Ukraine’s high casualty rate could bring war to tipping point

Ukraine’s high casualty rate could bring war to tipping point

Dan Sabbagh writes: Any way you count it, the figures are stark: Ukrainian casualties are running at a rate of somewhere between 6oo and 1,000 a day. One presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, told the Guardian this week it was 150 killed and 800 wounded daily; another, Mykhaylo Podolyak, told the BBC that 100 to 200 Ukrainian troops a day were being killed. It represents an extraordinary loss of human life and capacity for the defenders, embroiled in a defence of…

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Inside the OSCE’s botched withdrawal from Ukraine

Inside the OSCE’s botched withdrawal from Ukraine

Politico reports: The signs had been there for weeks, if not months: Russian forces were massing around Ukraine, painting Zs and Vs on their military vehicles; Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric was getting more and more bellicose; and Western intelligence agencies were warning that an invasion was imminent. But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest security body, was caught napping. For eight years, it had overseen a Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) on the ground in Ukraine,…

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The reason the Watergate hearings were explosive — and the January 6 hearings won’t be

The reason the Watergate hearings were explosive — and the January 6 hearings won’t be

Jeff Greenfield writes: It is fitting that a giant television screen loomed over the members of the January 6 committee Thursday night. The core premise of this hearing was that the images from that day, accompanied by the comments and testimony of key players in Donald Trump’s orbit, would galvanize a national audience. It’s too easy — and more importantly, unfair — to dismiss the presentation as “political theater.” The interviews with insurrectionists, the blunt comments from former Attorney General…

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The other cause of January 6: The Electoral College

The other cause of January 6: The Electoral College

Kate Shaw writes: John Eastman. Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump himself. These people all bear some responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021. But there is another contributing factor—an institution, not a person—whose role is regularly overlooked, and that deserves a focus in the ongoing January 6 committee hearings: the Electoral College. The Electoral College isn’t responsible for President Trump’s efforts to remain in office despite his clear loss. But it was integral to Trump’s strategy, and it has everything…

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Rural America reels from violent crime

Rural America reels from violent crime

The Wall Street Journal reports: Local prosecutor Rebecca McCoy used to think of her home in central Arkansas as a place where the worst crimes were usually stolen tractors and lawn mowers. In March 2020, she was called to the trailer of a 72-year-old man who had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. It was White County’s first homicide in almost two years. By that December, there were 11 more. In Marion County, a swampy stretch of South…

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65,000-year-old ‘stone Swiss Army knives’ show early humans had long-distance social networks

65,000-year-old ‘stone Swiss Army knives’ show early humans had long-distance social networks

Paloma de la Peña, Author provided By Amy Mosig Way, Australian Museum Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the world – from the icesheets to the deserts, rainforests to savannahs. As individuals we are rather puny, but when we are socially connected, we are the most dominant species on the planet. New evidence from stone tools in southern Africa shows these social connections were stronger and wider than we had thought among our ancestors…

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Why Russia’s ‘underperforming’ military is still making gains in Ukraine

Why Russia’s ‘underperforming’ military is still making gains in Ukraine

RFE/RL spoke with George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War: Barros: Moving forward, a major question is whether the Ukrainians will be capable of actually conducting counteroffensives to liberate the territory that the Russians have taken since the beginning of the war. I would say that we’ve not seen a Ukrainian capability to actually retake territory that the Russians are serious about defending. The territory that the Ukrainians recaptured in and around Kyiv and Kharkiv…

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The Black Sea blockade — mapping the impact of war in Ukraine on the world’s food supply

The Black Sea blockade — mapping the impact of war in Ukraine on the world’s food supply

The Guardian reports: Wheat is on the verge of rotting in Ukraine’s warehouses. Piles of it have been stuck in storage since Russia invaded in February and imposed a blockade on Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, from where the bulk of wheat is exported. This immediately disrupted global wheat exports from the two countries, which together provide 30% of world supply, and completely cut off Ukraine’s 9% share. The blockade sparked global panic about where to buy wheat, particularly…

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John Kerry: ‘We have to push back hard’ on efforts to build new fossil fuel infrastructure

John Kerry: ‘We have to push back hard’ on efforts to build new fossil fuel infrastructure

Time reports: John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate change, warned Tuesday that the war in Ukraine could undermine international progress to cut carbon emissions. “You have this new revisionism suggesting that we have to be pumping oil like crazy, and we have to be moving into long term [fossil fuel] infrastructure building, which would be absolutely disastrous,” Kerry said, speaking on June 7 at the TIME 100 Summit in New York City. “We have to push back,…

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Big Oil is suing countries to block climate action

Big Oil is suing countries to block climate action

The Lever reports: Fossil fuel investors are adopting a bold new legal tactic in response to efforts to limit global warming: They are going to private international tribunals to argue that climate change policies are illegally cutting into their profits, and they must therefore be compensated. Now governments are scrambling to figure out how to not get sued for billions when enacting climate policies. Termed “investor-state dispute settlement” legal actions, such moves could have a chilling effect on countries’ ability…

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A detailed roadmap for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030

A detailed roadmap for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030

Inside Climate News reports: Researchers of a new peer-reviewed study say they’ve developed the “first detailed roadmap” for how the United States can achieve its ambitious climate pledge to slash the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. It’s a critical target that, if missed, would likely jeopardize the larger global efforts to prevent devastating runaway climate change. The study, published in Science late last month by some of the nation’s leading research institutions, found that it is both…

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The content that fills discontent with nothing

The content that fills discontent with nothing

Kyle Chayka writes: In the beginning, there was the egg. In January of 2019, an Instagram account called @world_record_egg posted a stock photo of a plain brown chicken egg and launched a campaign to get the photo more likes than any online image had before. The record holder at the time was an Instagram shot of Kylie Jenner’s daughter, Stormi, which had more than eighteen million likes. In ten days, the egg’s like count rocketed beyond thirty million. It remains…

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New theories are taking shape about how planets are made

New theories are taking shape about how planets are made

Rebecca Boyle writes: Start at the center, with the sun. Our middle-aged star may be more placid than most, but it is otherwise unremarkable. Its planets, however, are another story. First, Mercury: More charred innards than fully fledged planet, it probably lost its outer layers in a traumatic collision long ago. Next come Venus and Earth, twins in some respects, though oddly only one is fertile. Then there’s Mars, another wee world, one that, unlike Mercury, never lost layers; it…

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Lessons NATO should draw about Russia’s military capabilities

Lessons NATO should draw about Russia’s military capabilities

Foreign Policy interviews former NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen: FP: What lessons will NATO planners draw from what they’ve seen of Russia’s military? AFR: I think we have made two miscalculations. We have overestimated the strength of the Russian military. Despite huge investments in military equipment and the reopening of old Soviet bases, we have seen a very weak Russian military. It remains to be seen why this is. I think corruption may be one of the reasons. But the…

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