🪙 Telegram now lets users send cryptocurrency through TON blockchain spinoff

Telegram now lets users send Toncoin, the cryptocurrency built off of Telegram’s abandoned blockchain effort, directly from chats within the messaging app. In 2020, Telegram shut down its own cryptocurrency operation after facing pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Even after Telegram abandoned the TON project, a group of developers kept it afloat, renaming it The Open Network and rebranding Gram as Toncoin. TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm.” Earlier this month, the TON Foundation managed to raise $1 billion in donations.

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This week, Jill Biden will be following in Nancy Pelosi's footsteps as she sets off for Europe to demonstrate her support for Ukraine. She will first visit Romania and then Slovakia where she will meet servicemen and women and members of the Romanian government, as well as humanitarian aid workers.

😏 All we need now is for Kamala Harris to jet over to eastern Europe to give us a hat-trick

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⚡️ City of Donetsk shelled by Ukrainian troops overnight, DPR says

⚡️ Ukrainian forces shell Gorlovka, firing eight 122-millimeter projectiles, DPR Office in JCCC says

⚡️ Erdogan to talk with Putin this week

Volodymyr Zelensky told Greece's ERT network that he is grateful to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and other "volunteers", whoever they may be

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🕺 Is Trump dropping 2024 hints again?

Remember Donald Trump's signature YMCA dance during campaign rallies? This time, he showed off his moves in front of thousands of supporters at the Save America rally in Nebraska, as he danced to Hold On, I'm Comin'

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Hungarian PM Viktor Orban's name has been added to Myrotvorets ("Peacekeeper"), a notorious Ukrainian website publishing personal information about supposed "enemies of Ukraine" curated by the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

He's listed there as an "accomplice to Russian authorities' crimes against Ukraine and its citizens".

Orban has yet to react to the listing, but former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev remarked that Kiev has started adding European leaders to the infamous database simply because they refuse to bow to pressure and cough up cash Ukraine wants so desperately.

A number of people, whose names once appeared on the site, were killed. Oles Buzina, a prominent Ukrainian journalist, and former Rada lawmaker Oleg Kalashnikov were among them. Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, who was blacklisted too, was killed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the Donbass war in 2014

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"How dare you hold us here?" The now-evacuated Mariupol residents were being held captive inside the Azovstal steelworks by Ukrainian neo-Nazis who wouldn't let them leave to get to a safe place.

🗣 “We tried to leave two or three times, even by bus, as there was no heavy shelling at the time, but they forced us back, and wouldn’t let anyone out,” one of the evacuated witnesses recalls

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📌 The latest update on the Ukraine operation from the Russian Defence Ministry:

▪️ Russian air defences shot down 10 Ukrainian drones, two Tochka-U missiles and one MIG-29 fighter overnight;

▪️ Artillery units have eliminated up to 280 Ukrainian servicemen and six ammunition depots;

▪️ Operational-tactical and army aviation destroyed up to 160 Ukrainian servicemen and 26 armoured vehicles;

▪️ Russian air forces hit 27 targets, areas of concentrated manpower, a Ukrainian military equipment and ammunition depot;

▪️ Russian missile troops hit nine Ukrainian fortified position, areas of concentrated manpower and one BM-21 "Grad" multiple rocket launcher;

▪️ High-precision air-based missiles have hit 38 Ukrainian military targets

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🏀 A jersey worn by late basketball star Kobe Bryant in his 1996-1997 rookie season will be auctioned from May 18-June 4 by SCP Auctions. The lot is expected to fetch up to $5 million, a record price for a basketball jersey, media report.

Photo credit: AP

Footage released by the Russian MoD shows Iskander operational-tactical missile systems during the special military operation in Ukraine

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📹 ⚡️ Women who were able to get out of Azovstal described what is happening in the grounds of the plant.

According to them, people have no way out, they are intimidated by Ukrainian militants and are afraid to go out.

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❗️ 🇭🇺 Hungary will veto the EU proposal to limit the import of Russian energy resources, despite previous reports to the contrary.

This was confirmed by the press secretary of Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban.

Earlier, Germany's national public television channel, ZDF TV, citing a high-ranking EU diplomat, reported that Austria, Hungary and Slovakia would not exercise their right to veto the EU embargo on Russian oil.

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⚡️ 📹 The Russian MoD has published footage showing the evacuation of civilians from the grounds of Azovstal.

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⚡️ 📹 A resident of Mariupol describes how she came under fire by the Armed Forces of Ukraine as she was trying to check up on her grandmother.

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⚡️ 📹 A resident of Pionerskoye village in the Donetsk region tells of the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists

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⚡️ 📹 Ukrainian Armed Forces prevented people from driving through checkpoints in Mariupol, keeping them in the city and using them as human shields.

🗣 “Nobody provided us with a corridor, it was thanks only to Russian troops setting up a checkpoint that we got out at all - we just took advantage of it to escape from Mariupol.”

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⚡️📹 One of the civilians released from the Azovstal plant describes how he survived there.

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‼️ US allows deals with Gazprom Germania GmbH until 30 September

⚡️ 📹 A refugee from Mariupol describes the horrible conditions she had to live in and how she fled the city.

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