Ginni Thomas-Mark Meadows texts expose the Christian nationalism that fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection: religious scholars

Travis Gettys
March 25, 2022

Supporters of President Donald Trump protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. - Yuri Gripas/Yuri Gripas/TNS

The shocking texts between Ginni Thomas and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reveal the key role that Christian nationalism played in the efforts to overturn Donald Trump's election loss, according to experts on America's Christian right.

Meadows promised the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that “King of Kings” would ultimately “triumph” in a "fight against good versus evil," and allow Trump to remain president despite his election loss, and Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent said the exchange was crucial to understanding the insurrection.

"We haven’t paid enough attention to the role of right-wing Christian nationalism in driving Trump’s effort to destroy our political order," Sargent wrote, "and in the abandonment of democracy among some on the right more broadly."

Many on the Christian right believe that Trump was "anointed" by God to fulfill their "goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation," according to religious scholar Sarah Posner, and the former reality TV star became the unlikely focus for their hopes.

RELATED: Time for Clarence Thomas to step down after 'haunting the court for years': NYT editorial board member

"In this narrative, Trump — despite his glaring and repugnant personal imperfections — became the vessel to carry out the struggle to defeat various godless and secularist infestations of the idealized Christian nation, from the woke to globalists to communists to the 'deep state,'" Sargent wrote.

Right-wing Christians justified the violence carried out on Jan. 6 as necessary to their "holy war against an illegitimate state," Posner argued, and she said Meadows and Thomas both saw themselves as "soldiers in this spiritual battle."

The movement is inherently violent, according to Robert Jones, the founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, who said right-wing Christians see their fight as existential.

“It is a violent reclamation movement,” Jones said. “If we’re going to move into the promise of a multireligious, multiethnic democracy, these forces are going to have to be confronted.”

NOW WATCH: GOP's Kevin McCarthy rejects calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from Jan. 6 cases despite wife's involvement

 

‘Astounding’ texts from Ginni Thomas put Chief Justice Roberts ‘in a terrible pickle': MSNBC panel

Travis Gettys
March 25, 2022

MSNBC

Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" agreed that "unhinged" texts sent from Ginni Thomas to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows cast serious doubt on the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, urged Meadows to help overturn Donald Trump's 2020 election loss, and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was shocked by the fringe conspiracy theories she used to justify her efforts to subvert democracy.

"These texts from Ginni Thomas are completely unhinged," Robinson said. "The thing that gets me is that she is arguing that Sidney Powell, the lawyer, be the sort of face and voice of the resistance, I guess, or of, you know, true democracy or of the Trump cult. This is after Donald Trump himself has decided that Sidney Powell is off the rails and is not making sense, but Ginni Thomas is still right in there with her to the bitter end. It's just amazing, this radicalization or -- I don't know what you would call it -- of the Republican Party, of the conservative movement in Washington is just astounding."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski wondered whether Clarence Thomas shared his wife's views or whether he knew about her communications with Meadows when he ruled on a case regarding Trump's presidential records.


RELATED: 'Really sick stuff': Morning Joe lays waste to Ginni Thomas-Mark Meadows election plot

"Did it penetrate the Supreme Court?" Brzezinski asked. "Was the Supreme Court justice's decision compromised? That is the question."

Washington Post investigative reporter Carol Leonnig said the situation put Chief Justice John Roberts under tremendous pressure to protect the court's reputation.

"I would say Chief Justice Roberts is in a terrible pickle because of this," Leonnig said, "and it raises, you said, Mika, and it also raises a question of when does a Supreme Court justice recuse himself? When will this happen in this appearance of a conflict?"

The “Watermarked Ballots” Theory Ginni Thomas Texted Mark Meadows Is Even Crazier Than It Sounds

BY JEREMY STAHL

SLATE

MARCH 25, 2022

Just some cool friends hanging out, having a good time. 

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Thursday, the Washington Post and CBS News broke the news that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had frantically texted with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the 2020 election and leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection to discuss an array of conspiracy theories alleging that the presidential election had been stolen by Democrats.

The implications of the report are astounding for a number of reasons. First, it means that the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice was deeply enmeshed in Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Second, it means that this justice’s wife could come under scrutiny by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Third, it means that in January when Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenting vote in an 8–1 decision by the court to allow the release of National Archives documents surrounding the events of Jan. 6 to the select committee, he was protecting documents that might implicate his wife—a clear conflict of interest that should have demanded recusal. It’s uncertain how all of this will play out, though Democrats do not seem to have the votes to impeach and remove Thomas, who was released from the hospital on Friday after spending several days there with an infection, and will thus likely not attempt that route.

There’s much more that has yet to be made public: The Post reported that the exchanges “pause after Nov. 24, 2020, with an unexplained gap in correspondence.” What we do know now, though, is just the full extent that Clarence Thomas’ wife has embraced the most radical and demented conspiracy theories of QAnon and Alex Jones.

Specifically, the Post describes a deleted YouTube video forwarded to Meadows by Thomas. It’s worth diving deeper into that clip to further understand just how far into QAnon territory Thomas has gone, and how the conspiracy theory about “watermarks” that captured her attention after the election still animates many conservatives.

Here’s how the theory is introduced in the Post report:

The first of the 29 messages between Ginni Thomas and Meadows was sent on Nov. 5, two days after the election. She sent him a link to a YouTube video labeled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

Pieczenik, a former State Department official, is a far-right commentator who has falsely claimed that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a “false-flag” operation to push a gun-control agenda.

The video Thomas shared with Meadows is no longer available on YouTube. But Thomas wrote to Meadows, “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she wrote.

Thomas further said she believed that the Bidens might ultimately be locked up in Guantanamo Bay, quoting a passage about “military tribunals for sedition” that had circulated on right-wing websites.

The deleted video appears to be this Nov. 5 interview with Pieczenik with Infowars host Owen Shroyer.



In it, Pieczenik—a former Carter administration official who has spent recent years writing spy novels—describes a theory that has become foundational to those who claim the election was stolen.

As Pieczenik said to Shroyer:

This is really a sting operation, contrary to what everybody else said. Trump knew this was happening. Eric knew this was happening and warned the public. I knew this was happening, however I could not say anything about it. What happened was we marked, watermarked every ballot with what’s called the QFS block chain encryption code. In other words we know pretty well where every ballot is, where it went, and who has it, so this is not a stolen election. … All of this is part of the sting operation we’re running. And let me tell you that 48 hours ago, not only did we put markers on those ballots, but I can say now with the permission of people in the intelligence community and elsewhere that we have sent out thousands and thousands of national guard to 12 different states. … This is our counter-coup against the Bidens. … [Arrests are] coming not just down the road, they’re being implemented. … People will be arrested as of tonight, tomorrow, and it will go on for quite a while and this was a total sting operation. … We use [the watermark] in any way that we need to use it in terms of counting, knowing which ones were fake, which ones were not, it’s a very sophisticated code.

For anyone not steeped in this world, this is all a bit challenging to even comprehend. The debunking website Snopes, though, wrote a comprehensive explanation of this conspiracy theory a week after it emerged. As Snopes explains, “QFS” is short for “quantum financial system,” a supposedly secret financial system that conspiracy theorists believe was passed into law in the 1990s and will wipe out debts. “A ‘quantum blockchain system’ is like the ‘quantum financial system’— an imaginary notion,” Snopes notes. According to this “nonsensical” theory, the technology was supposedly embedded by the federal government on ballots to differentiate real ballots from false ones that were allegedly dumped into the system by Biden and his backers. As Reuters journalist Brad Heath reported, this specific conspiracy theory was supported by at least one of the affiants in an early Trump election lawsuit in Michigan. As that “witness” wrote on Facebook:

On Sunday, November 8, 2020, a recount of ballots nationwide was being done by elite units of the National Guards [sic]. To prevent fraud, official ballots had been printed with an invisible, unbreakable code watermark and registered on a Quantum Blockchain System. As of writing, in five states, 14 million ballots had been put through a laser scanner – 78% of which failed because there was no watermark to verify the ballot. Of those ballots that failed, 100% had checked for Biden.

When Ginni Thomas referred to the “white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states” in a text to the White House chief of staff, she was referring to a theory that the Trump administration secretly watermarked millions of ballots in order to catch the Democrats in the act of stealing the election. Conspiracy theorists also understood a connection between the “watermarking” theory and a 2018 QAnon thread which cryptically warned adherents to “watch the water.” And QAnon—the cultlike belief in a Democratic cabal of child predators—received a boost this week from a series of Republican attacks about child porn sentencing during Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings.

At this point, you might be thinking that more than a year after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, these theories might no longer hold as much sway in the world Thomas inhabits. However, less than a year ago, the Cyber Ninjas’ ostensible audit of the election results in Arizona used ultraviolet lights to hunt for secret watermarks that had allegedly been inserted by Trump. And just this week, Alabama’s Republican attorney general refused to say that Biden had been legally elected. Meanwhile, Shroyer—the Infowars host of the program on which the theory originated—is fighting charges related to his presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 by claiming that if he deserved arrest “then Jesus Christ or the Dalai Lama would have been arrested for trying to be a peacemaker.”

Ginni Thomas was also at the Trump rally that sparked the mob attack on Jan. 6. Meanwhile, her husband continues to sit on nation’s highest court and participates in cases that might directly implicate his wife. The distance from the furthest reaches of far-right fairy tales to the highest seats of power has almost never been shorter.

#HERESIOLOGY

Pope Francis’ Response to Ukraine Has Tapped Into One of Catholicism’s Deepest ANTI-BOLSHEVIK Conspiracy Theories

BY MOLLY OLMSTEAD

SLATE

MARCH 24, 2022

The statue of Our Lady of Fátima, carried around the Fátima shrine in Portugal on May 13, 2020, for the 103rd anniversary of the apparitions. The apparitions in 1917 led to decades of speculation, confusion, and conspiracy theories. Patricia de Melo Moreira/Getty Images

The Vatican announced last week that Pope Francis had invited all the bishops and priests of the world to “join him in the prayer for peace and in the consecration and entrustment of Russia and of Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” The prayer, which is to take place Friday afternoon, seemed on its face to be an uncontroversial sign of support for the Ukrainian people, but the news sent shockwaves through a certain segment of the Catholic world.

To the average person, the responses seem nearly impossible to decipher. “Holy Father, I am a little bit worried,” one person wrote on Twitter. “This won’t be a legitimate consecration either,” another scoffed. “Only Idiots think this Freemason will do the consecration,” said another. “It’s about time, but what took so long?” one asked. Others pointed to blog posts and videos that warned the pope’s plans amounted to a “globalist trap” or that “an anti-pope’s ‘consecration’ of Russia” would lead to dire consequences. What in the world was happening here?

The pope’s announcement had tapped into one of the strangest and most heated debates in Catholicism, one that involves speculation about body doubles and forgeries; prophecies and visions of hell; secret messages; two global wars; the attempted assassination of a pope; and, above all, the Virgin Mary.

The story starts in 1917, when Mary appeared repeatedly to three shepherd children in Fátima, Portugal, in what is considered to be the most recent major apparition to be officially confirmed by the Vatican. Mary gave the children prophecies related to the Great War and a promise to perform a miracle on Oct. 13. When that date came, thousands reported seeing the sun dance in the sky. The children were also given three secrets: apocalyptic visions and global prophecies that two of the children, who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, would never see made public. The third child, their cousin Lúcia dos Santos, would not divulge the first two secrets until the 1940s. The third wouldn’t be revealed until the turn of the century.

The three secrets were cryptic. First, the children were given a vision of hell. Second, they were warned that another, even worse world war would come. And third, they were shown a pope slain at the foot of a cross. This last vision is commonly thought to allude to the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981, and the ambiguity has fascinated Catholics—and Catholic conspiracy theorists—for decades.

But it’s the second secret that concerns us here. Sister Lúcia—by then a Carmelite nun—wrote in her 1941 memoir that Mary had told the children of a way to avoid an even more devastating war:

To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the communion of reparation on the first Saturdays. If they listen to my requests, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not she will scatter her errors through the world, provoking wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and it will be converted and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.

According to Lúcia, Mary visited her again in 1929, repeating that request: “The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.” Without getting too deep into the theological meaning, a “consecration” here is akin to a dedication—setting aside a person or thing or even concept for a holy purpose.

Sister Lúcia’s prophecies were taken seriously by the church. While the Vatican has maintained that the terrible war in the second secret referred to World War II, it also saw in the revelation “the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism.” Over the decades, a number of popes have tried to stave off or resolve international conflict by invoking Mary’s protection: In 1942, Pope Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1952, he consecrated “the peoples of Russia, specifically.” Pope Paul VI renewed the consecration in 1964, and Pope John Paul II did similar renewals during the Cold War in 1981, 1982, and 1984.

This last consecration in 1984, conducted in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on behalf of the entire human race—naming Russia specifically would have been politically dangerous—and “in spiritual union with all the bishops of the world,” is considered the one that officially fulfilled Mary’s request in her visions at Fátima. In 2000, during the momentous revelation of the third secret, Rome revealed that Sister Lúcia, in a handwritten letter in 1989, had assured the pope that the consecration had been “accepted in Heaven.”

That, according to the Vatican, was the resolution of the second secret. The Cold War ended, communism fell, and Mikhail Gorbachev publicly embraced the Orthodox Church.

But that was not the end of the story. Many traditionalists, who believe the Catholic Church has betrayed its identity by softening and liberalizing to adjust to the modern world, became enamored with the revelations and questioned the official Vatican line. How could it be, they reasoned, that the 1984 consecration had satisfied Mary’s requests when the pope didn’t specifically mention Russia? And the previous consecrations that had mentioned the country had surely failed because they had neglected to secure the cooperation of “all the bishops of the world.”

It wasn’t totally unreasonable, they asserted, to think the Vatican had lied about having Sister Lúcia’s stamp of approval, just as they could have lied about the nature of the third secret. The letter could have been a forgery. (Elements of the Fátima conspiracy theories include private letters that appear to contradict Sister Lúcia’s public statements, reports of the Vatican hiding the nun away to silence her, and even body doubles for Sister Lúcia.) And as they saw it, Russia had not experienced mass conversions to Roman Catholicism, so it was fairly clear that the prophecy had never been fulfilled. No pope had done it right.

“There’s a subset of Catholics who are really into Fátima,” said Mike Lewis, the managing editor of the pro-Francis blog Where Peter Is. “It’s sanctioned by the church, but the message is very apocalyptic, so traditionalists love it. Children seeing a vision of hell—it comes off as fire and brimstones. It’s been fodder for conspiracy theorists ever since the ’60s.”

According to Lewis, only a tiny percentage—maybe 3 to 5 percent—of the 50 million Catholics in the U.S. even know about the Fátima debates. “But it’s a key 3 percent,” he said. “They follow Catholic news, want to know what’s going on in the Vatican, are die-hards for apparitions. And they’re seminarians—young priests. … This stuff is preached from the pulpit.”

In 2017, Cardinal Raymond Burke, considered a fringe but very influential figure on the Catholic right, gave a speech calling on Pope Francis to do the consecration properly, according to the specific conditions. “A mainstream cardinal calling out the pope and embracing the conspiracy theory—it becomes a rallying cry for the anti-Francis movement,” Lewis said.

But Burke was not fixating on the fine print of Lúcia’s visions. He was instead making a distinct theological claim. Burke argued that the world had reached such a place of corruption that it needed a new consecration to “put an end to the time of apostasy and the great shortcomings of the Church’s pastors.” He told the National Catholic Register more recently that those shortcomings dealt with “the violation of the most fundamental tenets of the natural law,” citing abortion, euthanasia, divorce, transgender rights and feminism, and restrictions on religious liberty.

Francis didn’t comply. His decision to do another consecration this month, however, didn’t come from pressure from Burke or the previous popes’ skeptics; it came from a plea from the bishops in Ukraine. “During this painful and difficult situation of war, we continued to pray, to celebrate the Holy Mass, to adore the Holy Sacrament, to fast and to offer our sufferings requesting God’s mercy. We were joined by the whole world in this, but we see that the war continues,” Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki of Lviv, Ukraine, told the Catholic News Agency. “But Our Lady of Fatima in 1917 said that the consecration would be followed by a time of peace. That time of peace is over now, so we need to repeat the act of consecration of Russia and Ukraine. … We believe that this act will be listened to by Our Lady and she will intercede before God for peace in Ukraine.”

On March 15, Francis announced he would say a prayer for the two nations. At first, the announcement was considered a nice gesture and not much more. But when, three days later, a letter circulated that requested the bishops’ participation as well, the story dramatically changed. This was the consecration. For the Fátima enthusiasts, this was big.

So why would Francis do this? There has been some speculation that the announcement has to do with his own efforts to quiet the radical traditionalists in the church. “It is a rare case where he’s being applauded by the traditionalist right, and so that’s a good thing, in one sense,” said David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. “In some ways, this can be read as the pope throwing a bone to conservatives.”

But that strategy is doomed to fail—conspiracy theorists will always find something else to feed the conspiracy—and sure enough, opponents of Francis have already started finding issues with the pope’s approach. They claim that naming Ukraine negates the process, or that all bishops won’t actually participate, or any number of other things. So it seems unlikely that Francis is doing this entirely for internal political reasons.

There’s another theory, though: that Francis really believes in this rite and in the secrets of Fátima. Given that headlines often tout the pope’s more progressive statements, people often forget that Francis is a traditionally devout man with an affection for old-school, popular forms of piety. He often prays at icons, and he’s known for encouraging exorcisms. “So if you take the church politics out of it, this is very much in keeping with who Francis is,” Gibson said.

Despite the fact that the Vatican in its consecration announcement explicitly mentions Fátima, Gibson says Francis hasn’t bought into the conspiracy theorists’ arguments. “He does not see these consecrations as magic, where you need to recite the words perfectly every time,” he said. Instead, Gibson said, Francis likely sees the consecration as something to adapt to different geopolitical situations to call on Mary’s support. “This is something where you can do these kinds of prayers again and again.”

Gibson had one more theory about the Francis consecration, one that assumes the Vatican is more aware of the theories than it lets on. “In a way, the pope’s taking back Fátima and this idea of consecration from the conspiracy theorists,” he said, who have “owned it for more than a century. And this is an effort to say, ‘No, this is not some crazy apocalyptic thing. This is standard Catholic practice.’ ”

Solar Orbiter probe snaps the sharpest ever image of the Sun's corona
By Nick Lavars
March 24, 2022

A close-up from Solar Orbiter's record-breaking 83 million pixel image of the Sun
ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team; Data processing: E. Kraaikamp (ROB)

Since launching in February of 2020, the Solar Orbiter probe has been zeroing in on the Sun with a suite of instruments designed to unravel some of its secrets. Among those is an advanced ultraviolet imager, which mission control has now used to capture the highest-resolution image ever of the Sun's outer atmosphere.

The incredibly detailed new image was captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager aboard NASA and the ESA's Solar Orbiter, which shoots at the wavelength required to image the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, where temperatures sit at around one million °C (1.8 million °F).


The Sun's outer atmosphere, shown in glorious new detail
ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team; Data processing: E. Kraaikamp (ROB)

The spacecraft was around 75 million km (46 million miles) away from the Sun on March 7 when it captured this sharp new view, taking 25 individual images over the course of four hours to create the final mosaic. This resulting image features more than 83 million pixels in a 9,148 x 9,112 pixel grid, which is a resolution around 10 times that of a 4K TV.

At the same time, the probe's Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument was used to image the Sun in the wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted by different atoms. This enables it to peer beneath the corona and take the Sun's temperature at a layer known as the chromosphere.


Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) images ultraviolet light emitted by different atoms
ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/SPICE team; Data processing: G. Pelouze (IAS)

The purple depicts hydrogen gas at 10,000°C, blue depicts carbon at 32,000°C, green depicts oxygen at 320,000°C, and yellow depicts neon at 630,000°C. These kinds of insights will help scientists understand how temperature rises through the atmospheric layers of the Sun, which counterintuitively is much higher at the corona than it is at the surface (around 5,000 °C).

The full-resolution version of the Sun's corona, as captured by the Solar Orbiter probe, can be viewed online here.

Source: ESA

Aspirin Could Be A Game Changer In Reducing Death Rates In COVID-19 Patients

BY KHARISSA FORTE/MARCH 25, 2022

Aspirin can be used to help alleviate pain and swelling, prevent blood clots from forming, and treat coronary events such as heart attack and stroke, according to Medical News Today. A new study published on March 24 in the journal JAMA Network Open suggests that aspirin can also help minimize the risk of death in hospitalized patients who are more seriously impacted by COVID-19.

Upon studying over 112,000 of these patients across 64 health centers in the United States, researchers at George Washington University found that people who received aspirin within the first 24 hours of being hospitalized for COVID-19 had a 1.6% lower risk of death than those who did not receive aspirin. Lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Chow, an associate professor at GW's School of Medicine, told Health Day that the findings are the result of 15 months of work and it is the third study involving the use of aspirin for treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Several treatments have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating hospitalized patients who are suffering from more severe cases of COVID-19.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the antiviral drug Remdesivir, also known as Veklury, was the first drug approved by the FDA for patients 12 years of age and older. Remdesivir is known for preventing SARS-CoV-2 from spreading throughout the body. The FDA also approved Actemra, a monoclonal antibody that is used to treat various inflammatory diseases and is believed to also be effective for treating COVID-19. Convalescent plasma is one treatment used that provides antibodies that fight COVID-19 and curtail inflammation. Barticitinib and corticosteroids are also known for reducing inflammation.

The HHS emphasizes the importance of participating in studies to test vaccine treatments. They encourage people of all backgrounds to find a clinical trial to be part of in order to help ensure treatments and vaccines are effective for all populations.

 CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Accusations of bribery in Microsoft's business investments surface

March 25, 2022 by Kip Kniskern

A former Microsoft employee, who lost his job in 2018, has come forward to accuse the company of incidents of bribery in its foreign business investments, according to a post at The Verge. The former employee, Yasser Elabd, a director of emerging markets for the Middle East and Africa, describes a $40,000 payment he flagged as suspicious, and says he saw many incidents of suspicious activity:

Sometimes, as in the African case, they were suspicious requests from the business investment fund. In another instance, he saw a contractor for the Saudi interior ministry receive a $13 million discount on its software — but the discount never made it back to the end customer. In another case, Qatar’s ministry of education was paying $9.5 million a year for Office and Windows licenses that were never installed. One way or another, money would end up leaking out of the contracting process, most likely split between the government, the subcontractor, and any Microsoft employees in on the deal.

Microsoft says its committed to "doing business in a responsible way," Becky Lenaburg, deputy counsel for compliance and ethics at Microsoft told The Verge. Calling the accusations "many years old," Lenaburg said that the allegations have been addressed.

Corporate bribery, especially with foreign countries with mid-level bureaucrats acting as intermediaries and seeing bribery as just "a cost of doing business," is a trillion dollar problem, reaching far beyond Microsoft, but while Microsoft says they have dealt with the problem, Elabd told The Verge that "(a)ll the executives are aware of it, and they’re promoting the bad people. If you’re doing the right thing, they won’t promote you.”

USA
AP Explains: Why the 14th Amendment has surfaced in midterms
By GARY D. ROBERTSON

Lawmakers point at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after President Joe Biden delivered his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An 1868 amendment to the U.S. Constitution best known for protecting the due process rights of previously enslaved Americans has resurfaced in certain congressional races this year.

Some attorneys and voters believe a rarely cited section of the 14th Amendment dealing with insurrection can disqualify a handful of U.S. House members from seeking reelection for events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

First-term Republican firebrands Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia are among those targeted. Both are strong supporters of former President Donald Trump who have pushed his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

It’s a largely untested argument working its way through election agencies in at least three states, with little success so far. But court cases and appeals could address the extent to which state officials can scrutinize the minimum qualifications for candidates for federal office.

2022 MIDTERM ELECTIONS

WHAT DOES THE 14TH AMENDMENT SAY?

There are five sections to the amendment. The best-known declares that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Section 3 of the amendment also declares that no one can serve in Congress “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” This section was designed to keep representatives who had fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War from returning to Congress. The amendment, however, allows Congress to pass laws that can remove such restrictions.

HOW COULD IT APPLY TO LAWMAKERS TODAY?

Voters from congressional districts where Cawthorn and Greene are seeking reelection this fall allege in legal filings that evidence shows they helped facilitate the Jan, 6, 2021, insurrection that attempted to thwart the certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. The voters want state officials to investigate Greene and Cawthorn and disqualify them from appearing on ballots this year, based on the amendment’s language.

Greene, according to a challenge filed Thursday with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, either helped plan the riot or helped plan the demonstration held beforehand, knowing that it was “substantially likely to lead to the attack, and otherwise voluntarily aided the insurrection.”

In a video posted on social media, Greene said: “You can’t allow it to just transfer power ‘peacefully’ like Joe Biden wants and allow him to become our president because he did not win this election.”

Somewhat similar allegations have been lodged with the North Carolina Board of Elections by voters challenging Cawthorn. Cawthorn spoke at the “Save America Rally” before the riot, days after he was sworn in to office, saying the “crowd has some fight in it.”

A longshot Democrat candidate seeking to unseat Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks filed similar allegations against Banks with the state elections commission.

HOW HAVE THE REPRESENTATIVES RESPONDED?

Greene and Cawthorn have said they did nothing unlawful such as encouraging political violence or participating in an insurrection.

Cawthorn, who was the first representative subjected to the challenge in January, said activists are going after “America First patriots” who backed Trump. Greene said she was targeted because she is “effective and will not bow to the DC machine.”

Cawthorn proceeded to sue the State Board of Elections in federal court, saying that North Carolina’s candidate challenge process violated his constitutional rights and should be overturned. His lawyers also said Section 3 didn’t apply to Cawthorn because of congressional action in 1872.

Free Speech for People, a national election and campaign finance reform group, is helping represent the voters in both challenges. The group has said more challenges could be filed against other members of Congress who are seeking reelection.

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO THE CHALLENGES?

Indiana’s state elections commission voted unanimously last month to reject the challenge against Banks. The commission’s chairman, a Republican, called the Capitol riot a “regrettable mark in history” but said there was no evidence that Banks was guilty of taking part in an insurrection.

As for Cawthorn, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers ruled earlier this month that the State Board of Elections could not hear the voters’ challenges on Section 3 claims.

Myers wrote that the 1872 law that removed office-holding disqualifications “from all persons whomsoever” — save for those who served in two specific legislative sessions — “demonstrates that the disability set forth in Section 3 can apply to no current member of Congress.”

The North Carolina Board of Elections hasn’t appealed so far. Myers previously rebuffed efforts by voters who filed challenges to participate in the litigation, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told him last week to reconsider their entry. Myers’ ruling could come as soon as next week.

COULD VOTERS ULTIMATELY HAVE THEIR SAY?

Free Speech for People argues that the 1872 law applied only to former members of the Confederacy: “The right of voters to bring this challenge to Cawthorn’s eligibility must be preserved,” group legal director Ron Fein said this month.

Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional expert at the University of North Carolina law school, said he believes the 1872 law could be construed more broadly than how Myers ruled. But he also said the chances that candidate challenges will go forward under insurrection claims are “probably not good.”

“It’s really a novel theory and there’s no consensus on what the actual procedure should be, and that does pose a problem,” Gerhardt said.

He said it’s unclear, for example, whether a declaration that someone participated in an insurrection should come from a judge hearing evidence, state officials or Congress.

If the challenges are unsuccessful or delayed, voters still will get to decide whether the subjects of the challenges should return to Congress. Greene and Cawthorn have GOP primaries in May.

Cawthorn may have the more difficult road, with seven GOP opponents. He also has taken criticism for a video in which he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug” even as his country resists a Russian invasion.

‘Gargantuan task’: Why India’s renewable push will be hard

By ANUPAM NATH and ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL

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Champa Timungi, 25, sits outside her home in Mikir Bamuni village, Nagaon district, northeastern Assam state, India, Feb. 18, 2022. Timungi said she was beaten by the police despite being pregnant during a protest against the transfer of her family's agricultural land to build a solar park. Injured, she was taken to a hospital. “I came back home and I suffered a miscarriage that night,” she said. Protests have been simmering in the village in Nagaon district in northeastern India's Assam state since January 2021. Timungi is among several poor families belonging to India's indigenous communities who contest the sale of 91 acres of land to New Delhi-based green energy producer Azure Power Global Limited. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

NAGAON, India (AP) — Plans to build a sprawling solar park on land cultivated for generations by indigenous farmers in India’s Himalayan foothills erupted in violent clashes with police last year after their crops were bulldozed for the development.

Most men from the farming village of a few hundred in Assam state were out looking for work on Dec. 29. One of the few people who remained was Champa Timungpi, who says she was beaten by police and kicked in the stomach when she tried to protest.

Pregnant at the time, the 25-year-old was rushed to a hospital for her injuries. “I came back home at night, and I miscarried,” said Tumungpi, who lodged a complaint with police.

The lush green village in Nagaon district — still largely unconnected to the grid and home to families who earn less than $2 a day — is now framed by blue solar panels, barbed wire and armed guards.

The solar developer Azure Power, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said in an email that the company legally bought 91 acres (38 hectares) in the village from “recorded landowners” and it’s “incorrect and erroneous” to say the land was forcibly taken.

The company’s position is strongly disputed by Timungpi and others in the Mikir Bamuni village who say their rights as tenants and established farmers were ignored. Local officials and police didn’t respond to requests for comment.

However it plays out in a district court, the dispute not only speaks to India’s often-tangled land ownership rules rooted in its colonial era. It also illustrates the complexity and immensity of the challenges facing the country of nearly 1.4 billion people in meeting its renewable power goals for the next decade.

Over the next 20 years, India’s demand for electricity will grow more than anywhere else in the world. Unlike most countries, India still has to develop and lift millions like Timungpi from poverty, and it will need to build a power system the size of the European Union’s.

How India meets its energy and economic needs will have an outsized impact on the world’s climate goals. The country is a major contributor of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at last year’s United Nation climate talks that India would increase its capacity of non-fossil fuels electricity to 500 gigawatts by 2030 — from the 104 gigawatts at the start of this year.

To meet its goals, India must add four times the amount of power the average nuclear plant produces — every month until 2030.

These short-term energy targets won’t do much to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius (34.7 Fahrenheit) — the level beyond which scientists warn of catastrophic climate impacts, scientists at last year’s United Nations climate conference had warned.

But for India, it’ll still be a “gargantuan task,” requiring investments between $20 billion and $26.8 billion, while only $10 billion is available, a parliamentary committee said last month.

Farmers whose agriculture lands had been transfered to build a solar power plant protest near the plant in Mikir Bamuni village, Nagaon district, northeastern Assam state, India, Feb. 18, 2022. Protests have been simmering among several poor families belonging to India's indigenous communities who contest the sale of 91 acres of land to New Delhi-based green energy producer Azure Power Global Limited. The dispute underscores not just India’s often fuzzy land ownership rules complicated by colonial-era land classifications, but also the immensity of the challenges facing India in its renewable goals for the next decade. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Some obstacles to renewables — such as the need to build electricity storage for when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing — are global challenges. Others are more specific to India — such as the question of who owns land in poor communities that bear least responsibility for the climate crisis and the need to realign power systems that have relied on coal for centuries.

While there’s no clear roadmap yet for India’s renewable energy push, experts cite a federal report last year that said an optimal mix would be getting more than half the country’s power from the sun and wind by 2030.

But big solar and wind facilities are sparking conflicts with local communities. This is partly because land ownership is fuzzy at many project sites. For example, some communities have used land for centuries to farm or graze cattle without legal rights over it.

As governments and companies focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels, such conflicts were “collaterals” that had to be managed, Kanchi Kohli, an environmental researcher at the Indian think tank Centre for Policy Research.

Mandatory environmental impact assessments were waived for solar and wind projects to make them more viable. But environmental issues still have arisen.

For instance, India’s Supreme Court in April 2021 ordered that transmission lines for solar energy be put underground after environmentalists reported the lines were killing critically endangered great Indian bustards. Nine months later, the federal government said burying the lines to safeguard the birds would be too costly and would impede green energy development. The court is hearing the matter again.

India could reduce its dependence on large solar parks by building solar panels on roofs in cities.

The country’s initial rooftop goals were small, but in 2015 it set a target of 40 gigawatts of rooftop solar, enough to power 28 million homes. Customers were allowed to send electricity back to the grid — and the sector grew.

In December 2020, the federal government changed rules restricting large industries and businesses from sending electricity back to the grid. These commercial groups are among the highest paying customers for India’s perennially cash-strapped power distribution companies, which lost over $5 billion in 2020.

With industries sending electricity back to the grid in the evening when demand and power tariffs are highest, distribution companies were losing their best customers said Vibhuti Garg, an energy economist at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“They were losing money,” Garg said.

The installation cost makes rooftop solar too expensive for most homeowners. That was the case for Siddhant Keshav, 30, a New Delhi entrepreneur, who wanted to put solar panels on his home. “It just didn’t make sense,” he said.

Homes comprised less than 17% of India’s rooftop solar in June 2021, according to a report by Bridge to India, a renewable energy consulting firm. And India has only managed to achieve 4% of its 2022 rooftop solar target.

Wind could become another important element in India’s clean energy portfolio. But the most “attractive, juicy, windy sites” have small turbines using old technology, said Gagan Sidhu, the director of energy finance at think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water.

By retiring old wind turbines built before 2002, India could unlock a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts, according to a 2017 study by Indo-Germany Energy Forum, the consulting firm Idam Infra and India’s renewable energy ministry. But experts said it’s unclear who would do the retrofitting and pay the bill.

With a coastline of over 4,670 miles (about 7,500 kilometers), India could potentially build enough offshore wind farms to provide roughly a third of the country’s 2021 electricity capacity by 2050, according to an assessment led by the Global Wind Energy Council.

But these are very expensive to build — and the first such project, a wind farm proposed for the Arabian Sea in 2018, has yet to get underway.

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Ghosal reported from New Delhi. AP journalist Chonchui Ngashangva in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Oscars diary: A yak in the classroom, a family in Hollywood
By PAWO CHOYNING DORJI

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Filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji, poses with Pem Zam on the set of "Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom," left, and Stephanie Lai and Dorji attend the 94th Academy Awards nominees luncheon in Los Angeles on March 7, 2022. Dorji's film "Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom" is nominated for best international feature. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” became the unlikeliest of Oscar contenders when it was nominated this year for best international film. The story of a young man in Bhutan who goes on an unexpected and life-changing journey to become a teacher in the nation’s remote mountains is the first feature from director Pawo Choyning Dorji and the first film in the history of the small Himalayan country to be nominated.

Dorji and his wife, Taiwanese actor and producer Stephanie Lai, arrived in Los Angeles a few weeks before Sunday’s Academy Awards along with their 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

He shared some of their experiences with The Associated Press in this first-person account.



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A “BORING YAK”

As I worked over the past two years on “Lunana, A Yak in the Classroom,” my kids were subjected to a lot of talk about it. My son could not understand what the big fuss was about, and asked me why I worked so hard to make such a “boring and slow” film, that had a “yak who does nothing but just sit there.” He would often say, “Dad, can you next time maybe try and make films that are enjoyable to watch, like ”Spider-Man?”

When the film was announced as Bhutan’s first ever Oscar nominee, me and my wife jumped and screamed in joy. Our two children, who had never seen their parents that ecstatic, asked what the Oscars were. I told them that we had just been recognized as one of the five best international films in the world, and that we would have to go to Hollywood.

They asked us who else would attend the Oscars, and I told them, “Everyone!” My son replied, “Even Spider-Man?” I said, “Yes, of course! Even Spider-Man will be there!” They started jumping and asked me if I could have them meet Andrew Garfield, their favorite Spider-Man. I did not know that Andrew was nominated for an Oscar for “tick, tick...BOOM!” and frankly I thought meeting him in Hollywood would not be possible, but I nonetheless said “Yes, yes, I promise you will meet Andrew Garfield!” as I did not want to disappoint them. The children jumped in joy and were finally excited about the ”boring yak.”

My children told many of their friends that they were going to Hollywood to meet Andrew Garfield. I was very worried about disappointing them and even warned my wife, “Don’t tell the kids, but someone like Andrew Garfield would not have time to meet us.”

A THRILLING SPIDER-MAN

After arriving in California, me and my wife attended the nominees luncheon at the Fairmont Century Plaza hotel on March 7. It was such a surreal moment as we sat in the same room as Steven Spielberg, Denzel Washington, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jessica Chastain, and, yes, Andrew Garfield!

Me and my wife sneaked over to him. As I introduced myself, he grabbed my hand and said, “Oh I visited Bhutan, and I loved it so much! I was so happy when I saw that there was a Bhutanese film that was nominated.” Me and my wife then shared with Andrew how our children, who were not with us at that moment, wanted to meet him and he graciously agreed.

My wife quickly went to get the children at the luncheon’s drop off point. Andrew was so kind, he came over and spoke to the kids as though they were old friends, even giving my son high fives. My children claimed that meeting Andrew Garfield was the “best moment in their lives!”

That night once we got back to hotel room, we told our son to wash up before going to bed. He looked down at his little hands and said “but Andrew Garfield high fived me, if I wash up, I’ll lose his energy.”

Pawo Choyning Dorji, poses with actor Andrew Garfield at the 94th Academy Awards nominees luncheon. (Stephanie Lai via AP)

AN UNEXPECTED BIT OF BHUTAN

When “Lunana” defied most predictions and was first put on the shortlist then nominated for best international feature film, I received congratulations and good wishes from Bhutanese the world over, from yak herders in the real village of Lunana, to monks from the most remote monasteries, to children in the city. While other films had financial support from their governments, this is what “Lunana” had, the genuine hopes, prayers, and aspirations of an entire nation.

But I did not expect we would find part of that nation, and those hopes and prayers, on our trip.

When we were not busy with the film’s Oscar campaign, we would make day trips to take the children to visit the popular spots of Los Angeles. My wife was the designated driver while I was the chief navigator with the GPS. While returning from one trip, I missed an exit on the freeway and we ended up losing our way.

While getting an earful from my wife and trying to navigate the Santa Monica rush hour, I suddenly saw the orange and yellow colors of the Bhutan flag! As we drove closer in total astonishment, we saw a sign that said, “Bhutan Shop.” My wife said, “Oh you must visit that shop!” We stopped the car and I quickly rushed inside.

The store sold Bhutanese handicrafts. There was a teenage boy behind the counter, and even though I was still wearing my medical mask, he looked up and said, “Oh, it’s you! You are the yak director, aren’t you?” The family-run shop belonged to a man named Dorji — no relation to me — who was the first Bhutanese to migrate to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. The teenager, his 18-year-old son Ugyen — no relation to the protagonist of my film with the same name — was born here in LA and hadn’t yet visited Bhutan. Ugyen seemed so American, yet seemed to have so much pride in how a film from his parents’ distant homeland had become an Oscar nominee. “I have been following you on IG since 2016,” he said, “and I know of all your work.”

I did not know of any Bhutanese in LA, so I was surprised when Dorji shared with me that there were only around 50 Bhutanese in the whole greater Los Angeles area. He said they were all planning on attending a screening of the film in Santa Monica, where I was conducting a Q&A session. “There is so much pride in the film, all the Bhutanese said they are going to attend the screening in their national dresses,” Dorji said.

(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

“There’s only a handful of us here but we try our best to have small gatherings to keep ourselves connected to our culture and way of life,” he said. “Many of our youths, who have been born here, refuse to go for these gatherings, they find it boring and cumbersome. But, when it’s for ‘Lunana’ they are all excited.”

Dorji, Ugyen and I took a photo in front of Bhutan Shop, which was quickly shared on the LA Bhutanese community’s group chat. As the photo made its rounds, the next day I was invited for a Bhutanese meal by the second Bhutanese to have settled in the LA area, a man who introduced himself to me as “Ashang,′ which means ”Uncle” in our language.

The delicious home cooked meal of Ashang’s wife, who everyone called “Aunty,” made me miss my family and home so dearly. I asked them how they got the authentic fermented cheese and chilis our cuisine is known for. Ashang laughed and said, “Oh I ask my family in Bhutan to send us fermented cheese every month by post.”

On the day of the screening, we were invited back to the Bhutan Shop, where all the Bhutanese of LA had gathered for a lunch of saffron rice and butter tea, something that is usually prepared in Bhutan only to celebrate the most auspicious of occasions. Most of the Bhutanese had dressed up in their Sunday best national dress to celebrate.

I was so far from home, but I had never felt so close to home.

Ukraine says Moscow is forcibly taking civilians to Russia

By NEBI QENA and CARA ANNA

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Natalya kisses her brother Sergiy Muravyts'kyi, 61, who was killed by Russian soldiers in the village of Mriya, which means Dream, in Ukrainian, during a ceremony before his cremation in Baikove cemetery, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine accused Moscow on Thursday of forcibly taking hundreds of thousands of civilians from shattered Ukrainian cities to Russia, where some may be used as “hostages” to pressure Kyiv to give up.

Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people, including 84,000 children, had been taken to Russia.

The Kremlin gave nearly identical numbers for those who have been relocated, but said they wanted to go to Russia. Ukraine’s rebel-controlled eastern regions are predominantly Russian-speaking, and many people there have supported close ties to Moscow.

A month into the invasion, the two sides traded heavy blows in what has become a devastating war of attrition. Ukraine’s navy said it sank a large Russian landing ship near the port city of Berdyansk that had been used to bring in armored vehicles. Russia claimed to have taken the eastern town of Izyum after fierce fighting.

At an emergency NATO summit in Brussels, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded with the Western allies via video for planes, tanks, rockets, air defense systems and other weapons, saying his country is “defending our common values.”

U.S President Joe Biden, in Europe for the summit and other high-level meetings, gave assurances more aid is on its way, though it appeared unlikely the West would give Zelenskyy everything he wanted, for fear of triggering a much wider war.

Around the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, Ukrainian defenders have fought Moscow’s ground troops to a near-stalemate, raising fears that a frustrated Russian President Vladimir Putin will resort to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

In other developments Thursday:

—Ukraine and Russia exchanged a total of 50 military and civilian prisoners, the largest swap reported yet, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

—The pro-Moscow leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, warned that Poland’s proposal to deploy a Western peacekeeping force in Ukraine “will mean World War III.”



—In Chernihiv, where an airstrike this week destroyed a crucial bridge, a city official, Olexander Lomako, said a “humanitarian catastrophe” is unfolding as Russian forces target food storage places. He said about 130,000 people are left in the besieged city, about half its prewar population.

—Russia said it will offer safe passage starting Friday to 67 ships from 15 foreign countries that are stranded in Ukrainian ports because of the danger of shelling and mines.

Kyiv and Moscow gave conflicting accounts, meanwhile, about the people being relocated to Russia and whether they were going willingly — as Russia claimed — or were being coerced or lied to.

Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the start of the military action were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control for nearly eight years.

Russian authorities said they are providing accommodations and dispensing payments to the evacuees.

But Donetsk Region Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that “people are being forcibly moved into the territory of the aggressor state.” Denisova said those removed by Russian troops included a 92-year-old woman in Mariupol who was forced to go to Taganrog in southern Russia.

Ukrainian officials said that the Russians are taking people’s passports and moving them to “filtration camps” in Ukraine’s separatist-controlled east before sending them to various distant, economically depressed areas in Russia.

Among those taken, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry charged, were 6,000 residents of Mariupol, the devastated port city in the country’s east. Moscow’s troops are confiscating identity documents from an additional 15,000 people in a section of Mariupol under Russian control, the ministry said.

Some could be sent as far as the Pacific island of Sakhalin, Ukrainian intelligence said, and are being offered jobs on condition they don’t leave for two years. The ministry said the Russians intend to “use them as hostages and put more political pressure on Ukraine.”

Kyrylenko said that Mariupol’s residents have been long deprived of information and that the Russians feed them false claims about Ukraine’s defeats to persuade them to move to Russia.

“Russian lies may influence those who have been under the siege,” he said.

As for the naval attack in Berdyansk, Ukraine claimed two more ships were damaged and a 3,000-ton fuel tank was destroyed when the Russian ship Orsk was sunk, causing a fire that spread to ammunition supplies.

Zelenskyy rallied the country to keep up its military defense in hopes it would lead to peace.

“With every day of our defense, we are getting closer to the peace that we need so much. We are getting closer to victory. … We can’t stop even for a minute, for every minute determines our fate, our future, whether we will live,” he said late Thursday in his nightly video address to the nation.

Zelenskyy said thousands of people, including 128 children, have died in the first month of the war. Across the country, 230 schools and 155 kindergartens have been destroyed. Cities and villages “lie in ashes,” he said.

Sending a signal that Western sanctions have not brought it to its knees, Russia reopened its stock market but allowed only limited trading to prevent mass sell-offs. Foreigners were barred from selling, and traders were prohibited from short selling, or betting prices would fall.

Millions of people in Ukraine have made their way out of the country, some pushed to the limit after trying to stay and cope.

At the central station in the western city of Lviv, a teenage girl stood in the doorway of a waiting train, a white pet rabbit shivering in her arms. She was on her way to join her mother and then go on to Poland or Germany. She had been traveling alone, leaving other family members behind in Dnipro.

“At the beginning I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “Now I’m scared for my life.”

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Anna reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv and other AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine