Ukraine’s Holocaust center names Nazi Babi Yar killers
Ukraine’s Holocaust memorial center on Wednesday revealed the names of 159 Nazi SS troops who took part in the killing of Jews during the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine eight decades after one of the most infamous Nazi mass slaughters of World War II.
Nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, when the city was under Nazi occupation in 1941. SS troops carried out the massacre with local collaborators.
“Babi Yar is the biggest mass grave of the Holocaust ... the most quickly filled mass grave,” said Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial center.
Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Isaac Herzog of Israel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany attended a ceremony in Kyiv on Wednesday to remember the victims of the massacre.
Another suspect pleads guilty to role in ATM skimming scheme
A Romanian man has pleaded guilty to his role in a multi-state ATM skimming scheme that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal prosecutors said.
Dragos Nelu Hornea, 26, pleaded guilty Tuesday to racketeering and conspiracy to use counterfeit access devices charges, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston.
Hornea was a member of a gang that attached skimming devices to ATMs to steal debit card numbers and PINs from unsuspecting bank customers, create counterfeit cards and make unauthorized withdrawals from the victims’ bank accounts, authorities said.
They victimized residents of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, prosecutors said.
Fifteen people have now pleaded guilty in the case, and those sentenced have received prison terms from one year to more than five years, prosecutors said. Hornea, originally indicted in 2017, faces sentencing Feb. 3.
White House restoring environmental reviews for big projects
In the latest reversal of a Trump-era environmental rollback, President Joe Biden is restoring federal regulations guiding environmental reviews of major infrastructure projects such as highways and pipelines. The reviews were scaled back by the Trump administration in a bid to fast-track the projects.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality said Wednesday it will restore key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law designed to ensure community safeguards during environmental reviews for a wide range of federal projects and decisions.
Last year, President Donald Trump overhauled the rules in a bid to accelerate projects he said would boost the economy and provide jobs.
Sweden suspends use of Moderna vaccine for young people
Swedish health authorities on Wednesday suspended the use of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for those ages 30 and under.
The reason for the pausing is “signals of an increased risk of side effects such as inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium” — the double-walled sac containing the heart and the roots of the main vessels, Sweden’s Public Health Agency said in a statement. “The risk of being affected is very small.”
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said they “follow the situation closely and act quickly to ensure that vaccinations against COVID-19 are always as safe as possible and at the same time provide effective protection” against the disease.
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