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Wave of Russian missiles strikes Ukraine’s Kyiv, wounds more than 10

Wave of Russian missiles strikes Ukraine’s Kyiv, wounds more than 10

Some 30 cruise and ballistic missiles have been shot down over Kyiv in the first large attack on Ukraine’s capital in 44 days. Russia has launched a wave of missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, wounding at least 13 people and damaging several buildings, according to local officials. The attack on Thursday, the first mass strike in 44 days, targeted the city with ballistic and cruise missiles, said Serhiy Popko, the head of the city’s military administration. Officials said air defences downed “about three dozen enemy missiles” but rocket fragments fell onto a kindergarten in the Sviatoshynskyi district while an apartment building and a car caught fire in other areas. A number of other residential buildings and industrial facilities were also damaged in the attack, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, while air alerts lasted for nearly three hours. An 11-year-old girl and a 38-year-old man were among the wounded, with two taken to hospital. The attack came hours after a visit by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to Kyiv during which he promised that the United States’ support to Ukraine in the fight against Russia would continue, even as crucial aid remains stuck in Congress since late 2023. The freeze has piled more pressure on already outgunned Ukrainian troops, with services on the front lines raising the alarm about ammunition shortages and warning they could not hold out forever under current conditions. “From our perspective, we are confident we will get this done. We will get this aid to Ukraine,” Sullivan told a joint news conference on Wednesday after meeting Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, without giving a timeline. (Al Jazeera) Also on Wednesday, a new round of aerial bombardments left civilians dead both in Ukraine and Russia. “Five people were killed by a Russia missile in Kharkiv today,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his evening video address. Another nine were wounded and five more were unaccounted for as search and rescue operations continued into the night, local officials said. Directly across the border from Kharkiv, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said multiple attacks had killed three people. Ukraine has also increased drone, rocket and artillery fire on the region over the last two weeks, in a wave of attacks launched in the lead-up to Russia’s presidential elections. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cruised to victory after facing no real opposition, has pledged to restore order to the border regions. The escalation comes as Russian forces are on the offensive again after weathering Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year. Earlier this week, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had captured the village of Orlivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, close to the also Russian-controlled town of Avdiivka. Adblock test (Why?)

Local fishermen slam Biden administration’s newly unveiled plans to industrialize Gulf of Maine

Local fishermen slam Biden administration’s newly unveiled plans to industrialize Gulf of Maine

A group of fishing associations is sounding the alarm about new plans from the Biden administration to industrialize the Gulf of Maine by leasing 2 million acres of area for wind farm construction, a move that fishermen say will be detrimental to their business and marine life. Last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), an agency within the Department of Interior, announced the finalization of what is known as a wind energy area (WEA), which is an area of the ocean that would allot for construction of enough wind turbines to produce 32 gigawatts (GW) of energy. The agency boasted that, in support of the Biden administration’s goals for deploying 30 GW of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030 and 15 GW of floating offshore wind energy capacity by 2035, the Gulf of Maine WEA surpasses the current state goals for offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Maine, which is 10 GW for Massachusetts and 3 GW for Maine. But a coalition of 17 fishing associations say the move is “the culmination of a rushed development process that is poorly informed on economic, scientific, environmental and cultural issues of paramount importance.” HOW MAINE LOBSTERMEN TURNED ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’ FROM WHITE HOUSE INTO POLICY VICTORY The groups, which include the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA) and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) said “serious questions” remain about how offshore wind activity is connected to spikes in whale mortality throughout the Atlantic Ocean. One large portion of the WEA is frequented by the endangered North Atlantic right whale, the groups said. Leasing the area to wind farming “is flatly inconsistent with a policy of endangered species protection.” Historically, the federal government has in some ways hamstrung the fishing industry by attempting to sharply limit fishing capabilities for fear of endangered marine species, despite no data to support the notion that the industry is a danger to those species. “Fishermen are disheartened that the WEA designation favors foreign energy developers over marine mammal protection. This preferential treatment is in stark contrast to the federal government’s aggressive campaign to burden commercial fishing needlessly with crushing restrictions to protect whales,” the groups said.  They also said the WEA would permanently displace fleets in the prime groundfishing territory.  MAINE LOBSTERMEN CATCH BIG COURT VICTORY AGAINST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ‘EGREGIOUS’ REGULATIONS “The Gulf of Maine WEA was finalized at a breakneck pace without adequate consideration of interactions with fisheries and long-term environmental impacts,” they said, adding that many questions remain unanswered. “Research such as that envisioned through the Gulf of Maine research array to study wind-marine environment interactions and identify strategies to avoid and reduce impacts from commercial scale offshore wind development has not been conducted,” they said. “Nor has sufficient time been set aside to follow best practices in ocean modeling, which should include significantly greater transparency and meaningful partnerships with fishermen as longstanding ocean stewards who hold generations of important ecological knowledge.” In an interview with Fox News Digital, Dustin Delano, chief operating officer at NEFSA, said that since an offshore wind farm of this size is unprecedented, the government should at least wait until current small-scale test projects yield more data – a timeline of just a few months. “It’s possible that the commercial leasing process could follow that research project by just a few months’ time,” Delano said. “There could be commercial-scale development going on just south of there without even waiting to see what the environmental impacts are.” “That’s just so incredibly irresponsible,” he said. “We have one Gulf of Maine, we have one chance at this, one shot at this. As soon as you go in there and destroy things. It’s destroyed for good,” he added. BIDEN ADMINISTRATION BLASTED FOR ‘HYPOCRISY’ ON OFFSHORE WIND AS IT SCRAMBLES TO PROBE WHALE DEATHS Annie Hawkins of RODA told Fox News Digital that at up to 32 gigawatts, the energy that BOEM predicts the WEA can generate “far and away exceeds both demand from adjoining states and requests from wind industry groups.” Typically, the government will finalize a WEA for a designated project that an energy company will bid to build. But in this case, Hawkins speculates that the unprecedented size of the WEA indicates that the government will have a freewheeling ability to green-light wind projects with little scrutiny. “The finality of WEA designation appears to give BOEM maximum freedom of movement to approve future leases from within this huge area with a minimum of further review,” she said. “The highest level of scrutiny is particularly needed, given the expected use of new floating turbine technology, which is still under design and carries entirely unknown environmental impact,” she said, adding that the agency has the opportunity to “clarify these points” after the upcoming notice and comment period. In a statement to Fox News Digital, BOEM said that the final WEA establishes the boundaries to inform BOEM’s initial environmental assessment under NEPA on potential site characterization and assessment activities. “BOEM does not intend to lease the entire Final WEA, rather, BOEM will now consider proposed lease area(s) from within the Final WEA that would later be issued for public comment in a Proposed Sale Notice,” the agency said. “The size of the Final WEA will allow BOEM to consider areas for additional deconfliction, while also supporting the region’s renewable energy goals and the potential for multiple lease sales, as BOEM continues to evaluate a phased leasing approach.” BOEM noted that the WEA was finalized “after extensive engagement with lobster fishermen in fishing communities” and avoids certain restricted areas that the National Marine Fisheries Service identified. The bureau also said that from initial conversations with tribal nations located within Maine, the recommended final WEA also likely avoids a majority of historical and present fishing grounds of those tribes. “BOEM will continue to consult with all Tribal Nations and ocean users with an interest in the region to understand their concerns with potential offshore wind development, including viewshed and transmission impacts, and strive to minimize

GOP senator to unveil findings on female athlete ‘helplessness’ in transgender sports fight

GOP senator to unveil findings on female athlete ‘helplessness’ in transgender sports fight

FIRST ON FOX: A report detailing the “helplessness” felt by female students due to biological males, or transgender women, participating with their female sports teams was to be released Thursday after a congressional investigation into proposed Title IX changes by the Biden administration. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), is expected to release the findings of the committee staff’s investigation into the proposed changes and their effect on female sports in a letter to his committee colleagues. The investigation included interviews with dozens of people, including female athletes and coaches, parents, industry experts, doctors and representatives from higher-education institutions, Cassidy said. NRSC, STEVE DAINES BACK TRUMP IN SCOTUS AMICUS BRIEF, WARN OF ‘SLIPPERY SLOPE’ FOR FUTURE PRESIDENTS Title IX is designed to prevent sex-based discrimination in education and related activities that are recipients of federal money. Last year, President Biden’s administration proposed a rule that would expand Title IX to include gender identity along with biological sex. The term “gender identity” is used to describe by which gender an individual chooses to identify.  “They feel helpless,” Cassidy told Fox News Digital in an interview on Wednesday, describing the feelings he heard from female athletes. “This is kind of a theme that we got: ‘Why am I even trying? I don’t have any hope whatsoever,’” he said. OBAMA, PELOSI TO RALLY FOR BIDEN ON OBAMACARE ANNIVERSARY The HELP committee report details the story of a woman at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, who described her motivational decline following the addition of a transgender woman, who was biologically male, to her swim team. “It felt unfair and demotivating … to even want to try [or] to want to swim better,” the unnamed female athlete is quoted as saying. Sixteen of 17 female swimmers on the team ultimately penned a letter to the athletic director in which they relayed “feeling manipulated and scared.” CUBA PROTESTERS DEMAND FOOD, ELECTRICITY AS RUBIO SAYS NATION ON ‘VERGE OF COLLAPSE’ FROM MARXIST POLICIES “Our lives have been consumed by this issue. We cannot think about our classes as we sit in lectures, we cannot enjoy our practices,” the women wrote. The report summarizes the similar testimony of a female cyclist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado: “I’ve wondered what’s the point in even racing,” she is quoted as saying. Two members of the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania, which became a headline-generating subject during transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’s domination in the sport, recalled feeling that their school was prioritizing Thomas over them. JUDGE ORDERS FBI TO HAND OVER TRANS SCHOOL SHOOTER AUDREY HALE’S MANIFESTO “Our voices as women were completely silenced,” they said. “If we wanted privacy and safety and equality, then we were bigots. This has roots in misogyny, and allowing this to go on is misogynistic.” “This is not bigotry,” Cassidy said, noting that those interviewed for the investigation did not have anything against transgender individuals. “These people we interviewed stressed they’ve got nothing against transgenders as a group,” he said. Riley Gaines, a former NCAA champion swimmer at the University of Kentucky, told the committee that female competitors were never warned about having to share their locker room with biological males, with male anatomy, at the 2022 NCAA Championship. When she realized that was the case, Gaines said she “experienced feelings of betrayal.” When she questioned the policy, she said the attitudes of officials were “if women feel uncomfortable with this, they should feel apologetic” and that they are ultimately those who should seek counseling to overcome it. Since experiencing this, Gaines, an OutKick contributor and host for “Gaines for Girls,” has become an advocate for protecting women’s sports. According to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, the proposed Title IX rule change was because “Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination.”  “Being on a sports team is an important part of the school experience for students of all ages,” he said at the time of the rule’s announcement.  GOP SENATOR RIPS BIDEN’S ‘GUN-GRABBING’ DOJ FOR TAKING NEARLY 2 YEARS TO ANSWER FOR CONTROVERSIAL POLICY But Cassidy pushed back on this, saying this rule is “the death of Title IX.” “I find it ironic the Biden administration talks about the mental health of the transgender individuals as a reason why they’re pushing those,” he said. “They’re totally ignoring the mental health and the feelings of fairness of the women who are competing,” the senator said.  Cassidy said that, alternatively, “We are trying to actually uphold the original intent of Title IX” by ensuring women are given a fair shot in relation to men. On Wednesday, Cassidy and fellow HELP member Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., penned letters to the NCAA and Cardona to inquire about the policies on transgender participation and their enforcement as well as official communications on the controversial subject. Neither the Department of Education nor the NCAA provided comments when contacted by Fox News Digital.