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25 Things That Caught My Eye Today: Ukraine, Sandra Bullock and ‘Adopted’ Children, & More

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A local resident walks near a destroyed apartment building in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, April 3, 2022. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

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2. BBC News: The Ukrainian mother who had to bury her own son

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5. New York Times: ‘This is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation

There are also stories, impossible to verify, highlighting the kind of hate left in an occupation’s wake and sharing a common thread of brutality: children held at knife point; an old woman forced to drink alcohol as her occupiers watched and laughed; whispers of rape and forced disappearances; and an old man found toothless, beaten in a ditch and defecated on.

“Oh, God, how I wanted to spit on them or hit them,” said Yevdokiya Koneva, 57, her voice steely as she pushed her aging bicycle toward the center of town on Friday.

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7. Washington Examiner: Bucha massacre prompts West to consider stronger sanctions, total Russian gas boycott

A man in a bright blue fleece was found hunched over the steering wheel of a crushed car at an intersection in the center of town, the New York Times reported. Another was found on his back on the side of the road with a single bullet through his head. His mangled green bicycle laid beside him. Several civilians had been stuffed into sewers, while others were found in mass graves.

Renewed allegations of war crimes came after multiple corpses were found with their wrists bound behind them and other signs of torture.

8. New York Times: Reports of sexual violence involving Russian soldiers are multiplying, Ukranian officials say.

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10.  Wall Street Journal: Inside an 11-Year-Old’s Solo Escape From Ukraine

“Better for him to be not with me but alive,” 53-year-old Ms. Pisetska recalled thinking. “I had already given up on myself, but I wanted him to live.”

Alhasan Alkhalaf—known to his family as Hasan—set out on a three-day solo trip from the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia. The trip’s success relied on a carefully laid plan, the goodwill of volunteers and border guards and the wits of a small boy bearing a ready smile, a plastic bag containing his documents and his brother’s name and telephone number scribbled on his left hand.

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13.  New York Times: Many Teens Report Emotional and Physical Abuse by Parents During Lockdown

After much of the country went into lockdown, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared with the same period in 2019, according to the surgeon general’s report. The figure rose 4 percent for boys. A C.D.C. report released in February found that emergency room visits by teenage girls relating to eating disorders had doubled during the pandemic.

14. Crux: English police to allow priests to give last rites at crime scenes

The change follows the outcry by Catholics at the denial of permission to Father Jeffrey Woolnough to pass through a police cordon and administer the sacrament of the anointing of the sick to Sir David Amess, a Catholic politician, after he was stabbed repeatedly in a suspected terrorist attack Oct. 15.

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16. Wall Street Journal: Support for 15-Week Abortion Ban Outweighs Opposition, WSJ Poll Finds

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18. With nowhere else to go, some Virginia foster children have been sleeping in government offices

19. Gov. Youngkin launches initiative aimed at creating safe housing placements for foster children

“It is unacceptable that last year over 150 children in foster care spent the night in places that just simply are not meant for kids. When this challenge came to our attention, my administration knew we had to act swiftly to ensure that every child has a safe place to belong,” said Youngkin. “Beyond the immediate need, we hope Virginians from all walks of life will step up to help children in foster care.”

20. Wall Street Journal: Flood of Refugees From Ukraine Mostly Are Finding Shelter in Private Homes

But instead of large-scale refugee camps—like those that popped up around Europe in 2015 to house the influx of Syrians fleeing war—the refugees from Ukraine have mostly found shelter in private homes. Hundreds of thousands of Poles, Western Europeans and, especially, Ukrainians in diaspora have taken in refugee families.

This massive, informal network—which has also offered food, transportation and, in some cases, jobs in addition to housing—has eased the burden on public services, and smoothed the welcome for the refugees.

Still, a month into the war, local officials are wary of backlash, aware that the goodwill toward refugees—and the invitations to stay at their homes—will eventually run out. Donations to aid groups have already fallen considerably since the start of the war.

21. Photographer uses toys to tell stories of children living in war zones

McCarty partners with organizations working in the war zone to recreate the children’s drawings in real life, using toys found in the local area, and staging them to represent the artwork drawn by young people.

22. Viral video of a child singing in front of a cross in Ukraine

23. Jyoti Thottam: Six Nuns Came to India to Start a Hospital. They Ended Up Changing a Country.

Lawrencetta Veeneman was 51 years old when she accepted her order’s mission to Mokama, leading the six nuns — three teachers and three nurses, three in their 20s and three a generation older — who founded Nazareth Hospital.

When she arrived, Veeneman found an empty warehouse, a series of empty rooms. There were no hospital beds, no medicines, no electricity, no source of running water, no doctors, nurses or other trained staff. The sisters’ mission was to turn this building into the tenth Sisters of Charity hospital, and they would have six months to fulfill it.

24. Lisa Milbrand: Sandra Bullock Asks People to Stop Saying ‘Adopted Child,’ and I Applaud Her

Then she makes it clear she’s getting really tired of every article (including the InStyle one she’s being interviewed for) making it clear that her kids were adopted. “Let’s all just refer to these kids as ‘our kids.’ Don’t say ‘my adopted child.’ No one calls their kid their ‘IVF child’ or their ‘oh, sh**, I went to a bar and got knocked-up child.’ Let just say, ‘our children.'”

YES. Because once a child enters a family—whether it’s in a hospital’s birthing rooms or a civil affairs office in the middle of China—they’re just family. And adoption isn’t a constant state of being—it’s a past event. So, maybe we don’t have to single out which celeb’s kids were adopted every time they’re mentioned, for years after they’ve been part of the family.

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