❗️🍫Mars stops investing in business in Russia, as well as importing or exporting products, the company's press service said.

⚡️🇺🇸🇶🇦 Biden has designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally of the United States

❗️🇷🇺 Russia is ready to resist sanctions, the Foreign Ministry says, adding that though it will be difficult, there is no panic

Moscow is not ruling out that even worse scenarions of sanctions may take place, but believes that the West may step back.

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🔎The suicide of a Washington, DC police officer nine days after he was attacked during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has been deemed a line-of-duty death, a report said.

The ruling in the death of Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith enables his widow to receive his benefits – including an annuity equal to his pay at the time of his suicide, CNN reported.

Jeffrey Smith fatally shot himself on Jan. 15, 2021, after leaving his Virginia home for what would have been his first day back to work following a medical leave.

The late officer’s widow, Erin Smith, had been fighting for the line-of-duty death designation. The District of Columbia’s Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board initially denied her request.

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🏛The White House attempted Thursday to shift the blame for the stratospheric inflation numbers onto Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that the surge in gas prices driving the overall increase was underway long before Russia announced a special military operation in Ukraine.

“Today’s inflation report is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched by price increases and families are starting to feel the impacts of Putin’s price hike,” President Biden said in a statement after the Labor Department announced that consumer prices rose 7.9 percent over the 12-month period ending in February — the highest year-ending increase since January 1982.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of gasoline rose by 38 percent over the previous 12 months — and most analysts predict inflation will get worse after Biden announced a ban on imports of Russian oil, natural gas, and coal Tuesday.

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😂 What's that country somewhere on the eastern flank?

🇺🇸Vice President Kamala Harris surprised everybody on Thursday, as she struggled to remember where exactly she was while addressing the Ukrainian crisis in Warsaw, Poland 🇮🇩 .

"I am here... standing here... on the northern flank... on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies, and what is at stake at this very moment, what is at stake this very moment are some of the guiding principles," Harris said, desperately checking her notes.

Well, it's no wonder now why she can't seem to find her way to the southern border 🤷‍♂️

⚡️🇺🇳🇷🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦The Russian Mission to the UN asked for a meeting of the Security Council for March 11 to discuss US military biological activities on the territory of Ukraine, First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy said in a tweet.

⚡️⛓An investigation into human rights abuses at an illegal prison that was run by the Ukrainian far-right Aidar battalion has been launched in the Lugansk People’s Republic's (LPR) Starobilsk district, Sputnik correspondent reports.

Over the course of Ukraine's offensive against the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, human rights organizations like Amnesty International have chronicled crimes perpetrated by volunteer battalions, which include abduction, unlawful detention, extortion and maltreatment.

⚡️🇷🇺 Meta has reportedly made a temporary change to its hate speech policy to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian people and Russian soldiers.

It will also allow posts "that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko," Reuters reported, citing internal emails to content moderators.

The change applies to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

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🔹Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and legislative leaders announced Thursday they plan to lift the state’s gas tax for 30 days to blunt fuel prices that have surged past $4 per gallon.

Hogan (R) and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly’s presiding officers said they will work to quickly suspend Maryland’s gas tax, which is roughly 37 cents per gallon. It is also tied to inflation and is set to rise this summer.

Democratic leaders said they would back a month-long reprieve and work with Hogan to get it quickly approved and implemented. A spokesman for Hogan said he has agreed to the deal.

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🇺🇸🇺🇦 Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) calls for pumping Ukraine with even more weapons 🤦‍♂️

"Send these MiGs...Enough talk. People are dying. Send them the planes that they need. They say they need MiGs...They want MiGs. Get them the MiGs."

Twitter users are calling him a warmonger

📲 U.S. authorities have broadly expanded the use of a smartphone app during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure immigrants released from detention will attend deportation hearings, a requirement that advocates say violates their privacy and makes them feel they’re not free.

More than 125,000 people — many of them stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border — are now compelled to install the app known as SmartLink on their phones, up from around 5,000 less than three years ago.

It allows officials to easily check on them by requiring the immigrants to send a selfie or make or receive a phone call when asked.

⚡️⚡️JUST IN: Actor Jussie Smollet has been sentenced to 150 days in the Cook County Jail, 30 months felony probation and $120,000 restitution to the city of Chicago for staging a hate crime attack against himself in order to boost his profile

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Smollett, who apparently lost it after the sentence was announced, shouted, “I am not suicidal, I am innocent! If anything happens to me in there I did not do it.”

📝US colleges cut partnerships, financial ties with Russia

Colleges across the U.S. are pulling students from study abroad programs in Russia, ending research partnerships, and cutting financial ties as part of a global wave of sanctions.

Last academic year, U.S. colleges hosted nearly 5,000 students from Russia, less than 1% of all international students. Advocates for international education say losing those students would forgo a chance to "expose them to western ideals."

Some in Congress have pushed for visa restrictions against Russian students.

What do you think of this discrimination?

⚡️🇺🇦 The World health Organization (WHO) told Ukraine to destroy "high-threat pathogens" in its public health laboratories to prevent potential spills, Reuters reports

The WHO has not specified the pathogens and has not clarified whether Ukraine had fulfilled the recommendation.

🇷🇺🇨🇦 The allegations by the Canadian government that Russia is behind an attack on a hospital ward in the city of Mariupol is based on a fabrication permeated by Kiev, the Russian Embassy in Ottawa says

❗️The Russian Embassy condemned the story saying it was staged and noted that Canadian media has not made an attempt to independently verify the veracity of Kiev’s claims.

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Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Ilya Kiva, who fled the country, also said he was confident that the story regarding the attack on the Mariupol maternity hospital was a false-flag.

"Ukraine is filled with lies and deception. The history of the tragedy in the hospital of Mariupol - another staging and fake," Kiva said on Telegram.

Mariupol is the site of an intense battle where surrounded Ukrainian troops and neo-Nazi and other extremist battalions have dug in against advancing Russian and allied troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. The latter have said are intending to end eight years of bloodshed in the area initiated by Ukrainian troops and assorted extremists.

🇺🇸🚘 A reporter is pressing White House press secretary Jen Psaki on whether Joe Biden owns an electric vehicle himself, as the US president has been actively pushing a green agenda

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❗️🇪🇺🇺🇦 Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that leaders of the EU nations had given a green light to the European integration of Ukraine during the summit in Versailles

📲 Google Cloud to stop accepting new customers in Russia

The announcement is the latest action from Google and other tech companies who have sought to "punish" Moscow. Google Cloud’s action follows similar suspensions from other top cloud providers, including Microsoft and Amazon. 

Amazon on Tuesday said it would no longer be accepting new Amazon Web Services customers in Russia. Microsoft last week said it would suspend all sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. 

The Silicon Valley giant also said last week it had suspended all advertising in the country. 

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