Putin's new conscripts find that they are not issued proper equipment, armor, weapons, or even uniforms. Some beg their relatives to buy some of what is missing.

I can't imagine anything worse for relatives of conscripts to do than pay for equipment to enable sending those conscripts to the front. That is self-defeating.

If you don't have warm underwear, you might get sick or frostbitten and be sent to the rear. Isn't that a good outcome?

I've read that British soldiers in France in World War I, knowing that the generals' incompetent tactics would get almost all soldiers killed uselessly sooner or later, used to pray for wounds that would make them invalids — that was a chance for survival.

If they give you a fake helmet that won't protect you, how about throwing it away? Likewise, a rusted rifle that you can't rely on. Why disguise the fact that you lack necessary equipment? The army needs to know this.

On the other hand, asking your relatives for a bulletproof vest might make sense; that would tend to protect you from the hits that are likely to kill you.

*Pesticide use around world almost doubles since 1990, report finds.*

The pesticides harm the health of almost 400 million people every year, and are part of the cause of the great decrease of bird and insect populations.

* New Jersey on Tuesday sued five oil and gas companies and a leading fossil fuel lobby group for knowingly lying to the public about the existence of climate change and the role their products play in exacerbating human-caused global heating.*

Workers at another Apple Store voted to unionize.

If only the users of Apple computers would go on strike against the injustice in those computers,

Ukraine and the US say that Iran is selling exploding drones to Russia. Iran and Russia deny this and say that Russia is building the drones. I don't see why this should matter.

The wrecker broke the old non-nuclear deal, and Biden's weak efforts to restore it have more or less collapsed. That is quite unfortunate, but since that is the case, why does Iran's exporting exploding drones change anything significant?