"Ukraine launched a major drone attack on Russia’s St. Petersburg to coincide with the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The purpose was obviously to humiliate Russia in front of its many international attendees, which included US State Department personnel and foreign dignitaries.
...
The problem is, as is usual for Ukraine, the attacks were more style over substance, as satellite photos showed minimal damage to the St. Petersburg oil terminal."
👀
"As jet fuel prices surge amid geopolitical shocks in the Middle East, a quiet laboratory advance in Shanghai has taken on fresh urgency. Scientists at the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have demonstrated a promising iron-based catalyst — modified with potassium and aluminum — that improves the direct hydrogenation of carbon dioxide into long-chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet fuel."
"France is watching one of its own monsters crawl out of the shadows. In a sealed Paris courtroom, twenty-two men sit in the dock. They stand accused of turning a quiet Masonic lodge into a private murder-and-intimidation franchise. The indictment reads like a disturbing merger between active officers from the DGSE, France’s foreign-intelligence service (the French CIA), veterans of the DGSI, the domestic-intelligence agency often compared to the FBI, street cops, ex-spooks now posing as “security consultants,” lodge bigwigs, businessmen, and hired muscle. What started as men in white gloves calling each other “brother” allegedly became a shadow service that sold surveillance, beatings, and killings to anyone with a grudge and enough cash."
"Before dawn on May 21, masked men entered Sameeha Rasheed’s farm in Masafer Yatta, a spread of Palestinian hamlets pressed into the dry hills south of Yatta in the occupied West Bank. They took the family’s guard dogs first, removing the alarm before they removed the animals. Then they herded 45 sheep into the darkness. The animals were Rasheed’s preparation for the Eid al-Adha sacrifice. They were also her income. Her husband has cancer. Without the sheep, she has nothing to pay for his treatment."
"To transform “mining rents into a lever for sustainable development and economic sovereignty for the benefit of the people of Burkina Faso,” its Council of Ministers decreed the establishment of the Burkina Faso Sovereign Mining Investment Fund (FSMIB) on 21 May."
"Kartapolov sent reverberations of eye-rolls and disgust through Russian channels after he announced that the Verkhovna Rada and President’s Office on Bankova are not infact “decision-making” centers and Russia will not be striking them."
PBS FRONTLINE compiles a powerful highlight reel of Trump pledging "no new wars" on the campaign trail.
(What apparently nobody noticed, he meant "no, new wars"...)