27.06.18  The vast expanse of an English headline often calls for segmentation:

Russia continues to surprise as street parties and rich history combine for an intoxicating fan experience

Россия продолжает удивлять

Уличные вечеринки и богатая история в сочетании c приключениями возбужденных и пьяных болельщиков

23.06.18 The bottom line? The world is no longer unipolar.

Our research suggests that the post-Cold War period of U.S. global dominance is coming to an end. We think these results suggest that the world is returning to an era of Great Power competition.

One of the variant correspondences may be:

Каков же вывод? Мир сегодня уже не однополярный.

Наше исследование указывает на то, что период американского мирового господства, начавшийся после холодной войны, подходит к концу. Как нам кажется, эти результаты говорят о том, что мир возвращается к эпохе соперничества великих держав.

bottom line - итог; суть дела; определяющий фактор

21.06.18 Bilingualism used to have an undeservedly bad reputation; then it got an undeservedly exalted one. The first came from early twentieth-century American psychologists, who, countering nativists, proposed that something other than heredity was causing Eastern and Southern European immigrants to score lower than Northern Europeans on newly invented I.Q. tests. They proposed that the attempt to learn two languages might be at fault. As Kenji Hakuta points out, in his 1986 book, “The Mirror of Language,” neither the psychologists nor the nativists considered that I.Q. tests might themselves be useless.

In the early nineteen-sixties, this pseudo-science was debunked by Canadian researchers in the midst of debates over Quebecois nationalism. A study by two McGill University researchers, which used French-English bilingual schoolchildren in Montreal, found that they actually outperformed monolingual children on tests that required mental manipulation and reorganization of visual patterns. Thus was born the “bilingual advantage.” It remains the conventional wisdom, as I have recently learned from people telling me about it over and over.

In fact, in recent years, the bilingual advantage has

17.06.18 President Donald Trump told world leaders at the G7 summit that Crimea, a contested territory south of Ukraine, is part of Russia because everyone there speaks Russian, two diplomatic sources told Buzzfeed. Trump made the remarks at a Friday night dinner during the recent G7 summit in Québec, Canada, according to one of the sources.

Before departing for this year's G7 summit on Friday, Trump ruffled feathers by telling reporters he believed Russia should be let back in to the G8.

"Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run," he said. "And in the G7, which used to be the G8 — they threw Russia out — they should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table."

13.06.18 - Ambivalence as it is: Even simple words can raise controversy:

‘Crispy?’ came the rallying cry from South-East Asia. An unctuous, slow-cooked dish of meat with coconut and spices, rendang can be described as many things – rich, spicy, melt-in-the-mouth – but everyone from the former and current Malaysian prime ministers to foreign diplomats and professional Indonesian and Malaysian chefs agree that it is definitely not crispy.

aaaaa0-how-an-outrage-over-crispy-chicken-united-south-east-asia`

06.18 The G7 met in Canada amid mounting tensions. Even the romantic sights of La Mallbai did not help to put on face on things. Trudeau and Macron showed their anger at Trump's proposal to reinstate Russia in the club (because it's impossible to do serious things without Russia's participation). They decided to have the after-party and socialize without inviting Trump to join in. The scheming Trudo and Macron did not master enough courage to do the dirty part themselves pushing the buck to the straight-forward Merkel who was supposed to do the lying trick:                           

“Angela was going to totally stonewall him.”

А уж Ангела устроила бы ему полную обструкцию.

7.06.18  Florentine Tuscan became the lingua franca of Italy as a result of The Divine Comedy, helping to establish Florence as the creative hub of the Renaissance. It also became the language in which Dante’s literary descendants Boccaccio and Petrarch would write – eventually just known as Italian. Through the force of his words, Dante helped create the very idea of the Italian language that is spoken today.

3.06.18 There is a word, beloved by the Kremlin and all its representatives, that has yet to cross into an American lexicon that longs for such Russian transplants: provokatsiya. Literally: a provocation. Figuratively: a false-flag operation.

The poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain? Provokatsiya!

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine? Provokatsiya!

The Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential race? Provokatsiya, obviously.

Before Wednesday, it was easy to deride Kremlin cries of provokatsiya as a cynical way of directing our gaze away from the facts and past them — onto the highly improbable and the flat-out conspiratorial. But after Wednesday, thanks to the machinations of the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, dismissing such claims became far more difficult. This time, the Russians turned out to be right.

1.06.18 The revenge of journalists:

Wednesday 30 May 2018 by Jack Shepherd

Russian journalist who faked his own assassination returns home to be murdered by wife

http://newsthump.com/2018/05/30/russian-journalist-who-faked-his-own-assassination-returns-home-to-be-murdered-by-wife/