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1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
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Thousands attend Jerusalem ‘Holy Fire’ ceremony despite complaints over restrictions-Israeli officials say they don’t want a repeat of Mt. Meron disaster; Easter ceremony at Church of the Holy Sepulchre goes ahead with some 4,000 participants-By Joseph Krauss-APR 23,22Today, 4:09 pm
JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of Christians celebrated the “Holy Fire” ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Saturday against a backdrop of rising tensions with Israeli authorities, which imposed new restrictions on attendance this year that it said were needed for safety.Israel says it wants to prevent another disaster after a crowd stampede at a packed Jewish holy site last year left 45 people dead. Christian leaders say there’s no need to alter a ceremony that has been held for centuries.In the dense confines of Jerusalem’s Old City, where Jews, Christians and Muslims must share their holiest sites — no matter how reluctantly — even small changes can cause prophetic angst.The city has already seen a week of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, which sites atop the Temple Mount.This year major Jewish, Christian and Muslim holidays have converged against a backdrop of renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence. Tensions have soared as tens of thousands of people flock to Jerusalem’s Old City to visit some of the holiest sites for all three faiths for the first time since the lifting of pandemic restrictions.Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that on the Saturday before Easter a miraculous flame appears inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a sprawling 12th-century basilica built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected.Every year the Greek patriarch enters the Holy Edicule, a chamber built on the traditional site of the tomb, and returns with a lit lantern, passing the flame from candle to candle among thousands of people, gradually illuminating the walls of the darkened basilica. The flame is later transferred to Orthodox communities in other countries on special flights.The source of the Holy Fire has been a closely guarded secret for centuries, and highbrow skeptics going back to the Middle Ages have scorned it as a carnival trick for the masses.Two years ago, the church was nearly empty because of a coronavirus lockdown, but Israel made special arrangements for the flame to be carried abroad. Hundreds attended last year, when travel restrictions were in place and the ceremony was limited to the fully vaccinated.This year, Israel says it is applying a safety law that limits crowd size based on space and the number of exits. Authorities say they want to prevent a repeat of last year’s stampede on Mount Meron in northern Israel during a religious festival attended by around 100,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews.It was one of the worst disasters in the country’s history, and authorities came in for heavy criticism over alleged negligence.“There’s never a problem until there’s a problem, and this is what happened last year in Meron,” said Tania Berg-Rafaeli, the director of interreligious affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.If something were to happen at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, “we would have to take responsibility for that, and we want to avoid any problem,” she said.Authorities said they would allow a total of 4,000 people to attend the Holy Fire ceremony, including 1,800 inside the church itself, which has a single large entryway with a raised step. Berg-Rafaeli said Israeli authorities have been in close contact with the churches and would revise the quota upwards next year if more doors in the basilica can be opened.“It’s totally about safety and not at all about anything else,” she said.Church leaders rejected any restrictions on principle, saying they infringe on religious freedom. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, like Al-Aqsa, is governed by a decades-old set of informal arrangements known as the status quo. As at Al-Aqsa, seemingly minor violations have ignited violence, including notorious brawls between monks of different denominations. Thousands gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem this morning, for the Holy Fire ceremony pic.twitter.com/9Pnrp8cQAd — Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 23, 2022-In a statement released earlier this month, the Greek Patriarchate said it was “fed up with police restrictions on freedom to worship.”“The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has decided, by the power of the Lord, that it will not compromise its right to provide spiritual services in all churches and squares,” it said. “Prayers will be held as usual.” The patriarchate says up to 11,000 people attend in normal years.Police sealed off the main entrances to the Christian Quarter with barricades. Large crowds jostled to get in, as the police waved through a trickle of local residents and some foreign tourists.The ceremony, which goes back at least 1,200 years, hasn’t always passed peacefully.In 1834, a frenzied stampede broke out in the darkened church, and the ruler of the Holy Land at the time barely escaped with his life after his guards drew swords and hacked their way through the crowd, the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore recounts in his history of Jerusalem. Some 400 pilgrims died in the melee, most from suffocation or trampling.Israel says it is committed to ensuring freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and has long presented itself as an island of tolerance in the Middle East. Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem today; thousands in attendance at the Holy Fire ceremony pic.twitter.com/MoHyT27Sqd — Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 23, 2022-In recent years, however, tensions have risen with the local Christian community, most of whom are Palestinian Christians, a population that has steadily dwindled through decades of conflict as many have sought economic opportunities abroad.In recent years, the Greek Patriarchate has been locked in a legal battle with a Jewish nationalist group over the sale of three properties in the Old City, including two Palestinian-run hotels. The patriarchate says it has proof of corruption in the disputed 2004 sale.Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the sale in 2019, ruling in favor of Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli organization that seeks to expand the Jewish presence in mostly Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem.The group took over part of one of the hotels — a popular backpacker hostel — last month. Christian leaders denounced the move, accusing them of trying to change the religious character of Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter.The frustration could be felt outside the New Gate leading to the Christian Quarter on Saturday, as people jostled with police to get in, lifting baby strollers and small children over the barricades as some were waved through.“It’s like this every year and every year there’s a different excuse,” said Dr. Muna Mushahwar, a physician who argued with police as she tried to organize the entry of a foreign delegation.“They don’t want the Christians here. The more you push people the more frustrated they get and then they leave.”
Ukraine says Russians trying to storm Mariupol steel plant, port city’s last defense-Officials estimate 2,000 troops defending 1,000 civilians sheltering at facility’s underground tunnels; Putin had ordered military to only blockade the area-By david keyton and YESICA FISCH-APR 23,22-Today, 3:08 pm
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces attacked a steel plant in the shattered Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, apparently seeking to eliminate the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic city the Kremlin claims its military has otherwise seized.The assault was reported by an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office as an estimated 1,000 civilians sheltered in the Azovstal plant alongside the remaining Ukrainian fighters, while Russian forces pressed their offensive elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region amid fierce Ukrainian counterattacks.The presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovich, said during a briefing that Russian forces had resumed airstrikes on the massive seaside plant and were trying to storm it, which would represent a reversal from an order Russian President Vladimir Putin gave two days earlier.Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin on Thursday that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians. At the time, Putin ordered him not to send Russian troops into the plant but instead to block off the facility, an apparent attempt to starve out the Ukrainians and force them to surrender.Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with the civilians sheltering in the facility’s underground tunnels. Arestovic said the Ukrainian forces were trying to counter the new attacks. ????????I am commander of Azov regiment, Denis Prokopenko. I call to the leaders of the world. Right now, in Mariupol, at "Azovstal" steel factory hundreds of civilians are sheltering. Among them – people of all ages, women, children, families of Mariupol defenders.???????? pic.twitter.com/7IG6cEJHud — АЗОВ (@Polk_Azov) April 18, 2022-Earlier Saturday, the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released footage of around two dozen women and children, some of whom said they had been in the mill’s underground tunnels for two months and longed to see the sun.“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.”The regiment’s deputy commander, Sviatoslav Palamar, told The Associated Press the video was shot Thursday, the same day Russia declared victory over the rest of Mariupol. The contents could not be independently verified.Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities have said the Azovstal plant is the last remaining defense stronghold in Mariupol, which has strategic importance to Moscow and has been under siege since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, according to Ukrainian authorities.The footage of Azovstal showed soldiers giving sweets to children who respond with fist-bumps. One young girl says she and her relatives “haven’t seen neither the sky, nor the sun” since they left home on Feb. 27.Over 20,000 civilians have been killed in Mariupol during the nearly two-month siege. Satellite images released this week showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to conceal the slaughter taking place there.Ukrainian officials had said they were trying again Saturday to evacuate women, children and older adults from Mariupol after many previous attempts failed. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on the messaging app Telegram that the effort was to get underway at midday, but it wasn’t clear how the new assault on the plant would affect any possible evacuation.Russia has pulled a dozen crack military units from Mariupol to bolster the offensive elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region, while other troops continue to keep the remaining Ukrainian troops in the city pinned in the plant, Ukrainian officials said.In Donbas, Russian troops pressed their offensive in an attempt to fully seize Ukraine’s industrial heartland but have made little headway as fierce Ukrainian counterattacks have slowed their efforts, Ukrainian and British officials said Saturday.Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours repelled eight Russian attacks in the two regions, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, a tanker and three artillery systems, Ukraine’s General Staff said.“Units of Russian occupiers are regrouping. Russian enemy continues to launch missile and bomb strikes on military and civilian infrastructure,” the General Staff said on its Facebook page.Luhansk Governor Serhiy Haidai said Saturday that two people were killed by Russian shelling in the city of Popasna. Separately, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram on Saturday that two people were killed and 19 more wounded by the Russian shelling. Synehubov said that over the past day the Russian forces fired at the region’s civilian infrastructure 56 times.“In addition to the fact that street fighting continues in the city (of Popasna) for several weeks, the Russian army constantly fires at multistory residential buildings and private houses,” Haidai wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “Just yesterday, local residents withstood five enemy artillery attacks. … Not all survived,”Britain’s Ministry of Defense said despite their increased activity “Russian forces have made no major gains in the last 24 hours as Ukrainian counter-attacks continue to hinder the efforts.”Russia still has not established air or sea control due to Ukrainian resistance, and despite Putin’s declaration of victory in Mariupol, “heavy fighting continues to take place, frustrating Russian attempts to capture the city, thus further slowing their desired progress in the Donbas,” the Ministry of Defense said.Overall, the Kremlin has thrown more than 100,000 troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya into the fight in Ukraine and is deploying more forces in the country every day, Danilov said.“We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state,” he said.In western Ukraine, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy announced a curfew for the Lviv area ahead of Orthodox Easter. Kozytskyy cited “new intelligence” and said the curfew would run from 11 p.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Sunday, and then every day between these hours until further notice.“Unfortunately, the enemy doesn’t have such a concept as a major religious holiday,” Kozytskyy wrote.Mariupol has taken on outsize importance in the war. Fully capturing it would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and allow Russia to create a land corridor with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.Taking over the city also would allow Putin to throw more of his forces into the potentially climactic battle for the Donbas and its coal mines, factories and other industries.The city has been reduced largely to smoking rubble by weeks of bombardment, and Russian state TV showed the flag of the pro-Moscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the city’s highest point, its TV tower. It also showed what it said was the main building at in flames.Under cover of darkness, Ukrainian forces have managed to deliver weapons to the besieged steelworks via helicopter, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.The latest satellite photos from Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be a second mass grave site near Mariupol. The site at a cemetery in the town of Vynohradne has several newly dug parallel trenches measuring about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.Earlier, Maxar released photos of what appeared to be rows upon rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves next to a cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol. That prompted Ukrainian accusations that the Russians are trying to conceal the slaughter of civilians in the city.The Ukrainians estimated that the graves seen in the photos released Thursday could hold 9,000 bodies.The Kremlin did not respond to the satellite pictures.
After Moscow visit next week, UN chief to meet Zelensky in Ukraine-Antonio Guterres heading to meet Putin on Tuesday, then Ukrainian president two days later-By AFP-APR 23,22-Today, 12:20 pm
UNITED NATIONS, United States — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine next week after a stop in Moscow to confer with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war, the UN said Friday.Guterres will see Zelensky and Ukraine’s foreign minister on Thursday, two days after visiting Moscow, the United Nations said in a statement.The Kremlin confirmed Friday that Putin would meet Guterres on Tuesday.Guterres sent letters this week requesting these in-person meetings to try to regain the initiative for the UN, which has been largely marginalized from the crisis since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.In part this is because the war has divided the UN Security Council permanent members: the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia.China has refused to condemn the invasion, depicting Russia as a victim of Western efforts to weaken it.With the letters he sent on Tuesday, Guterres sought to spur dialogue to end the war.“At this time of great peril and consequence, he would like to discuss urgent steps to bring about peace in Ukraine,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said this week.Guterres has had little contact with Zelensky since the war began, speaking with him just once by telephone, on March 26.Putin has not taken Guterres’s phone calls, or had any contact with him, since the UN chief stated that the invasion violated the UN charter.
Civilian evacuation effort set for Mariupol, say Ukraine authorities-Deputy PM says another attempt will be made to get women, children and elderly in bombarded city to safer area-By Agencies and TOI staff-APR 23,22-Today, 11:26 am
Ukraine will make a new attempt to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, the heavily destroyed city largely controlled by Russian forces, at noon on Saturday, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.Vereshchuk said on the Telegram messaging app there will be another attempt to evacuate women, children and the elderly from the strategic port city of Mariupol, which has been besieged by Russian forces for weeks and reduced largely to smoking rubble by constant bombardment.“Today we will again try to evacuate women, children and the elderly,” Vereshchuk said on Telegram, calling for people to gather on the motorway close to the Port City shopping center in the city. “If everything happens as planned, we will start the evacuation around noon.”Many previous attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed.The Kremlin earlier this week declared that Mariupol has been “liberated,” with the exception of the Azovstal steel mill, the last pocket of resistance where Ukrainian troops are holed up.The governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said on Telegram that an evacuation train will depart Saturday from the eastern city of Pokrovsk. Residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which comprise Ukraine’s industrial heartland known as Donbas, will be able to take the train free of charge.It will bring them to the Western city of Chop near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary, according to Haidai.Russia has said that establishing full control over the Donbas, a large part of which has been in the hands of Russia-backed separatists since 2014, is currently one of the main goals of its operation in Ukraine.Haidai also said Saturday that two people were killed by Russian shelling in the city of Popasna.Haidai said on the messaging app Telegram that residential buildings in the region were shelled 12 times the previous day, and Popasna “got the most” of it.“In addition to the fact that street fighting continues in the city for several weeks, the Russian army constantly fires at multi-story residential buildings and private houses. Just yesterday, local residents withstood five enemy artillery attacks… Not all survived,” Haidai wrote.He added that some houses were also destroyed in Lysychansk and Novodruzhesk.On Friday, the city council and an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol said that another mass grave has been found outside the city.The city council posted a satellite photo provided by Planet Labs showing what it said was a mass grave 45 meters (147.64 feet) by 25 meters (82.02 feet) that could hold the bodies of at least 1,000 Mariupol residents.It said the new reported mass grave is outside the village of Vynohradne, which is east of Mariupol.Earlier this week, satellite photos from Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be rows upon rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves in the town of Manhush, located to the west of Mariupol.The discovery of mass graves has led to accusations that the Russians are trying to conceal the slaughter of civilians in the city.
Despite advances, Russia makes ‘no major gains’ in past 24 hours, says UK intel-Ukrainian counter-attacks continue to hinder Russian forces’ efforts, reports British Ministry of Defence-By TOI staff and Agencies-APR 23,22-Today, 10:02 am
As Russia presses ahead with its deadly war on Ukraine, now focused on destroying and capturing the country’s eastern parts, its forces have made “no major gains” over the past 24 hours, hindered by Ukrainian counter-attacks, according to a daily intelligence report by the UK’s Ministry of Defence Saturday.“Russian air and maritime forces have not established control in either domain owing to the effectiveness of Ukraine’s air and sea defense reducing their ability to make notable progress,” the ministry said.In addition, despite Moscow’s claims of the “liberation” of the strategic port city of Mariupol, “heavy fighting continues to take place frustrating Russian attempts to capture the city thus further slowing their desired progress in the Donbas,” the report added.The Ukraine military’s general staff said Saturday that Russian forces continue their “offensive operations” in eastern Ukraine with the goal of defeating Ukrainian forces, establishing full control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and securing “a land route between these territories and the occupied Crimea.”Ukrainian forces in the past 24 hours repelled eight Russian attacks in the two regions, destroying nine tanks, 18 armored units and 13 vehicles, a tanker and three artillery systems, the general staff said on its Facebook page on Saturday morning.Russian forces continue to partially block and shell Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and are active in the area of Izyum, the update said.In Mariupol, Russian troops “continue to blockade” Ukrainian units in the area of the Azovstal steelworks, the last remaining stronghold, and “launch airstrikes on the city, including with the use of long-range aircraft,” the post said, adding that an engineering unit arrived in Mariupol in order to demine the port infrastructure.The city, reduced largely to smoking rubble by weeks of Russian bombardment, Russian state TV showed the flag of the pro-Moscow Donetsk separatists raised on what it said was the city’s highest point, its TV tower.Russian forces are pummeling an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters holed up inside the sprawling Azovstal plant, the last known pocket of resistance in the strategic southern port city, the mayor’s office reported.“Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal,” said Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor. “Fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop.”On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the battle for Mariupol despite the steel-mill holdouts. He ordered his forces not to storm the plant to finish off the defenders but to seal it off instead in an apparent bid to force them to surrender.The Kremlin has thrown over 100,000 troops and mercenaries from Syria and Libya into the fight in Ukraine and is deploying more forces in the country every day, said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.“We have a difficult situation, but our army is defending our state,” he said.Numerous cities and villages came under bombardment in the Donbas — the industrial region in the east that the Kremlin has declared the new, main theater of war — as well as in the Kharkiv region just to the west, and in the south, authorities said.Mariupol has taken on outsize importance in the war. Capturing it would deprive the Ukrainians of a vital port and complete a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014.It would also allow Putin to throw more of his forces into the potentially climactic battle for the Donbas and its coal mines, factories and other industries, or what the Kremlin has now declared to be its main objective.Danilov reported that some 12 to 14 of Russia’s elite military units have, in fact, left Mariupol and begun moving to the east to take part in the fighting there.“It will now be difficult for our forces, because our guys in Mariupol were taking [those units] on themselves. It is their courage and feat,” he said.Danilov also said Kyiv managed to deliver weapons via helicopter at great risk under cover of night to the Mariupol steelworks, which have been bombarded for weeks.Putin said Russia gave Ukrainian forces inside the plant the option to surrender, with guarantees to keep them alive, and offered “decent treatment and medical care,” according to an account of a phone call with European Council President Charles Michel, provided by the Kremlin.“But the Kyiv regime does not allow them to take this opportunity,” Putin charged.More than 100,000 people — down from a prewar population of about 430,000 — are believed trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, and over 20,000 civilians have been killed in the nearly two-month siege, according to Ukrainian authorities.Most attempts to evacuate civilians from the city have failed because of what the Ukrainians said was continued Russian shelling.Satellite photos released Friday by Maxar Technologies revealed what appeared to be a second mass grave site excavated recently near Mariupol. The site at a cemetery in the town of Vynohradne has several newly dug parallel trenches measuring about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.A day earlier, Maxar made public satellite photos of what appeared to be rows upon rows of more than 200 freshly dug mass graves next to a cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol. That prompted Ukrainian accusations that the Russians are trying to conceal the slaughter of civilians in the city.
1 rocket falls short of border; 2 land in open Israeli areas-Israel shutters Gaza pedestrian crossing after three more rockets fired at south-Gantz had vowed ‘harsh response’ to continued rocket fire, but military doesn’t strike Hamas sites overnight; Erez Crossing to reopen following assessment on Sunday-By Emanuel Fabian-APR 23,22-Today, 8:42 am
Israel announced the temporary closure of its sole pedestrian crossing with the Gaza Strip on Saturday, after three rockets were fired from the Hamas-run coastal enclave at southern Israel late Friday and overnight.According to the military’s liaison to the Palestinians, the crossing will not reopen for Palestinian workers on Sunday after it had been shuttered since Thursday afternoon due to the Passover holiday.“Following the rockets that were fired toward Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip last night, it was decided that crossings into Israel for Gazan merchants and workers through the Erez Crossing will not be permitted this upcoming Sunday,” the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, known by its acronym COGAT, said in a statement.“The re-opening of the crossing will be decided in accordance with a security situational assessment,” COGAT added.The crossing — along with crossings with the West Bank — was already closed since Thursday at 5 p.m., and was to remain in effect until Saturday at an hour yet to be determined.Exceptions are made for humanitarian and other outstanding cases but require the approval of COGAT.The number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who can work in Israel was raised to 12,000 last month, and the government said it would raise it by an additional 8,000, to a total of 20,000. Another video shows the two rocket launches at southern Israel, one which fell short. pic.twitter.com/tRyWkvRyGt — Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 22, 2022-Israel avoided responding militarily to the three rockets, despite a series of strikes this week that came in response to similar attacks.Defense Minister Benny Gantz had vowed on Thursday to provide a “harsh response” to continued rocket fire.“The defense minister noted that before the holiday [of Passover], forces and preparedness in the area were upped, and that the policy of a harsh response to all terror activities will continue,” Gantz’s office said. The defense minister had met with leaders of communities near the border with the Gaza Strip, hours after Israeli jets struck Hamas targets following an earlier rocket attack.On Friday night, one rocket landed in an open field in the Sha’ar Hanegev regional council, while the second fell short in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the military. Hours later, a third rocket was fired from the southern Gaza Strip, landing in an open area near a town close to the border.It was the fifth rocket attack on southern Israel in a week, after one fell short in Gaza on Thursday, one landed near a home in the city of Sderot on Wednesday, and another was shot down by air defenses on Monday.There was no immediate claim of responsibility by any of the Gaza-based terror groups for the rocket fire, though Monday’s attack was blamed on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in several media reports.The IDF responded to Monday’s and Wednesday’s rocket launches with air raids targeting a number of Hamas military sites in Gaza, including one used by the terror group to manufacture weapons.The army said in its early Thursday statement that it holds Hamas responsible for what takes place in the Gaza Strip, sticking to its long-held policy of targeting posts belonging to the group in response to rocket fire, regardless of whether its fighters were behind the launches or not.This week’s rocket attacks ended an almost four-month period of quiet on the Gaza border. Wednesday’s rocket fire came at the tail-end of a tension-filled day in Jerusalem, where Israeli nationalists were prevented by police from marching through the Old City’s Damascus Gate, a popular gathering point for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Hamas had threatened to attack if the march went ahead.The last few days have seen violent clashes between Palestinian rioters and police on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, leading to the injury of dozens of Palestinians and several police officers.Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups have repeatedly invoked the flashpoint holy site as a red line. Police actions to quell riots there last year were among the triggers of an 11-day war in Gaza last May.The Gaza Strip has been blockaded by both Israel and Egypt for 15 years in an attempt to contain the enclave’s Hamas rulers and other groups. Israel says the tight restrictions on goods and people are necessary due to efforts by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, to massively arm itself for attacks against the Jewish state.Critics lament the blockade’s impact on ordinary Gazans, around 50 percent of whom are unemployed, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The sky-high poverty rates make employment in Israel a highly attractive option for those lucky enough to receive permits.
Ukraine says Russian strike on Odesa killed 5, including three-month-old infant-Kyiv says 18 people wounded in missile attack on Black Sea port, which hit military facility and two residential buildings; Moscow continues assault on last Mariupol stronghold-By Agencies-APR 23,22-Today, 7:04 pm
A Russian strike killed at least five people, including a baby, and wounded 18 others in Ukraine’s Black Sea city of Odesa on Saturday, Kyiv said, warning the toll would likely rise.“Five Ukrainians killed and 18 wounded. And those are only the ones that we were able to find. It is likely that the death toll will be heavy,” the head of Ukraine’s presidential office Andriy Yermak said on Telegram. “A three-month-old baby was among those killed.”Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said: “The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odesa is terror.”Ukraine’s air force said its defense systems intercepted two Russian TU-95 missiles that it said were fired from the Caspian Sea.But it said four other missiles hit the city, including civilian infrastructure.“Unfortunately, two missiles hit a military facility and two hit residential buildings,” the air force’s southern command said on Facebook.Odesa, a largely Russian-speaking city and cultural hub, has been targeted previously by Moscow’s forces which were rebuffed by Ukraine.Meanwhile, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential office said on Saturday that Russian forces are attacking a steel plant that is the last defense stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the strategic port city of Mariupol.Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said during a briefing on Saturday that the Russian forces have resumed airstrikes on Azovstal and were trying to storm it.“The enemy is trying to completely suppress resistance of the defenders of Mariupol in the area of Azovstal,” Arestovich said.Arestovich’s statement came two days after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians.Putin ordered the Russian military not to storm the plant and instead to block it off in an apparent attempt to stifle the remaining pocket of resistance there.Ukrainian officials have estimated that about 2,000 of their troops are inside the plant along with about 1,000 sheltering in the facility’s underground tunnels.Arestovich says the Ukrainian fighters are still holding on despite the resumed attacks and are even trying to counter them.
Iran Revolutionary Guards general survives deadly ambush in restive region — report-Bodyguard killed near checkpoint in Sistan-Baluchistan province; attackers arrested, says Iran state TV-By TOI staff and Agencies-APR 23,22-Today, 8:33 am
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general is said to have survived a deadly attack that killed a bodyguard, according to a report on Iranian state TV Saturday.Brigadier General Hossein Almassi, a Guards commander in the restive Sistan-Baluchistan province, was traveling in a vehicle near a checkpoint in the provincial capital Zahedan when it came under fire by gunmen, Reuters reported Saturday, citing Iranian TV.The general sustained no injuries, the report said.The bodyguard who was slain was identified as Mahmoud Absalom, the son of a senior IRGC commander in the region, according to a report by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).Authorities have arrested some suspects but did not identify them, the report added.Sistan-Baluchistan is the site of occasional clashes between Iranian forces and various militant groups. The relationship between the predominantly Sunni residents of the region and Iran’s Shiite theocracy has long been fraught.The province, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a base for a Sunni separatist group affiliated with al-Qaeda and known as Jeish al-Adl, or Army of Justice.Security forces have also clashed with drug traffickers in the province, located along a major smuggling route for Afghan opium and heroin.In January, IRGC forces said they killed an unidentified gunman who attacked its intelligence office in the town of Saravan in Sistan-Baluchistan, about 1,360 kilometers (850 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.In late December, the IRGC said it killed six “armed bandits” in a shootout in the region that also left three of its members dead.The IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization.
Surprisingly low Shanghai COVID death toll spurs questions of government cover-up-City of 25 million only reports 25 coronavirus deaths despite major outbreak in recent months; Chinese authorities use less transparent, inconsistent methods of tallying statistics-By HUIZHONG WU and Dake Kang-22 April 2022, 11:51 pm
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Lu Muying died on April 1 in a government quarantine facility in Shanghai, with her family on the phone as doctors tried to resuscitate her. She had tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and was moved there in line with government policy that all coronavirus cases be centrally isolated.But the 99-year-old, who was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday, was not counted as a COVID-19 death in Shanghai’s official tally. In fact, the city of more than 25 million has only reported 25 coronavirus deaths despite an outbreak that has spanned nearly two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people in the world’s third-largest city.Lu’s death underscores how the true extent of the virus toll in Shanghai has been obscured by Chinese authorities. Doctors told Lu’s relatives she died because COVID-19 exacerbated her underlying heart disease and high blood pressure, yet she still was not counted.Interviews with family members of patients who have tested positive, a publicly released phone call with a government health official and an internet archive compiled by families of the dead all raise issues with how the city is counting its cases and deaths, almost certainly resulting in a marked undercount.The result is a blurred portrait of an outbreak that has sweeping ramifications for both the people of Shanghai and the rest of the world, given the city’s place as an economic, manufacturing, and shipping hub.An Associated Press examination of the death toll sheds light on how the numbers have been clouded by the way Chinese health authorities tally COVID-19 statistics, applying a much narrower, less transparent, and at times inconsistent standard than the rest of the world.In most countries, including the United States, guidelines stipulate that any death where COVID-19 is a factor or contributor is counted as a COVID-related death.But in China, health authorities count only those who died directly from COVID-19, excluding those, like Lu, whose underlying conditions were worsened by the virus, said Zhang Zuo-Feng, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “If the deaths could be ascribed to underlying disease, they will always report it as such and will not count it as a COVID-related death, that’s their pattern for many years,” said Jin Dong-yan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong’s medical school.That narrower criteria means China’s COVID-19 death toll will always be significantly lower than those of many other nations.Both Jin and Zhang said this has been China’s practice since the beginning of the pandemic and is not proof of a deliberate attempt to underreport the death count.However, Shanghai authorities have quietly changed other standards behind the scenes, in ways that have violated China’s own regulations and muddied the virus’ true toll.During this outbreak, Shanghai health authorities have only considered virus cases where lung scans show a patient with evidence of pneumonia as “symptomatic,” three people, including a Chinese public health official, told the AP. All other patients are considered “asymptomatic” even if they test positive and have other typical COVID-19 symptoms like sneezing, coughing or headaches.This way of classifying asymptomatic cases conflicts with China’s past national guidelines. It’s also a sharp change from January, when Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai’s epidemic prevention expert group, said that those with even the slightest symptoms, like fatigue or a sore throat, would be “strictly” classified as a symptomatic case.Further adding to the confusion, the city has overlapping systems to track whether someone has the virus. City residents primarily rely on what’s called their Health Cloud, a mobile application that allows them to see their COVID-19 test results. However, the Shanghai health authorities have a separate system to track COVID-19 test results, and they have the sole authority to confirm cases. At times, the data between the systems conflict.In practice, these shifting and inconsistent processes give China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “wiggle room” to determine COVID-related deaths, said the Chinese health official, allowing them to rule out the coronavirus as being the cause of death for people who didn’t have lung scans or positive test results logged on their apps. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.In response to questions about Shanghai’s COVID-19 figures, China’s top medical authority, the National Health Commission, said in a fax that there is “no basis to suspect the accuracy of China’s epidemic data and statistics.” Shanghai’s city government did not respond to a faxed request for comment.Statements from the authorities are little comfort to the relatives of the dead. Chinese internet users, doubting the official figures, have built a virtual archive of the deaths that have occurred since Shanghai’s lockdown based on firsthand information posted online. They have recorded 170 deaths so far.Chinese media reports on the unrecorded COVID-19 deaths have been swiftly censored, and many criticisms of Shanghai’s stringent measures expunged online. Instead, state media has continued to uphold China’s zero-COVID approach as proof of the success of its political system, especially as the world’s official death toll climbs past 6.2 million.Earlier this month, doubts over the data burst into public view when a Shanghai resident uploaded a recording of a phone conversation he had with a CDC officer in which he questioned why city health authorities told his father he had tested positive for COVID-19 when data on his father’s mobile application showed up as negative.“Didn’t I tell you to not look at the Health Cloud?” said the official, Zhu Weiping, referring to the app. “The positive cases are only from us notifying people.”Others skeptical of the data include relatives of Zong Shan, an 86-year-old former Russian translator who died March 29. Despite testing positive and being moved to a government quarantine facility, online test results showed Zong supposedly was negative for COVID-19 on the day of her death.“My relative, like most of the other people in Shanghai who were notified as positive, all reported negative results” on the Health Cloud app, one of Zong’s relatives said, declining to be named for fear of retribution.Zong was taken to a government quarantine facility from the Donghai Elderly Care Hospital on March 29, and died there that night. The family was told by hospital staff she was being transferred after she tested positive for COVID-19. But they didn’t think the virus was the biggest threat to her health — rather, it was the dearth of nursing care at the quarantine facility. Zong needed to be fed liquids and couldn’t eat without assistance.She had been in stable condition before the transfer, said a relative. When the family asked for the cause of death, doctors didn’t give a clear answer.“They gave me very vague answers. One minute they said it was stroke, then they said this was also just a hypothesis,” said the relative. “But on one point, they were very clear, they said it had nothing to do with COVID. Her lungs were clear.”Lu, who was also transferred from the Donghai hospital, would have celebrated her 100th birthday on April 16; her relatives had ordered a cake and gotten permission to host a small celebration Thursday. But when she tested positive, the family made mental preparations for her death, acknowledging she had lived a long life.But the strange thing, a relative said, was the night before she died, the doctor had specifically called the family to let them know Lu was now testing negative for COVID-19. Ultimately, the doctor said she died because the virus had worsened her underlying illnesses, said the relative, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue.Further, the family knew of another patient from the same hospital, a neighbor, who died the day after being transferred to a quarantine facility on March 25 and also had not been counted.Jin, the Hong Kong virologist, noted the potential political benefits of Shanghai’s low official COVID-19 death toll.“They might claim this is their achievement, and this is their victory,” Jin said.
