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Ukrainian sporting legend Bubka calls on sporting world to aid refugees

AFP

Ukraine’s former Olympic pole vault champion and world record holder Sergey Bubka called on the sports world to help provide essential goods for Ukrainians who have had to flee their homes as a result of Russia’s invasion.

The 58-year-old — who was crowned world outdoor champion on six successive occasions and broke the world record 35 times — had said on Friday Ukraine would win the war.

Bubka said he was going to use all his international connections to “defend his country” and he backed up his words through an open letter.

“Please, allow me to turn to you at this difficult times of the war in my country,” he wrote.

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“It is a very hard time for me — the time of hard working and the time of decisions on how to help my country, my compatriots, athletes and coaches, my colleagues and friends, who need help as never.

Bubka, president of the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee, said: “Over a million people, mostly women and children have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

“Millions of people lose their livelihoods and stay without medical care, food and clothes on the Ukrainian territories.

“From the sports community side, we are trying as much as we can to channel and reinforce the soft power of our global unity to support people in Ukraine as much as we can in these unprecedented times.”

Bubka, who is also senior vice-president of World Athletics, said there was an urgent need for basic products as well as sportswear for children, who could find playing sports in refugee camps a welcome distraction for them.

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“We are inviting everybody to help thousands of women and children that left their homes without the opportunity to take anything with them,” he wrote.

“The key priorities at this stage will be first aid medical materials, hygiene products, clothes for kids, long-lasting food and financial support.

“Secondly, I think about the possibility to organize sportswear, sport shoes, equipment of any sport for children who are now living in refugee camps.

He said while displaced children might not have the opportunity to study at school, “at least they will be able to play sport and spend their leisure time properly distracting from the horror of the life in which they find themselves now.”

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.