What would you do with an $80,000 bonus, more than quadruple the amount of an average annual salary? Or with $140,000 in debt relief? Those are the questions being posed to men in Russia, as the military advertises multi-million-ruble incentives to fight in Ukraine. Ads plastered on roadside billboards and embedded in young men’s social media feeds are offering eye-watering sums – more than many people earn in years – alongside promises to become a “hero” or be fast-tracked to Russian citizenship. And yet military recruitment was down by 20% in the first quarter of this year compared to 2025, and there are signs it’s still faltering, according to Russian economy expert Janis Kluge.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/14/europe/russia-manpower-problem-ukraine-war-intl
Back in March, President Donald Trump claimed the CIA told him that new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei might be gay. Trump’s White House and his allies have also recently taken to suggesting that a key Democratic Senate candidate, Texas’ James Talarico, is transgender and a vegan (neither of which is true). In the views of Trump and his allies, those characterizations would seem to build up his masculinity at the expense of others’.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/14/politics/trump-ufc-macho-image-rescue
Nobody can predict how the 48 teams will do at the FIFA World Cup this summer, but if you wanted to gamble on Japan being the tidiest team, you’d surely clean up at the bookies. Thanks to a societal expectation of all Japanese people, you’d never know they were there. Nozomi Morgan, founder and CEO of Michiki Morgan Worldwide and an intercultural leadership expert, vividly remembers moving from Seattle to Tokyo when she was eight years old, partly because the school experience was so different. “One of the first things that really surprised me,” she told CNN Sports, “you take off your ‘outside shoes’ and change into ‘inside shoes,’ you want to keep the inside as clean as possible.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/14/sport/japan-fans-tidy-world-cup
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/13/sport/video/sumo-wrestlers-paris-digvid-vrtc
The UK military has intercepted an oil tanker linked to Russia’s shadow fleet in the English Channel, according to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in the first such operation by British forces. “In the early hours of this morning, I directed our Armed Forces to intercept a shadow fleet oil tanker attempting to pass through the English Channel,” Starmer said in a post on X. “This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/14/europe/uk-intercepts-russian-shadow-fleet-tanker-for-first-time