JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 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)
SOMETHINGS FISHY IN CHINA-HARDLY ANY COVID DEATHS.YET CLAIM 25 MILLION IN LOCKDOWN.BECAUSE OF COVID-THAT WILL GET CONSPIRACY THEORY END OF THE WORLDERS MINDS DREAMING UP IMAGINATIONS.THATS FOR SURE. SUCH AS IS CHINA JOE BIDEN AND HUNTER BIDEN BEING PAID BY CHINA TO COVERUP THE CHINESE DEATHS.
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.
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