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Showing posts from July, 2022

Brazil towel sales emerge to mock mistrust of polls

 As keen supporters of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro claim polls signaling he will lose reelection can’t be trusted, an unlikely proxy has emerged: towel sales. Cashing in on skepticism of pollsters ahead of the October election, some street vendors have begun using scoreboards to track sales of towels bearing the faces of far-right Bolsonaro and his rival, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party. The boards have become a social media sensation in recent days. The trend is dubbed DataToalha, a pun alluding to the country’s most prominent pollster, Datafolha (“toalha’’ is Portuguese for towel.) At one stand in Rio de Janeiro’s city center Wednesday, Lula led 43 to 5. Vendor Jose Lucas da Silva, 28, said sales have soared and his scoreboard is drawing crowds and comments from passersby. “It’s a joke, a joke that’s working out!” he said. “Whoever wants to participate just needs to buy!” Political analysts have said that gap will narrow as inflation...

Russia steps up strikes on Ukraine amid counterattacks

Russian forces on Thursday launched massive missile strikes on Ukraine’s Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, areas that haven’t been targeted in weeks, while Ukrainian officials announced an operation to liberate an occupied region in the country’s south. Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram that a settlement in the Vyshgorod district of the region was targeted early Thursday morning; an “infrastructure object” was hit. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any casualties. Vyshhgorod is about 12 miles north of downtown Kyiv. Kuleba linked the strikes with the Day of Statehood, which Ukraine was marking for the first time on Thursday. “Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba told Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.” Chernihiv governor Vyacheslav Chaus re...