Russia blazes into Ukraine’s north
Prior to now three days, Russian troops have poured throughout Ukraine’s northeastern border. They’ve taken extra sq. miles per day than at virtually every other level within the battle — save the very starting — and are transferring close to Kharkiv.
Russian forces launched a posh offensive on Friday. At the very least 9 villages have been seized. Now, some Ukrainian troops are retreating, and a few commanders have taken the weird step of blaming one another.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s high army commander, conceded that the scenario had “considerably worsened.” However he mentioned that Russian makes an attempt to interrupt by Ukrainian defensive traces had been unsuccessful to this point.
Hundreds fled to Kharkiv, the closest huge metropolis to the villages. About 20 miles from the border, it’s secure — for the second. “We may hear machine gun fireplace coming nearer and nearer,” one lately arrived lady mentioned. The Russians have been “about to interrupt in.”
Toll: Villagers within the Kherson area slowly rebuilt their lives after Ukraine pushed Russia again. Now they’re braced for a contemporary assault.
In Russia: President Vladimir Putin moved Sergei Shoigu, his minister of protection, to a place operating the nationwide safety council. It was the primary shake-up for his nationwide safety staff because the invasion started.
In Belarus: Russia is upgrading a munitions depot, probably to deal with nuclear weapons, a Occasions evaluation of satellite tv for pc imagery discovered.
Preventing erupts in northern Gaza
Shut-quarters floor fight between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops raged in Gaza Metropolis and close by Jabaliya over the weekend, each side mentioned.
It match a state of affairs now acquainted: Israeli forces returning to an space the place they’d defeated Hamas earlier within the battle — particularly within the north — solely to see the group fill the lawless energy vacuum left behind.
Army analysts have mentioned that Hamas could reconstitute itself in these areas as a result of Israel has declined to manage them itself or to switch them to non-Hamas Palestinian management. In Beit Lahia, one other northern city, preventing over the weekend killed at the very least 12 folks, based on Wafa, the official information company of the Palestinian Authority.
Different updates:
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Rafah: U.S. intelligence mentioned that Yahya Sinwar, the highest Hamas chief within the Gaza Strip, was not hiding in Rafah. Such an evaluation may undercut the Israeli rationale for main army operations within the metropolis, from which a U.N. company say that about 300,000 folks had fled.
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Assist: The circulate of meals and items into Gaza has virtually solely dried up over the previous week, based on the U.N.
Lethal floods in Afghanistan
Flash floods have killed greater than 300 folks, destroyed 1000’s of houses and engulfed whole villages, Afghan and U.N. officers mentioned. The floods have been set off by heavy seasonal rains within the northern province of Baghlan, which seems to have suffered the worst devastation, and in at the very least three different provinces.
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In Bangkok, the location of a manufacturing facility that when churned out cigarettes has become an oasis for residents (and birds, bats and mosquito-eating dragonflies), bringing a breath of contemporary air to the megacity’s congested, smoggy middle.
The Australia Letter: Floods reduce off the meals provides of distant Indigenous communities this 12 months, requiring constitution flights to inventory cabinets.
CONVERSATION STARTERS
Britons struggle for his or her apostrophes
A British regional council prompted fairly a stir when it started eradicating apostrophes from avenue indicators for thoroughfares like St. Mary’s Stroll and King’s Highway. In protest of the transfer, somebody drew again an apostrophe.
Officers mentioned that the choice would make the streets simpler to seek for in databases. And a few grammarians mentioned that the apostrophes served no actual objective; one linguist mentioned they might be ornamental and complicated, just like the “fish forks” of punctuation.
However some proponents are livid. The chairman of the Apostrophe Safety Society, a tiny group in Britain, mentioned that phasing out apostrophes was “cultural vandalism.”
“What’s subsequent?” a former trainer mentioned, including, “We simply use emojis?”
