A coalition of faith groups held a memorial service in Lansing Tuesday for car crash survivors who died after losing care that was keeping them alive.

Members of the Michigan Interfaith Coalition said the deaths are a consequence of changes to Michigan's auto no-fault insurance law.

The Reverend Timothy Flynn of St. Michael's Episcopal Church began the ceremony, held at the Central United Methodist Church — just a block away from the state capitol building.

“We pray for all of us gathered here, especially for the families and the loved ones of those that have departed this life," he said, as mourners held flickering (flameless) candles. "We pray that our legislators and our governor be blessed with courage and a thirst for justice.”

Across the state, more than 1,500 people who suffered catastrophic injuries in car crashes have lost their care, according to an independent study conducted by the Michigan Public Health Institute.

Changes to Michigan's auto no-fault insurance law have slashed insurance company payments to long-term care providers by nearly half. People rely on those providers to stay alive after their crashes, but the cuts are so deep that some are going out of business.

https://www.michiganradio.org/health/2022-03-02/car-crash-survivors-who-died-after-losing-care-are-memorialized-in-service-at-lansing-church

Tymofii Brik and his girlfriend spent Friday evening walking around their neighborhood in Kyiv, looking at the ground, at walls, and up at roofs. They were searching for special markings left behind by Russian saboteurs, who Ukrainian officials warned had infiltrated cities and may have been marking buildings to target for strikes.

It is not clear Russian forces actually marked buildings, but Brik said the local government had asked civilians to go out and search, and they felt they had to do something, even a small thing like this. Brik’s girlfriend, a climber, wanted to scale the side of their nine-story apartment building to investigate. Brik talked her down from that idea, as did the climbing buddies she texted for advice. It wasn’t worth the risk, they said, and Brik and his girlfriend went inside without uncovering any signs of Russian saboteurs.

Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago, beginning a war that, to some Ukrainians, felt improbable until the first explosions went off. When the attacks began, “the activation was immediate,” said Brik, a sociologist and researcher at the Kyiv School of Economics, who spoke Sunday evening from the shower in his apartment bathroom in Kyiv, where he and his girlfriend were sheltering.

That activation happened all across Ukraine, drawing on some of the lessons of 2014, during the country’s Euromaidan uprising and, later, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine. Eight years later, civilians have signed up to fight, joining the Territorial Defense Forces to defend cities. But the resistance extends far beyond that. Citizens are using their skills and their contacts to fill in the gaps for the government and the armed forces, and are finding ways, many of them informal and improvised, to contribute to the war effort.

“All the nation is involved, not only the army,” said Viktoriya (who is being referred to by a pseudonym for safety reasons), who helps supply medicines to Kyiv.

https://www.vox.com/22956752/ukraine-resistance-volunteers-russia-invasion
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Slava Ukraini!

When Kyiv announced it disrupted a plot by Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, young Chechen men already preparing to head to fight for Ukraine took it as confirmation they’d have another chance to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russia and his key henchman at the same time.

With a population of two million under Kadyrov’s semi-autonomous rule, Chechnya’s two vicious civil wars in the 1990s and increasingly brutal rule by Kadyrov have combined to create a Chechen diaspora community across Europe and Turkey in the hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of them now appear ready to join the fight to defend Ukraine.

“Kadyrovtsy are in Ukraine fighting alongside the Russians, that makes it every Chechen man’s responsibility to confront the enemies of Chechnya and our faith,” according to Ramzan, a former jihadist fighter in Syria from Chechnya quietly living in exile in Turkey, speaking under a pseudonym. “Kadyrov and his clan control the [Russian-loyal security services] and hunt his political opponents in Russia, in Chechnya, and in Europe.”

“But now they are in Ukraine for Putin and we can hunt them again,” he said. “We know these men [sent to kill Zelenskyy] who work for Putin’s dog [Kadyrov].”

Ukraine has requested foreign volunteers, particularly those with specific military skills. It has already has received more applications than it can immediately vet for links to criminal or terrorist organisations, according to a Ukrainian Defence Ministry official interviewed by VICE World News.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgjn8/chechnya-fighters-ukraine-russia-ramzan-kadyrov

Yachts owned by Russian billionaires are on the move as the U.S. and its allies seek to hunt down the assets of Russia's wealthiest in direct response to the invasion of Ukraine. The wealthiest Russian money – including Russian President Vladimir Putin's — has pushed to sea.

Data from MarineTraffic, a global intelligence group, shows yachts owned by oligarchs are on the move, including aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska's $65 million Clio and oil executive Vagit Alekperov's $80 million Galactica Super Nova.

"No self-respecting oligarchy exists without a super yacht. And so what we're seeing now is a hightailing it on the high seas," financier and anti-corruption activist Bill Browder told CBS News.

A super yacht is typically over 40 meters long. The Clio and Galactica are each over 70 meters long.

In response to Putin's war against Ukraine, the Biden administration created a task force to go after Russian oligarchs' "yachts, luxury apartments, money and their ability to send their kids to fancy college[s] in the West."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-putin-oligarchs-yachts/
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It doesn't really matter where they put them, because this nifty little app called Maritime Tracker tells where they are. And anyone can access that......

Anyone here participating? I don't really care that the Mormons sponsor it, just as I don't care that they own the Family History Library in SLC. They let anybody in for free. I participated in the virtual RootsTech last year, and besides learning a lot, found a gang of relatives and some good info. I found out. for instance, that one brother of my great-great-grandfather became a Mormon, settled in Idaho, had 10 kids, and supplied me with a whole arm of the family I had hitherto known nothing about. Also found second cousins I didn't know.

In 2016, I was working as an ICU nurse in Reno, Nevada. But I didn’t live in Reno. In fact, I hadn’t trained as a nurse in the US at all; I’m from Canada and went to nursing school there. My initial contract was for just 13 weeks. I was what was called a travel nurse — someone who was brought in from a different city, and sometimes even from a different country — to meet a hospital’s temporary staffing needs.

At the start of my contract, we had a couple of days of onboarding and were then expected to hit the ground running. Every morning, I would report to the trauma ICU, one of four ICU units in the hospital, and only then find out where I was assigned, which was sometimes outside the ICU entirely.

Six years ago, travel nursing jobs like my Reno gig were a fringe part of the nursing landscape. But that’s changed. During the pandemic, the need for travel nurses has soared, and so have the wages paid them. Because I was a former ICU and travel nurse, I received frequent emails from travel nursing agencies when the pandemic first erupted, offering upward of $6,000 per week and occasionally as high as $10,000, if I were willing to relocate on as little as 48 hours notice to one of the cities experiencing a Covid-19 surge.

This was a steep increase from the average US ICU travel nurse’s salary of $1,800 per week, per this 2019 report. (I didn’t accept any of them, but I have to admit it was tempting.)

The rise of the travel nurse in the time of Covid-19 isn’t that surprising. From the earliest days of the pandemic, registered nurses bore the brunt of the increased strain on the health care system. With ICUs across the country overflowing, hospitals were forced to open specialized Covid-19 wards and staffing was strained. Nurses were often required to work grueling hours with heavy patient loads, a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), and limited access to Covid-19 testing.

https://www.vox.com/22936455/travel-nurses-health-care-covid
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I was a travel nurse prior to Covid and this reflects only some of my experience. The last paragraph is particularly revealing. Ask me.

I was seven years old when I started to learn to read, as is typical of the alternative Steiner school I attended. My own daughter attends a standard English school, and started at four, as is typical in most British schools.

Watching her memorise letters and sound out words, at an age when my idea of education was climbing trees and jumping through puddles, has made me wonder how our different experiences shape us. Is she getting a crucial head-start that will give her lifelong benefits? Or is she exposed to undue amounts of potential stress and pressure, at a time when she should be enjoying her freedom? Or am I simply worrying too much, and it doesn't matter at what age we start reading and writing?

There's no doubt that language in all its richness – written, spoken, sung or read aloud – plays a crucial role in our early development. Babies already respond better to the language they were exposed to in the womb. Parents are encouraged to read to their children before they are even born, and when they are babies. Evidence shows that how much or how little we are talked to as children can have lasting effects on future educational achievement. Books are a particularly important aspect of that rich linguistic exposure, since written language often includes a wider and more nuanced and detailed vocabulary than everyday spoken language. This can in turn help children increase their range and depth of expression.

Since a child's early experience of language is considered so fundamental to their later success, it has become increasingly common for preschools to begin teaching children basic literacy skills even before formal education starts. When children begin school, literacy is invariably a major focus. This goal of ensuring that all children learn to read and write has become even more pressing as researchers warn that the pandemic has caused a widening achievement gap between wealthier and poorer families, increasing academic inequality.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220228-the-best-age-for-learning-to-read
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Comment/personal experience below, too long for here.

Airbus has joined rival planemaker Boeing and oil giant ExxonMobil on a growing list of corporate giants cutting ties with Russia.

The European manufacturer said it had stopped support and supply of spare parts for Russia's aviation industry.

Earlier, Boeing suspended operations and ExxonMobil said it would end a multi-billion dollar joint venture with Russian state-owned company Rosneft.

Firms are exiting Russia after the West imposed sanctions over Ukraine.

Airbus said on Wednesday: "In line with international sanctions now in place, Airbus has suspended support services to Russian airlines, as well as the supply of spare part to the country.

"Services provided by the Airbus Engineering Centre in Russia (ECAR) have also been suspended pending further review."

US aviation giant Boeing said it had suspended "major operations" in Moscow and temporarily closed its office in Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

"We are also suspending parts, maintenance and technical support services for Russian airlines," a Boeing spokesperson told the BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60582367
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Vlad, your economy is tanking and Chinese parts do not fit. What ya gonna do?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may only be on its sixth day, but it’s already producing a flurry of accounts of Ukrainian soldiers and citizens alike defying the odds and standing up to their would-be occupiers. On the military side, stand-out stories so far have included the heroically futile defense of Snake Island and the mythic fighter ace known as the Ghost of Kyiv. Civilians who have grabbed headlines include Sunflower Woman, Ukrainian Tank Man, and now, a string of anonymous citizens who’ve apparently commandeered abandoned Russian military vehicles. To first get up to date on our most recent past coverage of the fighting so far, click here.

In the last few days, videos of these incidents have contributed to something of a social media phenomenon, one that’s also reflecting some of the surprising setbacks the Russian military is facing in a conflict that many had expected would be extremely one-sided. As it is, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have combined successes on the battlefield with a well-orchestrated public relations campaign that typically sets their ingenuity and heroism against the hapless Russian invaders. Though there are no clear indications one way or the other that any of this has been scripted, there are obvious propaganda and morale-boosting benefits from publicizing this imagery.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44511/ukrainians-citizens-are-taking-it-upon-themselves-to-capture-russian-military-vehicles
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I guarantee you, this has got some of the funniest, most inspiring footage yet, including a TikTok video of an influencer showing how to drive a Russian tank she found abandoned.

Days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the International Skating Union (ISU) announced it is barring all Russian ice skaters from participating in international skating competitions.

The ISU said in a statement that no skaters from Russia and Belarus "shall be invited or allowed to participate in International ice skating Competitions including ISU Championships and other ISU Events." Belarus is a close ally of Russia.

"The ISU Council will continue to closely monitor the situation in Ukraine and its impact on the ISU activity and will take additional steps if and when required," the ISU said.

The ISU said it was considering IOC's call to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competitions when making its decision, as well as appeals from ISU members and others. It's another hit to Russian figure skating, less than a month after 15-year-old Kamila Valieva became the subject of a doping scandal in the middle of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-international-skating-union/
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FIFA and UEFA have also banned their soccer teams, and FIVB their volleyball teams. More sports federations are considering bans. Hit 'em where it hurts, right in the prestige