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"When you are in a punishment cell and don't have much entertainment, you can always amuse yourself by corresponding with the prison administration," Navalny said. The letters showed that Navalny asked for an eclectic range of items, including, variously, a bottle of moonshine, a balalaika, a staff, two pouches of cheap tobacco, a kimono and a black belt. "The question of awarding eastern martial arts qualifications is not handled by the administration," the prison wrote back on April 28. In response to Navalny's request for a permit to keep a kangaroo, the prison wrote: "The animal identified in your request relates to the double crested-marsupial... The prison wrote coldly that massage chairs were not provided.

Persons: Alexei Navalny, Navalny, Nikolai Gogol, Guy Faulconbridge, Philippa Fletcher Organizations: IK, Karate, Thomson Locations: MOSCOW, Melekhovo, Moscow

"The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices," the FSB said in a statement. The FSB said the plot showed "close cooperation" between Apple and the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. agency responsible for cryptographic and communications intelligence and security. The FSB provided no evidence that Apple cooperated with, or had any awareness of, the spying campaign. "The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in U.S.-made mobile phones," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said all officials in the presidential administration knew that gadgets such as iPhones were "absolutely transparent."

Persons: Russia Apple, NSA Kaspersky, Apple, Eugene Kaspersky, Igor Kuznetsov, Kaspersky, Dmitry Peskov, Guy Faulconbridge, Raphael Satter, James Pearson, Zeba Siddiqui, Mark Potter, Andrew Heavens, Matthew Lewis, Diane Craft Organizations: NSA, Apple, Federal Security Service, FSB, Apple Inc, Soviet, National Security Agency, Twitter, Reuters, NATO, Harvard University's, Federal Guards Service, Kremlin, Kommersant, San, Thomson Locations: Moscow, Russia, MOSCOW, Soviet Union, U.S, Israel, Syria, China, States, United Kingdom, Australia, Washington, London, San Francisco

The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that several thousand Apple phones had been infected, including those of domestic Russian subscribers. "The FSB has uncovered an intelligence action of the American special services using Apple mobile devices," the FSB said in a statement. 'SOFTWARE VULNERABILITIES'The FSB said the plot showed the close relationship between Apple and the NSA, the U.S. agency responsible for U.S. cryptographic and communications intelligence and security. "The hidden data collection was carried out through software vulnerabilities in U.S.-made mobile phones," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement. Officials in Russia, which Western spies says has constructed a very sophisticated domestic surveillance structure, have long questioned the security of U.S. technology.

Persons: Vladimir Putin, Putin, Sergei Kiriyenko, Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones, Mark Potter Organizations: NSA, Apple, Russia Apple, Russia, Federal Security Service, . National Security Agency, FSB, Soviet, NATO, U.S, Harvard University's, Officials, Kremlin, KGB, Kommersant, Thomson Locations: Russia, Russian, Soviet Union, Israel, Syria, China, U.S, United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Ukraine

MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) - Russia's most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Wednesday that he had asked prosecutors to investigate whether senior Russian defence officials had committed any "crime" before or during the war in Ukraine. Prigozhin's request is his most blatant public challenge to date against President Vladimir Putin's top military brass, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The 61-year-old restaurateur-turned-mercenary has spent months insulting both Shoigu and Gerasimov, who are leading Russia's war effort, for alleged treachery. He says loyalty to Putin is part of his political stance, which he summed up as: "I love my motherland, I serve Putin, Shoigu should be judged and we will fight on." Prigozhin is not directly challenging Putin but rather playing a jester role and acting with the approval of those dismayed by the military's conduct of the war, officials, diplomats and analysts have told Reuters.

Persons: Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin's, Sergei Shoigu, Staff Valery Gerasimov, Prigozhin, PUTIN'S, Wagner, Putin, Russia's, Guy Faulconbridge, Gareth Jones Organizations: Staff, Investigative Committee, Russian Federation, Defence Ministry, Reuters, Thomson Locations: MOSCOW, Ukraine, Bakhmut

[1/2] An ambulance and firefighting vehicles are parked outside a multi-storey apartment block following a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, May 30, 2023. Drone attacks deep inside Russia have intensified in recent weeks, with strikes on oil pipeline installations and even the Kremlin earlier this month that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Some filmed a drone being shot down and a plume of smoke rising over the Moscow skyline. MOSCOW UNDER ATTACKIt was unclear how President Vladimir Putin will react to the attack on Moscow, which brings the war in Ukraine to the capital of the world's biggest nuclear power. Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region, said on the Telegram channel that several drones were shot down on their approach to Moscow.

☆ Britain is getting so desperate to tame inflation it’s talking about food price caps
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-30 | by ( Hanna Ziady | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Food inflation dipped slightly to 15.4% in May, but that’s still the second-highest rate on record. But chocolate and coffee prices are rising as global commodity prices soar, British Retail Consortium CEO Helen Dickinson said. Price controls anyone? “The current food price shock does not warrant such an intervention,” he added. Brexit is responsible for about a third of UK food price inflation since 2019, according to researchers at the London School of Economics.

MOSCOW, May 28 (Reuters) - Russia's most powerful mercenary said on Sunday he was convinced that senior Kremlin officials had banned reporting about him on state media, cautioning that such a misleading approach would lead to a backlash from the Russian people within months. Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, is the most striking member of President Vladimir Putin's circle to gain widespread notoriety in the 15-month war in Ukraine. In a sign of just how far Prigozhin is perceived to have breached the taboos of Putin's Russia, state television ignored the fall of Bakhmut for 20 hours, and did not air Prigozhin's victory speech. Asked about what appeared to be a ban on coverage of him on state media, Prigozhin used a series of Russian proverbs to poke fun at those responsible: "What is forbidden is always sweeter." After Prigozhin claimed victory on Bakhmut, it took the Kremlin 10 hours to release a 36-word statement congratulating Wagner and armed forces units for "liberating" Artyomovsk, the Soviet-era name for Bakhmut used by Russia.

Biden said on Friday he had an "extremely negative" reaction to reports that Russia has moved ahead with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. The U.S. State Department denounced the Russian nuclear deployment plan. Tactical nuclear weapons are used for tactical gains on the battlefield, and are usually smaller in yield than the strategic nuclear weapons designed to destroy U.S., European or Russian cities. "The United States has been for decades maintaining a large arsenal of its nuclear weapons in Europe. Together with its NATO allies it participates in nuclear sharing arrangements and trains for scenarios of nuclear weapons use against our country."

To be sure, the April inflation data hit the UK debt market like a thunderbolt. While the headline consumer price inflation rate dropped to 8.7% from 10.1% in March, as energy prices ebbed, that was still far higher than forecast and core inflation rates hit their highest in 31 years at just under 7%. And a chief concern for many households is ongoing annual food price inflation still near 20%. Sterling and real yield spreadsNew UK gilt shock? Using 5-year real yields from the index-linked bond market, that premium jumped almost 40bp this week to its highest since last October.

Climate change drove heat in the city to a record-breaking 48C (118F) in 2016. While traditional insurance can take months to pay, with so-called "parametric" insurance there is no need to prove losses. At annual climate talks in Egypt last year, nonprofits urged richer nations to help finance parametric insurance as a way of compensating victims of worsening weather extremes. At the moment, insurance schemes in the developing world are largely subsidized by nonprofit groups, national governments, or wealthy countries. Insurance payouts allow them to buy things like gloves to protect their hands from scorching hot metal tools, or fans to stay cool and avoid heat exhaustion.

☆ Opinion | What Americans Don’t Understand About China
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Peter Coy | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It sometimes comes as a surprise to Europeans and Americans that Chinese people who have seen and enjoyed the best of the West nevertheless prefer China. Jin doesn’t ignore China’s faults and failings in “The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism,” which was published on Tuesday. But she tells a nuanced story that deserves attention at a time of extreme tension between China and the United States. Consider this, for example: The United States is a democracy, and China isn’t, of course. Similarly, 93 percent of Chinese participants valued security over freedom; only 28 percent of Americans did so.

☆ Shifting to life post-Covid: How remote work transformed this city in the Midwest
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-13 | by ( Alex Harring | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Michigan Avenue in Lansing, Michigan. said Cathleen Edgerly, executive director of Downtown Lansing, Inc., a nonprofit working on the culture and sustainability of the downtown. Lansing had the largest share of job listings in March with at least one day of remote work of any city, according to WFH Map. And an analysis by Bloomberg found remote work has cost Manhattan more than $12 billion annually. Lansing, Michigan, USA at the Michigan State Capitol during the evening.

☆ Fact Check-UK COVID vaccine offer for vulnerable young children not mandatory
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The offer of COVID vaccination for very young children is voluntary and specifically targeted to children who are most at risk from COVID, according to the government’s April announcement of the new policy. After Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended that young children in clinical risk groups should be offered COVID vaccination, some social media users responded with outrage. JCVI ADVICEThe UK advice does not include all young children. In fact, the prioritisation of COVID-19 vaccination for clinically vulnerable children explains higher mortality rates seen during the pandemic among vaccinated children as compared with unvaccinated children (here and here). There is no evidence the vaccine is unsafe for infants and young children, according to experts and health regulators.

☆ Charles' coronation seized on by republicans as chance to ditch monarchy
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Andrew Macaskill | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

They believe Charles' accession to the throne presents their best chance of ending the monarchy, which traces its history back more than 1,000 years. Anti-monarchy protests are relatively small, and polls show the majority of Britons still want a royal family. Charles wants a slimmed-down monarchy which would be less expensive to run and his mother said the royal family only existed with the support of the people. Demonstrations against the monarchy are also planned in the capitals of Scotland and Wales on the day of the coronation. "Younger people are moving away from the royal family in their droves," he said.

The risks of doing dealsA British regulator’s decision to reject Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover bid for Activision Blizzard stunned many who had expected the deal to go through. That’s especially because moves this month by the agency, the Competition and Markets Authority, suggested that the transaction might pass muster. Though it narrowed the scope of its Activision deal inquiry to just one issue, cloud gaming, the C.M.A. The tribunal that will weigh Microsoft’s appeal will examine mainly whether the regulator followed proper procedure. That institutional advantage positions the agency as one of the world’s most influential antitrust enforcers, alongside those in the United States and the European Union.

☆ Where Were the Gatekeepers?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Amanda Taub | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Monday, I was having a conversation with Pavithra Suryanarayan, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, about what fuels far-right populism, when she suddenly stopped, midsentence, and gasped. She had just seen a news alert, she told me: the TV host Tucker Carlson had been fired from Fox News. The moment was an object lesson in the bigger point that she hammered home in our conversation: that to understand the rise of far-right populist politicians around the world, we need to think about institutions that did not check them. Much of Suryanaryan’s work has focused on the reasons that expanding democratic rights often produces a political backlash from groups that fear losing their status and privileges in a more equal society. (Such as the response of White Southerners in the United States during the Civil Rights era, for instance, and members of the Brahmin caste in India after the government instituted affirmative action in the 1990s.)

Russia has 110 official billionaires in the list, up 22 from last year, according to Forbes' Russian edition, which said their total wealth increased to $505 billion from $353 billion when the 2022 list was announced. "Last year's rating results were also influenced by apocalyptic predictions about the Russian economy," Forbes said, adding that the total wealth of Russia's billionaires was $606 billion in 2021, before the war began. The price of Urals oil, the lifeblood of the Russian economy, averaged $76.09 per barrel in 2022, up from $69 in 2021. Many Russian billionaires cast Western sanctions as a clumsy, and even racist, tool. New Russian names in the Forbes list include billionaires who made their money in snacks, supermarkets, chemicals, building and pharmaceuticals, indicating that Russian domestic demand has remained strong despite the sanctions.

REUTERS/Lindsey WassonLONDON, April 20 (Reuters) - People all over the world lost confidence in the importance of routine childhood vaccines against killer diseases like measles and polio during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from UNICEF. In 52 of the 55 countries surveyed, the public perception of vaccines for children declined between 2019 and 2021, the UN agency said. The picture on vaccine confidence varied globally, according to the UNICEF report, its flagship annual State of the World's Children. The report stressed that vaccine confidence can easily shift and the results may not indicate a long-term trend. The data was collected by the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

April 19 (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday accused Ukraine of sabotaging the Black Sea grain deal by demanding bribes from ship owners to register new vessels and carry out inspections under the cover of a deal the United Nations hopes could ease a global food crisis. There was no immediate comment on the allegation, levelled by Russia's Foreign Ministry, from Ukraine which has blamed Moscow for problems with the agreement. Russia and Ukraine both say the deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July, is in danger of collapsing just as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have imposed import bans on Ukrainian grain. The problems were caused "solely as a result of the actions of Ukrainian representatives, as well as U.N. representatives, who, apparently, do not want or cannot resist them," she said. Russia and Ukraine are two of the world's key agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets.

Summary Putin visits Russian-held UkrainePutin discusses war with Kherson commandersUnclear when the visit took placePutin sits beside General TeplinskyApril 18 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has visited military headquarters in Russian-controlled Ukraine, the Kremlin said, where he discussed the war with a general from Russia's airborne troops who has reportedly taken up a powerful new role in the invasion. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, launched on Feb. 24, 2022, has triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two. Dressed in a heavy blue jacket, Putin, 70, was shown on Russian state television descending from a military helicopter in Russian-held Ukraine and greeting senior military commanders. Colonel-General Mikhail Teplinsky, commander of Russia's airborne troops, sat to Putin's right while Colonel-General Oleg Makarevich sat to Putin's left. "Teplinsky, commander of Russia’s corps of airborne troops, the VDV, has highly likely returned to a major role in Ukraine," British military intelligence said.

☆ One chart shows how many more hours married women spend on housework than their husbands in 5 different types of opposite-sex marriages
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Pew Research Center compared the hours opposite-sex married couples spend on housework and caregiving. The chart below shows the average time spent per week on housework and caregiving duties for five different kinds of income arrangements for opposite-sex marriages. Wives in these wife-primary-earner marriages spend about 11 hours a week on housework and caregiving compared to their husbands' almost 8 hours a week. 57% of US adults said American society values the "contributions men make at work." Men and women pretty much said the same thing — 55% of men and 58% of women answered this way.

☆ These are the top 10 cities to find a remote job
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Jennifer Liu | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Fewer people are working from home today compared with the last few years, but remote work is continuing to reshape major cities across the U.S. Nationally, roughly 12% of job openings explicitly allow remote work at least one day a week, according to data from WFH Map, a group of economists and researchers measuring the lasting impacts of remote work, and Lightcast, a labor-market analytics firm with access to online job postings across the nation. Markets with labor shortages and a high share of job vacancies are more likely to have openings that will allow remote work, compared with cities where hiring has returned to pre-pandemic levels. When compared with international counterparts, the share of remote job openings in the U.S. is similar to what's being offered in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, hovering around 11% to 12%. The U.K., meanwhile, stands out with about 18% of jobs open to remote work as of February.

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.

One Feb. 23, 2023 assessment, titled "Battle for the Donbas Region Likely Heading for a Stalemate Throughout 2023", says Russia is unlikely to be able to take that part of east Ukraine. WARY OF STIRRING CHINAOne U.S. document posted on Russian Telegram channels had the casualty figures crudely altered to reduce Russian casualties and increase Ukrainian casualties. The document on casualties is embossed with emblems of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Intelligence Agency. The documents show that while Russia has overall numerical superiority in some areas, Ukraine has more tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs) in theatre than Russia. Ukraine has 802 tanks and 3,498 APCs fielded, while Russia has 419 tanks and 2,928 APCs in theatre.

☆ The 'Robinhood of passports' says it's a mistake to ban golden visas — make them fund affordable housing and refugee programs instead
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Hannah Towey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Portugal and Ireland recently announced they are shutting down their "golden visa" programs. Their less-advantageous siblings, "golden visas," provide temporary residence permits in exchange for investment, as opposed to permanent citizenship. A golden taxInstead of banning golden passports and visas outright, countries should adjust the investment requirements to match their current needs, Arton says. A scandalous historyBut golden passports don't only raise the issue of inequality, the European Commission argues, they also pose a threat to national security. Last year, 282 of Ireland's 306 golden visa applications came from Chinese citizens, The Irish Times reported.

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