In her first public comments since May on the US intelligence assessment of the war, Ms Haines suggested Russia's invasion would grind on "for an extended period of time" and that "the picture remains pretty grim".

She said intelligence agencies see three scenarios of how the war could play out, the most likely being a slow moving conflict with Russia making "incremental gains, with no breakthrough".

The other, less likely possibilities include a major Russian breakthrough, or a stabilisation of the frontlines with Ukraine achieving small gains.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61990495

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations have mocked the macho image of Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Germany dominated by the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine.

As the leaders sat down for their first meeting of the three-day G7 summit in the sweltering Bavarian Alps on Sunday, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, asked if their jackets should come off – or if they should even disrobe further.

... Читать дальше »

The economy has always been at the heart of the Brics but the Ukraine war is likely to loom large over the summit on Thursday.

The nations may not overtly mention the war, but it will definitely be discussed when Indian PM Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro talk to each other.

Pratyush Rao, director for South Asia at the Control Risks consultancy, says Ukraine, without a doubt, will be the elephant in the room.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61894760

Russia's two proxy statelets are not recognised internationally. In fact Moscow only recognised the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics two days before it invaded Ukraine in February. Last week the president of Kazakhstan said in front of President Vladimir Putin that he had no intention of recognising them.

Moscow city council announced on Wednesday that it had changed the address of the US embassy in the Russian capital, from Bolshoi Devyatinsky Lane to 1 Donetsk People's Republic Square.

The UK Ministry of Defense assesses that the Kremlin’s continued framing of its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” rather than a war is actively hindering Russian force generation capabilities.

Продолжающееся определение Кремлем своего вторжения в Украину как "специальной военной операции", а не войны, активно препятствует возможностям России по формированию своих боевых сил, поскольку исключает законные карательные меры.

https://www.bbc.com/russian/live/news-61845923

"The word 'discipline' has been misconstrued as 'punishment', meaning inflicting pain as a consequence of doing something," says Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the author of six books on parenting, including No-Drama Discipline. He points out that the word "discipline" comes from the Latin word disciplina – which means instruction or teaching.

"Parents say, 'Parents should be good disciplinarians.' We go, 'Yes – and a disciplinarian is a teacher.'"

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220607-what-should-you-do-when-a-child-misbehaves

It's no surprise that the influence and impact of Ancient Greece resonates today. As defined by Britannica, the phrase refers to the northeastern Mediterranean region in the era between "the end of the Mycenaean civilisation (1200BC) and the death of Alexander the Great (323BC)", when it was one of the most important places in the world, according to National Geographic. The people of Hellas – as the lands of the Hellenes were called (the names Greece and Greek were conferred on them later by the Romans) were great thinkers, writers, warriors, actors, athletes, artists and politicians.
Roderick Beaton in his history book The Greeks, writes that the Greek civilisations were the "origin of much of the arts, science, politics and law as we know them throughout the developed world today".
Think Aristotle in his studies of plants, animals and rocks; Herodotus in writing history; Socrates and Plato in philosophy. The Greeks pioneered democracy; reading with an alphabet; the Olympics; geometry and mathematical calculations; health innovations (the Hippocratic oath is still a standard of ethics for physicians); great architecture, like the Parthenon, Temple of Zeus and Acropolis; theatre, care of Greek comedy and tragedy; and language – with an estimated 150,000 English words still in use being derived from Greek words.
All this before we've touched on religion and deities. For sheer fantasy value, what can beat the idea of a family of superpowers – such as Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Athena, Apollo and Poseidon – dwelling in a cloud palace above Mount Olympus, each controlling a different aspect of life? For some, such as Eric Weiner, author of The Socrates Express, a treatise on the ancients' philosophy and travel, the Ancient Greeks have a lot to teach us about values today. In an essay on how technology can deceive us, especially in relation to war reporting, he writes: "One way to build a brighter future is by revisiting the past. Ancient Greece in particular."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220601-the-mysterious-ancient-civilisation-that-resonates-now
 

Former President Donald Trump has called on US lawmakers to prioritise funding for school security over sending military aid to Ukraine.

Speaking at a pro-gun conference, Mr Trump questioned how the US "has $40 billion to send to Ukraine" but cannot ensure security in schools.

The meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest US gun group, is taking place in Houston.

The intervention comes days after 21 people died in a Texas school shooting.

• Texas shooting response was wrong, says official
• Armed female bystander kills man firing at US party
• Giants manager boycotts US anthem after shooting

"Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation," Mr Trump said in Friday's speech, drawing loud applause.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61614782 ... Читать дальше »

The English writer Rose Macaulay published What Not: A Prophetic Comedy in 1918. What Not depicts a dystopian future where people are ranked by intelligence, the government mandates mind training for all citizens, and procreation is regulated by the state. Macaulay and Huxley shared the same literary circles and he attended her weekly literary salons.

George Orwell believed that Brave New World must have been partly derived from the novel We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter to Christopher Collins, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying. Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952), he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We".

Ursula von der Leyen loves cameras, and excels in the art of storytelling - and that's what we should expect for her. She delivers her speech in three languages with equal ease. She presents herself as a European, who was born and raised in Brussels: "I was born in Brussels as a European, finding out only later that I am German with roots in Lower Saxony. And that is why there is only one option for me: to unite and strengthen Europe." 

there are probably not many leading European politicians who have experienced Europe, in such a way that this daughter of a senior European civil servant who studied at the London School of Economics did. Nor are there many who have an equivalent international experience, since she lived four years in California from 1992 to 1996. Expatriates know that it is only by leaving Europe that we begin to understand how much it exists. "The world is calling for more Europe. The world needs more Europe.": this is a woman who knows what she is talking about.

https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/ursula-von-der-leyen-finally-truly-political-commission