Ukraine is reinforcing the defenders of Bakhmut with "elite units" as the Putin forces get closer to encircling that town. I have to wonder, is it tactically wise to send the best units into a town that may soon be cut off? That risks losing them for no gain.

There is nothing important about Bakhmut except that the Putin forces keep trying to capture it. I think it may be more efficient to pull out of Bakhmut now and defend the next town. If it takes the Putin forces 6 months to capture each town, it will take them decades to conquer all of the Donetsk region. The war won't last that long.

There was a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations for a global ocean conservation treaty. With organizations such as Greenpeace praising it, I expect I would be pretty happy with it.

One issue where I might have expected bad decisions was that of control over "genetic resources" — scientific discoveries that could be made by studying the genes of ocean life. There have been demands for harmful policies that would declare countries to be the "owners" of genomes found in species found in those countries. That would be unjust.

I can't be sure from this article, but I think this treaty chooses a better approach, that would distribute some of the income from some sorts of activities to some poor countries. I see nothing wrong with that.

*Second train derails in Ohio but carried no hazardous materials, company says.*

This second derailment demonstrates that train disaster is not a rare, freak accident, and thus supports the insistence on safety improvements: better brakes, larger crews, sick pay, etc.

*Oil CEOs Should Be Barred From Global Climate Summits, Not Running Them.*

Efforts to solve critical world problems, including coming climate disaster, are hamstrung by their fundamental structural organization: "multistakeholderism", which means the corporations doing the worst harm have the power to thwart all progress.

Increasing wildfires in northern hemisphere forests could start a chain reaction of increasing release of CO2.