Haniger has been played on the 10-day injured list after fouling a ball off his groin in Thursday’s 8-7 loss to the Houston Astros in MLB. A timeline for Haniger’s absence was not revealed by the Mariners on Friday. All-Star Haniger is hitting .220 with 15 home runs and 32 RBIs this season. The 28-year-old, who arrived from the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2017, made his first All-Star appearance for Seattle last season....
Following the Thunder’s win over Melbourne United, Westbrook spoke to reporters while wearing an “adopt a cat” shirt. MORE: Russell Westbrook returns, sports new look for Thunder offense NBA fans were quick to point out Durant’s third-person tweets from September explaining why he left the Thunder. Durant claimed he couldn’t win a “championship with those cats.” Now the cats make sense.
The Thunder guard scored 21 points in the 124-103 win over the Suns, including this scintillating tomahawk jam. PHOTOS: NBA Christmas jerseys 2015 | MORE: NBA admits error in goaltending non-call against Dwight Howard He also dished out 13 assists, pulled down six rebounds and added four steals in Sunday’s victory. Westbrook, who led the league in scoring last season, is arguably having an even better season through six games....
After 10 seasons, the Seahawks traded Wilson to Denver for a haul, which included Drew Lock, Noah Fant, Shelby Harris, and picks. While Wilson has struggled at times early in the season, the Broncos are hoping more time with Nathaniel Hackett in their offense will make him more comfortable. The Broncos are in the middle of the hyper-competitive AFC West, which has become an arms race in recent seasons....
Russia took the scare calmly: local financial markets barely rippled. Perhaps that’s because Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin has convinced the country that, to a large extent; he’s in charge. Ever since Chernomyrdin singlehandedly-and on live television–negotiated with Chechen rebels for the release of hundreds of hostages in southern Russia, he’s been riding high. Once regarded as a colorless bureaucrat, Chernomyrdin is now praised for his commitment to market reform and gets affectionate bear hugs from Vice President Al Gore....
While the invasion has tempered open expressions of support for his leadership, it is clear that some endearment remains. But a closer look reveals that the opposite should be the case—it should be Putin who the American New Right looks down upon and Ukraine which it holds up. Some conservatives stress the idea that Putin stands against progressive ideologies. “Russians know which bathroom to use” is a not-infrequent way to praise the Kremlin’s social policies....
Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China both oversaw via teleconference Monday the first operation of the “Power of Siberia” pipeline, which the Kremlin said runs roughly 1,864 miles and has the capacity to deliver 38 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Russia’s Chayandinskoye and Kovyktinskoye fields to northeastern China. The pipeline currently reaches as far as Jilin and Liaoning, but was reportedly projected to eventually extend into Beijing and Shanghai....
“That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. The president was delivering a speech on Saturday when he took a hit at Putin in Warsaw, Poland, at the Royal Castle where he met with Polish officials, among other Western allies, to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia—for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden said....
Although Pelosi’s travel plans have not been confirmed by her office, local news outlets reported Pelosi was set to become the first House of Representatives speaker since 1997 to set foot on the self-ruling island that Beijing claims as its own on Tuesday. Beijing has reacted angrily to the visit, warning it would not “sit by idly” if it feels that its “sovereignty and territorial integrity” were being threatened....
Newsweek was not able to independently verify the report and the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not specify how it obtained the information. Russia’s Defense Ministry and Ukraine’s intelligence agency were contacted for confirmation and comment. The Ukrainian directorate said in a report Tuesday that the explosion took place on Monday. A train with military equipment and ammunition for Russian forces arrived at the Kalanchak station in Ukraine’s Kherson region on Sunday, and the personnel began unloading the next morning, the report said....
Roman Vilfand said that the first six months of 2020 were the warmest in the “history of instrumental weather observations” in the country. The weather chief said that several locations in the Russian Arctic had experienced new record temperatures in June, with climate change contributing to the “fantastical” anomalies. In June, “we had extremely anomalous weather,” Vilfand said. “Previous records were broken easily.” Notably, the town of Verkhoyansk—located six miles north of the Arctic Circle in remote eastern Siberia—recorded a temperature of 100....
Per Ukraine’s newest figures released on Monday morning, Russia has now lost 2,966 tanks since Moscow’s troops crossed into Ukrainian territory on February 24. Another 620 Russian troops were claimed killed by the Ukrainian armed forces, bringing the total to 94,760 since February 24. At the current rate of 300 to 400 deaths reported each day, Russia’s military could reach the grim 100,000 milestone by Christmas Day. Ukrainian forces estimate Moscow has so far suffered some 284,280 injured and another 1,000 captured....
TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Russia have made four changes for a match against Wales that they need to win to have any hope of qualifying for the knockout stages of Euro 2016. Dmitri Kombarov comes in at full back in place of Georgi Schennikov and the midfield, changed at halftime in the 2-1 defeat by Slovakia, has been revamped again. Denis Glushakov, Pavel Mamaev and Roman Shirokov all start weth Roman Neustadter, Oleg Shatov and Aleksandr Golovin missing out....
Its daily assessment said that Russian defense operations had remained “reduced in scope and scale” and that fighting west of the city of Lysychansk, which Moscow’s forces have captured, were “focused on Siversk and Bakhmut.” “This is despite Russian claims to have entered the outskirts of Siversk town earlier in the week,” the defense officials said on Saturday. “Russia has previously made premature and false claims of success,” according to the officials and this was, “likely at least in part aimed at demonstrating success to domestic audiences and to reinforce the morale of the fighting forces....
Reports of a mass grave and bodies strewn in the streets after Russian forces pulled out of the Kyiv suburb shocked the world and prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to call for an end to Russian “war crimes.” But Russian foreign affairs ministry official Pyotr Ilyichev raised the prospect that Russia would use its veto to stop any move by the United Nations to investigate alleged atrocities in Bucha....
On Thursday, lawmakers in the Russian parliament approved a bill that widens the restrictions on “LGBT propaganda” that already exist among minors. It also bans the “demonstration” of LGBTQ behavior, prohibits Russians from publicly suggesting such lifestyles are “normal” and outlaws all advertising, media, books and motion pictures that are seen as promoting such “propaganda.” Violations of the ban would be punishable by fines ranging from 100,000 to 2 million rubles ($1,660 to $33,000)....
The fighting is focused in the eastern Donbas region, after a failed attempt to capture Kyiv earlier on in the war. However, several Russian missiles struck the capital on Sunday, for the first time in three weeks. One man was killed and residential buildings and a kindergarten were damaged in the attack on central district, according to Ukrainian officials. “While Russia’s main operational focus remains the Sieverodonetsk-Lysychansk pocket, a week of consistently heavy shelling suggests Russia is now trying to regain momentum on the northern Izium axis,” the U....
The hearings are being followed closely by pro-Putin journalists, who have bashed the Jan. 6 committee as “a step towards dictatorship,” in the words of top Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, TV host on state-controlled Russia-1. “Look at what’s going on in America. A criminal prosecution against Trump and his followers is an obvious step towards a dictatorship,” Solovyov said during his show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov last Friday, as quoted by Daily Beast journalist Julia Davis....
In its daily intelligence update, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Russia’s failure to consistently deliver air power is likely one of the most important factors behind the Kremlin’s “very limited campaign success” in the conflict, which began more than 100 days ago. Since the war began on February 24, Russia’s air force has operated in a “risk [averse] style,” meaning it has rarely penetrated deep behind Ukrainian lines, and has not been able so far to “gain full air superiority,” the ministry said....
Lukashenko, who has held power in Belarus since 1994, said on Monday that Belarus and Russia agreed to deploy the Regional Grouping of Forces (RGV) — a strategic formation of Russian and Belarusian units that defend the two countries, or Union State, the think tank noted in its daily update on the conflict on Tuesday. Lukashenko said that strikes on Belarus were being planned by Ukraine, without providing evidence. The dictator added that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Friday on an unspecified “deployment” of the Russian-Belarusian RGV in “connection with the escalation on the western borders of the Union State....
