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U.S. Preparing More Sanctions Against Russia, Sullivan Says

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s national security adviser said on Sunday that the United States was preparing more sanctions against Russia in response to the poisoning of Aleksei A. Navalny, the country’s most prominent opposition leader, days after Mr. Biden attended his first face-to-face summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin.

“We are preparing another package of sanctions to apply in this case,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring to Mr. Navalny’s treatment.

Mr. Sullivan was vague when pressed on the timing of the sanctions or what they would include, saying only that

John Bercow, Central Figure in Brexit Drama as U.K. Speaker, Switches to Labour

Mr. Bercow also was accused during his career of bullying members of his staff, claims that he denied. He stepped down in 2019.

Mr. Bercow is a strong critic of Mr. Johnson, a champion of Brexit whose rise has coincided with an exodus of pro-European Union politicians from the Conservative Party. Mr. Bercow told The Observer newspaper that the Conservatives under Mr. Johnson had become “reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic.”

“The conclusion I have reached is that this government needs to be replaced,” he said. “The reality is that the Labour Party is the only vehicle that can

Video of Montreal Police Kneeling on Black Teenager Spurs Outcry

MONTREAL — For some Canadians, the 90-second video evoked memories of George Floyd: A white police officer appears to be kneeling on the neck of a Black teenager who is face down on the ground on a Montreal street.

The police said on Saturday that they were investigating what happened after a video of the encounter drew an outcry from politicians and human rights advocates, many of whom expressed alarm over the way the 14-year-old appears to have been restrained.

The Montreal police said that the encounter took place on June 10 after officers were called to the scene of

A Roadblock for Iran’s President-Elect: He’s on the U.S. Sanctions List

At a 2019 rally for commanders of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ebrahim Raisi, the conservative head of the country’s judicial system at the time, vowed to dismember corrupt Iranians and praised the Guards for shooting down an American drone.

“We will not only cut off the fingers but chop off the arms of the corrupt,” Mr. Raisi said at the time, according to videos on Iranian media, adding that the downing of the drone had helped shift the country’s mood “to defiance instead of negotiations.”

Now Mr. Raisi, a 60-year-old hard-line cleric and close ally of the country’s

U.N. General Assembly Demands Myanmar Junta End Coup and Stop the Killings

The United Nations General Assembly sought to ostracize Myanmar’s ruling generals on Friday with an emphatic rebuke, demanding they end the five-month-old military takeover, stop killing opponents and free imprisoned civilian leaders.

The 193-member body also called for an arms embargo on Myanmar and requested unimpeded humanitarian access to stop the country’s slide into poverty, dysfunction and despair.

The adoption of a resolution containing these demands by a vote of 119 to one, with 36 abstentions and 37 members not voting, was not the overwhelming consensus its drafters had originally sought. But it still represented the most widespread condemnation yet

On the Pointless of Pointy Shoes

One also could not easily kneel, or pray, in such shoes, which were sometimes known as “Satan’s claws.” In 1215, Pope Innocent III prohibited clergy members from wearing, among other things, “shoes with embroidery or pointed toes.” The edict was unsuccessful enough that Pope Urban V tried again in 1362.

Poulaines swept into England in the 14th century, ostensibly on the feet of Anne of Bohemia, the 16-year-old bride to the 15-year-old Richard II, but perhaps even slightly earlier. (Poulaines, a French term, refers to Poland; the shoes were also sometimes called crakows, after the Polish capital.) In Dr. Dittmar’s …

The Maldives Lured Tourists Back. Now It Needs Nurses.

MALÉ, Maldives — The largest Covid-19 treatment facility in the Maldives has nearly 300 beds and a steady supply of oxygen. But as the country reported some of the world’s highest caseloads per capita last month, Covid wards ran low on another essential resource: employees.

“At worst, we had one nurse to attend to 20 patients in the general wards,” said Mariya Saeed, the head of the Hulhumalé Medical Facility in Malé, the capital. “We needed human resources to provide proper care to the many bedridden elderly, but the nurses were exhausted.”

The pandemic has triggered shortages of health workers

Covid Live Updates: Ahead of Olympics, Tokyo’s State of Emergency to Be Relaxed

plunged about 45 percent in the last two weeks.

Michigan, one of the last states to fully reopen, has been home to some of the fiercest opposition to coronavirus protocols. In the early weeks of the pandemic, hundreds of people, some of them armed, converged on the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the state’s stay-at-home orders.

Beginning Tuesday, the state will

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‘Queerness isn’t a western concept’: Adeju Thompson is bringing genderless Nigerian fashion to the world

Written by Nadia Leigh-Hewitson, CNN

“There are very early examples of gender bending in African culture,” explains the designer behind the gender-fluid Nigerian clothing label Lagos Space Programme. “Queerness isn’t a western concept.”

From West Africa to Europe and beyond, non-binary fashion designer Adeju Thompson is showcasing genderless African fashion on the world stage.

Thompson, 30, who uses they/them pronouns, grew up in Lagos and, bar a stint studying fashion design in the UK, has lived in Nigeria their entire life. In 2018, Thompson founded label Lagos Space Programme. “I’m always collaging different ideas, tying all these things together,” Thompson …