John Brown's Notes and Essays

By   Alexander Osipovich   and   Alexander Saeedy , The Wall Street Journal [4/29/2022]; see also  image (not from article) from Russia said it had made payments on two dollar-denominated bonds, potentially  staving off a default on the country’s foreign debt . The nearly $650 million in payments were made in dollars to a London branch of Citigroup Inc. that processes payments on behalf of bondholders, Russia’s finance ministry said Friday. The money from Russia’s bond payments must land in bondholders’ accounts by Wednesday, the end of a 30-day grace period after Russia missed a payment in early April. Otherwise, the country can officially be called in default by its creditors. The move to pay in dollars marked a reversal, as Russia’s finance ministry had earlier insisted on making the bond payments in rubles. Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have complicated the country’s efforts to make sovereign bond payments. In early April, th...

It seems unthinkable, but American leaders’ failure to think about it heightens the risk it will happen.  image from article, with caption:   The Soviets detonate their first atomic bomb in Kazakhstan, Aug. 29, 1949. PHOTO:  BRIDGEMAN IMAGES  By Peggy Noonan , The Wall Street Journal , April 28, 2022 6:26 pm ET  Sometimes a thing keeps nagging around your brain and though you’ve said it before you have to say it again. We factor in but do not sufficiently appreciate the real possibility of nuclear-weapon use by Russia in Ukraine. This is the key and crucial historic possibility in the drama, and it really could come to pass. And once it starts, it doesn’t stop. Once the taboo that has held since 1945 is broken, it’s broken. The door has been pushed open and we step through to the new age. We don’t want to step into that age. And once it starts, it doesn’t stop. Once the taboo that has held since 1945 is broken, it’s broken. The door has been pushed open and...

image (not from article) from Gigi Barnett   |  gbarnett@wtop.com wtop.com ,  April 29, 2022, 4:30 AM As D.C. sees an uptick in pedestrian deaths over the last year, a group of researchers at the Urban Institute spent months tracking the challenges walkers face in the city . They released a study on Thursday called  “Redefining Walkability,”  which maps and ranks the problems and perks of each community. It discovered that all District neighborhoods are failing to provide safety for pedestrians in one way or another.   “Different neighborhoods face different obstacles to improving walkability,” said Yonah Freemark, a  senior researcher at Urban Institute . “You would think a neighborhood like Georgetown would have high-quality infrastructure, but, we found that their infrastructure quality is very low.” As a result, no D.C. neighborhood made a perfect score in the study.  “The entire city of D.C. needs to be worked on,” Freemark said. Researchers ...

image (not from article) from Analysis by  Stephen Collinson , CNN Updated 2:48 AM EDT, Fri April 29, 2022 CNN  —  This was the week when  the war in Ukraine  truly transitioned from one nation’s bloody fight for liberation against Russia’s vicious onslaught to a potentially years-long great power struggle. Every day brought a sense of grave, historic events and decisions that will not just decide who wins the biggest land war between two countries in Europe since World War II, but will shape the course of the rest of the 21st century. President Joe Biden  declared Thursday that two months of fighting in the war triggered by  Russian President Vladimir Putin’s  unprovoked invasion had brought the world to a critical point. 'They never expected Mariupol to resist.' Locals horrified by Russia's relentless attack on the vast steel plant shielding Ukrainians “Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggr...