Justice Thomas slams cancel culture, 'packing' Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he's concerned efforts to politicize the court or add additional justices may erode the institution's credibility, speaking Friday in Utah at an event hosted by former Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch’s foundation.

Thomas, the most senior justice on the nine-member court, said he often worries about the long-term repercussions of trends such as “cancel culture” and a lack of civil debate.

“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised,” he told an audience of about 500 people at an upscale hotel in Salt Lake City.

"By doing this, you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society," Thomas said.

Rulings for the upcoming year will set laws on hot-button political issues, including abortion, guns and voting rights.

The court has leaned increasingly conservative since three justices nominated by former President Donald Trump joined its ranks. Progressives have in turn called to expand the number of justices on the court, including during the 2020 presidential primary. Democrats in Congress introduced a bill last year to add four justices to the bench, and President Joe Biden has convened a commission to study expanding the court.

“I’m afraid, particularly in this world of cancel culture attack, I don’t know where you’re going to learn to engage as we did when I grew up,” he said. “If you don’t learn at that level in high school, in grammar school, in your neighborhood, or in civic organizations, then how do you have it when you’re making decisions in government, in the legislature, or in the courts?”

In addition to condemning “cancel culture,” Thomas also blasted the media for cultivating inaccurate impressions about public figures — including himself, his wife and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Ginni Thomas, Justice Thomas’s wife and a longtime conservative activist, has faced scrutiny this year for her political activity and involvement in groups that file briefs about cases in front of the Supreme Court, as well as using her Facebook page to amplify partisan attacks.

As Congress prepares to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Thomas recalled his 1991 confirmation process as a humiliating and embarrassing experience that taught him not to be overly prideful. During congressional hearings, lawmakers grilled Thomas about sexual harassment allegations from Anita Hill, a former employee, leading him to call the experience a “high tech lynching.”

If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman on the court, and would join Thomas as its second Black justice.

Thomas, who grew up in Georgia during segregation, said he held civility as one of his highest values. He said he learned to respect institutions and debate civilly with those who disagreed with him during his years in school. Based on conversations he’s had with students at his university lectures in recent years, he said he doesn’t believe colleges are welcoming places for productive debate, particularly for students who support what he described as traditional families or oppose abortion.

Thomas did not reference the future of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that extended abortion rights throughout the country. The court this year is scheduled to rule on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and whether Mississippi can ban abortions at 15 weeks. While the court deliberates over the case, lawmakers in Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky are advancing similar legislation hoping the court overturns Roe and establishes new precedent.

‘You will see the wrath’ — Progressives warn Biden against cutting down agenda

President Joe Biden’s vision for building a vast "care economy" has collapsed — and Democrats fear their party’s political advantage with parents and caregivers could end up as collateral damage.

More than a year into his term, Biden’s plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into child and eldercare programs is on the congressional backburner. An expanded tax credit that dramatically reduced child poverty expired and is unlikely to be revived. And the administration’s ambitions for guaranteeing free pre-kindergarten and paid family leave are struggling to gain widespread traction in Congress.

Making matters worse: There’s little public talk of resuscitating these items. In fact, Democrats seem to be girding themselves for a deal in which they are removed entirely from the president’s Build Back Better bill in favor of a pared-down version that funds climate change initiatives and reduces the deficit.

The situation has alarmed liberal advocates and unnerved Democrats who believe winning the support of parents is key to keeping control of power in Washington. Caregivers already exhausted by the pandemic now face rising prices due to historic inflation, with no relief in sight. Republicans, sensing an opening, are attempting to make fresh inroads on education and children’s issues — largely by waging campaigns around curriculums and sexual orientation and gender identification instructions in the classroom.

“They cannot return home for a midterm election without bringing home the goods,” said April Verrett, president of long-term care worker union SEIU Local 2015, who has met frequently with White House officials on the matter. “Americans want and need the support to lower costs for families.”

Democrats’ hopes on this front rely largely on winning over the party’s main holdout, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). But Manchin is focused on limiting drug prices and advancing climate programs, regarding the rest as “social” spending that should be considered only if there’s money left over. And after months spent trying to win the Senator’s elusive vote, many congressional Democrats are signaling they’re willing to give in to his demands.

Advocates for the care provisions have warned the White House and lawmakers that any reconciliation bill that leaves out large investments in the care economy risks alienating one of Democrats' most important voting groups ahead of the midterms. A Morning Consult/POLITICO poll conducted in February found that Democrats had already begun ceding their electoral advantage among recipients of the expanded child tax credit within a month of the payments expiring.

“If a reconciliation package passes without any of the care agenda items, you will see the wrath of women around the country,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation.

And while members of Congress who have been working on caregiver issues continue to speak optimistically, they acknowledge the skepticism that a deal will be made.

"It will remain a big priority for us," said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.). "But I am nervous about whether or not those provisions ultimately make it into something that can pass the Senate."

The current status of the expanded child tax embodies the vise Democrats now find themselves in. The program was passed as part of the Covid relief plan passed last spring, granting families up to $3,600 per child in monthly payments. But it expired in December. Then the main vehicle for its extension — the Build Back Better bill — faltered, and Congress is unlikely to strike a deal this year to restore it, even in a reduced fashion.

Two people close to the process blamed the lack of progress on GOP obstruction, along with Manchin’s reluctance to keep the program going despite its link to plunging child poverty rates. But they also said the administration is largely disengaged from negotiations on Capitol Hill.

There is no point person in charge of getting the expanded tax credit renewed, and the White House has refused to say what concessions it could accept to make a fix more palatable to Republicans and Manchin — making it difficult for lawmakers to hash out specifics. That's left some privately resigned to the probability an agreement is out of reach.

"I'm amazed at the lack of strategy," said one advocate in close touch with the White House. "There's a debate about the future of children and families going on, and they've taken a step back on it."

White House officials are aware of the concerns about the president’s care agenda and try to assuage those fears by saying the president will keep looking for ways to pass the issues into law if they don’t end up in the BBB bill that can be done through reconciliation. During a Friday speech to House Democrats, Biden pleaded with lawmakers to continue working on reducing childcare costs, insisting that "we can do that."

But avenues for passage through a 60-vote threshold in the Senate are, as of now, non-existent. And in a response to a series of questions about its strategy for advancing the issue, the White House declined to comment.

Others told POLITICO that the White House has continued to reassure them that there's still a chance of securing funding for certain items, like universal pre-K and capping childcare costs — emphasizing that the issues are still major priorities for Biden evidenced by their inclusion in his State of the Union address.

“There were a lot of things that were not included in that list of three priorities for Congress to address through a reconciliation bill that he wants on his desk,” said Charles Joughin, who leads public affairs for the child advocacy group First Five Years Fund.

Yet even under that scenario, progress could take months.

While the administration has carefully guarded the details of its talks with Manchin, for fear of leaks that could derail the delicate discussions, officials have indicated it may take until the end of April for negotiations on the specifics of an economic package to begin in earnest.

A person familiar with the White House’s thinking told POLITICO, “The White House is not setting deadlines.”

The delay means that Democrats are likely to head into the campaign stretch either still in the messy negotiation phase or having made little headway on a “care economy” initiative that once formed the backbone of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

The expanded child tax credit is hardly the only place where progress has faltered. The White House also initially sought funding to upgrade child care facilities and create a nationwide pre-K program. It wanted to guarantee 12 weeks of paid leave and cap the cost of childcare for low-to-middle income families. Another $400 billion was planned for home and community-based care for older Americans and people with disabilities.

Those initiatives would slash families’ biggest expenses and grow the economy overall, supporters argue, chiefly by allowing more stay-at-home caregivers to re-enter the workforce. Democrats also hoped it would aid them politically, shoring up support among those managing the brunt of the pandemic: suburban women voters who also helped Biden take the presidency in 2020 and people of color who make up a core part of the party’s base.

Instead, that early optimism has been replaced by warnings that Democrats are blowing it.

“Republicans are well aware that parents are going to be a highly contested demographic this cycle, and so they’ve ramped up culture war messaging aimed at this group,” said Ethan Winter, a senior analyst at progressive polling firm Data for Progress, pointing to GOP efforts in Congress and several states to redefine fights over school curricula, gender identity and Covid policies as "parents rights" issues.

There are signs the administration shares the urgency of the advocacy community. Earlier this week, a fact sheet circulated by the White House ahead of the one-year anniversary of its American Rescue Plan credited the law for driving child poverty to its lowest rate on record.

Yet that point is quickly losing its political salience. With the payments drying up, new Columbia University research indicates child poverty is on the rise again — especially among Latino and Black children who saw the greatest benefits last year.

On a Tuesday call with reporters to tout the law’s accomplishments, White House officials declined to say whether they saw a path to restoring the tax credit.

“This is something that we are still fighting for and haven’t given up,” a senior official said.

In the absence of clear momentum, some Democrats have pushed congressional leaders to hold voters on individual proposals even if they’re unlikely to pass, so lawmakers can at least register their support. But that tactic won’t do much to deliver the on-the-ground benefits that Biden promised — and that Democrats once hoped would boost their chances in November.

“We have to define what the parents agenda is,” said Celinda Lake, one of Biden’s campaign pollsters. “We need a more visible fight on this.”

Russia strikes near Ukraine's capital; mosque reported hit

Russian forces pounding the port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 people, including children, the Ukrainian government said Saturday as fighting also raged on the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv.

There was no immediate word of casualties from the shelling of the elegant, city-center mosque. Mariupol has suffered some of the greatest misery from Russia's war in Ukraine, with unceasing barrages thwarting repeated attempts to bring in food and water, evacuate trapped civilians and to bury all of the dead.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey said 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who had sought safety in the mosque of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roksolana. Opened in 2007 and modeled after a mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, the white-walled mosque and its towering minaret were proudly advertised as a popular scenic draw by city authorities before Mariupol became a target of Russian barrages.

Around Kyiv, artillery barrages in multiple areas sent residents scurrying for shelter as air raid sirens rang out across the capital region. Britain's Defense Ministry said Russian ground forces massed north of Kyiv for most of the war had edged to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the city center.

The massive column of Russian fighters also has spread out, likely to support an attempt to encircle Kyiv, the British ministry said.

Ukraine's military and volunteer forces have been preparing for a feared all-out assault. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said that about 2 million people, half the population of the metropolitan area, have left and that “every street, every house … is being fortified.”

As artillery pounded Kyiv’s northwestern outskirts, two columns of smoke – one black and one white -- rose southwest of the capital after a strike on an ammunition depot in the town of Vaslkyiv caused hundreds of small explosions. A frozen food warehouse just outside the capital also was struck in an apparent effort to target Kyiv’s food supply.

Russia's slow and grinding tightening of a noose around Kyiv and the bombardment of other population centers with artillery and air strikes mirror tactics that Russian forces have previously used in other campaigns, notably in Syria and Chechnya, to crush armed resistance.

Mariupol, with its strategic Black Sea port, has seen some of the greatest suffering. As of Friday, the death toll in Mariupol passed 1,500 during 12 days of attack, the mayor’s office said. A strike on a maternity hospital in the city of 446,000 this week that killed three people sparked international outrage and war-crime allegations.

The ongoing bombardment forced crews to stop digging trenches for mass graves, so the “dead aren’t even being buried,” the mayor said. An Associated Press photographer captured the moment when a tank appeared to fire directly on an apartment building, enveloping one side in a billowing orange fireball.

Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities since they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to the World Health Organization. Ukrainian officials reported Saturday that heavy artillery damaged a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in Mykolaiv, a city 489 kilometers (304 miles) west of Mariupol.

The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the facility during the attack but no one was killed.

The invading Russian forces have struggled far more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. But Russia's stronger military threatens to grind down the defending forces, despite an ongoing flow of weapons and other assistance from the West for Ukraine's westward-looking, democratically elected government.

A senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow could target foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine. Speaking Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow has warned the United States "that pumping weapons from a number of countries it orchestrates isn’t just a dangerous move, it’s an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets."

Russia's troops are likely to see their ranks bolstered soon from abroad. Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed head of a separatist region in eastern Ukraine, said Saturday that he expects “many thousands” of fighters from the Middle East to join the rebels and fight “shoulder-to-shoulder” against the Ukrainian army.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s said Friday that Russian authorities have received request from over 16,000 people from the Middle East who are eager to join the Russian military action in Ukraine. He added that many of those people have previously fought together with Russia against the Islamic State group.

Thousands of soldiers on both sides of the war in Ukraine are believed to have been killed along with many civilians. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The Ukrainian chief prosecutor’s office said Saturday at least 79 children have been killed and nearly 100 have been wounded since the start of the war. most of the victims were in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions, the office said, noting that the numbers aren’t final because active fighting continues.

On the ground, the Kremlin’s forces appeared to be trying to regroup and regain momentum after encountering tough resistance and amassing heavy losses over the past two weeks.

“It’s ugly already, but it’s going to get worse,” said Nick Reynolds, a warfare analyst at Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

Russian forces were blockading Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, even as efforts have been made to create new humanitarian corridors around it and other urban centers so aid can get in and residents can get out.

Ukraine’s emergency services reported Saturday that the bodies of five people - two women, a man and two children - were pulled from an apartment building that was struck by shelling in Kharkiv,

The Russians' also stepped up attacks on Mykolaiv, located 470 kilometers (292 miles) south of Kyiv, in an attempt to encircle the city.

New commercial satellite images appeared to capture artillery firing on residential areas that stood between the Russians and the capital. The images from Maxar Technologies showed muzzle flashes and smoke from big guns, as well as impact craters and burning homes in the town of Moschun, 33 kilometers (20.5 miles) from Kyiv, the company said.

On the economic and political front, the U.S. and its allies moved to further isolate and sanction the Kremlin. President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will dramatically downgrade its trade status with Russia and ban imports of Russian seafood, alcohol and diamonds.

The move to revoke Russia's “most favored nation” status was taken in coordination with the European Union and Group of Seven countries.

“The free world is coming together to confront Putin,” Biden said.

With the invasion in its 16th day, Putin said Friday that there had been “certain positive developments” in ongoing talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. He gave no details.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared on video to encourage his people to keep fighting.

“It’s impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it," he said from Kyiv.

Zelenskyy also accused Russia of kidnapping the mayor of one city, Melitopol, calling the abduction “a new stage of terror.” The Biden administration had warned before the invasion of Russian plans to detain and kill targeted people in Ukraine. Zelenskyy himself is a likely top target.

American defense officials said Russian pilots are averaging 200 sorties a day, compared with five to 10 for Ukrainian forces, which are focusing more on surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and drones to take out Russian aircraft.

The U.S. also said Russia has launched nearly 810 missiles into Ukraine.

Until recently, Russia's troops had made their biggest advances on cities in the east and south while struggling in the north and around Kyiv. They also have started targeting areas in western Ukraine, where large numbers of refugees have fled.

Russia said Friday it used high-precision long-range weapons to put military airfields in the western cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk “out of action.” The attack on Lutsk killed four Ukrainian servicemen, the mayor said.

Russian airstrikes also targeted for the first time Dnipro, a major industrial hub in the east and Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, with about 1 million people. One person was killed, Ukrainian officials said.

In images of the aftermath released by Ukraine’s emergency agency, firefighters doused a flaming building, and ash fell on bloodied rubble. Smoke billowed over shattered concrete where buildings once stood.

The United Nations political chief said the international organization had received credible reports that Russian forces were using cluster bombs in populated areas. International law prohibits the use of the bombs, which scatter smaller explosives over a wide area, in cities and towns.

‘Arsonists with keys to the firehouse’: once-obscure state races fuel fears for US democracy

Last year, Brad Raffensperger was attracting national headlines for taking a stand against Donald Trump and his lies about the 2020 election.

In a phone call that was quickly made public, Trump demanded that Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, “find” enough votes to deprive Joe Biden of a victory in the battleground state. Raffensperger refused to do so and won widespread praise for his courage.

Raffensperger is paying for his actions in a way that reveals how his once obscure elected position is now at the center of a battle for the future of American democracy – and attracting all the big money and political heat that entails.

This year, Raffensperger is facing a brutal primary race against a Trump-backed candidate, the US congressman Jody Hice, and trying to cling on to his job. Hice, who has said the 2020 results in Georgia would have been different if the race had been “fair”, has already raised more than twice as much money as Raffensperger.

Hice’s impressive haul is partly thanks to the unusually high number of out-of-state donations that his campaign has attracted, as more Americans across the country zero in on secretary of state races.

And Georgia is not unique. As Trump and his allies continue to spread the “big lie” of widespread fraud in the 2020 race, many voters are focusing their attention – and wallets – on the officials who oversee states’ elections.

Secretary of state candidates in both parties are now posting substantial fundraising figures, intensifying concerns over how election administration has become a heated political issue in the US.

Secretary of state races have historically attracted little notice and even less money. The winners of these elections assume rather bureaucratic roles, and their duties may include managing state records, overseeing the department of motor vehicles and keeping the state seal. But in many states, the secretary of state also serves – crucially – as the chief election official.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, as Trump and his supporters falsely claimed the results had been tainted by fraud, secretaries of state in key battleground states became the target of intimidation and threats. Now the former president is using the power of his endorsement to wield influence in the races for those posts.

While Trump did not endorse any candidates for secretary of state in 2020, he has already endorsed three in the 2022 cycle: Hice in Georgia, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Kristina Karamo in Michigan. All three candidates have embraced the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election by allowing fraud to affect the results. Biden’s margin of victory in each of those states was less than three points, and their input could prove decisive in the next presidential election.

“They are willing to overturn the will of the voters in order to choose the winner,” said Kim Rogers, executive director of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “It is disempowering, and it is akin to giving an arsonist keys to the firehouse.”

Republicans and Democrats’ disparate concerns over election fairness have contributed to a significant increase in donations to secretary of state candidates.

According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, donations for secretary of state races in six battleground states are three times higher than they were at this point in the last election cycle, in 2018, and eight times higher than the 2014 cycle. Fundraising has particularly increased in Arizona, Geor­gia and Michigan, which also happen to be the three states where Trump has issued an endorsement.

“A lot more money is going to these once sleepy, bureaucratic races,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “The places that we’ve seen the biggest increase – which is basically Arizona, Georgia and Michigan – each of those places had some degree of nationally covered election controversy around 2020.”

The Brennan Center analysis also indicated that out-of-state donations to secretary of state candidates are increasing at an even faster rate than overall donations. Finchem, who has called on the Arizona legislature to decertify the 2020 presidential results in three major counties, already has six times as many donors as every secretary of state candid­ate in the 2018 elec­tion combined. Two-thirds of those donors live outside Arizona.

Democrats have taken note of Republican enthusiasm about secretary of state elections, and they are responding by ramping up their own fundraising.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and its partner groups raised a record $4.5m in 2021, compared with $1.5m raised during the entire 2018 cycle. The organization has said it is on track to meet its fundraising goal of $15m for the 2022 cycle, in part because of the increase in first-time individual donors. Other progressive groups, including End Citizens United and iVote, have pledged to spend tens of millions more on secretary of state races this year.

“The engagement is at every single level. We have seen a massive increase in our email list and grassroots support,” Rogers said.

Rogers believes Democratic activists are increasingly turning their attention to secretary of state races partly because they have been frustrated by the lack of progress at the federal level. Congressional Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass national voting rights legislation, which would reverse some of the voting restrictions enacted by 19 states last year, but Senate Republicans have successfully used the filibuster to defeat those bills.

“I think there are a lot of activists who got involved in 2020 who fought incredibly hard for the federal voting rights legislation in 2021,” Rogers said. “When 50 Republicans blocked it yet again, folks were looking for a way to stay engaged and to continue the fight, and they shifted their assets into the states.”

Republicans complain that Democrats are trying to alter election regulations to their benefit at both the federal and state levels. Andrew Romeo, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee, said Democrats were “ramping up their interest in secretary of state races because they see control of these offices as a way to change the rules to compensate for their inability to win elections”.

Romeo’s group is an umbrella organization that promotes Republican candidates for state legislatures, state supreme courts and secretary of state offices, among other roles. The RSLC and its policy partner group raised $33.3m in 2021, exceeding their previous odd-year record by more than $14m.

But to Democrats like Rogers, the outcome of secretary of state races in key battleground states represents nothing less than the fate of American democracy.

“These folks want to rig the game, and they are out to do that,” Rogers said.

Vandewalker fears that the increasingly dire messaging about secretary of state races will contribute to a political climate in which both parties distrust the outcome of elections.

“Money and attention being paid to these races is not inherently a bad thing. The voters should be informed about these candidates,” Vandewalker said. But he adds, “that kind of rhetoric is extremely dangerous to voter confidence because of course one side or the other is going to win and is going to count the votes. And democracy counts on people accepting the result, even if their side doesn’t win.”

Falun Gong organizer eligible for political asylum, Ninth Circuit rules

An organizer of the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong who fled to California is eligible for political asylum because he is likely to be arrested and imprisoned if returned to China, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

Chunguo Liu’s application for asylum had been rejected by an immigration judge and the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, who both concluded he had failed to show he faced persecution if deported. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Liu’s testimony, and a U.S. government report on China’s treatment of Falun Gong members, demonstrated a likelihood of persecution.

“Liu’s testimony established that government agents sought to arrest him for practicing and organizing Falun Gong and did in fact arrest, detain, and imprison all of the people with whom he regularly practiced,” the three-judge panel said. The court said Liu had also testified credibly that police in China had often come to his home to look for him since he left the country.

Falun Gong, a meditation practice, grew rapidly in China in the 1990s before it was outlawed by the government in 1999. Its followers have marched in San Francisco and elsewhere to protest China’s treatment of the movement.

Liu’s case is long-running — he appealed the immigration board’s ruling in 2015 in Los Angeles and has remained in the United States since then. The timing and circumstances of his flight from China were not described in the court ruling, and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Federal appeals courts seldom overturn deportation rulings, generally deferring to the findings of the immigration courts, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department. But the panel in Liu’s case said there was “no substantial evidence” to support the board’s conclusion.

The court said a 2012 report by the U.S. State Department, cited by Liu, found that Falun Gong practitioners in China “have been subjected to involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities, physical and psychological coercion to renounce their beliefs, and assignment to reeducation-through-labor camps.”

The court returned the case to the immigration appeals board for further review, but said the record in the case “compels the conclusion that Liu is eligible for asylum.”

The panel consisted of Judges Sidney Thomas, M. Margaret McKeown and Ronald Gould.

The politics of Scotland’s bookishness

The country’s official embrace of literature reveals much about its comfortably stuck political culture, cosily immured from an increasingly illiberal world.

Nicola Sturgeon loves books. It says so on her Twitter bio, with her picture against a wall of colourful hardbacks. It could be an upmarket bookshop, but it’s actually the First Minister’s home library, easily recognised from newspaper profiles and internet sleuthing. (Scottish authors have been known to squint at these shelves in search of their own names.) It’s hard to recall a leading politician whose personal brand is more strongly invested in bookishness and reading. I don’t mean the consumption of books, but reading in its most mindful and exalted form. This tasteful pastime is about the enriching qualities of literary experience, quite different from the image of Gordon Brown devouring information (and then churning out books of his own). Sturgeon’s kind of reading represents moral attentiveness and curiosity, the tact and connection of the evening book group, and has nothing to do with facts or phrase-making. The current UK government has a number of crowd-pleasing authors on the front bench, but none would look half as comfortable discussing poetry at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, or interviewing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The virtues of reading are also key to the government Sturgeon leads. There is a First Minister’s reading challenge, a nationwide project to “develop reading cultures” and encourage reading for pleasure. The signature social policy of Sturgeon’s government, the “baby box” introduced in 2017, presents every newborn in Scotland with a free crate of “essential items, such as clothes, nappies and books”. Bundled in with the stories, muslins and footed leggings is a specially commissioned poem by Scotland’s then Makar (or national poet), Jackie Kay. With more than 200,000 boxes now delivered to new parents, “Welcome Wee One” is probably the most widely read Scottish poem published this century. Kay also wrote a lyric to celebrate the opening of the new Queensferry Crossing, a gleaming bridge over the Firth of Forth. Whether steel or cotton-based, weaving poetry through these forward-looking infrastructures is an apt symbol for Sturgeon’s progressive vision.

Being governed by an Ali Smith fanatic is nothing to grumble about. It’s depressing to compare the ruling passions of other national leaders, or indeed the place of literature in public life. There is an “unprecedented surge of book bans” sweeping across school libraries in the US, with classic works by Toni Morrison and Harper Lee suppressed in “an assault on student reading”, according to the Times. Texts exploring racial justice and gender identity are a prime target: in Hungary, the Viktor Orbán regime actively suppresses LGBTQ-themed books, imposing restrictions on where and how they may be sold. In the UK, too, the “creep of far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories into mainstream politics” is well advanced, and university English departments field regular media enquiries chasing phantoms of woke madness. (No, Shakespeare has not been cancelled.) A Yale professor recently went on television to explain why books are good, “refreshing our minds and allowing us to be citizens”, and not a threat to American national cohesion. The need for such homilies tells a grim story of its own. Against this backdrop it’s easy to feel smug about Scotland’s enlightened literary scene, a sturdy shield against culture war rather than its battlefield. As Britain’s columnist-in-chief entered the sewer of Jimmy Savile smears, Scotland’s most coveted blurb-writer posted a glowing appreciation of the new Douglas Stuart novel.

Drawing these comparisons from inside Scotland’s bookish bubble feels a bit like an outdoor hot tub in winter, marvelling at the icy darkness while impervious to the storm. This sense of cosy apartness goes to the heart of the nation’s political culture, and tells us something about the role of literature – or at least the image of literature – in maintaining a comfortable temperature. This is not a critique of the First Minister’s bookishness or book-related policies, but an exploration of their political meaning in adverse conditions. The prominence of its book culture can tell us a great deal about Scotland’s untimely high liberalism, and its future in an increasingly illiberal world. Under the tasteful digital PR, Scotland’s cosmopolitan self-image embodies a set of mid-20th century dreams whose lustre has been artificially protected by devolution – the set of governing arrangements Sturgeon has pledged to end.

If we revisit the growth of self-government that made Makars and baby boxes possible, we find that the nurturing social democracy Sturgeon stands for is the result less of Scottish progress than British conservation. As Neal Ascherson has observed, since 1999 devolution has allowed Holyrood administrations, both Unionist and nationalist, to “barricade the welfare state – higher education, free social care and the Scottish National Health Service above all – against the tide… washing away the British postwar social settlement south of the border”. Holyrood’s nationalist government is the inheritor of pre-Thatcher Britain’s most progressive impulses and its accompanying rhetoric of transformation. The work of David Edgerton highlights how the UK’s post-1945 “developmental state” focused its vast powers on “building a new national future”, with a completely revamped economic and social model.

Mike Pence knocks Trump and lays the groundwork for possible presidential run

Former Vice President Mike Pence has spent the past week outmaneuvering Donald Trump, his old boss and potential 2024 primary opponent.

Shortly after the plane Trump was flying on last weekend was forced to land due to an engine failure, Pence flew to Israel on the private jet of the GOP’s most prized donor, Miriam Adelson. And while Trump was avoiding criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin in a call-in interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Pence and his wife, Karen, flew to the border between Ukraine and Poland to distribute relief aid to refugees.

In perhaps the most telling indication that the political dynamic between the two men has shifted, Pence implicitly hit Trump at a Republican National Committee speech last Friday, saying the GOP should not include any “apologists for Putin.”

“Welcome to the front end of the Pence boomlet,” said veteran Republican pollster Michael Cohen, who has no relation to the former Trump lawyer. “Who had a better week or past few weeks than Pence? I mean, it’s not even close.”

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, he not only resolidified the old Western alliances formed in the wake of World War II, he also shook up the Republican Party’s power dynamics, at least temporarily.

The longtime center of power on the right, Trump has been struggling to garner attention for himself after six years of almost unilaterally controlling the national stage. And Pence, who’s best known for being stiff, boring and deferential to the former president, has walked into the center of the vacuum created by Trump's absence.

Pence has even grabbed prime slots on Fox News, making news in an interview with one of Trump’s favorite hosts, Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo pressed Pence repeatedly on his plans for 2024, and whether he would run against Trump if the former president enters the race. But Pence played coy, brushing away the questions.

“I’m confident the Republican Party will nominate a candidate who will be the next president of the United States of America, and at the right time, my family and I will reflect and consider how we might participate in that process,” Pence said.

The burst of attention for Pence comes after more than a year of laying groundwork behind the scenes, making campaign-style trips to early-voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa and courting Republican donors who have bankrolled successful White House bids.

Trump remains the leader in early polls for the 2024 party nomination, but despite his popularity with the Republican grassroots, a number of GOP lawmakers are mulling runs of their own. All are trying to develop their own unique brands, whether through Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture-war broadsides or Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s appeal to unite the pre- and post-Trump wings of the GOP.

Yet despite his very public falling out with Trump, Pence's backers see him as a figure uniquely suited to bring together the warring factions within the GOP. An evangelical Christian originally elected to Congress in 2000, he steadily climbed the ranks of the House Republican caucus. In 2012, Indiana voters elected him governor, a position he left to become Trump’s running mate and shore up the erstwhile TV host’s conservative bona fides.

Since the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, in which Trump-backed rioters threatened to hang Pence for not helping the then president overturn the 2020 election results, Pence has been slowly and steadily hitting the campaign trail — even though he has yet to announce his intentions for 2024. A Pence spokesman did not respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment.

But the real break in the dam seemed to come almost immediately after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. Trump and his backers, who just days earlier had been touting Putin’s “genius,” suddenly looked outdated and perhaps out of touch with the GOP.

“The McCain wing of the GOP is back and stronger than ever, truth-telling about Mr. KGB,” said longtime Republican strategist Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s campaign for president in 1996.

But Republican operatives, like the candidates they advise, are still trying to game out whether the turn from Trump-style populism, at least in matters of foreign policy, is permanent or merely a passing fluke.

“It’s too soon to tell, but I still think Americans don’t want U.S. troops over there, and a lot don’t want to even send money there,” said former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “This could be an issue in the midterms.”

Pence, meanwhile, is doing what he has always done, plodding forward steadily and waiting for his moments to grab the spotlight.

Russia to block Instagram over ‘death to invaders’ posting rule

Moscow also opens criminal case into Instagram’s owner, Meta, for allowing posts calling for violence against Russian forces.

Russia has announced plans to block access to Instagram and launched a criminal case against its owner, Meta Platforms Inc, after the company said it would allow posts that call for “death to the Russian invaders”.

Friday’s move is the latest in Russia’s confrontation with United States-based social media platforms that has escalated since its invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow has already limited access to Twitter and blocked Facebook, which is also owned by Meta.

Russia’s communications and media regulator, Roskomnadzor, said it was restricting access to hugely popular Instagram because of the platform is spreading “calls to commit violent acts against Russian citizens, including military personnel”.

The ban will come into effect on Monday, it said, allowing active Instagram users “time to transfer their photos and videos to other social networks and notify their followers”.

In response, Meta’s Global Affairs President Nick Clegg defended what he described as a temporary decision “taken in extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances”.

“I want to be crystal clear: Our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country,” he said in a statement.

“The fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable.”

He noted that the policy only applies in Ukraine and the company hasn’t changed its policies against hate speech targeting Russian people.

‘Illegal calls’

But Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, had already said it was launching an investigation of Meta, and prosecutors pushed for the Silicon Valley giant to be branded “extremist”.

“A criminal case has been initiated … in connection with illegal calls for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation by employees of the American company Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram,” said the committee, which reports directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was not immediately clear what the consequences of the criminal case might be.

Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services are all popular in Russia, with 7.5 million, 50.8 million and 67 million users last year respectively, according to researcher Insider Intelligence.

Russia’s RIA news agency, citing a source, said the legal moves will not affect WhatsApp as the messaging app is considered a means of communication not a way to post information.

Meta’s relaxing of its rules had met with controversy almost immediately, and the United Nations voiced alarm, warning it could lead to “hate speech” against Russians.

UN Rights Office Spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell said that the policy lacked clarity, which “could certainly contribute to hate speech directed at Russians in general”.

Contrasting views

Meta, which boasts billions of users globally across its apps, has previously struggled with what it would allow people to post in moments of upheaval.

In July 2021, the firm temporarily allowed posts calling for “death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during protests that rocked the country.

Tech platforms have had to navigate a slew of thorny issues related to the war in Ukraine, such as when US Senator Lindsey Graham called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a televised interview and on Twitter.

“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” says Graham’s tweet from March 3, which Twitter has not taken down.

Meta’s decision drew sharply contrasting views.

“The policy regards calls for violence against Russian soldiers,” said Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

“A call for violence here, by the way is also a call for resistance because Ukrainians resist a violent invasion,” he added.

But some expressed deep concerns, like Lehigh University Professor Jeremy Littau, who tweeted: “‘We don’t allow hate speech except against certain people from a certain country’ is one hell of a can of worms.”

Facebook and other US tech giants have moved to penalize Russia for the attack on Ukraine, and Moscow has also taken steps to block access to the leading social media network as well as Twitter.

Russia thus joined the very small club of countries barring the largest social network in the world, along with China and North Korea.

Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last month, Russian authorities have also stepped up pressure against independent media, though press freedoms in the country were already rapidly waning.

Moscow blocked Facebook and restricted Twitter the same day last week that it backed the imposition of jail terms on media publishing “false information” about the military.

Businesses Assail Texas Move to Classify Care for Trans Teens as 'Child Abuse'

More than 60 major businesses, including household names in technology and retail, have signed onto a new advertising campaign in Texas protesting a move by the state’s governor to label as “child abuse” medical treatments that are widely considered to be the standard of care for transgender teenagers.

In digital ads and a full-page advertisement in Friday’s Dallas Morning News, the businesses assailed a Feb. 22 directive by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, requiring teachers and medical professionals to report to child protective services parents who are helping their children get such treatments as puberty-suppressing drugs and hormones.

Abbott’s order — announced a week before the Texas primary, in which he won nomination for another term as governor — came as lawmakers in Florida have also moved to advance a bill banning instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in some elementary school grades, widely called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Both measures are part of a wave of anti-LGBTQ crackdowns by conservative politicians heading into the midterm elections.

“It’s a page from the playbook that we’ve seen before, and it’s very familiar to me,” said Jay Brown, a senior vice president for programs, research and training at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, which arranged for the Texas ads.

“Discrimination is bad for business,” Friday’s print ad says, followed by a demand that Abbott drop the new policy.

The signatories include old blue-chip brands like Johnson & Johnson and Macy’s as well as tech giants like Apple, Meta and Google, the apparel makers Levi Strauss & Co. and Gap Inc., and retailers like Ikea and REI.

“Our companies do business, create jobs, and serve customers in Texas,” the ad says, adding that the companies “have stood to ensure LGBTQ+ people — our employees, customers, and their families — are safe and welcomed in the communities where we do business.”

“The recent attempt to criminalize a parent for helping their transgender child access medically necessary, age-appropriate healthcare in the state of Texas goes against the values of our companies,” the ad continues. It warns that the policy could instill fear among parents of transgender children worried that providing them the best possible medical care could “risk having those children removed by child protective services.”

“It’s not just wrong, it has an impact on our employees, our customers, their families and our work,” the ad concludes.

The effort by businesses to pressure the state recalls the response after North Carolina officials passed a bill in 2016 requiring people to use public bathrooms appropriate to the sex listed on their birth certificates.

Whether there will be a more aggressive response from businesses to the Texas measure or others like it remains to be seen.

“I think the community has been really hungry for more,” Brown said, adding, “We really do see that this is the beginning and not the end of more voices speaking out against these laws.”

Brown said that Texas lawmakers had caused intense fear among families of transgender youths, who he said were some of the most vulnerable people with the fewest legal protections.

“People are really scared,” he said. “I know families who have had to move hundreds of miles from their homes because their lawyers are telling them it’s not safe in the country they live in, in Texas. The lawmakers who do this, they’re making a short-term wager with their extremist base that they’re going to score a couple points at the risk of people’s lives.”

Uber will add a temporary surcharge for rides and food deliveries due to the rising cost of gas

As the price of gasoline continues to surge to record highs across the country, Uber announced Friday that it is adding a fuel surcharge to rides and food-delivery orders. 

Depending on location, a fee of 45 cents or 55 cents will be added per trip for rides, and 35 cents or 45 cents for Uber Eats food delivery orders for the next 60 days beginning on March 16, Liza Winship, head of driver operations for U.S. and Canada, said in a press release. 

Winship added that the surcharge will depend on location and trip length, with "100% of that money going directly to workers' pockets."

"Our hope is that this temporary measure will help ease the burden, but we’ll continue to listen to feedback and may make changes in the future." She said the ride-hailing company will reassess the need for the surcharge after 60 days.

As of Friday, the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $4.33, up 53% from a year prior, according to AAA. The average price per gallon reached a nationwide high of $5.72 in California on Friday, compared to $3.78 a year ago, AAA data shows.

During his annual State of the State address on Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he will propose legislation to provide Californians relief from rising gas prices.

Newsom previously proposed suspending a gas tax increase scheduled for July. On Tuesday night, Newsom said, "it's clear we have to go farther" than that.

"That's why, working with legislative leadership, I'll be submitting a proposal to put money back in the pockets of Californians to address rising gas prices," he said.

Newsom has since provided no further details on his proposal to offset the rising price of gas.

Ukraine says shelling damaged cancer hospital

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials accused Russia damaging a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv with shelling from heavy artillery.

The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the hospital during the attack but that no one was killed. The assault damaged the building and blew out windows.

Russian forces have stepped up their attacks on Mykolaiv, located 470 kilometers (292 miles) south of Kyiv, in an attempt to encircle the city.

Ukrainian and Western officials earlier accused Russia of shelling a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol on Wednesday. Three people died in that attack.

___

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on Friday of kidnapping the mayor of the city of Melitopol, equating it to the actions of “ISIS terrorists.”

“They have transitioned into a new stage of terror, in which they try to physically liquidate representatives of Ukraine’s lawful local authorities,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Friday evening.

Kirill Timoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, posted a video on the social media site Telegram which he said showed a group of armed men carrying the mayor, Ivan Fedorov, across a square.

Russian forces captured the southern port city of Melitopol, with a population of 150,000, on Feb. 26.

The prosecutor’s office of the Luhansk People’s Republic, a Moscow-backed rebel region in eastern Ukraine, said on its website that there was a criminal case against Fedorov. The prosecutor’s office accused Fedorov of “terrorist activities” and of financing the nationalist militia Right Sector to “commit terrorist crimes against Donbass civilians.”

The office said it was looking for Fedorov and called for anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact them.

___

SAVANNAH, Ga. — U.S. soldiers are continuing to deploy to Europe, joining thousands already sent overseas to support NATO allies amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

About 130 soldiers from the 87th Division Sustainment Support Battalion, 3rd Division Sustainment Brigade gathered Friday at Hunter Airfield in Savannah, Georgia and departed on a chartered flight.

The soldiers are in addition to the estimated 3,800 soldiers from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division who deployed recently from nearby Fort Stewart.

A division commander said that soldiers are being told to prepare for about six months overseas. The Pentagon has ordered roughly 12,000 total service members from various U.S. bases to Europe.

The soldiers’ mission is to train alongside military units of NATO allies in a display of force aimed at deterring further aggression by Russia. The Pentagon has stressed U.S. forces are not being deployed to fight in Ukraine.

___

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the port city of Mariupol, which has been encircled by Russian forces and cut off from deliveries of food and medicine.

Mariupol officials said Friday that 1,582 people had been killed in the 12 days since the siege began.

“There is a humanitarian catastrophe in the city and the dead aren’t even being buried,” Mariupol’s mayor’s office said in a statement Friday, calling for Russian forces to lift the siege.

Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian forces of shelling evacuation routes and preventing civilians from escaping the city of 430,000 people.

___

BERLIN — Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday that technicians have started repairing damaged power lines at the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant in an effort to restore power supplies, the U.N. nuclear agency said.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said that Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, was knocked off the power grid, with emergency generators supplying backup power.

The Ukrainian nuclear regulator said Friday that workers repaired one section of the lines, but there still appears to be damage in other places, the IAEA said. Repair efforts would continue despite “the difficult situation” outside the plant, which was taken by Russian forces early in the invasion, it said.

The Ukrainian regulator said additional fuel was delivered for generators, but it remains important to fix the power lines as soon as possible. The IAEA reiterated that the disconnection “will not have a critical impact on essential safety functions at the site.”

The Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog said that it still isn’t receiving data from monitoring systems installed to monitor nuclear material and activities at Chernobyl, but transmission from the Zaporizhzhia plant — Ukraine’s biggest, which Russian forces seized last week — has been restored after being lost earlier this week.

____

PARIS — Interpol is restricting Russia’s ability to input information directly into the global police organization’s vast network, deciding that communications must first be checked by the general secretariat in Lyon, France.

The French Foreign Ministry said Friday that the beefed-up surveillance measures follow “multiple suspicions of attempted fraudulent use” of the Interpol system in recent days, but it did not elaborate.

Interpol stressed in a statement Thursday that it is maintaining its pledge of neutrality amid war between two of its members, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it said that “heightened supervision and monitoring measures” of Moscow’s National Central Bureau were needed “to prevent any potential misuse of Interpol’s channels” like targeting individuals in or outside Ukraine.

The ministry noted that Interpol’s decision has multiple impacts from communications, to putting out so-called “red notices” for criminals on the loose or even feeding data on lost or stolen documents — all of which must now get compliance checks from Interpol headquarters.

Interpol, which has 195 members, said it had received calls to suspend Russia from the network, along with calls by law enforcement leaders looking for continued cooperation to better fight crime.

“In addition to the tragic loss of life, conflicts invariably lead to an increase in crime,” as organized crime groups try to exploit desperation, Interpol said. Risks include human trafficking, weapons smuggling and trafficking in illicit goods and medicines.

____

BOSTON — YouTube announced Friday that it has begun blocking access globally to channels associated with Russian state-funded media. It had previously blocked them — specifically RT and Sputnik — across Europe.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, announced the move in a Twitter post and said that while the change is effective immediately, “we expect our systems to take time to ramp up.”

YouTube also said it was now removing content about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that violates its policy that “minimizes or trivializes well-documented violent events.” The Kremlin refers to the invasion as a “special military operation” and not a war.

YouTube previously paused YouTube ads in Russia. Now, it is extending that to all the ways it makes money on the platform in Russia.

Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, predicted in his Telegram channel that the Kremlin would soon move to block YouTube in Russia. “It’s a question of time.”

____

ANTALYA, Turkey— With the Ukrainian refugee crisis, European countries that had previously been reluctant to share the burden for refugees have found themselves seeking solidarity and burden-sharing, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday.

Grandi spoke at a diplomacy forum near the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya as the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine passed 2.5 million.

“European countries, including countries that have been rather hesitant in the past to any notion that you should share that responsibility, now find themselves … in the situation to hold hundreds of thousands,” Grandi said. “And what do they do? They ask for that international solidarity and sharing, which means financial assistance.”

Grandi said: “I think that we need to capitalize on what is happening now to restate this notion, that if refugees move, everybody should share responsibility.

____

WARSAW, Poland – Ukraine’s president and NATO chief remotely joined Poland’s leaders and lawmakers Friday for a session marking Poland’s 23 years in the defensive military alliance at a time when neighboring Ukraine is fighting Russian invasion.

In a video link to the gathering in Poland’s parliament, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Poland for supporting his nation’s struggle against the aggressor and also for opening its borders to refugees fleeing the war. Over 2.3 million people have fled Ukraine since the Feb. 24 invasion. Over 1.5 million of them have made their way to Poland.

In a veiled way Zelenskyy said he hopes Ukraine will eventually receive Soviet-designed MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland. The delivery implications of the jets recently led to an apparent misunderstanding between Warsaw and the U.S. administration.

“I am grateful for the efforts you are taking to allow us to protect Ukraine’s skies,” Zelenskyy said. “I trust that we will be able to arrive at a result that is very important to us.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Poland is safer for being a member of the alliance, and stressed the task is now to make sure the armed conflict does not spread but comes to an end.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda condemned Russia’s bombings of Ukraine’s cities and housing areas as “war crimes.”

____

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations human rights office has received “credible reports” that Russian forces are using cluster munitions in Ukraine, including in populated areas which is prohibited under international humanitarian law, the U.N. political chief said Friday.

Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo told a U.N. Security Council meeting that residential areas and civilian infrastructure are being shelled in Mariupol, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv and “the utter devastation being visited on these cities is horrific.”

Most of the civilian casualties recorded by the U.N. human rights office — 564 killed and 982 injured as of Thursday — “have been caused by explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including heavy artillery and multi-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” she said.

“Indiscriminate attacks, including those using cluster munitions, which are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction, are prohibited under international humanitarian law,” DiCarlo said. “Directing attacks against civilian and civilian objects, as well as so-called area bombardment in towns and villages, are also prohibited under international law and may amount to war crimes.”

As of Thursday the U.N. World Health Organization has verified 26 attacks on health facilities, health workers and ambulances, including the bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital, which caused 12 deaths and 34 injuries, DiCarlo said.

All alleged violations of international humanitarian law must be investigated and those found responsible must be held accountable, she said.

DiCarlo stressed that “the need for negotiations to stop the war in Ukraine could not be more urgent.”

____

Footage recorded on the outskirts of Kyiv by Radio Free Europe on Wednesday shows Ukrainian soldiers with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers slung over their shoulders traversing snow-dusted fields and woods and expressing disdain toward the Russians.

One unidentified soldier called their adversaries “orcs,” a reference to the monstrous and malevolent foot soldiers in the “Lord of the Rings” series.

Another soldier said they planned to kill all their enemies over the bombing of Mariupol.

“We’ll multiply them by zero,” the unidentified soldier said.

Gunfire and explosions erupt during the 3-minute, 30-second clip. At one point in the woods, shots split the air near the group, and soldiers drop to their stomachs in an instant and return fire. The assailants are not visible in the clip, but the crack-crack-crack from the gunfire exchange carries on for 15 seconds in one part of the clip.

____

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has opened an online portal to gather evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, as he renewed his call to combatants to abide by the laws of war.

Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a written statement Friday that he is “closely following the deeply troubling developments in hostilities.” There have been reports in recent days of Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian towns and cities, including the deadly strike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol earlier this week.

Khan notes in a written statement that “if attacks are intentionally directed against the civilian population: that is a crime. If attacks are intentionally directed against civilian objects: that is a crime. I strongly urge parties to the conflict to avoid the use of heavy explosive weapons in populated areas.” He says there is no legal justification or excuse “for attacks which are indiscriminate, or which are disproportionate in their effects on the civilian population.”

Khan also said that two more of the global court’s member states, Japan and North Macedonia, have formally requested him to investigate in Ukraine, bringing the number of so-called state party referrals to 41.

The information will bolster evidence gathered by an investigative team Khan sent to the region last week to begin gathering evidence.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine is an ICC member state, but Kyiv has recognized the court’s jurisdiction, allowing Khan to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

____

BELGRADE, Serbia — A flight from Belgrade to Moscow was reverted and evacuated following a bomb alert, Serbian police said Friday.

The Belgrade airport received an email saying that an explosive device has been planted on the Air Serbia flight to Moscow, police said in an email.

The plane was then turned back shortly after take-off, and is being checked by police, the statement said. No other details were immediately available.

Serbian media said there were more than 200 passengers and crew on the plane.

Air Serbia carrier is the only one in Europe that still flies to and from Russia as Serbia has refused to join Western sanctions against its traditional ally over Ukraine.

Air Serbia has increased the number of flights to Russia amid high demand.

____

ATHENS, Greece — The leader of Greece’s Orthodox Church has contacted the Orthodox Church of Ukraine to offer support in housing refugees fleeing the war-torn country.

Archbishop Ieronymos, who heads the Greek church, said in a statement on Friday that he had telephoned Metropolitan Bishop Epiphanius of Kyiv, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church leader, and promised “full support” for Ukraine, adding that parishes across Greece had been sent a request to provide assistance.

Only several thousand refugees from Ukraine have traveled to Greece so far — out of the 2.5 million that have fled the country — but Greek authorities expect that number to increase in the coming weeks.

The Greek church has recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine despite strong opposition from the Russian Orthodox Church.

____

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Friday evacuated its embassy in Kyiv, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Tanju Bilgic said staff at the mission would move to Chernivtsi near the Romanian border for security reasons, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

The order to leave Kyiv came as Russian forces fanned out around the city and appeared likely to step up artillery and rocket attacks. Many countries ordered diplomatic staff to leave Kyiv before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24.

Turkey has close ties to both Ukraine and Russia and has been seeking to mediate between its warring Black Sea neighbors.

____

VERSAILLES, France — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is underlining the importance of keeping in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but is stressing that “we will not make decisions for the Ukrainians.”

Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, who has spoken frequently with the Russian leader, together spoke to Putin on Thursday. After a European Union summit on Friday, Scholz said “it is absolutely necessary that we do not let the thread of talks break.”

The Elysee said Friday that Macron and Scholz would speak again with Putin on Saturday.

Scholz stressed that he and Macron are consulting closely among themselves and with the Ukrainian leadership — and that a cease-fire is the top priority. Scholz said it’s good that there are talks, but they shouldn’t just drag on while “weapons every day destroy people’s lives, buildings, infrastructure and dreams.”

The chancellor said that there is “one very clear principle: we will not make decisions for the Ukrainians. They must know themselves what from their point of view is the right thing for their country in this threatening situation.”

____

BELGRADE, Serbia — Germany’s foreign minister has urged Serbia, which has not imposed sanctions on traditional ally Russia over the war in Ukraine, to align policies with the European Union if it wants to join the bloc.

Annalena Baerbock said Friday in Serbia’s capital Belgrade that “we all must have a clear position” over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Baerbock said, launched a “shameless campaign of destruction” that is targeting “maternity wards, schools, (people’s) homes.”

While Serbia has criticized the attack on Ukraine and voted in the United Nations for the condemnation of the attack, Belgrade has refrained from joining Western sanctions against Moscow.

Historically considered a friendly nation, Russia remains popular among the Serbs, particularly because of Moscow’s support for Serbia’s opposition to the Western-backed independence of the breakaway former Kosovo province.

Baerbock praised Serbia’s U.N. vote and the offer to host Ukrainian refugees. But she added that “joining the European Union means readiness to align with the positions of the union.”

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said that “Serbia has a very determined and clear position” and has done “nothing that would hurt Ukraine.”

____

MOSCOW — Russia’s communications and media regulator says it's restricting national access to Instagram because the platform is spreading “calls to commit violent acts against Russian citizens, including military personnel.”

The regulator, called Roskomnadzor, took the step Friday as Russia presses ahead with its invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier on Friday, Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said in a statement tweeted by its spokesman Andy Stone that it had “made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules on violent speech, such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’.”

The statement stressed that the company “still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

___

PRAGUE — Prague City Hall has started readying temporary accommodation for a surge in refugees from Ukraine after the Czech capital ran out of housing options for them.

The government estimates that up to 200,000 refugees — 55% of them children — have arrived in the Czech Republic, a European Union and NATO member that doesn’t border Ukraine. About 25% of the refugees entering the country have gone to Prague.

Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib has asked the heads of 22 city districts to prepare at least 100 beds each in school gyms and also provide food for the refugees there.

Hrib compared the current situation in Prague to Germany facing the waves of refugees during a European migrant crisis in 2015-16.

“The difference is that Germany had months to react, we have just days,” Hrib said. “The demand for accommodation in Prague is enormous and by far surpasses what we can offer.”

___

ANTALYA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested that the war in Ukraine could have been avoided had the world spoken out against Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“Would we have faced such a picture if the West, the whole world, had raised their voices?” Erdogan asked. “Those who remained silent in the face of Crimea’s invasion are now saying some things.”

Erdogan spoke Friday at a diplomacy forum near the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya, where the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met a day earlier for talks facilitated by Turkey’s foreign minister.

Erdogan said Turkey would continue its efforts for peace.

___

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Finnish President Sauli Niinistö spoke in a phone call Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine.

Niinistö's office said in a statement that he informed Putin that he, earlier in the day, had a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that Zelenskyy was prepared to talk directly with Putin.

The statement said Niinistö called for an immediate ceasefire and the safe evacuation of civilians, but also spoke to Putin about the security of nuclear energy facilities in Ukraine.

Niinisto is one of the few Western leaders who has kept a regular dialogue with Putin ever since the Finnish leader took office in 2012.

___

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s prime minister said Friday that sanctions imposed against Russia by the European Union would not involve a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas.

In a video on his social media channels following a meeting of EU leaders in Versailles, France, Viktor Orban said it was possible that the war in Ukraine “would drag on,” but that “the most important issue was settled in a way that was favorable to us.”

“There will be no sanctions covering oil and gas, which means that Hungary’s energy supply is guaranteed for the next period,” Orban said.

Orban, widely considered to be the Kremlin’s closest ally in the EU, has supported the bloc’s sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbor.

But he has remained firm in insisting that the energy sector be left out of sanctions, arguing that such a move would damage EU countries more than Russia.

Last year, Hungary extended by 15 years a natural gas contract with Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom, and has entered into a 12 billion-euro ($13.6 billion) Russian build-and-finance agreement to add two nuclear reactors to Hungary’s only nuclear power plant.

___

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president says his country’s military forces have reached “a strategic turning point,” while Russia’s president says there are “certain positive developments” in talks between the warring countries.

Neither leader explained clearly what they meant, however.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday: “It’s impossible to say how many days we will still need to free our land, but it is possible to say that we will do it because ... we have reached a strategic turning point.” He didn’t elaborate.

He said authorities are working on 12 humanitarian corridors and trying to ensure needy people receive food, medicine and basic goods.

He spoke on a video showing him outside the presidential administration in Kyiv, speaking in both Ukrainian and Russian about the 16th day of war.

Meanwhile, in Moscow Russian President Vladimir Putin said there have been positive developments in talks between the warring countries, but he didn’t offer any details about what those developments were.

Putin hosted Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for talks on Friday and told him that negotiations with Ukraine “are now being held almost on a daily basis.”

Biden, allies move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia

Seeking to further punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he described as a “merciless assault” on Ukraine, President Biden said on Friday that he would move to revoke Russia’s status as a top trading partner with the United States.

The action, Biden explained, would “make it harder for Russia to do business with the United States” by allowing for new taxes on imports from which nations with most-favored status are exempt. The European Union and Group of Seven nations — which include Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom — are taking similar steps, which could deal Russia what Biden described in his White House remarks as a “crushing blow.”

Congress will have to take up the matter, but given the rare eagerness with which Democrats and Republicans have united around a single foe, this latest effort to isolate Russia could be realized within a matter of days.

“The free world is coming together to confront Putin,” Biden said. “Our two parties here at home are leading the way.”

Putin does have a key ally: China, which trades far more with Russia ($147 billion last year) than it does with second-place Germany ($65 billion) or distant-fifth United States ($35 billion). Beijing has done its best to remain neutral when it comes to the Ukraine conflict and has not been party to any of the restrictive new trade policies directed at the Kremlin.

Still, the loss of premier trading status across Canada, Japan and much of Europe means that Russian exporters — already caught in a hostile global economy — will now face the possibility of tariffs on the goods they are looking to sell abroad. And even though the trade relationship with China remains stable, it is not clear just how much more that relationship can be expanded simply because Moscow has few other friends left.

Earlier this week, American financial giants Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase said they were ending business in Russia, further underscoring the costs both ordinary Russians and Russian elites are bearing for the unprovoked attack on Ukraine that Putin began last month. So far, diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have failed.

“Putin’s actions are causing massive harm to the Russian people,” former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb tweeted. “The sanctions will be as total as the isolation. No area will be spared: finance, trade, goods, services, individuals, culture, sport, energy, transport. Reserves will not last forever.”

American officials have said U.S. troops would not fight in Ukraine. Economic means are thus seen as the best way to convince Putin to withdraw troops from sovereign Ukrainian territory, an occupation that has already taken the lives of thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of Ukrainian civilians.

“Russia has now become a global economic and financial pariah,” the White House said in announcing the move, which comes with an outright ban of imports from Russia of luxury goods like vodka and caviar — two poignant symbols of the country after two decades of Putin’s rule, which has enriched a class of oligarchs known for their lavish lifestyles.

Biden called those oligarchs “corrupt billionaires,” and the Treasury Department moved on Friday to implement new sanctions on Russia’s ruling elite. “They support Putin, they steal from the Russian people and they seek to hide their money in our countries,” Biden said.

“They must share in the pain of these sanctions,” Biden continued, vowing to go after “their superyachts and their vacation homes.” Later in the morning, he signed an executive order banning the export of American luxury goods to Russia.

Congress gave Russia access to permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) — also known as most-favored-nation status — in 2012 as a sign that it had become a democracy that had recovered from the chaos and corruption of the early post-Soviet days. Yet antidemocratic abuses by the Kremlin, including the death of imprisoned attorney Sergei Magnitsky, made some wonder if Russia was deserving of such privilege.

“This culture of impunity in Russia has been growing worse and worse,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at the time.

Today, Cuba and North Korea are the only nations in the world that can’t claim the favored-nation protections of the PNTR, underscoring how quickly Russia is being expelled from virtually all U.S. economic arrangements.

Even Iran retains PNTR status, though trade with the Islamist republic has been sanctioned, to the point of nonexistence, since 1987. Venezuela, another adversary, also retains its favored-nation status. In fact, it appears to be on the cusp of selling oil to the United States again, in a stark contrast to Russia’s narrowing trade options. (Congress suspended oil imports from Russia earlier this week, thus making Venezuela’s vast oil reserves a potentially attractive option.)

Biden said Russia could soon be deprived of loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, further squeezing a nation cut off from Western financial markets. “He cannot pursue a war that threatens the very foundations of international peace and stability and then ask for financial help from the international community,” the president argued.

As such, the move would be as symbolic as it is economic. Last month’s invasion of Ukraine seemed to reverse three decades of optimism about Russia. Trade relations with Russia were normalized in 1990, with hopes that the Kremlin would steer the nation in the direction of a free-market economy. And for a while, that was indeed the course undertaken by President Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Putin.

Putin ended the “gangster capitalism” of the 1990s, turning the oligarchs who had gotten rich during that time essentially into an arm of the Kremlin. Those who weren’t chased out (Boris Berezovsky) or jailed (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) became near-literal vassals of Putin. Meanwhile, he ruthlessly consolidated control over the media and other sectors of free society.

American corporations and legislators were willing to overlook much of that over the last 15 years, though Putin invaded Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014). But the second Ukraine invasion — which has been longer and more brutal than the first — has shifted the calculus, and now the same Congress that granted Russia PNTR status could move to revoke the vote of confidence it gave a decade ago.

In his remarks on Friday, Biden made clear that the Russian people have one man to blame, just as his administration has said that Americans upset at higher gas prices should point their finger at the Kremlin, not the White House.

"Putin is an aggressor. He is the aggressor. And Putin must pay the price."