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Tuesday, March 22, 2022
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Biden to visit Poland during trip
Allen softball sweeps Indy
provided the core of a small group of regular volunteers with others pitching in at times. One work day, volunteers dug holes and mixed cement by hand to install the playground equipment. Volunteers gathered for another work day in December to cut open 14 2,000-pound bags of mulch and spread it across the area. Kathy Hale, librarian and secretary of Savonburg
WA S H INGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has added a stop in Poland to his trip this President Joe week to Biden Europe for urgent talks with NATO and European allies, as Russian forces concentrate their fire upon cities and trapped civilians in a nearly month-old invasion of Ukraine. Biden will first travel to Brussels and then to Poland to meet with leaders there, press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday night. Poland is a crucial ally in the Ukraine crisis. It is hosting thousands of American troops and is taking in more people fleeing the war in Ukraine — more than 2 million — than any other nation in the midst of the largest European refugee crisis in decades. Biden will head to Warsaw for a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda scheduled for Saturday. Biden will discuss how the U.S., along with its allies and partners, is responding to “the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created,” Psaki said. On Monday ahead of his trip, Biden discussed the war with European leaders. President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister
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Humboldt students earn honors PAGE A2
Aging With Attitude returns PAGE A5
Chinese plane crashes with 132 aboard BEIJING (AP) — A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade. More than seven hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors. The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement that the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. The flight was traveling from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial center of See PLANE | Page A6
Savonburg Mayor Aaron Wilson shows off the new playground and park, located just a block or so from the library and city hall. A walking trail will connect the park to the building. REGISTER/VICKIE MOSS
Now playing in Savonburg By VICKIE MOSS The Iola Register
Savonburg Mayor Aaron Wilson watched children slide, swing and climb around the equipment at the city park’s new playground on Sunday. He smiled. “That’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s the goal,” he said. It’s taken years for the playground to take shape, but the equipment is now in place with a rubber-mulch base. Volunteer crews have marked the path of a new walking trail and are spreading crushed limestone along the quarter-mile path. Still to come are benches and picnic tables. Next month, the community will have a ribbon cutting along with a recycling event. Everything at the park is recycled, reused, renewed and restored. The refurbished playground equipment was bought from an elementary school years ago in the Kansas City area. Most of it has been sandblasted and repainted. The rubber mulch is made
These animal rockers were sandblasted and repainted. They’re now ready to entertain children at the Savonburg Park. from a recycled product. Large trees were cut down to make room. Their stumps serve as seats and are placed around what will be a garden area. The rest of the wood was given away as firewood or piled into what will eventually be a huge bonfire. Volunteers contributed more than 200 hours since May of 2021 to the effort. A local farmer, who prefers to be anonymous, used his equipment to help prepare the site. Others, including Wilson,
Fresh attacks hit Ukraine; Mariupol refuses to surrender By PATRICK J. MCDONNELL and JAWEED KALEEM Los Angeles Times/TNS
Need seeds? LaHarpe’s Jim Heinrich, left, visits with Krista Harding, horticulture expert with Kansas State University Research and Extension, during a seed exchange event Saturday at LaHarpe City Hall. A small number of gardeners stopped by to trade in their seeds. Harding agreed to provide information on gardens, plants and other agro-related topics. REGISTER/RICHARD LUKEN Vol. 124 No. 119 Iola, KS $1.00
LVIV, Ukraine — As the besieged city of Mariupol rejected a demand to surrender, Russian forces mounted attacks across Ukraine overnight and into Monday, including a missile strike that officials said hit a Kyiv shopping center and killed at least eight people. With fears growing that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is turning into a bloody war of attrition, Mariupol leaders rebuffed the Russian proposal — which offered evacuation routes for Ukrainian troops if they left by Monday morning — even after the reported bombing of a local art school where officials said hundreds of people had taken shelter. Mariupol’s mayor swiftly
ruled out giving in to the enemy troops that have surrounded his city, which has become a symbol of Ukrainian suffering and destruction. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk also dismissed the Russian demand. “There can be no talk of any surrender, laying down of arms,” she told the Ukrainian Pravda news organization. In an overnight address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the bombing of the art school, where he said 400 people had taken refuge, was further proof against Russian claims that it’s not targeting civilians. “There were no military positions,” Zelenskyy said. “They are under the debris. We do not know how many are alive at the moment.” The bombing, in a war-torn See UKRAINE | Page A3