There's a reason our perception of time changes as we age — but there are ways to make it feel slower.

For many people, 2022 went by in a blink ― doesn’t it feel like it was just January? But for others, especially children, last year’s holidays may seem like eons ago.

There’s a reason why you may feel like the years moved slowly when you were a kid, but zoom by now. Experts say our perception of time greatly changes as we age, which makes certain periods feel like they go by quickly.

“Our perception of days, weeks, years and that kind of time seems to be especially influenced by our perspective: Are we in the moment experiencing it, or are we looking backward on time?” said Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. 

She added that the perception of time is also influenced by memory and how much you’ve experienced. For an 8-year-old, a week is a big portion of their life. For an 80-year-old, a week is a much smaller portion of their life, which contributes to the feeling that it went by quickly.

Looking back on time plays into this feeling of acceleration

A day in the life of a retired 80-year-old may feel like it’s going by more slowly than that of an 8-year-old who is busy at school. However, when both people look back on a month or a year, that period of time will seem like it went by faster to the older person.

This is for a number of reasons. For the 80-year-old, their life probably doesn’t look too different than it did when they were 78 or 79, “so, in that case, they’re looking back on fewer events,” Lustig said. “When you’re looking back, the less rich your representation is, the more it’s going to seem like the time went by quickly.”

In other words, our brains lump time together when the days or weeks are similar. So for an 80-year-old who largely does the same thing every day, the year is going to blend together in their mind and feel like it went by quickly. 

The new and exciting things in a day are what make the days and months feel different, and thus set them apart in our minds. 

Changes to your routine can also affect how fast the years seem to go by

“Our brains are designed to record change,” said Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University and the author of the recent book “Time And Beauty: Why Time Flies And Beauty Never Dies.”

The many experiences young children have in a day (such as learning new things at school, going to ballet class or visiting a new friend’s house) contribute to the notion that time is more plentiful and more activities can fit into that time. Therefore, when looking back, time may feel slower.

This can apply to adults, too. When we look back on a time period that was filled with lots of new experiences, “we see [a] large expense of events and memories, and that makes it seem like time stretches out ... and it feels very long,” Lustig said. If you’re not introducing new patterns into your life, time can feel like it’s going by much quicker overall.

Some experts think that how our brain absorbs images impacts our perception of time

How we process what we see can also influence how we view time, Bejan said. Our brains are trained to receive many images when we are infants. Because we’re absorbing so many new images as kids, it may feel like months and years are longer.

As adults, “the brain receives fewer images than it was trained to receive when young,” Bejan said. Therefore, we feel like time went by more quickly. In other words, there are physiological factors at play that influence our perception of time ― namely, the older we get, the faster it feels.

While you can’t slow time, you can do things to feel like it’s moving a little slower

Bejan said many older people ask him how they can slow down time, “because everybody wants to live longer [and has] the urge to do more and better things with the time that is available.”

He said one way to do this is to experience things that are new and out of your usual regimen. 

This could mean picking up a childhood hobby (like dancing or violin), taking an overnight trip to a city you’ve never visited or signing up for a cooking class. Learning new things is another good way to make your time feel longer when you look back on your life, he said.

Bejan stressed the adage “variety is the spice of life”: you should get out of your routine and take advantage of the time you have, which will only help make you feel like your year had more time to fill, he said. 

Living a routine-only life makes the year fly really fast, he added.

Lustig noted that being fully engaged and “in the moment” can make those moments seem to last longer. In fact, laboratory studies show that mindfulness exercises can stretch our perception of time, she said. So don’t try to focus on multiple tasks at once. Instead, just focus on the experience at hand.

“None of us know how much time we have, but, interestingly, we do actually have a lot of control over how we experience that time,” Lustig said. “So I encourage everybody to make the most of the time that you’ve got.”

HuffPost

Nigeria's total public debt could rise to 37.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) this year, close to the government's self-imposed 40% limit, the country's Debt Management Office said on Thursday.

The debt office linked the projected rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio from 23.4% in September to new borrowing and a central bank loan-to-bond swap.

"The country's debt stock remains sustainable under these criteria, but the borrowing space has been reduced when compared to Nigeria's self-imposed debt limit of 40%," it said in a report.

Nigeria has said it aims to borrow 8.8 trillion naira ($11.81 billion) in 2023 to cover its budget deficit, and has swapped temporary overdrafts worth 23 trillion naira into long-term bonds this year.

The debt office estimates Nigeria's debt service-to-GDP ratio will reach 73.5% in 2023, exceeding a government limit of 50% due to low revenue collection.

President Bola Tinubu, who took office last month, is embarking on a reform agenda as he seeks to tackle the country's debt burden, low economic growth, double-digit inflation and mounting insecurity.

Nigeria expects restricted access to international capital markets in the near term after Moody's downgraded its credit in January, the debt office said, adding it would seek help from development finance institutions, export and international banks to bridge the gap in external financing.

Nigeria's total public debt was around $103 billion as of September.

($1 = 745.0000 naira)

Reuters

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says plans by the federal government to increase electricity tariff by 40 percent from July 1, 2023, is “insensitive and callous”.

On Monday, the federal government hinted at removing the N50 billion monthly electricity subsidy in the sector owing to the revenue shortfall.

The development is coming a few weeks after the removal of petrol subsidy which now has petrol retail prices skyrocketing.

Reacting to this in a statement issued on Thursday, Joe Ajaero, NLC president, condemned the intentions of the federal government, saying it reflected an organised indifference to the wellbeing of consumers.

“The massive increase is explained away as a response to the over 100 percent increase in the pump price of premium motor spirit. Details reveal a movement in inflation from 16.9 percent to 22.41 percent (threatening to needle 30), and a shift in the exchange rate from N441 to N750,” the statement reads.

“We believe not even these figures are a justification for this reckless proposed tariff increase. The issue of capacity to pay and quality of service delivery are not only germane but superior to any rationalisation by market logic. The service providers, in spite of sundry support, have not been able to meet the threshold of 5,000 megawatts.

“Coupled with this, there have been surreptitious increases without notice in violation of statutes. The inherent risk in the new regime of tariff is that there is no control, implying that by August, consumers will pay new rates.

“The other risk is that by the time other products or service-rendering entities come up with their new prices or rates, the ordinary person would have been compacted into dust. We would want to advise apostles of the market who have called NLC all sorts of names to check their conscience.

“The rate at which they are going is highly combative and combustible. With the contemplation of payment of school fees in tertiary institutions and increases in privately-owned ones in addition to other costs/tariffs on the way, life in Nigeria could truly be Hobbesian.

“The market economies which the market fundamentalists seek to emulate, have in place socio-economic safeguards which we do not have. In light of this, our advice is that this proposed tariff hike should be shelved for our collective safety.”

The Cable

About 80 per cent of Small and Medium Enterprises fail before their fifth anniversary due to harsh economic environments, lack of access to capital, and poor business practices, which have stunted growth and transition of micro-businesses, a new report has said.

According to the report titled “Perception Study: Efficiency and Impact of Regulatory Activities of Standard Organisation of Nigeria on  SMEs”, numerous variables currently influence Nigeria’s economic climate and as a result, it is unfavourable and risky for foreign investments.

It further stated that there were obstacles in the Nigerian business environment that act as constraints to the survival of business in the nation, despite the economic expansion and the possibility for economic prospects.

It identified multiple taxations as a major constraint that has negatively impacted many businesses in the country.

The report read in part, “MAN (Manufacturers Association of Nigeria) has spoken out loudly that the Nigerian business environment is now under the oppressive weight of several taxes, which have the potential to bankrupt companies. In a recent survey, MAN discovered that only 39 of the 119 taxes and levies that were authorised under the taxes and levies (Approved list of collection) Act 1998 were really being levied by various levels of government across the three states.

“80 per cent of SMEs fail before their fifth anniversary due to harsh economic environments, lack of access to capital, and poor business practices, which have stunted the growth and transition of micro-businesses, according to the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria in Nigeria.”

The report listed additional difficulties such as the cost of accessing adequate technology, the lack of facilities for research and development, the decline in demand for locally produced products and the increase in demand for imported goods.

“Low formal educational and technical competency of SME owners and staff as well as weak organisational framework, product/service marketing, low information technology utilisation, people management issues, insufficient accounting records, among others, are some significant challenges facing SMEs in Nigeria,” the report read further.

Punch

A witness for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has told the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja that results on all 110 BVAS machines he inspected were deleted.

The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine is an electronic device distributed across the over 176,000 polling units in the country by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the accreditation of voters during the 2023 general elections.

The device was also designed to promptly upload photographic copies of result sheets to the INEC Results View (IReV) portal after result documentation at the polling units.

Atiku disputed the results of the presidential election declared by INEC. He also rejected the results because of INEC’s failure to promptly upload the polling unit results of the election to IReV.

In his petition that he filed at the Presidential Election Petition Court to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s victory, Atiku prayed that he be declared the winner instead. But he alternatively asked for an outright cancellation of the poll for a fresh one to be conducted.

Hitler Nwala, who was subpoenaed to testify as an expert witness for the petitioners, said he inspected and analysed 110 BVAS machines used for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) election.

The witness, led in evidence by the petitioner’s lead counsel, Chris Uche, described himself as a Digital Forensic Analyst.

He said his analysis of the BVAS showed that their results were deleted but that he didn’t know when the deletion was done.

Cross-examination

Under cross-examination by INEC’s lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud, the witness said that he attached a standard exercise device to the machine to arrive at his conclusion.

When asked if he had the authority of the commission to attach an external device to the BVAS machines, the witness answered in the affirmative.

Mahmoud further asked the witness if he was aware that inspecting only 110 machines out of 3,163 that were deployed in the FCT amounted to only 3.4 per cent of the total number of BVAS deployed in the FCT and 0.06 per cent of BVAS deployed nationwide.

The witness told the court that he only compiled the report and didn’t take time to calculate the percentages.

The INEC counsel attempted to give a BVAS machine to the witness to check if the results on them were deleted, as he had said in his report.

The witness, however, said that it would be against the ethics of his profession to collect the BVAS machine in open court to check it.

“It is professionally wrong to access a device that will be used as evidence in a court of competent jurisdiction because it will tamper with the evidence.

“We cannot access the device directly; what we do is extract the evidence and take it for analysis,” he said.

Moreover, the witness told the court that since all the devices had the same model and looked the same on the outside, he couldn’t tell by merely looking at it if it was one of those he inspected.

On his part, counsel for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagbemi, told the witness that neither he nor his team members signed the six-volume forensic report.

The witness, however, insisted that he signed the report and the certificate of compliance.

On his part, counsel for Tinubu, Wole Olanipekun, confronted the witness with a portion of his report where he said that from his inspection of the machines, “nothing was intrinsically wrong with them”.

“Were you in Abuja on the day of the presidential election? If you were not in Abuja, how can you know that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the machines on the day of the election?” the senior lawyer asked.

The witness said he was not in Abuja, so he couldn’t have known if something went wrong with the machines on election day.

Exhibits tendered

After the witness was discharged, the petitioners went further to tender Forms EC8A series from 20 local government areas of Ogun State, 17 local government areas of Ondo State, 27 local government areas of Jigawa State, and 20 local government areas of Rivers State.

The five-member panel of the court led by Haruna Tsammani adjourned the hearing of the petition until Friday.

After the pre-hearing report, Atiku and the PDP are expected to close their case on Friday.

They had asked for three weeks to present their case, which elapsed on Tuesday, but because they had lost three days, one being the June 12 Democracy Day public holiday, the court extended their time by three days.

NAN

Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on Thursday fielded more witnesses in aid of its petition at the Presidential Election Petition Court.

The petitioners are protesting the outcome of the last presidential elections wherein the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Bola Tinubu as the elected president.

Tinubu contested under the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

During the resumed hearing in the matter, Ugwuoke who was led in evidence by the petitioners’ counsel, Patrick Ikweato, insinuated that the Amazon Web Service could not have shut down as it was the responsibility of the service provider to be up and running.

The AWS was the web host of the INEC Results Viewing portal where the election results were to be uploaded.

Under cross-examination by counsel to the electoral commission, Abubakar Mahmoud, the witness averred that the AWS model has a shared responsibility model between the service provider and the clients.

He maintained that it is the responsibility of the company to guarantee the security of its customers.

Furthermore, Ugwuoke explained that there are three components of shared responsibility between the company and INEC – confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The witness noted that “availability” remains the responsibility of AWS.

In his words, ”It means it will always be available. It won’t shut down. This is the responsibility of AWS. The cloud trail will explain the availability of AWS infrastructure.”

Under cross-examination by counsel for the APC, Lateef Fagbemi, the witness affirmed that there is a Service Level Agreement between the service provider (AWS) and clients (INEC).

He said the agreement contained details of security features.

The cyber security expert further informed the court that whereas election results ought to be domiciled on the INEC Results Viewing portal, what is seen in some uploads are “incorrect uploads such as a picture of a book rather than a result.”

He insisted that the chances of errors being detected after the deployment of an application are negligible.

However, he said such errors are more likely to be detected at the testing stage of an application.

Punch

Federation Account Allocation Committee says it shared N786.16bn among the three tiers of government for May 2023.

The figure represents an increase of N130.23bn compared to the N655.93bn shared in April 2023, and it is the highest this year and the first increase following a constant decline since January.

FAAC disclosed this in a communiqué issued at the end of its latest meeting in Abuja on Thursday.

The meeting was chaired by the new Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein.

The total amount includes gross statutory revenue, Value Added Tax, Augmentations from Forex and Non-oil Mineral Revenue, and electronic money transfer levies.

The communique read, “The N786.16bn total distributable revenue comprised distributable statutory revenue of N519.55bn, distributable Value Added Tax revenue of N251.61bn, Electronic Money Transfer Levy of N14.37bn, and Exchange Difference revenue of N0.64 bn.”

Federal Government received N301.89bn, the states received N265.88bn, and local government councils got N195.54bn, while the oil-producing states received N22.86bn as derivation (13 per cent of mineral revenue).

A breakdown showed that “Gross statutory revenue of N701.79bn was received for the month of May 2023. This was higher than the N497.46bn received in the previous month by N204.324bn.”

It was noted that from the N519.55bn distributable statutory revenue, the Federal Government got N261.69bn, State Governments received N132.73bn, and Local Government Councils received N102.33bn. N22.8bn was shared to the relevant States as 13 per cent derivation revenue.

Also, “For May 2023, the gross revenue available from the Value Added Tax was N270.2bn. This was higher than the N217.74bn available in April 2023 by N52.45bn.

“The Federal Government received N37.74bn, the State Governments received N125.80bn and the Local Government Councils received N88.06bn from the N251.61bn distributable Value Added Tax revenue.

“The N14.37bn Electronic Money Transfer Levy was shared as follows: Federal Government received N2.16bn, State Governments received N7.189bn and Local Government Councils received N5.03bn.

“From the N0.64bn Exchange Difference revenue, Federal Government received N0.31bn, State Governments received N0.16bn, Local Government Councils received N0.12bn and N0.06bn was shared to the relevant States as 13 per cent mineral revenue.”

Punch

National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says Indomie noodles manufactured in Nigeria is safe for human consumption. 

The agency said the noodles do not contain ethylene oxide.

Health officials in Malaysia and Taiwan said they had detected ethylene oxide in Indomie’s special chicken flavour noodles.

Ethylene oxide is a colourless and odourless gas that is used to sterilise medical equipment and plastics. It is said to be a cancer-causing chemical.

Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC director-general, said the agency would begin random sample tests of the noodles from May 2.

Speaking with journalists on Thursday, the director-general said during the probe, samples of chicken flavoured instant noodles of various brands and the seasonings were drawn from the production facilities across the country.

She said the exercise was to ensure that the investigation was robust and cover other instant noodles brands manufactured in Nigeria, besides Indomie.

She said the agency also visited markets and retail outlets in the major cities of Lagos, Abuja, and Kano and drew samples of instant noodles for laboratory analysis.

“The market visits served as surveillance for the presence of the Taiwan and Malaysian special chicken noodles in the Nigerian market,” she said.

“The samples drawn from production facilities and trade were properly packaged and delivered in good condition to our central laboratory, Oshodi, Lagos, where analytical activities commenced immediately in accordance with international standards and methods of analysis.

“The technique using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detector was deployed.

“A total of 114 samples of instant noodles and the seasonings were received.

“We did not only analyze for ethylene oxide and its derivative 2-chloroethanol in the noodles and seasonings; we also analysed for other contaminants such as mycotoxins and heavy metals in the samples.

“Ethylene oxide or its derivative was not found in any of the instant noodles produced in Nigeria and their seasonings.

“The level of mycotoxin and the heavy metals were within the internationally acceptable limit. Therefore, the noodles made in Nigeria are very safe to eat.”

The Cable

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to mainland in blow to Russian supply route

Ukrainian missiles on Thursday struck one of the few bridges linking the Crimea Peninsula with the Ukrainian mainland, Russian-appointed officials said, cutting one of the main supply routes for Russian occupation forces in southern Ukraine.

Meanwhile on the eastern front, Ukrainian forces were containing Russian troops and have not allowed "a single metre" of Russian advances, Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said on the Telegram app on Thursday.

She added Ukrainian forces on the southern front, where several villages were retaken last week, were "gradually moving forward. We have had partial success. We are pushing back the enemy and levelling the front line".

Ukraine is attacking Russian supply lines to disrupt Moscow's defence of occupied territory in the south, where Kyiv is in the early stages of its most ambitious counteroffensive of the 16-month-old war.

Kyiv says it has recaptured eight villages so far, but it has yet to commit the bulk of its forces to the fight and its troops have yet to reach the main Russian defensive lines.

Vladimir Saldo, head of the Russian-installed administration in occupied Kherson province, released video of himself on the Chonhar road bridge, where craters were blasted through the asphalt.

"Another meaningless act perpetrated by the Kyiv regime on orders from London. It solves nothing as far as the special military operation is concerned," he said, vowing to repair the bridge and restore traffic. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the bridge attack.

The bridge is one of a handful of access roads to Crimea, which a narrow isthmus links to the Ukrainian mainland.

Alternative routes require hours-long detours over roads in poor condition. Russia's RIA new agency quoted Russian-installed transport officials as saying repairing the bridge could take weeks.

The bridge is beyond range of the battlefield rockets Ukraine has used for a year, but within reach of newly deployed weapons such as British and French air-launched cruise missiles, allowing Kyiv to hit logistics routes Russia had deemed safe just weeks ago.

'PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT'

The strike was "a blow to the military logistics of the occupiers", said Yuriy Sobolevsky, a Ukrainian official on the governing body for the Kherson region.

"There is no place on the territory of Kherson region where they can feel safe," he said.

Russian investigators said four missiles were fired by Ukrainian forces at the bridge, the RIA news agency reported. It quoted a spokesman for military investigators as saying markings on one missile suggested it was made in France.

Ukraine's Maliar said fighting in the Lyman sector, in the north of Donetsk region, was "the most difficult".

In the south, Ukrainian forces continued their offensive aimed at moving towards the city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region and the port of Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov, she said.

Russia says it has fended off the Ukrainian counterattack and inflicted heavy casualties, which Ukraine denies.

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the leaders of the Russian military of lying to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people about the extent of Russian losses and setbacks in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has acknowledged that progress has been slow so far, but says his troops are advancing cautiously into heavily mined and well-defended areas to minimise losses.

Zelenskiy on Thursday accused Russia of planning a terrorist attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which is in Russian-held territory near the front line. Moscow denied any such plan.

In a video statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian president said Moscow had prepared an attack that would release radiation from the plant but did not provide evidence.

Zelenskiy also claimed in his nightly video address that Russia had formed teams to collect and hide bodies of people killed in the Kakhovka dam collapse this month in southern Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of being behind the dam breach.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called out Russia on Thursday for killing 136 children in Ukraine in 2022, adding its armed forces to a global list of offenders, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council seen by Reuters on children and armed conflict.

Russia has denied targeting civilians since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

In London, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he was certain Ukraine will have received the $6.5 billion it needs this year for its rapid reconstruction from pledges made at a conference that closed on Thursday.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Kiev regime’s losses indicate West intends to fight Russia until last Ukrainian — Putin

The West can supply additional military equipment to Ukraine but it does not have an endless amount of manpower to work with, meaning Western countries intend to fight Russia until the last Ukrainian, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out at a briefing with permanent Security Council members.

"I realize that this is preliminary information because it is impossible to get a complete picture of the battlefield but overall it is clear. One can conclude that, of course, it is possible to supply additional hardware but the mobilization reserve is not infinite," the Russian head of state said commenting on the data on Ukrainian equipment and personnel losses provided by Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev.

"It seems that Ukraine’s Western allies have indeed decided to fight Russia until the last Ukrainian," the president stressed.

During the meeting, Putin listened to Shoigu’s report on Ukrainian losses and then compared that information with the data obtained by Patrushev via other channels. "Nikolay Platonovich, I asked you to maintain interaction with your colleagues from various agencies in order for us to have an objective picture of what is going on," he explained, asking for an account of "how it looks from the point of view of various agencies participating in the special military operation." "It is clear that the main responsibility rests with the Defense Ministry but nevertheless, other agencies also accumulate information," the Russian president added.

According to the Defense Ministry and Security Council, Ukrainian personnel losses have surpassed 13,000 people. Putin was also interested in how the Defense Ministry assessed the prospects of new supplies of Western military hardware.

Having listened to the reports, the president emphasized that Ukrainian army reserves had not been exhausted and Russian commanders should be practical when planning combat operations. "One has to proceed from the premise that the adversary’s advance potential has not been exhausted; a number of strategic reserves have not yet been engaged and I am asking to keep this in mind when planning combat operations. It is necessary to proceed from the real situation," Putin concluded.

** Current counteroffensive ‘not decisive’ – Kiev

Ukraine is already planning for its next ‘counter-offensive’ using the US-made Abrams tanks, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told state broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday.

Washington promised Kiev about 30 Abrams tanks back in January. Asked whether they might arrive in time for the current operation, Kuleba said Ukrainians should look to the future instead.

“There is hope, but one should not think only in terms of this counter-offensive,” he said. “You should not look at this counteroffensive as the last and decisive one. There will be so many counteroffensives, as many as is needed to expel Russia from our territory.”

The Abrams is a “much more complex design” than the German-made Leopards that Ukraine was provided in the spring, Kuleba added. 

Kiev launched its long-heralded attack on June 4, deploying several brigades armed with American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-made Leopards against Russian defenses in Zaporozhye and southern Donetsk. 

President Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged on Wednesday that the advance had been “slower than desired.” Anonymous Western officials told CNN on Thursday that the attack was “not meeting expectations on any front.” 

According to the Russian military, Ukrainian troops were stopped cold on the screening line, losing up to 13,000 casualties and 800 armored vehicles. Briefing President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev spoke of 13 Western-made tanks being destroyed in the 16 days of fighting.

Ukrainian losses reportedly include 246 tanks, 152 infantry fighting vehicles – including 59 Western-made ones – 443 armored vehicles, 279 field artillery pieces and mortars, 42 multiple rocket launchers, ten fighter jets, four helicopters and 264 drones, according to the briefing.

Several Russian regions and organizations have offered bounties for the destruction or capture of any Leopard, Abrams or UK-made Challenger tanks provided to Ukraine. The first million-ruble prize for killing a Leopard was paid out to a Russian serviceman earlier this week. 

** NATO ‘out of the question’ for Ukraine right now – Scholz

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has argued that NATO should use its upcoming summit to marshall more military aid for Ukraine rather than pushing for the country to join the bloc. The US-led alliance is divided on the speed of Ukraine’s accession, with Britain demanding a fast-tracked process.

“We have to take a sober look at the current situation,” Scholz told parliament in Berlin on Thursday. Scholz added that Ukrainian officials have admitted “that joining NATO is out of the question” for as long as the conflict with Russia is raging, and the Western bloc should focus on other means of “support” for Kiev.

"Therefore, I suggest we focus on the top priority in Vilnius, namely strengthening the combat power of Ukraine," he argued, referring to the July summit in the Lithuanian capital.

"Our goal is… a sustainable military support of Ukraine, including with modern Western weapons,” he said, adding that EU and G7 nations could work out “security guarantees” for Ukraine in the absence of full NATO membership.

NATO’s official position on Ukrainian membership remains unchanged since 2008, when it declared that Ukraine “will become a member” at an unspecified point in the future. As long as the conflict with Russia is ongoing, this will be unlikely to shift, as Ukraine joining NATO would place the bloc at war with Russia. Prospective members can only join with the unanimous consent of all existing members.

Nevertheless, the European Parliament wants NATO leaders to use the Vilnius summit to extend a membership invitation to Ukraine, as do Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian lawmakers. The UK backs these calls for urgency, with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly stating earlier on Thursday that London “would be very, very supportive” of NATO expediting Ukraine’s accession to the bloc.

“The Ukrainians have demonstrated their commitment to military reform required for NATO membership through their actions on the battlefield, and I think all NATO allies recognise that,” Cleverly added, without explicitly saying whether NATO should wait for the conflict with Russia to be resolved first.

For the time being, the US remains opposed to any fast-track process. Last week, US President Joe Biden stated that Ukraine would have to meet the same standards as everyone else and that “we are not going to make it easy.” 

Reuters/Tass/RT

South Kordofan residents flee as new front in Sudan war develops

Residents of the city of Kadugli in southwest Sudan began fleeing the city on Thursday as tensions escalated between the army and a powerful rebel group, threatening to open another area of conflict in the country's ongoing war, witnesses said.

Mobilisation around Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan state, and an escalation of fighting in Darfur come after nearly 10 weeks of fighting focused in the capital, Khartoum, between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The United States and Saudi Arabia adjourned talks they had been facilitating in Jeddah, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee said at a congressional hearing in Washington.

"The format is not succeeding in the way that we want," she said, after a series of violated ceasefire agreements.

Since mid-April the war has uprooted more than 2.5 million people from their homes and threatened to destabilise neighbouring countries suffering from a combination of conflict, poverty and economic pressures.

In the fighting between the army and the RSF, army air strikes on Thursday morning hit areas of southern Khartoum and Omdurman, and the RSF responded with anti-aircraft weaponry, residents said.

ESCALATION IN THE WEST

The army on Wednesday accused the SPLM-N rebel group led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, which controls parts of South Kordofan state, of breaking a long-standing ceasefire agreement and attacking an army unit in the city.

The army said it had fought back the incursion but sustained losses.

South Kordofan has Sudan's main oil fields and borders West Darfur State as well as South Sudan.

The SPLM-N, which has strong ties to South Sudan, also attacked the army in the South Kordofan city of al-Dalanj on Wednesday, as did the RSF, residents said.

Residents of Kadugli said the army had redeployed forces to protect its positions in the city on Thursday, while the SPLM-N was gathering in areas on the outskirts.

There were electricity and communications outages as well as dwindling food and medical supplies, they said.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

The war has also brought an eruption of violence in Darfur, with the West Darfur city of El Geneina worst hit.

In Al Fashir, capital of North Darfur, the army and the RSF clashed violently, including around the main market, witnesses said after having deployed across the city on Thursday, witnesses said.

Nyala, capital of South Darfur and one of Sudan's largest cities, has also seen clashes between the army and RSF in recent days, amid electricity and communications blackouts. Both cities had been relatively calm after locally negotiated truces.

Reuters