Ukrainian media published an alleged recording of a conversation between Farkhad Akhmedov, a sanctioned Russo-Azerbaijani oligarch, and Iosif Prigozhin, a Kremlin-connected music producer whose wife, a prominent singer, performed at a pro-war concert alongside Putin last year.
The call included complaints about Russia’s growing international isolation and pressure from the security services. Akhmedov could not be reached for comment but a person close to him said the recording was genuine. Prigozhin — who is not related to the warlord — has said the recording was “distorted partially or fully” and vowed legal action against the person who recorded it.
“They screwed us, our children, their future, and their fate. Do you understand?” Akhmedov said on the call. “Screw them. We all understand what’s going on there. Go to the Maldives, to Dubai . . . I don’t know . . . to Altai, to Baikal, wherever you want, but stay away from Moscow,” he added.
Russia Is Struggling to Maintain Its Nazi Narrative: U.K. Newsweek
The post Russia Is Struggling to Maintain Its Nazi Narrative: U.K. – Newsweek first appeared on The Shared Links – The News And Times.
History is all too human—busy with battles, emperors, and land grabs. Yet, it is our relationship with animals that has changed the face of the planet, as far back as our mammoth-hunting days 30,000 years ago.
We went where the meat went, following herd migrations of animals like mammoth to the vast frigid grasslands of the steppe that stretched across the northern hemisphere from central France to Alaska, the largest terrestrial biome on the planet. The soils were fertile, and the foraging rich. One adult mammoth could consume over 400 pounds of herbage a day and scatter a vast tonnage of fertilizer ensuring a continuous cycle of nutrients. We hunted and hunted. As herds dwindled, our skills only improved. Large mammals with long pregnancies and few offspring could not reproduce in number or in time to replace themselves. We could never have imagined this loss, let alone the impacts it would have to the whole ecosystem. Without the mammoth grazing and dispersing seeds and nutrients, grassland became dominated by tundra vegetation which, uneaten, became waterlogged and frozen, turning to acid peat where grasses struggled to regrow.
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Then, we became farmers. No need to chase after food anymore: we grew it. Or corralled it into warm, living larders. But these would need safekeeping, and here are the seeds of our 12,000-year war against nature. The way we thought about animals informed how we treated them. We ordered the natural world into a hierarchy, a narrowing ladder that climbed, getting warmer and better all the way up to man (and woman one rung below). We were not a branch on the evolutionary tree—we were the pinnacle. Thus, we became separated from the interrelated community of which we are part.
We had dominion over the beasts with orders to subdue them and multiply ourselves. This relationship has shaped our minds, our lives, our land, our civilization, and will shape our future too. Animals were to serve us. But without them we wouldn’t have gotten very far. They provided the meat, milk, fur, leather, wool, fertilizer, pulling power, and then horsepower. We could fell forests, straighten rivers, or stop them entirely.
Although we are tropical animals, we have used our big brains to outsmart our natural limitations to occupy every possible ecological niche. There is no ecosystem immune to us. And now we are in trouble. Yet our saviors are all around us. What’s more, they can do it for free.
Read More: What Humans Owe Animals
Take, for instance, the sperm whale, who defecates 50 tons of iron fertilizer each year in the upper layer of the ocean where plants grow. Phytoplankton captures as much CO2 as terrestrial plants, seeds clouds which reflect sunlight, and provides half our oxygen. Phytoplankton feeds plankton who feed krill who feed little fish who feed bigger fish. The presence of whales increases marine life. The body of a great whale at the end of her life takes 33 tons of carbon, captured over a 70-year lifespan, to the ocean bed, removing it from the atmosphere for centuries. What is her ecological impact? Or the impact of her loss? Producing, say, 10 young, who produce 10 young, who produce 10 young, and so on. Before 19-century commercial whaling devastated populations the effect would have been phenomenal. Imagine if we could protect recovering populations of great whales and allow them to thrive in our oceans. In Chile, a network of smart acoustic buoys monitor the locations of whales and provide shipping with alternative routes—a world first to protect whales for the role they play. Save the whale to save the seas to save the planet. Whales might come to our rescue.
Or beavers. The life-giving power of fresh water is the expertise of beavers, nature’s architects and engineers. After centuries of the rapacious fur trade, the loss of beavers affected the hydrology of the land. Creeks dried up; beaver meadowlands became tinderbox dry and wildfires began to rage. Now, beavers are making a comeback not only in America, but in British rivers too, not seen since the 16th century.
Busy holding back the flood waters and creating dynamic habitats teaming with life, herbivores can repair life support systems for free by browsing, grazing, rootling, fertilizing, opening glades, aerating the soil, and transporting seeds. Predators will keep them in check from overgrazing. These dynamic natural processes can solve some of our biggest challenges: fire risk, flood mitigation, soil health, insect collapse, carbon sequestration. It’s the most exciting environmental fix out there—with legs on. One recent study estimated that thriving populations of just nine key groups of animals (sharks, grey wolves, sea otters, musk oxen, wildebeest, ocean fish, American bison, African elephants, and whales) could facilitate the additional capture 6.41 gigatons of CO2 each year. In fact, it’s almost the amount calculated to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Animals maintain ecosystems that take CO2 out of the atmosphere and their absence can trigger breakdowns that turn carbon sinks into carbon sources.
It’s not just large animals. Without insects to pollinate plants where would we be? (Up a tree with a feather duster.) Pollinators like bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, and flies have a global economic benefit of $500 billion a year, and insects are indispensable in the food web. Yet chemicals like neonicotinoids decimate populations indiscriminately worldwide, and these short term gains have long term costs. Systemic neonicotinoids have a long residual life and are water soluble, and we cannot feed the planet from degraded soil. Soil is one of the richest ecosystems on Earth. Billions of organisms within it provide a myriad of services, from recycling to decomposing to aerating. There is more carbon in the soil than the atmosphere and all the plants and animals combined. Plato lamented the destruction of soils and forests in ancient Greece 2,500 years ago; pollen analysis reveals a fertile land of rich soil long since washed away after trees were felled—many turned into ships for war and colonization.
War, wealth, and power have always taken precedence over nature. But imagine if nature took precedence. Imagine if understanding came before fear or quick profit. Imagine if we could all see our animal cousins as the miraculous eco-engineers they are (and as the individual beings they are) and safeguard their prospects and their homes, the seas, rivers, grasslands, wetlands, and forests. To reimagine our home, we have to begin to imagine theirs. To try to put ourselves in their whale skin or bison fur. Complex beings are fairly simple on one level, needing space, water, food, shelter, and mates, like we do. Aside from all the free services and natural capital they provide, there is that other priceless commodity: pure joy.
Imagine a global commons of ocean protection zones that is bold and big and serious, that seeds the seas around them. It’s not hard to imagine—we’re already helping it happen. Bald eagles, once on the brink, have barreled back into American skies; wolf howls shiver over brows of Spanish hills; in 1941, there were just 21 whooping cranes and now there are 800; sea otters, by keeping urchins in check, are restoring the great kelp forests, one of the most dynamic ecosystems on the planet; and blue whales have returned to the southern Atlantic seas around South Georgia, including mothers and calves, 60 years after whaling so very nearly disappeared the largest animal that ever breathed on Earth.
Life supports life. Animals are the key. Variety and abundance are the strengths. Animals could save us. The paradox is, now, only we can save them.
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International officials meet in Germany to coordinate weapons … WUNC
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State lawmakers seek to drag the country back to the 19th century on child labor. Washington Post
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The US Government recently took aim at the four sons of notorious Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin El Chapo Guzman in a crackdown on deadly fentanyl. The indictments described wanton murder & torture by El Chapo's sons to protect & expand their dominance of the Mexican drug trade. They tortured rivals with electrocution & some were fed, dead & alive, to tigers kept by Ivan & Jesus Guezman. In recent years, the drug fentanyl has fuelled a surge in US opioid overdose deaths. A potent synthetic opioid drug, fentanyl is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine & 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic.
The new cases describe a brutal cartel viciously expanding its operations & focusing on fentanyl. Sometimes, to test freshly made batches, the cartel gave it to people who were tied down. instead of shooting one woman dead, they repeatedly tried out fentanyl on her until she overdosed. In another case, they injected an addict with newly made fentanyl to gage its strength.
#us #elchapo #worldnews
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For the very first time non-Christian figures would be represented in the coronation of a British monarch. According to a report by the Times, this comes as King Charles III whose coronation is going to take place next month has stated his desire to be a defender of all faiths.
#uk #kingcharles #worldnews
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Please keep discussions on this channel clean and respectful and refrain from using racist or sexist slurs and personal insults.
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The Forza Italia leader is having intensive therapy to restore correct blood oxygenation following a shocking diagnosis of leukaemia
Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been diagnosed with leukaemia following a hospital admission yesterday.
He was hospitalised because of pneumonia, which arose following what Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper says was a diagnosis of leukaemia.
The 86-year-old was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday with heart problems and shortness of breath.
Leukaemia is a cancer of the blood cells, meaning your body makes some abnormal blood cells which behave differently from healthy blood cells.
The Forza Italia leader is having intensive therapy to restore correct blood oxygenation, Corriere della Sera reports.
Pneumonia is common during induction chemotherapy for acute leukaemia.
Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian prime minister and leader of Forza Italia' party ( SCALZO/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Berlusconi is alert and in stable condition on his second day in intensive care at a Milan hospital, a top political aide said Thursday, citing an update from the media mogul's main doctor.
"I spoke this morning with Professor (Alberto) Zangrillo. He told me that Premier Berlusconi spent the night quietly," said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who is the coordinator of Forza Italia, the political party that Berlusconi created some 30 years ago.
"His condition is stable," Tajani said, interviewed on Italian state television.
Berlusconi is one of Italy's most controversial contemporary leaders and has been in and out of hospitals in recent years.
Berlusconi was prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011, but it was his lavish sex parties that were so infamous.
He coined the term "bunga bunga" to describe the debauched soirees he would throw at his private villa, where young women reportedly stripped for him.
Last month he was acquitted of bribing witnesses to lie about his notorious parties.
In his various court cases, he continually denied wrongdoing and accused prosecutors of pursuing a political vendetta against him.
He insisted the parties, described by some as "orgies", were actually elegant dinner parties.
He was also temporarily barred from political office over his conviction for tax fraud. He has had over 20 separate trials, most of them on corruption, embezzlement and bribery charges.
He once referred to former US President Barack Obama as "sun-tanned" and said it was "better" to like girls than be gay.
Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party is part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing coalition, but he does not have a role in government.
"Sincere and affectionate wishes for a speedy recovery to Silvio Berlusconi. Forza Silvio (Come on Silvio)", Ms Meloni wrote on social media.
Meanwhile, family members continued to visit Berlusconi. Spotted arriving at the hospital were his brother, Paolo, his eldest daughter, Marina, and his younger son, Luigi.
Paolo Berlusconi said of his brother: "He's a rock. Thus, he'll make it this time, too."
The former three-time premier and now senator has had a pacemaker for years, underwent heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in 2016 and overcame prostate cancer decades ago.
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Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has adopted a consistent antiwar position, holding Russia responsible for its military aggression and atrocities. As part of this commitment, we regularly update an interactive map that documents combat operations in Ukraine and the damage inflicted by Russia’s invasion forces. Our map is based exclusively on previously published open-source photos and videos, most of them posted by eyewitnesses on social media. We collect reports already available publicly and determine their geolocation markers, adding only the photos and videos that clear this process.
Meduza doesn’t try to track the conflict in real time; the data reflected on the map are typically at least 48 hours old.
Key updates
What we knew as of 8 a.m. GMT on Thursday, April 20
The Russian assaults on different segments of the frontline are increasingly sporadic, even though the invading forces haven’t yet quit trying to advance. Still, their efforts across the board are positional in character and often boil down to shelling the other side while being shelled in return.
We saw a similar picture in July and August 2022, when, after capturing Lysychansk, Russian troops did not stop advancing immediately. Instead, their offensives grew less and less determined, as if their momentum was gradually running out. Last November, the Ukrainian offensive, which drove the Russian forces beyond the secure barrier of the Dnipro River, ended in a similar way, as the Ukrainian side’s assaults on the Russian positions in the north of the Luhansk region gradually waned in December.
This dynamic signals a transfer of initiative from one of the adversaries to the other. Russian formations are likely expecting a Ukrainian offensive. For the time being, this keeps them from wasting strength and ammunition in localized tactical attacks. The one exception to this state of affairs is Bakhmut, where Ukrainian formations still control the western quarters of the city, staving off the critical prospect of being completely surrounded.
Bakhmut
- According to Russia’s Defense Ministry and the Wagner Group command, the mercenary group has transferred control over parts of the line of contact to the regular Russian army. These are specifically the segments between the Sakko i Vantsetti village (named after the American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti) and Zaliznyanske north of Bakhmut, and between Ozarianivka and Stupochky in the south. This has freed the mercenary assault groups to regroup and mount a new offensive in Bakhmut.
- After gaining ground in central Bakhmut in early April, the mercenaries have been halted at a new defensive line not far from the railroad. Fighting over the train station and its vicinity has been ongoing for more than two weeks.
- Judging by the most recent Ukrainian drone videos, Wagner mercenaries were able to penetrate past the railroad. It’s unclear whether the Ukrainian army’s main strongholds, the train station and the grain elevator north of it, have been captured. The elevator building rising over Bakhmut’s western outskirts had been blown up by the retreating Ukrainian units, but half of it has remained intact. You can watch a panoramic video of fighting in this area here.
- Wagner Group is also trying to cut off the Ukrainian units in the western quarters of Bakhmut from their supply lines, by advancing right along the edges of the defensive positions from the north (near the Siverny Stavok pond) and from the southwest (by the high-rise buildings on Chaikovsky St.). The Wagner units coming from the north have managed to capture the Rose Alley district and the former House of Culture blown up by Ukrainian troops around April 10–19.
- The siege may go on for a while. The mercenaries are now close to a district comprised entirely of concrete high-rise buildings and well-connected to the Ukrainian “mainland”: this area has been thoroughly fortified by the Ukrainian side. Wagner Group, likely reinforced by paratrooper units of the regular Russian army, will almost certainly try to capture the remaining two roads out of Bakhmut by attacking the suburbs of Ivanivske (formerly known as Krasne) and Khromove.
- Ukrainian sources also report that Wagner units have succeeded in capturing the defenders’ positions on one of the “lifeline” thoroughfares west of the city. This isn’t the first time fighting has taken place right by the roadside, but this time the Ukrainian side is likely at risk of losing control over the highway.
- Ukrainian forces are dealing limited counteroffensives on the flanks of the Russian grouping now storming Bakhmut. To prevent the invading Russian forces from capturing the city, the Ukrainian command will likely have to mount a larger counteroffensive.
Other directions
While anticipating a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russian forces are making no attempt to mount any serious assaults by Kreminna, Avdiivka, Marinka, or Vuhledar. Piecemeal attacks continue only in the Kreminna Forests National Park, near Bilohorivka by Lysychansk, north and southwest of Avdiivka, and both north and south of Marinka. The Russian side’s gains in these areas have been minimal or else nil over the past week.
The data reflected on the map are typically at least 48 hours old. Meduza is careful in working with data, but mistakes are still possible, and perhaps even inevitable. If you spot one, please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]. Thank you!
Translated by Anna Razumnaya
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