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Релігієзнавча експертиза статуту УПЦ (МП) минулого року показала наявність церковно-канонічного зв’язку з РПЦ
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WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Haiti’s former president, Michel Joseph Martelly, over drug trafficking, accusing him of playing a significant role in perpetuating the ongoing crisis in the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department in a statement said Martelly “abused his influence to facilitate the trafficking of dangerous drugs, including cocaine, destined for the United States.”

The department said he also worked with Haitian drug traffickers, sponsored multiple gangs and engaged in the laundering of illicit drug proceeds.

“Today’s action against Martelly emphasizes the significant and destabilizing role he and other corrupt political elites have played in perpetuating the ongoing crisis in Haiti,” Treasury’s Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said in the statement.

“The United States, along with our international partners, is committed to disrupting those who facilitate the drug trafficking, corruption and other illicit activities fueling the horrific gang violence and political instability.”

Tuesday’s action freezes any of Martelly’s U.S. assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with him.

Gang wars have displaced more than 578,000 Haitians, while nearly 5 million — almost half the population of 11.7 million — face acute hunger, with 1.6 million of those people at risk of starvation, the United Nations says.

Armed gangs have formed a broad alliance while carrying out widespread killings, ransom kidnappings and sexual violence.
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Пропонується передбачити, що особа може бути позбавлена державної нагороди України за обвинувальним вироком суду, або рішенням РНБО
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Шмигаль додав, що вже протягом року Миколаївщина має бути забезпечена водою
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Рішення підтримали 265 депутатів
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CHICO, Calif. — California’s largest wildfire this year has been significantly tamed as the state’s initially fierce fire season has, at least temporarily, fallen into a relative calm.

The Park Fire was 53% contained Monday after scorching nearly 1,738 square kilometers in several northern counties, destroying 637 structures and damaging 49 as it became the state’s fourth-largest wildfire on record.

A large portion of the fire area has been in mop-up stages, which involves extinguishing smoldering material along containment lines, and residents of evacuated areas are returning home. Timber in its northeast corner continues to burn.

The fire is burning islands of vegetation within containment lines, the Cal Fire situation summary said.

The Park Fire was allegedly started by arson on July 24 in a wilderness park outside the Central Valley city of Chico. It spread northward with astonishing speed in withering conditions as it climbed the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.

July was marked by extraordinary heat in most of California, where back-to-back wet winters left the state flush with grasses and vegetation that dried and became ready to burn. Wildfires erupted up and down the state.

The first half of August has been warmer than average but not record-breaking, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We’re still seeing pretty regular ignitions and we’re still seeing significant fire activity, but the pace has slowed and the degree of that activity, the intensity, rates of initial spread, are not as high as they were,” he said in an online briefing Friday.

“Nonetheless, vegetation remains drier than average in most places in California and will likely remain so nearly everywhere in California for the foreseeable future,” he said.

There are signs of a return of high heat in parts of the West by late August and early September, Swain said.

“I would expect to see another resurgence in wildfire activity then across a broad swath of the West, including California,” he said.
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Ляшко зазначив, що сьогодні представники Ради з відновлення зберуться у повному складі і розглянуть поетапний план відновлення дитячої лікарні
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LEWISTON, Maine — After more than a dozen public meetings, scores of witnesses and thousands of pages of evidence, a special commission created to investigate the deadliest shooting in Maine history is ready to issue its final report on Tuesday.

The independent commission began its work a month after the Oct. 25 mass shooting by an Army reservist that killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston. Over nine months, there has been emotional testimony from family members and survivors of the shooting, law enforcement officials and U.S. Army Reserves personnel, and others.

The commission created by Gov. Janet Mills will hold a news conference to release the full report at Lewiston City Hall — less than 5 kilometers from the two sites where the shootings took place.

It’s unclear if the report will contain any surprises. An interim report released in March said law enforcement should have seized the shooter’s guns and put him in protective custody weeks before the shootings.

The commission’s public hearings revealed the swift response by police to the shootings, but also the ensuing chaos during the massive search for the gunman. Also revealed were missed opportunities to stop the shooter, 40-year-old Robert Card, an Army Reservist whose mental health was spiraling.

Card’s sister testified at a hearing, her hand resting on his military helmet as she spoke.

Kathleen Walker, whose husband Jason was killed while rushing at Card to try to stop him, also testified, and said: “The system failed, and we can’t allow this to happen again.”

Family members and fellow reservists said Card had exhibited delusional and paranoid behavior months before the shootings. He was hospitalized by the Army during training in July 2023, but a commanding officer acknowledged not checking to ensure compliance on follow-up care.

The starkest warning came in September when a fellow reservist texted an Army supervisor, saying, “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.” Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a search that followed the shootings.

Army officials conducted their own investigation after the shootings that Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, then the chief of the Army Reserves, said found “a series of failures by unit leadership.” Three Army Reserve officers were disciplined for dereliction of duty, according to the report, which noted communication failures within the chain of command and between military and civilian hospitals.

Maine’s legislature passed new guns laws for the state, which has a tradition of firearms ownership, in the wake of the shootings. A three-day waiting period for gun purchases went into effect earlier this month.

The Lewiston commission is chaired by Daniel Wathen, a former chief justice of Maine’s highest court. The seven-member commission also included two former federal prosecutors, two additional former judges, a psychiatrist and executive at a psychiatric hospital, and the state’s former chief forensic psychologist.
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Moscow — A Russian court rejected an appeal Monday by a U.S. soldier who has been jailed for three years and nine months for alleged death threats and theft.

Gordon Black was sentenced in June by a court in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok, where he was arrested in May while visiting a Russian woman he met and dated while serving in South Korea.

The 34-year-old was detained after the woman, named by Russian media as Alexandra Vashuk, reported him to the police after an argument, saying he physically attacked her and stole about $110 from her.

Black pleaded “partially guilty” to theft and not guilty to threatening to kill Vashuk, saying she had started an argument after drinking.

Black appealed his sentence and Monday, the Primorye regional court rejected the appeal, saying in a statement that it decided “to leave the verdict in place” after examining the case.

The pair met in October 2022 on the dating app Tinder in South Korea and had dated there, Black said, before Vashuk then invited him to come to Vladivostok.

Black is one of several American citizens imprisoned in Russia.

Washington has accused Moscow of arresting its citizens on baseless charges to use them as bargaining chips to secure the release of Russians convicted abroad.

On August 1, Russia freed U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and 14 others in its biggest prisoner swap with the West since the Cold War.
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oxford, connecticut — Torrential rains turned streets into raging rivers in parts of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island, trapping people in cars and a restaurant, covering vehicles in mud, and sweeping two women to their deaths, authorities said.

Dramatic rescues unfolded as a foot (30 centimeters) of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut late Sunday and early Monday, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening.

The bodies of two women who had been in separate cars were recovered Monday in Oxford, a town of 13,000 about 35 miles southwest of Hartford, officials said. Both were Oxford residents.

Firefighters were trying to get the first woman to safety when the flooded Little River swept her away, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said at a news conference with other Connecticut officials. The second woman got out of her car and tried to cling to a sign, but “the racing water was too much” and swept her away, too, he said.

“This is a tragic and devastating day for Oxford,” the town’s first selectman, George Temple, said.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal added, “Who would have thought the Little River would turn into a gushing torrent of destruction, which is what happened.”

In nearby Southbury, Lucas Barber used wilderness first responder techniques he learned as a backpacker and rock climber to wade through chest-high water to save Patrick Jennings, who has a prosthetic leg, and Jennings’ dog from a car outside the Southbury Plaza mall.

Barber, 30, said he drove to higher ground and grabbed rope he keeps in his car for emergencies. Jennings’ car, he said, looked like it was “turning in the tide and seemed to be sinking.”

Barber said he first tried to throw his rope to Jennings but changed his approach when he was told Jennings had a prosthetic leg. Barber waded and swam to the car, which was filling with water, he said.

He saw Jennings’ golden retriever, Stanley, in the back, scared, and Jennings worried about leaving him behind.

“‘Your dog is coming with us, but also I need to get you out right now,'” Barber said he told Jennings.

Jennings took off his prosthetic leg, and Barber wrapped his rope around the man’s waist and chest. Barber tried tying the rope around the dog’s collar, but it came undone. Once he got Jennings to safety and others could tend to him, he went back for Stanley. Halfway back, Barber said, the dog got excited to see Jennings and swam the rest of the way to his owner.

Barber said he went back a third time to fetch Jennings’ prosthetic leg, which was bobbing next to his car.

In Oxford, rushing waters surrounded the Brookside Inn, trapping 18 people. Firefighters had to stretch a ladder across the floodwaters to reach them as cars and other large debris carried by the torrent smashed into the building, said Jeremy Rodorigo, a firefighter from neighboring Beacon Falls.

The storm system that hit Connecticut and then moved on to Long Island was separate from Hurricane Ernesto, which on Monday was over the open Atlantic Ocean but still expected to cause powerful swells, dangerous surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast.

William Syrett, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State University, referred to the Connecticut-New York system as “training thunderstorms.”

“It’s like each thunderstorm is a car on a train track, and so they just keep going over the same place,” he said. He cited “perfect conditions” for the storms, thanks to the amount of moisture in the air and a slow weather system.

The unusual part was the amount of rain that fell over several hours, Syrett said, not the thunderstorms themselves.

Ed Romaine, the executive of Long Island’s Suffolk County, said that hundreds of homes were affected by flooding and that mudslides covered the roofs of cars in some areas.

The storms canceled more than 450 flights at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, officials said.
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Washington — A Washington, D.C., councilmember known for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories has been arrested on charges that he accepted over $150,000 in bribes in exchange for using his elected position to help companies with city contracts, according to court records unsealed on Monday.

Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who ran an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2022, was arrested on a federal bribery charge by the FBI on Sunday. He is expected to make his initial court appearance on Monday.

An FBI agent’s affidavit says White agreed in June to accept roughly $156,000 in kickbacks and cash payments in exchange for pressuring government agency employees to extend two companies’ contracts for violence intervention services. The contacts were worth over $5 million.

White, 40, also accepted a $20,000 bribe payment to help resolve a contract dispute for one of the companies by pressuring high-level district officials, the affidavit alleges.

An FBI informant who agreed to plead guilty to fraud and bribery charges reported giving White gifts including travel to the Dominican Republic and Las Vegas along with paying him bribes, the FBI said.

White, who has served on the D.C. council since 2017, represents a predominantly Black ward where the poverty rate is nearly twice as high as the overall district. He is running for re-election in November against a Republican challenger.

White’s chief of staff and communication director didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
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Yearlong probe stops short of alleging any criminal wrongdoing by president
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Сьогодні планові графіки відключення електроенергії передбачається застосовувати в години вечірнього пікового споживання – з 17:00 до 21:00
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Наразі у Покровську працюють усі сервіси та служби, але начальник МВА прогнозує, що вже невдовзі їхню роботу доведеться зупинити
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