ECM WORLD WATCH: NATIONAL AND GLOBAL NEWS

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April 11, 2022 (San Diego’s East County) - East County Magazine's World Watch helps you be an informed citizen on important issues globally and nationally. As part of our commitment to reflect all voices and views, we include links to a variety of news sources representing a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social views. Top world and U.S. headlines include:

U.S.

Misc. national news

January 6 investigation

WORLD

Ukraine war

Other world news

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

U.S.

Congress votes to revoke Russia's trade status, ban Russian gas and oil (10 News)

The Senate and House have passed a bill to revoke Russia’s permanent normal trade relations status. President Joe Biden called for the move in March.

President Biden taps oil reserves to control US gas prices (10 News)

President Joe Biden has ordered the release of up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation's strategic petroleum reserve in a bid to control energy prices.  The president said the move could mean a fairly significant drop at the gas pump, potentially up to 35 cents per gallon.

Baby Formula Shortage, Partially Prompted by Recall, Leads Stores to Ration (Newsweek)

 

An estimated 30 percent of popular formula brands may be sold out across the country, according to an analysis of over 11,000 stores.

 

Native American tribe gets its land back after being displaced nearly 400 years ago (CNN)

The Rappahannock Tribe, a Native Tribe in Virginia, has reacquired 465 acres of sacred land at Fones Cliff.  Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams celebrated the tribe's reacquisition of the land…The acquisition follows a growing movement of Indigenous people fighting to reclaim their land.

Washington Post and CBS News: White House records of January 6 show more than seven-hour gap in Trump's calls (CNN)

Official White House records from January 6, 2021, show a gap of more than seven hours in phone calls placed to or from then-President Donald Trump, which is at odds with reporting about the calls between Trump and lawmakers while the attack at the US Capitol was ongoing, The Washington Post and CBS News reported.

Judge: Trump Likely Committed Crimes Related to Election (US. News & World Reports)

A federal judge has asserted it is “more likely than not” that former President Donald Trump committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

Biden's Justice Department wants to hire 131 more lawyers to prosecute January 6 cases (Business Insider)

The Justice Department wants to hire 131 additional lawyers to help with the hundreds of prosecutions stemming from the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, according to the Biden administration's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year…In the nearly 15 months since a pro-mob stormed the Capitol, the Justice Department has brought more than 770 prosecutions, including cases charging members of far-right groups with seditious conspiracy.

Justice Dept. Widens Jan. 6 Inquiry to Range of Pro-Trump Figures (New York Times)

Federal prosecutors have been seeking documents and testimony about the fake electors scheme and the planning for the rally just before the storming of the Capitol.

WORLD

Ukraine war

Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt, says S&P (CNN)

Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt because it offered bondholders payments in rubles, not dollars, credit ratings agency S&P has said.  Russia attempted to pay in rubles for two dollar-denominated bonds that matured on April 4, S&P said in a note on Friday. …Moscow has a grace period of 30 days from April 4 to make the payments of capital and interest, but S&P said it does not expect it will convert them into dollars given Western sanctions that undermine its "willingness and technical abilities to honor the terms and conditions" of its obligations.

West pledges to punish Russia over civilian killings in Bucha (Reuters)

The United States and European countries pledged on Monday to punish Moscow over civilian killings in northern Ukraine, where a mass grave and tied bodies of people shot at close range were found in a town seized back from Russian forces.

Mariupol mayor says 31,000 residents deported at 'gunpoint' to Russian 'filtration camps,' evacuations stalled (Yahoo News)

... Mayor Vadym Boychenko said in a Telegram post Friday that he had "verified" that Ukrainians from the southern port city were being taken "at gunpoint" to a camp in Novoazovsk – a Ukrainian border town 35 miles from Mariupol and just 9 miles from the Russian border…Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said this week that she has seen "credible reports" that support the filtration camp claims and noted that Ukrainians are being separated from their families and stripped of their passports and identification cards.  "I do not need to spell out what these so-called filtration camps are reminiscent of. It’s chilling, and we cannot look away," she said in an address to the UN Security Council, alluding to Nazi-era concentration camps…An estimated 5,000 Mariupol residents have been killed according to the mayor, and reports have surfaced that a mobile crematorium is being used by Russian troops to cover up their alleged war crimes.

UN assembly suspends Russia from top human rights body (KPBS)

The U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body over allegations of horrific rights violations by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, which the United States and Ukraine have called tantamount to war crimes.

Talks resume as Ukraine denies hitting depot on Russian soil (10 News)

Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine have resumed. They are occurring as Russia accuses the Ukrainians of launching a cross-border helicopter attack on a fuel depot. A Kremlin spokesman says the incident on Russian soil could undermine Friday's negotiations. Ukraine is denying responsibility for the attack.

Russian Troops Suffer ‘Acute Radiation Sickness’ After Digging Chernobyl Trenches (Daily Beast)

Several hundred Russian troops were  reportedly rushed to a special medical facility in Belarus after digging in radioactive soil in a forest near the infamous nuclear plant.

Ukraine claims control over Kyiv region as Russia looks east (Reuters)

Ukraine said on Saturday its forces had seized back all areas around Kyiv, claiming complete control of the capital region for the first time since Russia launched the invasion. As Russian troops regrouped for battles in east Ukraine, towns surrounding Kyiv bore scars of five weeks of fighting. Dead bodies laid scattered over streets, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russian forces of leaving behind mines.

Russ­ian oli­garch Ro­man Abramovich and Ukrain­ian peace ne­go­tia­tors suf­fered symp­toms of sus­pected poi­son­ing af­ter a meet­ing in Kyiv ear­lier this month (Wall Street Journal)

Mr. Abramovich, Ukrain­ian law­maker Rustem Umerov and an­other ne­go­tia­tor de­vel­oped symp­toms fol­low­ing the March 3 meet­ing in Kyiv that in­cluded red eyes, con­stant and painful tear­ing, and peel­ing skin on their faces and hands, the peo­ple said. Mr. Abramovich has shut­tled be­tween Mos­cow, Be­larus and other ne­go­ti­at­ing venues since Rus­sia in­vaded Ukraine. Mr. Abramovich was blinded for a few hours ….Abramovich and oth­ers in­volved in the in­ci­dent since have im­proved, and their lives aren’t in dan­ger…West­ern ex­perts who looked into the in­ci­dent said it was hard to de­ter­mine whether the symp­toms were caused by a chem­i­cal or bi­o­log­i­cal agent or by some sort of elec­tro­magnetic-ra­di­a­tion at­tack.…

With Ukraine farmers on frontlines, U.N. food chief warns of 'devastation' (Reuters)

The U.N. food chief warned on Tuesday that the war in Ukraine was threatening to devastate the World Food Programme's efforts to feed some 125 million people globally because Ukraine had gone "from the breadbasket of the world to breadlines."  "It's not just decimating dynamically Ukraine and the region, but it will have global context impact beyond anything we've seen since World War Two," WFP Executive Director David Beasley told the 15-member United Nations Security Council.  Beasley said 50% of the grain bought by the WFP, the food-assistance branch of the United Nations, comes from Ukraine, "so you can only assume the devastation that this is going to have on our operations alone." Beasley added that the crisis was compounded by a lack of fertilizer products coming from Belarus and Russia.

Other world news

Emmanuel Macron to face Marine Le Pen in French presidential election runoff (CNN)

French President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen in the second round of the country's presidential election, setting up a rematch of their runoff contest in 2017.  Centrist Macron and Le Pen, a long-time standard-bearer for the French far-right, were the top two candidates in the first round of Sunday's vote, picking up 27.8% and 23.2% of the ballots respectively, according to the French Interior Ministry.

Here's why Mexico's president is launching a vote to recall himself (NPR)

…While campaigning ahead of his landslide victory in 2018, López Obrador pledged to let voters decide at his term's halfway mark whether he should stay.

China tightens restrictions and bars scholars from international conferences  (NPR)

The international conference was supposed to gather some of the most promising and most established Asia studies scholars from across the world in lush Honolulu. Instead, at least five Chinese scholars based in the People's Republic of China (PRC) were prevented from attending virtual events via Zoom, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. They said Chinese security officers and education officials directly intervened, citing education regulations published during a global coronavirus pandemic which require all Chinese scholars to receive university permission to attend any international event in-person or online.

U.N.: 1 out of 4 of the world's population live in areas affected by violence  (NPR)

Two billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, now lives in conflict-affected areas, according to the United Nations. An estimated 84 million people were "forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence and human rights violations," and an estimated 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance due to conflict, the U.N.'s Secretary-General António Guterres said on Wednesday. In remarks to the U.N.'s Peacebuilding Commission, Guterres said the world is experiencing the highest number of violent conflicts since 1945, as World War II drew to a close.

Gunman kills 5 in mass shooting spree in central Israel  (NPR)

A gunman on a motorcycle opened fire in a crowded city in central Israel late Tuesday, methodically gunning down victims as he killed at least five people in the second mass shooting rampage this week. The shooter was killed by police.  The shooting appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks by Arab assailants ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.



 

 


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