Youpe Last Week
Bulls and Bears and Balls
Another week and another look at another week’s goings-on in Europe, or as Grandma Riva, born in Horadenka, Ukraine, circa 1888 — featured here holding a very young Jack Friedman after being called away from her weekly poker game — called it, “Youpe.”
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, having recovered from a bout with pneumonia — he said he had a spiritual experience during his convalescence — was in Bulgaria, along with US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, to discuss what is known as the “Vertical Gas Corridor,” a infrastructure initiative designed to transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) between Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Critics charge there was no official communication through Bulgarian government channels about the meeting — it was announced on social media by one of Greece’s foreign ministers. Giuliani has no official role in the US government. A Russian military aircraft is suspected of violating Finnish airspace over the Gulf of Finland. A Spanish court has ordered the country’s tax authority to refund €55m (£48m, $64m) to singer Shakira, who had been assessed the tax lien in 2011. In the country, as in much of Europe, one must spend 183 days to be considered a tax resident. She proved she spent only 163. In France, Edgar Morin has died at the age of 104. He made the film “Chronique d’un ete” (“Chronicle of a Summer”) and was known as the inventor of "cinema verité,” a style of movie-making where the filmmaker is a participant, not just an observer. Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, wants to strip Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s top military honors — the Order of the White Eagle for his efforts against Russia — after Zelenskyy renamed a Ukrainian army regiment the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). While many Ukrainians believe that the UPA was central to the fight against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in World War II, critics charge the regiment was involved in the Volhynia massacres, a series of killings from 1943 to 1945 in which 100,000 Poles were killed.
