The War Zone: Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky ordered hundreds of thousands of people living in eastern Ukraine to evacuate as continuing Russian bombardment makes the area unlivable.  He said, “The sooner it is done, the more people leave Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian Army will have time to kill.”

  The Russian lines appeared to have stabilized with few advances, but there’s little or no electricity in the occupied territories or fuel for the coming winter heating season. Under Russian shelling, civilians are getting killed every day.

  Zelensky is also furious about the explosion that killed 50 Ukrainian prisoners in a Russian POW camp. The Russians claim the Ukrainians did it, but there’s been no independent verification of who did it or how.

  Making things more difficult for the Ukrainians to recover territory, Russian forces are using a nuclear power plant as a fortified artillery base. The Ukrainians can’t shoot back.  

  In other action, one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen was killed in the port city of Mykolaiv. Oleksiy Vadaturskyi, who made his money in the grain storage and export business, was killed along with his  wife in missile strikes that  destroyed multiple homes, a hotel, a sports complex, two schools, and a service station.

  And there’s one good development. The first ship carrying grain has left the port of Odessa under a United Nations-brokered deal to ease the global food crisis caused by the Russian invasion. 

The Price of Conspiracy: A verdict is expected this week in the libel trial of conspiracy monger Alex Jones who described a couple that lost their six-year-old son in the Sandy Hook school massacre as “actors in a “false flag” operation staged by the government as a pretext to impose gun control.

  Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis are suing for $150 million. Jones has already lost several defamation lawsuits. The question is whether in a country of free speech Jones can be held accountable. The couples’ lawyer, Mark Bankston, said in opening statements last week, “Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for.”

  Jones has no proof of what he said about a Sandy Hook conspiracy and his defense is hiding in obfuscation. His lawyers argued that the national conversation is so polluted by disinformation that no one really knows what’s true.

  But the families of Sandy Hook know what’s true; their children were murdered by a killer wielding an assault rifle, not an agent of the government.

Donald Who?: Fox News, the network that helped create Donald Trump the politician is increasingly ignoring their once-favorite  president. Trump has not been interviewed on Fox in more than 100 days and they even ignored his recent speech in Arizona in which he teased the possibility of running for president again.

  Instead, Fox ran an interview with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a nearly certain Republican candidate in 2024.

  This easing away from Trump comes as both the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, which, like Fox, are owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, both published editorials denouncing Trump. The NY Times reports that Murdoch and his sons are uncomfortable with Trump’s continuing claim that he won the 2020 election and that it was taken from him through fraud.

  Fox will not be able to ignore Trump if there are major developments either with Trump declaring for president, or being indicted.

The Obit Page: The great Bill Russell, who led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA championships and played 13 years of professional basketball, has died at age 88.

  Red Auerbach, the coach who brought the 6-10 center to the Celtics and coached him to nine championships, called Russell “the single most devastating force in the history of the game.”

  Former NY Knick Bill Bradley, who went on to become a US Senator, wrote that Russell was “the smartest player ever to play the game and the epitome of a team leader.”

  Russell was a factor off the court as well. He was in the 1963 March on Washington had a front row seat for the Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to Mississippi after the civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered and worked with Evers’s brother, to open an integrated basketball camp. And he was one of a group of  big name Black athletes who supported Muhammad Ali’s refusal to serve in the Vietnam War.

The Spin Rack: President Joe Biden has a rebound case of Covid-19 but says he has no symptoms. Doctors say that’s common among patients who take Paxlovid to get over their first infection. — The number of dead from last week’s flood in eastern Kentucky has reached 28. — A wildfire in Northern California has burned more than 52,000 acres, making it the biggest fire in that state so far in the summer fire season. — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Singapore today, kicking off her Asian tour. There’s been no word on whether she will go to Taiwan, which would annoy China. — Mark Finchem, a Trump-backed candidate for Arizona Secretary of State and a 2020 election denier, says he won’t concede if he loses his election. Arizona was a critical state Trump lost in 2020 and a friendly Secretary of State would be useful next time around. 

She, Her: Vice President Kamala Harris is being ridiculed for how she introduced herself at a meeting last week about people with disabilities, including the blind. She said, “I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.”

  Every participant introduced themselves the same way, including what they were wearing, for the benefit of listeners who were blind or limited in sight. But what’s worth noting is that the minority of people in sexual flux or transition has the majority stating the obvious about themselves.

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