Congress passes bill that could unlock billions in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine

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• Oh, Zendaya knows all about that ‘Spider-Man’ female lead-to-tennis player ‘prophecy’
• Russia’s upper house rescinds ratification of nuclear test ban treaty
• Biden signs $95-billion military aid measure that includes path to ban TikTok
• Review: In ‘Unsung Hero,’ a family’s musical success story comes to life via the clan itself
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There is, overall, a simulated sense of peril promising suspense that never comes. Barley returns to the Soviet Union to seek out Dante and confirm he is a genuine informant. Through her, he confirms that Dante is indeed Saveleyev, and he also denies to Katya that he is a spy. Bartholomew "Barley" Scott-Blair, head of a British publishing firm, arrives in Moscow on business. At a writers' retreat near Peredelkino, he speaks of an end to tensions with the West, heard by the mysterious "Dante", who demands that Barley promise to do the right thing if the opportunity arises.

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To judge by this film, the life of a Cold War spy consists of sitting for endless hours in soundproof rooms with people you do not particularly like, waiting for something to happen. President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a statement of appreciation moments after the vote, which occurred late Saturday evening Ukraine time. He thanked by name House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who had been heavily lobbied by Ukraine’s supporters to bring the measure to a vote despite bitter opposition from his party’s far-right flank. It also contained a measure to help pave the way to selling off frozen Russian sovereign assets to help fund the Ukrainian war effort, and a new round of sanctions on Iran.

Oh, Zendaya knows all about that ‘Spider-Man’ female lead-to-tennis player ‘prophecy’

Since lawmakers introduced their latest proposal targeting the app last month, the company has launched a major counteroffensive against the effort, enlisting scores of users through pop-up notifications to bombard lawmakers with calls voicing opposition to the legislation. TikTok has blasted lawmakers’ efforts to potentially ban the app as an affront on free speech and disputes lawmakers’ suggestions that it is beholden to China or any government. TikTok is “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” used to “surveil and exploit America’s personal information,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Saturday as he introduced the measure for debate.

Russia’s upper house rescinds ratification of nuclear test ban treaty

Ironically, you usually need a car to access the recycling services currently available in Russia. In Russia, heating is centralized via a few immense power plants – this means that an administrator will set the temperature in your flat. They usually put it at a sweltering temperature too, creating a discrepancy between indoors and out that takes quite some getting used to. It also means there are a couple of periods during the year (usually mid-October and early May) when it’s either chilly out, and the radiators aren’t on yet, or it’s balmy outdoors and the heating is still on.

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The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as Tuesday and send it to President Biden’s desk, capping its tortured journey through Congress. Most Russian buyers in the US purchased their properties for use as a primary residence, while 36% purchased properties to use for vacation or to rent, NAR said. In comparison, 40% of all US foreign buyers purchased their properties as vacation homes.

Biden signs $95-billion military aid measure that includes path to ban TikTok

Yakov feels betrayed, but Barley convinces him that the manuscript can still be published, and is given another volume of the manuscript after assuring Yakov he is sympathetic to the scientist's cause. Some U.S. lawmakers said coming to Ukraine’s aid now had helped avert sending a dangerous signal of U.S. weakness to Moscow. U.S. and Ukrainian officials said resupply efforts could take place relatively quickly, because of supply chains and logistical networks established early in the more than two-year-old conflict. As President Joe Biden targets Russia's elite and their families with sanctions that aim to minimize their financial footprint, pockets of Georgia and New York may also be worried about their assets. A tiny beach town north of Miami is home to a large concentration of Russians, but Little Moscow isn't the only place this wealthy set calls home.

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Review: In ‘Unsung Hero,’ a family’s musical success story comes to life via the clan itself

The House passed a foreign aid package Saturday as well as what's called the REPO Act, which would allow the Biden administration to confiscate billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets sitting in U.S. banks and transfer them to Ukraine for reconstruction. The House voted resoundingly on Saturday to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as Speaker Mike Johnson put his job on the line to advance the long-stalled aid package by marshaling support from mainstream Republicans and Democrats. Several months later in Moscow, a woman named Katya seeks Barley out at an audio fair, hoping to convince him to publish a manuscript for her friend Yakov which details Soviet nuclear capabilities and atomic secrets. The manuscript has a cover letter to Barley, saying that Yakov is trying to serve his country by hastening the day when democracy will come to the Soviet Union.

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You see, the Russian notion of “suburbia” is slightly different to that of the West. As a country that was transformed into an urban society in a matter of decades, the Soviet Union housed its upwardly mobile peasants as cheaply as possible in communal apartments. As a result, the only fenced-off, gardened house the average Russian city-dweller stays in is the family dacha (unless he/she is a multi-millionaire with a suburban mansion). For most, a three-room apartment in a block of flats is deemed a perfectly acceptable place to settle down and raise a family. We can see how practicing espionage has coalesced his disparate temperaments. Barley seemed miscast as a book publisher--he’s too out-sized and physical and unruminative.

We’ve become so jangled by the punch-and-grab of conventional thrillers that I fear “The Russia House,” with its kicky combination of slow, tricky plotting and fervent emotionalism, may be left in the lurch this season. Watching this film about conspirators requires an almost conspiratorial participation on the part of its audience; we’re made to understand that our patience and our attentions will pay off. A middle-aged, boozy publisher is enlisted as a spy by British Intelligence after he receives a manuscript, authored by a leading Russian physicist, purporting to lay out the true details about Soviet nuclear capabilities. It appears to be a highly technical work calling into question the quality of the Soviet Union's defense weaponry.

Principal photography included scenes in and around Moscow and Leningrad (now St Petersburg). In 1987, Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair, a British publisher, is at a book fair in Moscow. With business friends he goes on a drunken retreat to a secluded dacha in the forest near Peredelkino. When their talk turns to politics, Barley finds himself talking boldly of patriotism and courage, of a new world order, and an end to Cold War tensions.

The top-level spies in this film are apparently hooked into some kind of high-tech electronics network that allows them to know at all times what their people in the field are doing. But the people are often not doing very much, and so my mind wandered, speculating what it would be like to sit for hours in cynical world-weariness, drinking coffee or sherry in book-lined rooms, waiting for something to happen so you can make a suitably jaundiced comment about it. It takes a lot of patience to watch "The Russia House," but it takes even more patience to be a character in the movie.

There is the same overwhelming aggressiveness to the first 30 minutes of "The Russia House." The aim in this case is apparently to convince the audience that the film is far more complex than, in fact, it ever becomes. "The Russia House," the screen adaptation of John le Carre's post-Cold War spy novel, comes on like a drill sergeant who talks fast and feeds the recruits more information than they can possibly absorb, the aim being to intimidate them into woozy submission. The BBC produced a radio play of the novel adapted in seven episodes.

The manuscript is intercepted by British intelligence, which pays a visit to Barley in the Lisbon flat where he often repairs for drinking bouts, and they quiz him about the book and the girl until in exasperation he agrees to go to Moscow and follow up on the transaction. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are supportive of the bill’s inclusion in the aid package, their offices confirmed. The two lawmakers had previously led separate legislative efforts to tackle concerns over the app.

As the political infighting dragged on in Washington, Ukrainian officials expressed particular alarm over the systematic destruction of crucial energy infrastructure, such as a power plant wrecked by missiles outside Kyiv this month. In some parts of the country, the targeting of electricity-generating plants has caused power cuts of a scope and duration comparable to those seen much earlier in the war. US home prices have climbed because of a lack of housing inventory that has increased buyer competition. While many US buyers grapple with affordability woes, data from NAR shows that Russian buyers typically pay for their homes in cash. Matt Bradley is a London-based foreign correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. “Other G7 countries will only act to confiscate Russian assets if the U.S. leads,” he Epshtein.

The House vote “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime,” Peskov said, according to official Russian media. Russia, predictably, hammered on what has become a key talking point — that U.S. assistance would do little more than prolong a bloody confrontation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also suggested that the main idea behind the package was to funnel money to U.S. weapons manufacturers. Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was confident the U.S. would be able to resume shipments of equipment by the end of the week.

The film was re-released on Blu-Ray by Sandpiper Pictures on June 14, 2022.[19] Their release included the trailer. It was also a single-layer Blu-Ray, where the previous release had contained a larger file size, on a dual-layer Blu-Ray. The sequence at the safe house was shot on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, British Columbia. Impressed by the additional volume, Russell's boss Brady and U.S. military officer Quinn interrogate Barley to be certain of his loyalties.