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☆ Meet the woman who engineered Russia's wartime economy and helped secure another term for Putin
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-02 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina has played a key role in stabilizing Russia's sanctions-hit economy. It's also aimed at the woman behind him: Elvira Nabiullina, the country's central bank governor, who plays a chief role in keeping Russia's wartime economy ticking. At the time, she was the first woman to lead a Group of Eight, or G8, central bank. In 2015, Euromoney, a finance trade publication, named Nabiullina Central Bank Governor of the Year. In December, she issued a warning that Russia's economy was at risk of overheating.

Persons: Elvira Nabiullina, —, Putin, It's, Nabiullina, Daniel McDowell, McDowell, wined, Christine Lagarde, Nabiullina —, Richard Portes, Portes —, Portes, Anders Åslund, Åslund, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Yaroslav Kuzminov, Kuzminov, Nabiullina's, Alan Harvey, Herman Gref —, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, Maxim Shemetov, Michel Camdessus, she's, isn't, Sergei Aleksashenko, Alexei Makarkin, Vladimir Pesnya, Nabiulina, let's Organizations: Ukraine, Service, Russian, KGB, Syracuse University, Kremlin, International Monetary Fund, US, London Business School, Moscow Times, Bloomberg, Higher School of Economics, —, Moscow State University, SNS, USSR, Industrial Union Board, Gref, Central Bank Governor, Nabiullina Central Bank Governor, Banker, Central Banker, IMF, Monetary Fund, Financial Times, Government, Political Technologies, Wall Street Journal, RBC, Politico Europe Locations: Russian, Ukraine, Russia, Brussels, Nabiullina, Swedish, Moscow, Ufa, Central Russia, Tatars, Crimea, Euromoney, Europe, steadying

☆ No One Has Ever Read Genesis Like This
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-06 | by ( Francis Spufford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

READING GENESIS, by Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson’s “Reading Genesis” is a writer’s book, not a scholar’s; it has no footnotes. Its power lies in the particular reading it gives us of one of the world’s foundational texts, which is also one of the foundations of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s mind and faith. We want to know what Robinson thinks of Genesis for the same reason we’d want to know what Tolstoy thought of it. The spirit of God moves on the face of the waters, and eventually, far off in Idaho, the novelist’s bedsheets stir. But the surprising thing about “Reading Genesis,” given that it’s by a writer who can make even nonbelievers feel the presence of the thing they disbelieve, is that it is hardly interested in the numinous.

Persons: Marilynne Robinson, Robinson, Genesis, Tolstoy, Gilead, Jacob, sideshows, herdsmen, ” Locations: Idaho

☆ Before He Was George Orwell, He Was Eric Blair, Police Officer
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( William Boyd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

BURMA SAHIB, by Paul TherouxGeorge Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950, at the age of 46. The word “Orwellian” is as omnipresent as “Kafkaesque.” His two dystopian novel-allegories — “Animal Farm” and “1984” — have sold in the millions around the world. Almost everything that Orwell wrote seems to be in print. But there is one area of his life that is relatively unexplored and full of baffling gaps, not to say mystery. He was still several years removed from becoming “George Orwell” by adopting the nom de plume that would carry his legacy.

Persons: Paul Theroux George Orwell, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, ”, Albert Camus, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Tolstoy, Orwell, Eric Blair, “ George Orwell ”, Paul Theroux Organizations: Eton College Locations: BURMA, Britain, British, Burma, Myanmar

☆ My great-uncle was 70 years older than me. We built a friendship by sending letters to each other.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-21 | by ( Rosalind Moran | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Despite being separated by oceans and years, my great-uncle became a dear friendMy great-uncle was born in 1921, meaning we had an age gap of over 70 years. As someone who also loves languages, writing, and talking to many different people, his undimmed intellectual curiosity proved inspiring to me. An additional ongoing gift from my friendship with my great-uncle is that of writing letters. Since writing to him and realizing how differently — and beautifully — people sometimes express themselves in long-form handwriting, I began writing letters to friends and receiving letters in turn. Some of my friendships now have a precious quality they potentially wouldn't otherwise have were it not for letters.

Persons: —, hadn't, Tolstoy Locations: Cornwall, England, Canberra, Australia, Italy, Europe, Cambridge

☆ I went to college in the US and then enrolled at Oxford. I preferred college life in England with black-tie balls and no testing.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Jennifer Barton Packer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Since my Ukrainian-born mother dreamed of returning to Europe, she begged me to consider transferring to a university in England or France. So I reapplied for the degree I hoped to study and headed off to Somerville College, Oxford, where I would "read" — major in — Modern Languages, French, and Russian. Most of all, it opened my eyes to many differences between US and UK college life. AdvertisementMy college years in England involved a lot of dressing up for fancy-dress-themed "bops," or dances with cheesy music, and black-tie balls. I also learned that my college life in the UK was all-around better than the one I experienced in Vermont.

Persons: Jen, couldn't, they'd, Proust, Tolstoy Organizations: New Yorker, Middlebury College, Somerville College , Oxford, Oxford, University Locations: New, Vermont, Europe, England, France, Paris, St, Petersburg, Russia, —

☆ Christopher Paolini Wanted a Job Involving Dragons, So He Created One
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-02 | by ( Stefano Montali | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the months before Christopher Paolini wrote the book that made him a star in young adult fantasy, he built a hobbit hole. His family self-published the book, and for more than a year, he promoted it as he could, hand-selling copies outside bookstores and giving presentations at schools. Eventually, Carl Hiaasen, a best-selling novelist, picked up a self-published copy at a grocery store while on a family trip to Montana. His stepson — who, according to Hiaasen, said “Eragon” was “better than Harry Potter!” — finished the 500-page book in a day. Hiaasen passed the book to his editor at Random House Children’s Books, connecting Paolini to the New York publishing world.

Persons: Christopher Paolini, He’d, he’d, — Leo Tolstoy, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen, ” Paolini, wasn’t, ”, Eragon, Carl Hiaasen, —, Hiaasen, Eragon ”, Harry Potter, ” — Organizations: Random, New Locations: Paradise Valley, Mont, Montana, Paolini, New York

☆ For Russia’s Pop Star Exiles, a Moral Stand and a Creative Climb
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-24 | by ( Paul Sonne | Alex Marshall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Monetochka was on her way to becoming a superstar in Russia. She had released two hit albums of lyrical pop, secured ad deals with brands including Nike and Spotify, and was set to appear and sing a new song in the opening scene of Netflix’s first original Russian drama, a lush adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina.”But President Vladimir V. Putin’s military action derailed everything. Netflix shelved the series. The big ad deals, which once comprised more than half of Monetochka’s income, disappeared. And, after making a raft of antiwar statements and fleeing Russia, she was branded a foreign agent in January.

Persons: Monetochka, Netflix’s, Leo Tolstoy’s “ Anna Karenina, ”, Vladimir V, — Organizations: Nike, Spotify, Netflix, Melrose Locations: Ukraine, Russia, Russian, Lithuania, New York, U.S

☆ ‘Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros’ Review: A Beautiful Collaboration
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Manohla Dargis | More About Manohla Dargis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Frederick Wiseman’s transporting documentary “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” centers on a dynasty of French chefs who live and work in a pastoral region in central France named Ouches, some 65 miles west of Lyon. The chef Daniel Boulud includes the Troisgros salmon recipe in several of his cookbooks. “Menus-Plaisirs” is Wiseman’s 44th documentary and the first that he’s made since “City Hall” (2020), which notionally focuses on the administration building for the city of Boston. (In between “City Hall” and “Menus-Plaisirs,” he made one of his rare forays into fiction, “A Couple,” about Sophia Tolstoy.) Wiseman directed, edited and served as one of the producers on “Menus-Plaisirs,” which runs a heroic four hours (about a half-hour shorter than “City Hall”!).

Persons: Frederick Wiseman’s, Les, Michel, who’s, Bois, Michel’s, Pierre, Jean, Daniel Boulud, he’s, notionally, ”, Sophia Tolstoy, Wiseman, Le Bois, Marie Organizations: Michelin, “, ” Locations: France, Lyon, Boston, “, Roanne

☆ Your Next 10 Steps After Watching the New ‘Napoleon’ Film
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Victor Mather | More About Victor Mather | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Since you’re already in Paris to see that horse, stop by the Louvre for one of Jacques-Louis David’s masterworks: “Le Sacre de Napoléon” (1807). Far from a stock figure, he is a fully realized person in the novel, displaying egotism, anger and a liking for snuff. If that famously thick book is too much, there are several film versions. Herbert Lom plays Napoleon in a 1956 Hollywood film starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. And Prokofiev wrote an opera that was last seen at the Met in 2008, but is readily available on streaming services.

Persons: Jacques, Louis David’s, Napoléon ”, Napoleon, Pope, Read, Leo Tolstoy’s, ” Napoleon, Herbert Lom, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Prokofiev, William Thackeray’s, George Orwell’s Organizations: Louvre, Notre Dame, Times, Met Locations: Paris, Moscow, Hollywood, Le

Last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision rescinding a five-decade-old right to abortion has reshaped American abortion policy, shifting power to states. Sales of abortion pills in 2022 were up 60%, according to Nikolay Bespalov, development director of the RNC Pharma analytical company. A recent Health Ministry decree restricted circulation of abortion pills, used to terminate pregnancies in the first trimester. Regional authorities have tried to get private clinics to stop offering abortions, with varying success. In Tatarstan, about a third of all private clinics no longer provide them, officials said.

Persons: heartened Dasha, Vladimir Putin, Yakovleva, ”, Michele Rivkin, rescinding, Putin, Mikhail Murashko, Nikolay Bespalov, Yekaterina Hivrich, Irina Fainman, Fainman, Pyotr Tolstoy, Irina Volynets, Lina Zharin, ” Natalya Moskvitina, Moskvitina, Olga Mindolina, Mindolina, Anastasia, “, Lyubov Organizations: Associated Press, Nationwide, Health Ministry, University of North, Supreme, Russian Orthodox Church, Health, AP, Authorities, Lahta Clinic, Conservative, Women Locations: TALLINN, Estonia, Kaliningrad, Russia, U.S, University of North Carolina, Last, Soviet Union, ” State, Ukraine, St . Petersburg, Karelia, Tatarstan, mulling, Chelyabinsk, Mordovia, Voronezh

☆ Tolstoy vs. Trump in 2024
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-29 | by ( Kimberley A. Strassel | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal. She writes editorials, as well as the weekly Potomac Watch political column, from her base in Alaska. Ms. Strassel joined Dow Jones & Co. in 1994, working in the news department of The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels, and then in London. She moved to New York in 1999 and soon thereafter joined the Journal's editorial page, working as a features editor, and then as an editorial writer. An Oregon native, Ms. Strassel earned a bachelor's degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from Princeton University.

Persons: Kimberley Strassel, Strassel Organizations: Wall Street, Potomac Watch, Dow Jones & Co, The, Street, Fox, Sunday, Press, Policy, International Affairs, Princeton University Locations: Kimberley, Alaska, Brussels, London, New York, An Oregon

☆ My Summer With Leo Tolstoy
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Peggy Noonan | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Peggy Noonan is an opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal where her column, "Declarations," has run since 2000. She has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and has taught in the history department at Yale University. Before entering the Reagan White House, Noonan was a producer and writer at CBS News in New York, and an adjunct professor of Journalism at New York University. She was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up there, in Massapequa Park, Long Island, and in Rutherford, New Jersey. In November, 2016 she was named one of the city's Literary Lions by the New York Public Library.

Persons: Peggy Noonan, ”, ” Noonan, Ronald Reagan, Noonan Organizations: Wall, Journal, NBC News, The, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, Yale University, Reagan White House, CBS News, Journalism, New York University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Lions, New York Public Library Locations: New York, Brooklyn , New York, Massapequa Park, Long, Rutherford , New Jersey, Rutherford, New York City

☆ US judge to set trial date for Trump over efforts to overturn 2020 election
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-28 | by ( Sarah N. Lynch | Thomson Reuters | Sarah N. Lynch Is The Lead Reporter For Reuters Covering The U.S. Justice Department Out Of Washington | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Trump, who on Thursday appeared at a Georgia jail to face state criminal charges of trying to overturn his defeat there, is not expected to attend Monday's hearing. Trump has previously lashed out at U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, saying, without evidence, that she is biased against him. In Georgia, where Trump faces racketeering and other state charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat there, District Attorney Fani Willis has asked the court to set a March 4, 2024 date. Last week, a judge agreed to set a trial date of Oct. 23 for Trump co-defendant, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, after he requested a speedy trial. The judge has not yet set a trial date for the other defendants, though Sidney Powell, an attorney who advised Trump and promoted false fraud claims after the election, has also requested a speedy trial.

Persons: Donald Trump, Evelyn Hockstein, Donald Trump's, Jack Smith, Democrat Joe Biden, Trump, Tanya Chutkan, Chutkan, Leo Tolstoy's, Fani Willis, Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Attorney Alvin Bragg, Smith, Sarah N, Lynch, Scott Malone, Bill Berkrot Organizations: Fair, REUTERS, Rights, Washington , D.C, Trump, Democrat, U.S, Washington, House, Attorney, White, Thomson Locations: Iowa, Des Moines , Iowa, U.S, Washington ,, Georgia, New York, Manhattan, Florida, New York , Florida, Washington

☆ Analysis: Donald Trump's $200,000 bond drives home the unique peril of his Georgia indictment
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Stephen Collinson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Trump had to agree, for example, to make no threats on social media against co-defendants, witnesses and the 30 unindicted co-conspirators. The former president has excoriated special counsel Jack Smith, who indicted him twice, on social media and in speeches. Elliot Williams, a former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst, said that the terms were fair and did not infringe on Trump’s rights. Trump’s many late-night social media eruptions will make it hard for observers to believe that he will stick to the conditions to which he’s agreed. By Monday evening, Trump had already posted on his social media network about the bond.

Persons: Donald Trump, Trump, Norm Eisen, Barack Obama, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, he’d, Fani Willis, Geoff Duncan, “ shouldn’t, Duncan, Willis, Scott McAfee, Jack Smith, Tanya Chutkan, Chutkan, Elliot Williams, “, ” Williams, Trump’s, he’s, it’s, Anthony Michael Kreis, CNN’s Brianna Keilar, ” Trump’s, John Eastman, Bond, Ray Smith, Ken Chesebro, Scott Hall, Smith, –, Tolstoy Organizations: CNN, Trump, Democrat, Manhattan, Attorney’s Office, Florida –, Republican, Georgia State University, Conservative, Washington Locations: Atlanta, Milwaukee, Georgia, Fulton County, Washington, Florida, Texas, Washington , DC, Iowa

☆ There's blood in the water after Prigozhin's revolt shattered the façade of Putin's invincibility
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Jason Corcoran | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

It represented the most significant affront to President Vladimir Putin's 23-year reign. It has also fed paranoia and put a spotlight on Aleksey Dyumin, Putin's ex-bodyguard turned governor. A brief and ultimately aborted attempt at a coup d'état by Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin represented the most significant affront to President Vladimir Putin's 23-year reign. President Vladimir Putin (L) and Aleksey Dyumin, the governor of Tula and Putin's former personal bodyguard, in Moscow in 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Tula Governor Aleksey Dyumin visit Russian writer Lev Tolstoy's former home in 2016.

Persons: Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin's, Aleksey Dyumin, Putin's, —, Vladimir Putin —, Prigozhin, Vladimir Fesenko, trundling, Sergey Shoigu, Valery Gerasimov, There's Prigozhin, Wagner, Putin, Belarus —, defenestration, Dyumin, Shoigu, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Svetlov, Igor Girkin, Alexander Lukashenko —, Dyumin's, Dmitry Peskov, Boris Yeltsin, Viktor Yanukoyvch, Girkin, Andrei Gurulyov, Russia's, Lev Tolstoy's, Tatiana Stanovaya, Alexandra Prokopenko, Prokopenko, Sergei Surovikin, Surovikin, Viktor Zolotov, Zolotov, Alexander Lukashenko, Chris Weafer Organizations: Service, Kremlin, Kommersant, Angry Patriots, Russia's First Channel, Prigozhin, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, Central Bank, Washington Post, New York Times, Defense Ministry, Moscow Times, National Guard, Ministry, Macro Locations: Russian, Russia, Rostov, Ukraine, Moscow, Voronezh, Lipetsk, St, Petersburg, Minsk, Belarus, Russia's Tula, Kremlin, Tula, Dyumin's Tula, St Petersburg, Prigozhin, Crimea, Berlin, Novosibirsk, Osipovichi, Africa, Syria

☆ Translating Tolstoy While Inciting Revolution
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( Jennifer Wilson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Over time, Garnett’s detractors would make her out to be a prim and proper smotherer of the wild (male) Russian soul. In Russia, the abolition of serfdom was part of a series of reforms meant to stave off revolution. Stepniak wrote a profile of Zasulich for his book “Underground Russia” (1882), a study of the country’s new revolutionaries. In England, “Underground Russia” was a smash hit, going through three printings the year it was translated. In a 1991 biography of Constance, Richard Garnett, the pair’s grandson, writes that “the young lovers had a row about Land Nationalization.”

Persons: prim, Nabokov, Gogol, “, Kornei Chukovsky, Garnett, Stepniak, ”, uncouth, Constance Black, Alexander II, Ivan Turgenev’s, Vera Zasulich, Zasulich, Russia ”, Clementina, Eleanor Marx, Karl’s, William Morris’s, Edward Garnett, Edward, Constance, Richard Garnett Organizations: British Museum, Russia, Fabian Society Locations: Russian, Soviet, Crimean, Russia, Brighton, St . Petersburg, Europe, England, London

☆ A Pacifist Sect From Russia Is Shaken by War, and Modernity
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-04 | by ( Dan Bilefsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When he was growing up among the Doukhobors, a pacifist religious group that emigrated to Canada from Tsarist Russia, J.J. Verigin would sometimes arrive home from school to find naked elderly women trying to burn down his family’s house. One attempt, in 1969, succeeded, lamented Mr. Verigin, 67, who recently recounted the episode. A blaze destroyed precious family artifacts, including correspondence between his great-great-grandfather, a prominent Doukhobor leader, and the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, an early admirer of the Doukhobors’ pacifism and Christian morality. The elderly women, Mr. Verigin explained, were part of a small and radical splinter group within the Doukhobors who periodically stripped naked and lit buildings on fire to protest land ownership and what they viewed as excessive materialism. Some among those charged with arson had another motive, he said: getting deported to Mother Russia.

Persons: Verigin, Leo Tolstoy, Russia Locations: Canada, Tsarist Russia, Russian

☆ Will Ripped Jeans Ever Go Out of Style?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Vanessa Friedman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I am perplexed by the ripped jeans looks. And if not, how do you wear ripped jeans with style?— Connie, Marblehead, Mass. The retailers sent the jeans back. That was 40 years ago, and, as Mr. Martens pointed out, distressed styles have helped power Diesel’s parent company to revenues of more than a billion euros last year. Mr. Bravado and Ms. D’Amore believe such one-off distressed jeans have reached the status of “timeless,” like the white shirt.

☆ CIA launches video to recruit Russian spies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Alex Marquardt | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The CIA first posted the video on Telegram, which ends with instructions on how to get in touch with the CIA anonymously and securely. The video is also being posted to its other social media platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. It appeals to their sense of patriotism and plays on Russian culture, quoting lines from Leo Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. The emotional two-minute video shows different Russians going about their lives, appearing to contemplate major decisions. Monday’s video mirrors a more blunt outreach on social media by the CIA a year ago, two months into the war in Ukraine.

☆ Slava Zaitsev, Enduring Soviet-Era Fashion Designer, Dies at 85
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-13 | by ( Penelope Green | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Slava Zaitsev, an effervescent and enduring Soviet-era fashion designer, once called the “Red Dior” by the Western press, whose over-the-top theatrical creations and persona made him a go-to couturier at home, died on April 30 in Shchyolkovo, Russia. His longtime friend Tatiana Sorokko, a Russian-born model and journalist, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by internal bleeding that resulted from an ulcer. Mr. Zaitsev died just two days before Valentin Yudashkin, a pupil of his who was also known for his sumptuous creations, and who found greater success in the West than he did, died of cancer at 59. Mr. Zaitsev gave color, sparkle and opulence to a generation raised in drab Soviet gray, the uniform of the proletariat, by combining Western bling with nods to traditional Russian folk costumes and nostalgic references to Pasternak and Tolstoy. He was the first designer, in pre-perestroika days, to be allowed to put his name on his work, which he first did in 1982.

☆ Legendary Female Artists on the Younger Women Who Inspire Them
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

The Artist’s Mind What it feels like for female artists to wrestle with ambition, ego, ambivalence and inheritance. That isolation has, historically, been especially true for women artists, some of the most celebrated of whom have seen “writer” or “painter” or “filmmaker” treated as a secondary part of their identity. For this issue, we asked legendary female artists to tell us about a younger woman whose work excites them and gives them hope. But for the current generation of women artists, who have come of age with models who more closely resemble them, identity seems more like a source of community than a trap. Women artists, born into a Babylon of exclusion and possibility, reveal that creative inheritance is as promiscuous as legal inheritance is strict.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, denies the espionage charges. When asked by the judge if he needed translation, Gershkovich said in Russian that he understood everything. The Kremlin has said Gershkovich, the first U.S. journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War, was caught "red-handed". "He is reading a lot in prison - Russian literature in the original Russian," Nozhkina told Reuters, adding that he was reading Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece "War and Peace" about the French invasion of Russia in 1812. Asked about the prison food, Nozhkina said Gershkovich was being given porridge in the mornings and that the food was normal.

RISE TO PROMINENCEA former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs which exposed what he said was vast corruption across the Russian elite. Navalny has been detained countless times for organising public rallies, and prosecuted repeatedly on charges including corruption, embezzlement and fraud. Putin dismissed the investigation as a smear, saying: "If someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off." KEY NAVALNY QUOTES:ON THE UKRAINE WAR:"This is a stupid war which your Putin started," Navalny told an appeal court in Moscow via video link from a corrective penal colony in 2022. ON PUTIN:"Corruption is the foundation of contemporary Russia, it is the foundation of Mr. Putin’s political power," Navalny told Reuters in an interview in 2011.

☆ Why hasn't U.S. poverty improved in 50 years? Pulitzer-prize winning author Matthew Desmond has an answer
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Annie Nova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

In his new book, "Poverty, by America," sociologist Matthew Desmond proposes a reason for that stagnation: We benefit from it. His last book, "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. I think many of us can go about our daily lives only confronting poverty from the car window or in the news. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwardsAN: So you think there should be fewer tax breaks like the home mortgage interest deduction and more policies to help poor Americans? Matthew Desmond sociologist and authorAN: Thinking that poverty in the U.S. is avoidable makes its existence feel so much worse.

☆ Russian soldier describes turning on his country to fight for Ukraine, driven by disgust at Putin's invasion: 'I've killed a lot of them'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Mia Jankowicz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A Russian soldier fighting to defend Ukraine says he's killed many of his own countrymen in the war. The New York Times gained access to the little-known Free Russia Legion in Ukraine. The units have been kept under wraps due to the sensitivity of their role, the newspaper said. I do my job and I've killed a lot of them," he told the Times. They aren't Russian," he told the newspaper.

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