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“When I played,” Silas said, “we knew what the NBA stood for: No Boys Allowed. Can’t do that now. Too many cameras all around.” MORE: Westbrook details heated exchange with Jazz fans That was 2003. Oh, the cameras we have now, coach. Silas’ lament came to mind when seeing Thunder star Russell Westbrook, again, in a tiff Monday night with a fan in the heat of an NBA game. The incident was caught on camera, of course, a reminder that Westbrook, on the court, is a jerk....

Westbrook also scored 21 points to lead the Thunder to a second win in as many nights without reigning NBA MVP Kevin Durant. MORE: Richard Jefferson throws down age- and gravity-defying dunk | LeBron passes A.I. on all-time scoring list Oklahoma City has won five of six without Durant, who has a foot injury but is expected to return later this season. Westbrook is making his own case for MVP this season....

Indifference. Mild curiosity. A slow warming-up. An unexpected result. A goal-fest. Permutations & Combinations. Knockouts. A full-throttled dive. Is that the life-cycle of a football fan during every major football tournament? If not every, at least some? The ones like Russia 2018, which has started slowly before erupting into a full-throttled, chaotic, unpredictably brilliant street fight. Like an irritable colleague at work, or a classmate at school, who tries to be overtly friendly, wanting to grab attention before settling down to reveal true colors....

Russia’s state financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring on Friday listed “Navalny Networks” on its database of groups with links to terrorist activities, joining Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State militant group. The new designation means that Russian authorities can now cut off the network’s bank accounts, The Moscow Times reported. On top of that, prosecutors in Moscow are seeking to have Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, labeled as an “extremist” organization, which would fully ban the network’s 50 regional headquarters from operating, and put members and supporters at risk of criminal prosecution....

Speaking at a recent meeting, Federation Council Deputy Speaker Galina Karelova claimed that the job status of over 8.4 million Russians has changed since Western sanctions were enacted. Over 95,000 of those affected have had their job status changed to be “on standby,” similar to paid leave, she said. However, it is unclear whether their companies or the Russian government are paying the workers. The majority of jobs that could be affected by the sanctions are those involving Western companies....

In an interview with state-run Sputnik radio, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova blasted the visit to the self-ruled island, which China claims as part of its territory. “This is an absolute disaster that the United States itself created with its own hands around Ukraine, the failure of everything that is connected in this regard in the European direction. Europeans have turned to Washington and wonder what will happen next, because winter is around the corner,” she said....

Gorinov, a deputy at Moscow’s Krasnoselsky district council and a trained lawyer, was sentenced by a court in Russia’s capital to seven years in a penal colony for criticizing what Putin calls a “special military operation.” He was also banned from holding public office for four years after his release. The 60-year-old was arrested on April 27 for spreading “knowingly false information” about Russia’s army during a session of the local assembly in Krasnoselsky....

The U.S. is among a group of 45 countries which, under the rules of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has given Russia 10 days to respond to questions over the Novichok poisoning of Navalny in August 2020. The U.S. State Department concluded that agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence agency had poisoned Navalny using Novichok. The Hague-based OPCW said samples from Navalny, supplied by Germany, tested positive for Novichok....

Speaking Thursday to the state-run Tass Russian News Agency, Great Russian Encyclopedia executive editor Sergei Kravets said that he was developing a digital version of the famed 21st-century Great Soviet Encyclopedia commissioned by Putin. “The project, which began in July, is anticipated to take 33 months,” he said. “It will be completed by the spring or summer of 2022.” The name has not been selected, but Kravets said he sought a title that both evoked the prestige of the Great Russian Encyclopedia and could bring such a work to a contemporary, young audience....

In a report published on Sunday, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for the western Kostroma region put in a request to monitor certain individuals who may be “prone to committing crimes” under stringent new laws that crack down on dissent. The FSB, Kremlin’s principal security agency, asked the head of the Vohomsk municipal district to provide background information on persons who may violate laws on “public dissemination of false information and actions to discredit the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and their participation in aggression against Ukraine,” according to the report by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense....

“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’ press service said on its Telegram channel, according to Reuters. “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colors of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from…To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.” The statement came after several Western media outlets reported that the cosmonauts wore the defining colors on Friday in an apparent show of support for Ukraine, following Russia’s invasion of the country on February 24....

Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov claimed the successful strikes during an update to reporters on Saturday. “As part of the counter-battery fight, two American M777 howitzers were destroyed in the area of ​​Stepnogorsk, Zaporozhye region,” he said, according to state news agency TASS. In May, the U.S. gave 90 of the field artillery pieces, which are used by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, to Ukraine. The M777 uses NATO-standard 155-millimeter shells, which is an improvement over Ukraine’s 122 and 152-millimeter artillery pieces....

“We are not planning to attack other countries,” Lavrov said during remarks delivered in Russian in Antalya, Turkey. “We didn’t attack Ukraine in the first place,” the Russian foreign minister said. “We just explained a lot of times that the situation has come that there was a direct threat to the safety and security of the Russian Federation.” Lavrov’s comments come as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its second week amid fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces and harsh sanctions imposed on Russia by the U....

Civilian ships have been warned to stay away from Russia’s west Arctic seaports during the three days of exercises which finish on Thursday and involve five nuclear submarines, 105 aircraft, 213 missile launchers, The Barents Observer reported. Last week, 15 navy vessels sailed from the headquarters of the Northern Fleet, Severomorsk, to the Barents Sea, including the nuclear-powered battle cruiser “Pyotr Velikiy,” (Peter the Great) the publication added. Russia’s ministry of defence said that the drills will include tests of cruise and ballistic missiles “including against the Pemboi, Chizha and Kura firing ranges,” state news agency TASS reported, referring to targets in the Komi Republic, Arkhangelsk region and the northern part of the far-eastern Kamchatka Peninsula....

Musk posted a poll on Twitter Monday that suggested recent referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine be redone under supervision by the United Nations, and that Russia should leave those territories if that is the “will of the people.” It also said, among other suggestions, that Crimea should be “formally part of Russia.” Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and has pushed for international recognition that it is part of its territory ever since, but Ukraine and Western countries have continued to assert that the peninsula is part of Ukraine....

The British defense ministry said in an intelligence update that as Russia deals with “severe under-manning,” Putin’s army is resorting to having to choose between deploying troops to push on with its goal of seizing Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region or preventing Ukrainian counterattacks elsewhere. “Russia has struggled to sustain effective offensive combat power since the start of the invasion and this problem is likely becoming increasingly acute,” Britain’s defense ministry said....

The incident took place during a training session at a firing range in the Belgorod region, which is located along the country’s border with Ukraine near the city of Kharkiv. According to TASS, a state-run Russian news agency, the Ministry of Defense confirmed the shooting to reporters, claiming that two individuals from an unspecified country in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a collective of Russia and several other former Soviet republics, opened fire on the training exercise....

Alla Pugacheva asked Russia’s Ministry of Justice to list her as a foreign agent “in solidarity” with her husband Maxim Galkin. Galkin, a Russian comedian and television presenter, was recently included on the ministry’s list of individuals acting as “foreign agents,” according to Meduza, an independent outlet covering Russian news. “I am asking you to please include me in the group of foreign agents of my beloved country in solidarity with my husband, an honest, decent, and sincere person, a true and incorruptible patriot of Russia,” Pugacheva wrote in a statement posted on her verified account, which has more than 3....

Golos, Russia’s leading election watchdog, was also labeled as a “foreign agent” in 2013. It liquidated as a non-governmental organization (NGO) in 2016. However, it never registered as an NGO and exposed violations in several elections. It is now the only group in a new registry of “foreign agents” created by Russia’s Justice Ministry for groups not recognized as legal entities in Russia. In 2012, a Russian ambassador, Michael McFaul, claimed that a U....

“We will have a fine from UEFA, so I understand. We behaved incorrectly,” Mutko said, adding that Russian officials will investigate what happened and there were “many nuances”. His comments follow violent scenes at a Euro 2016 game between England and Russia on Saturday evening. (Reporting By Jason Bush; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle) 0 votes