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The country's second-largest city has been targeted almost incessantly since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

But this time was worse than usual, because, when rescue workers arrived at the scene, there was a second strike. Three of them were killed.

The following Friday, it happened again when Russian missiles hit Zaporizhzhia, a major city in Ukraine's southeast.

Rescuers and journalists rushed to the scene, and then two more missiles hit.

In total, four people were killed and more than 20 were wounded, including two local journalists.

Both the Kharkiv and the Zaporizhzhia attacks employed a technique called "double-tap" - when an initial air strike is followed by a second attack, killing rescuers trying to help the injured.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14299625

Thousands of Palestinians, including men, women, children and elderly, attempted to return to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday when they came under Israeli fire.

“We reached all the way to the checkpoint until we saw Israeli tanks. We headed back because they fired towards us. We didn’t see anyone make it to the other side. We risked our children’s lives to cross, but apparently it was all a lie,” one woman said.

Video shows several people with what appear to be gunshot wounds. One man is seen carrying another man who has blood streaming along his face from a head injury.

We know Republicans hate diversity. We see attacks on everything from voting rights to DEI initiatives to teaching accurate American history in schools. Education is, of course, a favorite target for the GOP. In the state of Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee just dissolved the board at the state’s only HBCU, Tennessee State University. The narrative Lee and his fellow Republicans are pushing is that TSU has been suffering from major financial mismanagement. Their only solution is to replace the board of trustees of the state’s  only public historically Black college. However, there claims are not accurate.

A recent audit revealed that NO fraud or malfeasance occurred under the school’s leadership. In actuality, the school has been criminally underfunded for decades. According to the Biden-Harris administration, TSU has been underfunded by about $2 billion, the largest amount of any HBCU. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement, “Unacceptable funding inequities have forced many of our nation’s distinguished historically Black colleges and universities to operate with inadequate resources and delay critical investments in everything from campus infrastructure to research and development to student support services.”

Washburn Police Sgt. Chandler Cole resigned after being charged with aggravated forgery, tampering with public records or information, falsifying physical evidence, and unsworn falsification, according to court records. He was arrested on March 29.

Cole said he had no comment when reached by The Associated Press.

The charges, first reported by WAGM-TV, stem from the case of a missing person who appeared to be distressed when seen walking along a road on Jan. 30.

Cole reported that he had picked up Erik Foote and dropped him off at a convenience store, but he told Foote’s parents he took him to the hospital.

An investigation concluded Cole altered his report to reflect a hospital drop-off. But there is no hospital record to support the claim.

President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the U.S. will not take part in a counter-offensive against Iran, an option that Netanyahu's war cabinet favors after a mass drone and missile attack on Israeli territory, according to officials.

The threat of open warfare erupting between the arch Middle East foes and dragging in the United States has put the region on edge, triggering calls for restraint from global powers and Arab nations to avoid further escalation.

The U.S. will continue to help Israel defend itself but does not want war, John Kirby, the White House's top national security spokesperson, told ABC's "This Week" program on Sunday.

Jordan's King Abdullah told Biden in a phone call on Sunday that any further escalation from Israel would widen the conflict in the region, Jordanian state media reported.

Donald Trump once again attacked his former lawyer Michael Cohen on Saturday, potentially testing the limits of a gag order that bars him from making public statements about witnesses concerning their testimony in his upcoming criminal trial in New York.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the former president wrote, "Has disgraced attorney and felon Michael Cohen been prosecuted for LYING? Only TRUMP people get prosecuted by this Judge and these thugs!"

Cohen is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution at the trial, which is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Monday and will be the first criminal trial ever of a former American president.

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It is a scenario playing out nationwide. From Oregon to Pennsylvania, hundreds of communities have in recent years either stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies or voted to prevent its addition. Supporters of such bans argue that people should be given the freedom of choice. The broad availability of over-the-counter dental products containing the mineral makes it no longer necessary to add to public water supplies, they say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that while store-bought products reduce tooth decay, the greatest protection comes when they are used in combination with water fluoridation.

The outcome of an ongoing federal case in California could force the Environmental Protection Agency to create a rule regulating or banning the use of fluoride in drinking water nationwide. In the meantime, the trend is raising alarm bells for public health researchers who worry that, much like vaccines, fluoride may have become a victim of its own success.

The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom drinking water may be the only source of preventive dental care.

“If you have to go out and get care on your own, it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Myron Allukian Jr., a dentist and past president of the American Public Health Association. Millions of people have lived with fluoridated water for years, “and we’ve had no major health problems,” he said. “It’s much easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.”

According to the anti-fluoride group Fluoride Action Network, since 2010, over 240 communities around the world have removed fluoride from their drinking water or decided not to add it.

Hundreds of Palestinians are trying to return to northern Gaza via the Al-Rashid Street and very few of them, all of them women and children, succeeded in reaching the northern Gaza Strip, according to an Anadolu correspondent.

Adraee warned the Palestinians against approaching the Israeli forces operating in the northern Gaza Strip.

“The northern Gaza Strip is still a war zone and we will not allow a return to it,” he added.

The scenes were emblematic of the crisis gripping the small, Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, where a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

The town’s case, set to be heard April 22, has broad implications for how not only Grants Pass, but communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. It has made the town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis, and further fueled the debate over how to deal with it.

“I certainly wish this wasn’t what my town was known for,” Mayor Sara Bristol told The Associated Press last month. “It’s not the reason why I became mayor. And yet it has dominated every single thing that I’ve done for the last 3 1/2 years.”

Officials across the political spectrum — from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, which has nearly 30% of the nation’s homeless population, to a group of 22 conservative-led states — have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments.

Public safety statistics reflect the serious challenges. Native Americans and Alaska Natives are more than twice as likely to be victims of a violent crime, and Native American women are at least two times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted compared with others.

For Toulou, a descendant of the Washington state-based Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, part of addressing those grim realities is expanding the power of tribal justice systems.

Tribes had been barred, for example, from prosecuting non-Natives under a 1978 Supreme Court decision, even if the crime happened on reservations, making it harder to seek justice in many cases. That changed somewhat in 2013 with a federal law that allows tribes to prosecute non-Natives in a limited set of domestic violence cases. The authority was expanded in 2022 to include cases such as violence against children and stalking.

A judge ordered Planned Parenthood to hand records of transgender care over to Andrew Bailey.

A St. Louis judge has ruled that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is entitled to Planned Parenthood’s transgender care records, ordering the nonprofit to turn over some of its most sensitive files to the man who has built his unelected political career on restricting health care access for trans people.

In his Thursday decision, Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer wrote that Bailey can collect documents under Missouri’s consumer protection statute that aren’t protected under federal mandate, namely the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA.

“It is clear from the statute that the Defendant has the broad investigative powers when the consumer is in possible need of protection and there is no dispute in this matter,” wrote Stelzer. “Therefore, the Defendant is entitled to some of the requested documents within his [Civil Investigative Demand].”

Bailey, who last year attempted to implement a ban on gender-affirming care for people of all ages, was quick to celebrate the decision, calling it a “big day” for the state.

The activists said they will continue protesting at clinics for the next two weeks and work to penalize self-managed abortions.

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The 1864 Arizona law outlawed abortion from the moment of conception, with an exception to save the woman’s life. It made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performed an abortion or helped a person obtain one. Tuesday’s decision effectively undoes a lower court’s ruling that held that a recent 15-week ban superseded the law.

Reproductive rights advocates and supporters like Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes have called the law “draconian” and argued that a 160-year-old policy has no place in the state’s modern political landscape. But Lynn Dyer, 80, with the Life Choices Women’s Clinic doesn’t see it that way. She said she was “overjoyed” when the ruling came down.

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In the days following Tuesday’s decision, reproductive rights groups and advocates have protested across the state as abortion providers wrestle with how to move forward. The state Supreme Court said Tuesday it would put its decision on hold for 14 days so a lower court can consider “additional constitutional challenges.” Reproductive rights advocates can appeal the ruling in the two-week window. Meanwhile, a separate, ongoing suit would allow abortion providers to continue providing services through the 15th week of pregnancy until the end of May.

Greased by lobbying and campaign cash, tax breaks for retirement savings are one thing Congress agrees on. But they also blow out the deficit and add to income inequality.

Five months before Congress faced a near-catastrophic standoff over the debt ceiling, with Republicans demanding restrictions to food and Medicaid programs to rein in spending, a bill that raised the cost of private retirement savings accounts to $282 billion per year was quietly signed into law.

In this era of deeply divided politics, the 2022 bill known as Secure 2.0 was hailed as a bipartisan success — a victory for average Americans. It had sailed through the House by a whopping 414-5 vote. It followed four other major bills passed between 1996 and 2019 that dramatically expanded taxpayer savings – all equally lauded as bipartisan victories.

But that rare issue that brought a divided Washington together also increased wealth disparities and the federal deficit. And the victory was most strongly applauded by the burgeoning financial services industry, for whom tax-advantaged retirement savings has transformed a $7 trillion retirement market in 1995 to a $38.4 trillion behemoth in 2023.

Experts partnered with RIP Medical Debt, a medical non-profit that buys and forgives debt, found it had little effect on people’s credit scores and mental health

Medical debt is the most common form of debt in collections in the US. But forgiving that debt once it has gone to collections may provide fewer health and financial benefits than once hoped.

A new study by researchers who partnered with RIP Medical Debt, a non-profit that buys and forgives medical debt, found “disappointing” results when people’s bills were purchased and forgiven, with little impact on people’s credit scores and willingness to go to the doctor.

“Our hope was that this would be a cost effective intervention,” said Raymond Kluender, lead author on the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) report which partnered with RIP Medical Debt, and an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

“We find no real benefits on people’s household finances or their mental health or utilization of healthcare in our study,” Kluender said.

However, he added, he doesn’t “think any of the authors on the project would not say medical debt is not a huge issue”. Instead, Kluender said, “Our interpretation is you have to intervene upstream,” which essentially means it might be more effective to provide people with financial assistance or universal, affordable healthcare – the sort that might prevent bills from accumulating – rather than forgive one bill at a time.

Paris agreement negotiator Todd Stern attacks premiers who say that decarbonisation programmes are unrealistic and should be slowed down

Political leaders who present themselves as “grownups” while slowing the pace of climate action are pushing the world towards deeper catastrophe, a former US environment chief has warned.

“We are slowed down by those who think of themselves as grownups and believe decarbonisation at the speed the climate community calls for is unrealistic,” said Todd Stern, who served as a special envoy for climate change under Barack Obama, and helped negotiate the 2015 Paris agreement.

“They say that we need to slow down, that what is being proposed [in cuts to greenhouse gas emissions] is unrealistic,” he told the Observer. “You see it a lot in the business world too. It’s really hard [to push for more urgency] because those ‘grownups’ have a lot of influence.”

But Stern said the speed of take-up of renewable energy, its falling cost, and the wealth of low-carbon technology now available were evidence that the world could cut emissions to net zero by 2050. “Obviously it’s difficult – we’re talking about enormous change to the world economy – but we can do it,” he said.

Embroidery is enjoying a resurgence as a new generation taps into its potential – both for upcycling clothes and for making an empowering declaration. Here's our DIY guide to embroidering your own clothes.

In the exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at London's Barbican, artist LJ Roberts displays three small textile artworks depicting queer parades and protests. The works, part of Roberts's series Carry You With Me: Ten Years of Portraits, are caught between panes of glass so that visitors can see the back of each embroidery, with knots and incidental threads on show. "Working in textiles mirrors the flexibility and resilience that often permeates queer and trans survival and thriving," writes the artist on their website. "The embroideries demonstrate that art centering kinship, persistence, and connection can be made anywhere at any time."

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The resurgence is due, in no small part, to the need to confront the fashion industry's damaging impact – on everything from carbon emissions to planetary boundaries, from animal rights to racial justice. Almost 70% of all clothes are synthetic, while 40% of all clothes produced never even make it to retail; only 2% of garment workers, mainly women, are paid a living wage. The key driver is over-consumption. More and more sustainable fashion activists are calling for the imaginative re-use, through upcycling and repair, of what already exists – and one way to do this is decorative embroidery.

Published today in a JAMA Health Forum research letter, policy researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and Boston University show how the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling affected preferences for permanent contraception among males and females between the ages of 18 to 30. It’s the first study to assess how the Dobbs ruling affected both females and male interest in permanent contraception procedures. What the researchers found was that despite all the attention on male vasectomies post-Dobbs, the rise in tubal sterilizations among females was twice as high as the increase among vasectomies in males.

A federal jury has convicted Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz on all 10 counts he faces connected to tampering with IV bags.

Ortiz was an anesthesiologist at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas in the summer of 2022; His actions caused surgery patients to have medical emergencies.

Ortiz is also tied to the death of a fellow anesthesiologist, Dr. Melanie Kaspar. She died after administering an IV bag to herself after feeling sick. The bag was also allegedly tainted by Ortiz, but prosecutors did not charge Ortiz in Kaspar's death.