Free Republic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Russian troops weren’t occupying Bakhmut even though they may have “razed it” to the ground and it is no longer in full possession of Kyiv’s forces. That assertion made in Hiroshima, Japan, where Zelensky is meeting members of the G7 at their annual conference directly contradicts Moscow’s claims the eastern Ukrainian city has fallen. On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated mercenaries from the Wagner organisation and regular units for the operation to “liberate” the town.

What had been one of the lowest-performing, under-enrolled schools in San Francisco was little more than a pile of rubble as workers demolished Willie Brown Jr. Academy in the city's Bayview neighborhood. Loud hydraulic excavators bit off pieces of the few remaining walls still standing last week at the school, which served about 160 students in grades four through eight until June 2011. With blue sky visible above and gaping holes nearby, a paper sign directed visitors to the now-nonexistent counseling office. Soon, the tons of mangled rebar and concrete chunks will be carted off for recycling and the 4-acre...

Unused hospital razed in Nigeria A fully-equipped hospital that lay unused for two years has burned to the ground in northern Nigeria. The General Hospital in Maiduguri was built in 2006 but the state government refused to open it until the president came to cut the ribbon. Several surgical theatres, the intensive care ward, and the clinical section which held millions of dollars of equipment were all destroyed. The president was due to visit the hospital next month to open it. Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff blamed the fire on arsonists who wanted to damage his political reputation. The...