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How I decolonized my Russian mind and retook Kyiv

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

How I decolonized my Russian mind and retook KyivUkrainians are responding to Vladimir Putin’s assault by reclaiming our identity from those who sought to erase it.Soviet symbols were never meant to be just a part of history, but an act of cultural annihilation toward Ukraine | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign up here.KYIV — My city is changing so fast that I am failing to keep up sometimes. It seems like only yesterday that I hopped on a tram on a street named after the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaieva. Today, that street boasts the name of Alexandra Ekster, an acclaimed international artist who was born in Poland, worked in Paris, married a lawyer from Kyiv and incorporated Ukrainian folk art into her avant-garde paintings.Listen to the storyHear the author, Veronika Melkozerova, read her story aloud. This recording was do...

Baby dies after pregnant woman shot while on bus in Holyoke

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

A baby died after its pregnant mother was shot while riding a bus in Holyoke Wednesday, the Hampden County District Attorney’s announced. The DA’s office said the shooting happened around 12:30 p.m. in the 100 block of Sargeant Street. The pregnant woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition after the shooting, according to the DA’s office. Officials said the woman’s infant was delivered and needed life-saving medical services. In an update late Wednesday afternoon, the DA’s office said the infant had died. The DA’s office said the incident appeared to have been part of an altercation between three male suspects. Officials said investigators believe one gunshot hit the pregnant woman while she was on a public bus, adding that the woman was not involved in the altercation.The DA’s office said all involved suspects “are believed to have been identified and transported to nearby hospitals and are in custody.”The incident remained under investigation as of We...

Nobel Prize in literature to be announced in Stockholm

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize in literature will be announced Thursday, with the new laureate, or laureates, joining an illustrious list of past winners that ranges from Toni Morrison to Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre — who turned down the prize in 1964.This year’s winner or winners will be known at 1 p.m. (1100 GMT), assuming there is no slip-up similar to Wednesday, when a press release divulging the names of the three chemistry laureates was sent to Swedish media hours before the official press event to unveil the winners.Last year, French author Annie Ernaux won the prize for what the prize-giving Swedish Academy called “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.Ernaux was just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates. The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated.On Wednesday, the che...

Shelling in northwestern Syria kills at least 5 civilians, activists and emergency workers say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

IDLIB, Syria (AP) — The Syrian government early Thursday shelled a village in the rebel-held northwestern part of the country, killing at least five civilians, activists and emergency workers said.The shelling, which comes amid a rise in strikes in the rebel-held enclave in recent days, hit a family house on the outskirts of the the village of Kafr Nouran in western Aleppo province, according to opposition-held northwestern Syria’s civil defense organization known as the White Helmets.The dead included an elderly woman and three of her daughters and her son, said Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Nine others from the family were injured, it said. Neither Syria nor its key military ally Russia commented on the shelling, but Damascus says strikes in the northwestern province target armed insurgent groups. The Syrian pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said the Syrian army had targeted the al-Qaeda-linked militant group Hayat Tahrir al Sham in ...

Pattern Change Brings Sharp Cooling Following Warmest October Open In Chicago On Record; Date Of First Snowflakes Growing Closer...

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

Pattern Change Brings Sharp Cooling to MidwestOur run of ABOVE NORMAL TEMPS—five of them with daytime highs in the 80s—is ending. This JET STREAM FORECAST shows why. Steering winds are shifting in from Canada collapsing the unseasonable dome of warm air which has brought July-level temps to Chicago since this past Saturday.The dome of warm air has produced Chicago's WARMEST OCTOBER OPEN in 153 years!The NOAA SATELLITES folks post the following TRUE COLOR IMAGES—the first from this past August 31st—the second from yesterday (Tuesday, October 3rd)—and CHECK OUT COLOR CHANGE as we move into fall color season.

EU awards tender for JUPITER Exascale Supercomputer for breakthrough solutions to accelerate drug development, emergency response and climate action

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has announced the procurement for JUPITER. Once in place, JUPITER will be the most powerful computer in Europe. Moreover, as the first system in Europe to achieve exascale performance, i.e. the ability to execute over one billion billion calculations per second, it will place the EU as a world leader in supercomputing. Supported by a total EU contribution of €500 million, the new supercomputer will be located and operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) in Germany.Following its installation and set-up in the coming months, the JUPITER system is expected to be accessible to a wide range of European users from the end of 2024. It will help supercomputing researchers make scientific breakthroughs and contribute to finding solutions in climate change monitoring, drug and material discovery, and the need for better emergency response systems. The configuration of an additional mid-range supercomputer, Daedal...

Three-bedroom home in Dublin sells for $1.7 million

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

4462 Mazzoni Terrace – Google Street ViewA spacious house located in the 4400 block of Mazzoni Terrace in Dublin has new owners. The 2,019-square-foot property, built in 2012, was sold on Aug. 7, 2023. The $1,656,000 purchase price works out to $820 per square foot. The layout of this two-story house consists of three bedrooms and three baths. Additionally, the home comes with a two-car garage, allowing for convenient vehicle storage and additional storage space.Additional houses have recently been sold nearby:In June 2023, a 2,601-square-foot home on Lee Thompson Street in Dublin sold for $1,700,500, a price per square foot of $654. The home has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.On Cherico Lane, Dublin, in April 2023, a 2,658-square-foot home was sold for $1,700,000, a price per square foot of $640. The home has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.A 2,737-square-foot home on the 3200 block of Vittoria Loop in Dublin sold in November 2022, for $1,550,000, a price per square foot of $566. The home h...

Typhoon Koinu injures 190 and brings record-breaking winds to Taiwan

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Typhoon Koinu swept southern Taiwan on Thursday, injuring 190 people but causing no deaths as it brought pounding rain and record-breaking winds to the island, leading to school and office closures.Koinu, which means “puppy” in Japanese, made landfall early Thursday in Cape Eluanbi, the southernmost tip of Taiwan, and is expected to weaken as it moves west toward Guangdong and Fujian provinces in southern China.The typhoon brought the fastest wind ever recorded in Taiwan as it approached on Wednesday night. A weather monitoring station on the outlying Orchid Island, southeast of the main island, measured a gust of 342.7 kph (212.9 mph) at 9:53 p.m., as well as sustained winds that reached 198.7 kph (123.5 kph) at 9:40 p.m. Both values set all-time highs since Taiwan began keeping records of wind speeds in 1897, said Huang Chia-mei, head of the Central Weather Administration’s Taitung Weather Station, according to the official Central News Agency.The device meas...

2023 va camino de ser el año más caluroso, ya que septiembre bate récords de calor

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

(CNN) — Puede que el hemisferio norte esté entrando en el otoño, pero el calor extremo no ha dado tregua. Nuevos datos muestran que el mes pasado fue el septiembre más caluroso (el cuarto mes consecutivo de un calor sin precedentes), lo que ubica a 2023 firmemente en camino de ser el año más caluroso de la historia.Septiembre superó el récord mensual anterior establecido en 2020 por la asombrosa cifra de 0,5 grados Celsius, según datos publicados este miércoles por el Servicio de Cambio Climático Copernicus de la Unión Europea. Nunca hubo un mes tan anormalmente caluroso desde que comenzaron los registros de Copérnico en 1940.“Las temperaturas sin precedentes para la época del año observadas en septiembre –tras un verano récord– han batido récords por una cantidad extraordinaria”, dijo Samantha Burgess, subdirectora de Copernicus, en un comunicado.El calor extremo golpea gran parte de Sudamérica… y apenas es el final del invierno australSeptiembre se sintió m...

UK says ‘retain and explain’ statues of slave traders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:11:36 GMT

LONDON — Museums and other cultural institutions in the U.K. have been told to “resist being driven by any politics or agenda” when they decide what to do with controversial monuments.New guidance published by the U.K. government’s Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer recommends a strategy of “retain and explain” for relics that have come under fire for their links to the slave trade or colonialism — a move that may anger campaigners seeking to remove such items.In 2020, activists dropped the statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Harbor, amid the global Black Lives Matter protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd in the U.S.Other monuments linked to colonial Britain, including a statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University, have been subject to campaigns calling for their removal.But the government — helped by academics and heritage experts on its Heritage Advisory Board — has instead argued that such monuments shoul...