These include a trademark on the company name itself, along with trademarks on the word Frappuccinos, its loyalty program, its instant coffee, and others related to the preparation of food and drinks, the Kyiv Post reported, citing Vedomosti.
The move has sparked speculation that the company may be considering re-entering the market, which it left following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
However, it could simply be about protecting its global brand.
A spokesperson for Starbucks told Business Insider that the company "routinely files trademark applications around the world to protect its brand."
The Kyiv Post reported that several of Starbucks' patent protections in Russia are due to expire next year. In April, the Russian businesses that bought out the coffee chain's sites filed a lawsuit to terminate Starbucks' trademark, it said.
Along with other major international brands, Starbucks announced its intention to divest from the Russian market in March 2022, ultimately shutting 130 stores after Russian forces began their full-scale invasion.
By August 2022, Starbucks' former locations had been bought up by Russian entrepreneur Anton Pinskiy, rapper Timur Yunusov, and retail property company Sindika Company. The stores reopened as "Stars Coffee."
Starbucks is not the only company affected by Russian copycats: Soon after the invasion of Ukraine, trademark applications were also filed for "Makdonalds," while the "Uncle Vanya" burger brand clearly aped the McDonald's golden arches logo.
For the first time on Thursday, both stages of the rocket — the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket — reached a major new reusability milestone when they both landed in the water after launch.
Super Heavy landed in the Gulf of Mexico minutes after lift-off. But Starship's splashdown is even more impressive.The rocket ship flew into space, briefly cruised above Earth, and screamed back through the atmosphere at about 17,000 mph, enduring ultra-heated plasma lashing it at temperatures up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
A screengrab from SpaceX's livestream shows a camera view aboard Starship as the vehicle plows through Earth's atmosphere on its fall.
SpaceX via X
As it approached the Indian Ocean, Starship fired its engines in an effort to flip itself upright and slow itself down, practicing a controlled landing. It's not clear how soft the landing was, as the spaceship was clearly shredding pieces on the livestream and visibility became extremely poor as it approached the water.
You can see small pieces of Starship's fin flying off as it reenters Earth's atmosphere.
SpaceX
Whatever happened, the ship completed its mission by sinking into the ocean.
Believe it or not, cannon-balling into the sea is a big deal for Starship. Last time it attempted the feat, in March, it disintegrated mid-fall.
A screengrab from Starship's reentry video in March shows ultra-hot plasma gathering on the spaceship's belly.
SpaceX via X
Now Starship and its Super Heavy booster are one big step closer to fulfilling their revolutionary promise of being the first fully reusable rocket system capable of reaching orbit. If Starship can translate this ocean landing into a land landing, it could slash the cost of spaceflight tenfold.
A screengrab from SpaceX's livestream of the June 6, 2024 launch shows Starship sitting atop its Super Heavy booster on the launchpad.
SpaceX via X
Then, of course, there are Elon Musk's Mars ambitions. Starship is the vehicle that's supposed to build his city on the red planet, with a population of 1 million people.
"No rocket before this has had the potential to extend life to another planet," Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 for this very purpose, said in a speech standing before Starship at the company's Texas facilities in April.
Starship's 4th flight to space
The giant launch system, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty, fired its Raptor engines and roared past its Texas launchpad on Thursday morning.
The launch wasn't perfect — one engine failed to light. But the rocket still worked.
One of the engines on SpaceX's Super Heavy booster was not lit during its fourth launch.
SpaceX
Just like on its last flight in March, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship rocket-ship high above Earth, allowing the winged spacecraft to continue into space.
Starship cruises through space on its fourth launch.
SpaceX
The booster fell back to Earth, practiced firing its engines to lower itself as if it were landing on solid ground, and splash-landed in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX reaches a major new milestone by landing its Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX
That checked off SpaceX's first vehicle-return goal for the flight. Next was Starship itself.
On its last plummet back to Earth, in March, Starship fell out of communications. SpaceX eventually declared it "lost," likely broken apart or blown up by the stress of reentering the atmosphere.
But on Thursday the rocket ship survived the fall, splashing into the ocean and completing its first full flight.
It wasn't unscathed, though. One of its flaps began to visibly rip off and shred mid-fall, and the camera offering the live view cracked.
Starship's fin rips off on the livestream.
SpaceX
Next step: catch the rocket with 'chopsticks'
No orbital launch system on Earth is fully reusable. SpaceX pioneered reusing the lower stage of a rocket — its booster — with the Falcon 9, the workhorse that takes NASA missions and Starlink satellites to orbit.
Starship-Super Heavy is poised to be the first system to also reuse the upper stage — the spaceship that enters orbit after the booster falls away.
Indeed, a Starship prototype already proved that it could lower itself to a soft landing from a flight six miles above Texas, albeit after several explosive failed attempts. But returning from orbital heights to land in one piece is another feat.
SpaceX's Starship serial No. 8 rocket-ship prototype careens toward a landing pad in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX
On its next flight, SpaceX might attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster with giant "chopsticks" on its Texas launch tower.
"I think the odds of actually catching the booster with the tower, probably like 80% or 90% this year," Musk said in his April speech. "Which is insane. Like actually, when we first talked about it, it sounded so batshit crazy."
As for Starship, the upper stage, itmight not descend from space to an actual landing paduntil next year, he said.
"We just need to be confident that we can get through the high heating portion of the reentry reliably, and then we will bring the ship back and we'll land on the tower as well," Musk said.
Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
The Fed's rate hikes have had "zero impact" on the job market, Barry Sternlicht said.
The real estate mogul pointed to job growth in rate-sensitive areas of the economy.
Job losses in the services sector could push the US into a swift recession, he warned.
The Federal Reserve's aggressive inflation fight hasn't worked to cool off the job market, and the central bank risks sparking a "serious" downturn for US consumers, according to real estate billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht.
The Starwood Capital Group CEO pointed to the Fed's steep rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, which tightened financial conditions and helped lower high prices in the economy.
Sternlicht said high interest rates haven't loosened the job market even in the most rate-sensitive areas like construction. That growth poses a problem for central bankers, who are looking for more evidence of a cooling economy before easing monetary policy.
Jobs in the healthcare industry have climbed 1.4 million since March 2022, the month the Fed first began raising interest rates. Jobs in construction, meanwhile, grew by half a million in that time frame, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"He's had zero impact," Sternlicht said of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, speaking to CNBC on Wednesday. "He's not getting layoffs in the parts of the market that are the most sensitive."
In aggregate, job growth has cooled since the hiring spree in 2023. The unemployment rate has ticked higher over the past year, clocking in at 3.9% in April, but is still at the lowest level in decades.
Job cut announcements also spiked at the start of the year, with plans to lay off working rising 136% over the month of January, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The Fed keeping interest rates higher for longer risks further weakening the job market. If job losses begin to hit the services sector, that could easily push the US into a hard landing, given it's outsized impact on the economy, Sternlicht warned.
"If he hits that, he creates a great recession. If he's going to knock those jobs out, which is a big category, he's going to have to have a serious consumer recession, which I don't think he can stop," Sternlicht said, adding he foresaw "aggressive" Fed rate cuts.
Other Wall Street forecasters have been warning of the risk of recession, especially as interest rates look poised to stay higher for longer. Rates are hovering at their highest levels since 2001. Meanwhile, the New York Fed sees a 52% chance the US could enter a recession within the next 12 months.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower told his invasion force, "Your task will not be an easy one." He was brutally right.
The National WWII Museum
The D-Day invasion was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a turning point in World War II.
By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians had been killed or wounded.
The greatest risks were borne by American troops who arrived in the first wave, seized clifftop artillery, and set up balloons to defend against aerial attacks.
"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely."
As the sun set on the blood-stained beaches of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's message to the thousands of Allied troops dispatched to carry out the largest amphibious landing in military history rang true.
The invasion, codenamed Operation Neptune and remembered as D-Day, sent roughly 156,000 British, Canadian, and American troops to the Nazi-occupied French coast by air and sea, beginning the multi-month Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe from Hitler's Wehrmacht.
Four years ago, as millions gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, National WWII Museum senior historian Rob Citino emphasized that the impact of the landings came at a tremendous human toll. By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis soldiers and civilians had died and been wounded, with those involved in the initial landings suffering disproportionately.
"Certain sectors and certain minutes, casualties were 100 percent," Citino said.
Citino described the most perilous jobs American troops performed to help make the D-Day landings a World War II turning point. "It was bad enough but would have been worse," he says.
1. The Pathfinders
A paratrooper with a Thompson M1 submachine and heavy equipment.
The National WWII Museum
The earliest paratroopers of the US Army's 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions jumped into enemy territory in the dark, facing unrelenting attacks with little back-up and a lot of pressure to light the way.
Strategy and scope: Upwards of 13,000 American paratroopers would jump in the early days of Operation Neptune, the Allied invasion of well-guarded Normandy.
Minutes after midnight on June 6, around 300 101st Pathfinders, nicknamed "the Screaming Eagles," went in first. Paratrooping in lean, highly-trained formations, the Pathfinders were not out to engage in combat. They were to quickly set up lights and flares to mark drop zones for paratroopers and landing paths for the gliders preparing to land.
General Eisenhower's advice to the 101st ahead of D-Day? "The trick is to keep moving."
The Pathfinders paved the way for waves of paratroopers to follow, but paid a heavy price.
Pathfinders with the 82nd Airborne Division jumped from C-47 transports into occupied France under the cover of darkness.
The National WWII Museum
Threats and losses: The equipment they carried — from parachutes and life jackets to lighting systems they were to set up once on the ground — made their packs so heavy that they had to be helped onto the planes.
Then there was the jump.
Amid the bad weather and limited visibility that night, some were blown wildly off course after leaping from the C-47 Skytrains. Even those who managed textbook landings into the intended locations were at risk.
"It's the loneliness — out there all by yourself with no one riding to your rescue in the next 10 minutes if you get in trouble. You're against all the elements," Citino said.
Impact: While the Pathfinders saw heavy losses, they ultimately enabled more accurate, effective landings and ability for Allied troops to withstand counterattacks.
They climbed 100-foot cliffs under fire to take out key German artillery pieces aimed at the beaches.
National Archives
Strategy and scope: Once dawn broke on June 6, 1944, a force of 225 US Army Rangers of the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions began their attempts to seize Pointe du Hoc. Their mission: Scale the 100-foot rock and upon reaching the cliff top, destroy key German gun positions, clearing the way for the mass landings on Omaha and Utah beaches.
The multifaceted naval bombardment sent the highly trained climbers hauling themselves up the cliffs using ropes, hooks, and ladders. Two Allied destroyers would drop bombs onto the Germans in an attempt to limit the enemy's ability to simply shoot the Rangers off the cliffs.
The Rangers climbed the cliffs in sodden clothes while Germans above them shot at them and tried to cut their ropes.
The sheer cliff walls the Rangers scaled, shown about two days after D-Day when it because a route for supplies.
US Army
Threats and losses: Beyond the challenging mountain climbing involved in getting into France via the cliffs along the English Channel, the Rangers faced choppy waters and delayed landings, which increased the formidable enemy opposition.
Nazi artillery fire sprayed at the naval bombardment. Landing crafts sank. Those who made it to the rocks were climbing under enemy fire, their uniforms and gear heavy and slippery from from mud and water. Germans started cutting their ropes. Rangers who reached the cliff top encountered more enemy fire, along with terrain that looked different from the aerial photographs they had studied, much of it reduced to rubble in the aftermath of recent aerial bombings. And they discovered that several of the guns they were out to destroy had been repositioned.
Impact: The Rangers located key German guns and disabled them with grenades. They also took out enemy observation posts and set up strategic roadblocks and communication lines on Pointe du Hoc. The 155mm artillery positions they destroyed could have compromised the forthcoming beach landings.
3. The first troops on Omaha Beach
US soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division approach Omaha Beach in a landing craft.
The National WWII Museum
Members of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions and the US Army Rangers stormed the beach codenamed "Omaha" in the earliest assaults. These were the bloodiest moments of D-Day.
Strategy and scope: Beyond enemy fire, the Allies were up against physical barricades installed to prevent landings onto the six-mile stretch of Hitler's "Atlantic Wall."
To break through, infantry divisions, Rangers, and specialist units arrived to carry out a series of coordinated attacks, blowing up and through obstacles in order to secure the five paths from the beach and move inland.
A fraction of the first assault troops ever reached the top of the bluff.
American troops approach Omaha Beach on June 7.
The National WWII Museum
Threats and losses: In pre-invasion briefings, troops were told there would be Allied bombing power preceding them and that the Germans would be largely obliterated and washed ashore, Citino said.
While there were aerial bombings, the impact was not as planned. Some of the B-24s and B-17s flying overhead missed their targets. German troops sprayed guns and mortars with clear views of the soldiers, stevedores, porters, and technical support charging the narrow stretch of beach. Men waded through rough, cold water from Allied landing crafts under withering heavy fire. The dangers continued with mines in the sand.
The scene was similarly gruesome for combat engineers moving in with Bangalore torpedoes to blow up obstacles. Meanwhile, amphibious tank operators tried to shield Allied infantry and medics came ashore to try to administer emergency care while facing counterattacks and navigating around the dead and wounded.
Impact: A fraction of those who landed reached the top of the bluff. Some company headcounts went to single digits. But the troops who helped secure Omaha and the five paths off the beach in the coming days cleared the way for massive tanks, fuel, food, and reinforcements important to the rest of the campaign.
4. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion
Soldiers prepare to deploy a barrage balloon on Utah Beach during the Normandy invasion.
The National WWII Museum
These combat troops landed on Utah Beach and set up key lines of defense to prevent Luftwaffe raiders from strafing the incoming army of troops and supplies.
Strategy and scope: The Allies knew that as soon as the landings began, German air attacks would present a major threat to the masses of troops arriving in thousands of landing crafts. To defend against air raids, they turned to defensive weaponry units, including the 621 African-American soldiers in the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, to land with 125-pound blimps and work in teams to anchor them to the ground. Each blimp was filled with hydrogen and connected to small bombs that could denote if enemy aircraft made contact with the cables.
Threats and losses: They came ashore on Utah Beach from some 150 landing crafts on the morning of June 6, facing the dangers of fellow infantry and the added threats that came with maneuvering heavy cables and balloon equipment on the beach under fire. They set up barrage balloons, digging trenches to take cover as waves of fellow soldiers landed.
The air cover allowed Allied troops to move inland with less threat of being bombed or strafed by German planes.
The landings would have been even more deadly without the defensive balloons set up by the 320th.
AP Images
Impact: As landing craft after landing craft came ashore on and after D-Day, the 320th's balloons gave Allied troops and equipment some protection, allowing them to move inland with less threat of being blown into the sand by German fighters.
The hydrogen-filled balloons they deployed along the coast created barriers between the Allied troops and the enemy aircraft out to decimate them. Citino said that their actions setting up the defensive balloons under enemy fire were "as heroic as it gets."
Lise De Baissac was a leader in the French Resistance whose efforts contributed to the success of the D-Day landings.
Eric Harlow/Getty Images
Women played key roles in D-Day, the Allied seaborne invasion of Nazi-held France.
"Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says journalist Sarah Rose.
These are three of the British agents who contributed to the Allied victory in Normandy
It has been 80 years since upward of 150,000 Allied troops began storming the beaches of Normandy by air, land, and sea.
As the anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in military history approaches, journalist Sarah Rose illuminated several less widely known combat heroes who fought for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe in Operation Overlord: Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, and Odette Sansom. They are among the 39 female agents who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secret World War II intelligence agency created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze."
"Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says Rose, who started researching the history of women in combat and was surprised to learn that their roles dated back to World War II. "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers. No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water. They did what men did. They led men."
In her book, "D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II," Rose chronicles three of these agents' contributions to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.
Andrée Borrel, the first female combat paratrooper, fought for the liberation of France until Nazis executed her a month after D-Day.
Born to a working-class family on the outskirts of Paris after World War I, Borrel left school at 14. She had a job at a Paris bakery counter when World War II broke out.
Once the war began, Borrel left Paris and took a crash course in nursing with the Red Cross.
The German military defeated France in June 1940, but many French citizens took up arms in a resistance to Adolf Hitler and his troops.
German Federal Archive
After a stint treating people wounded by the German Army, she joined a group of French Resistance operatives organizing and operating one of the country's largest underground escape networks, the Pat O'Leary line. She aided at least 65 Allied evaders (mainly British Royal Air Force airmen shot down over enemy territory) on their journeys out of France to Spain through the Pyrenees.
When she herself got ratted out, she escaped to Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to London, eager to continue fighting for the liberation of France. In the spring of 1942, the SOE recruited her. She was trained not only to jump behind enemy lines, but also to spy on, sabotage, and kill Axis troops occupying her home country.
Borrel parachuted into France in September of 1942, becoming the first female combat agent to do so. She worked as a courier for the SOE network Physician (nicknamed "Prosper"), which raised bands of Resistance members in the north to carry out guerilla attacks against Nazi troops. Moving between Paris and the countryside, she coordinated aerial supply drops and recruited, armed, and trained Resistance members.
She rose to second in command of the network's Paris circuit, which was also funneling enemy intelligence back to the Allies in London. She was in the SOE's first training class for female agents, where she learned skills from hand-to-hand combat to Morse code. When asked, "How might you kill a Nazi using what you have on you?" she is said to have responded: "I would jam a pencil through his brain. And he'd deserve it."
Her commanding officer described her as "the best of us all."
The Nazis arrested Borrel in 1943 and sent her to a concentration camp.
Borrel was sent to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944, a month after D-Day.
Windofkeltia
Nazis, allegedly leveraging intelligence from a double agent, arrested Borrel and fellow Physician leaders in June 1943. After being interrogated and imprisoned around Paris, she was transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944 with three other female SOE agents and executed a month after D-Day.
Even from prison, she is said to have continued fighting by inserting coded messages about her captors in several letters to her sister. She was 24.
Honors: Croix de Guerre, Medal of the Resistance, the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct
Lise de Baissac parachuted into France twice and became the No. 2 commander of a French Resistance group fighting Nazis during the Battle of Normandy.
Andrée Borrel was the first female SOE agent to parachute into France during World War II, but her jumping partner, 37-year-old Lise de Baissac, was right behind her. The daughter of a wealthy family in British-ruled Mauritius, de Baissac was in France when Hitler's troops moved into Paris in 1940. She fled to the south and then to London. When the SOE started recruiting multilingual women as agents, she joined the fight.
After parachuting into Central France with Borrel, de Baissac set up an Allied safe house for agents in the town of Poitiers in western France, selecting an apartment near Gestapo headquarters — a hiding-in-plain-sight strategy she felt would arouse less suspicion.
She bicycled around occupied territory as a liaison among different underground networks, often riding 60-70 kilometers a day and carrying contraband. On one occasion, a Nazi stopped her and her clandestine radio operator, patting them down. The officer searched them for guns, which they didn't have, so he let them go. She'd later report that a radio crystal fell out of her skirt as she was leaving but that she leaned over, grabbed the crystal off the ground, and pedaled on.
In August of 1943, when her network in Poitiers was blown, the SOE airlifted her back to England by Lysander aircraft. She trained new female SOE recruits in Scotland. In April of 1944, after recovering from a broken leg, she jumped back into occupied France. She made her way to Normandy, joining her brother, fellow SOE agent Claude de Baissac, in leading a network of Resistance fighters in Normandy. They carried out attacks to weaken Nazi communication and transportation circuits, strategically cutting phone lines and blowing up roads, railways, and bridges to hinder the movement of German reinforcements Hitler was ordering to the beaches.
De Baissac raced out of Paris to assist the allies when she learned D-Day was imminent.
Sherman tanks of British 30th Corps passing through Bayeux, France.
Imperial War Museum
On June 5, 1944, de Baissac was in Paris recruiting when she learned D-Day was imminent. She biked for three days, speeding through Nazi formations, sleeping in ditches, and reaching her brother and their Resistance circuit headquarters in Normandy.
As the bloody Normandy campaign raged and the Allies struggled to penetrate the Axis front, the de Baissacs continued leading espionage and sabotage operations. They gathered intelligence on enemy positions and transmitted messages back to England, helping lay the groundwork for Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout in which U.S. Army forces came out of the peninsula and pierced Hitler's front line seven weeks after D-Day.
After the war, she worked for the BBC.
Honors: MBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur Croix de Guerre avec Palme
Odette Sansom blew up Nazi train lines and, upon being arrested and tortured, told Gestapo officers: “I have nothing to say.”
Aliases: Lise 1912-1995
Imperial War Museum
Odette Sansom was a 28-year-old homemaker in Somerset, England when she answered the British War Office's call for images of the French coastline, offering photographs she had from her childhood. Born in France as "Odette Brailly" in 1912, she had lost her father in the final months of the World War I. With World War II raging and her English husband already away fighting in the British Army, she didn't take lightly the decision to leave her three young daughters. But with Hitler already occupying her old homeland and threatening her new one, she felt compelled to join the fight.
She was tough, determined, and persistent. When a concussion during parachute training left her unable to jump into France, she docked in Gibraltar on a gunrunner disguised as a sardine fishing boat, only to arrive in France's "free" zone the same week in November 1942 that Hitler's forces began occupying the region. So began several months working as a courier in SOE agent Capt. Peter Churchill's network, Spindle. Churchill relied heavily on her to set up clandestine radio networks, coordinate parachute drops, and arm Resistance fighters in the Rhône Alps in preparation for D-Day.
She and Churchill fell in love and continued working together mobilizing Resistance members in southeast France until April 1943, when the Gestapo arrested them. Knowing that they were at risk of being executed as spies, she convinced their captors that her commanding officer was a relative of UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that she was his wife and only in France at her urging. Peter Churchill was not, in fact, related to Britain's prime minister, but Sansom figured that if she could trick the Germans into thinking they were VIPs, there would be incentive to keep them alive.
Sansom emerged from the largest, most lethal women’s concentration camp in history with evidence used to convict its leaders of war crimes.
Sansom with her then fiance Capt. Peter Churchill in 1947.
Getty Images
While Sansom was imprisoned around France and then at Ravensbrück concentration camp, enduring solitary confinement and somewhere between 10-14 torture sessions – she survived.
By the time Ravensbrück was evacuated in the spring of 1945, Sansom's back was broken, and she had been starved and beaten, with her toenails pulled out and her body burned in attempts to get her to reveal information about her fellow agents. She is said to have revealed nothing.
In the years after the war, Sansom's testimony was later to convict Ravensbrück camp commandant Fritz Suhren, as well as other SS officers, of war crimes. Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 came less than a year after the sweeping invasions that began the Battle of Normandy, now memorialized as "D-Day."
Honors: George Cross, Member of the Order of the British Empire, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
Editor's Note: This post was initially published on June 5, 2019.
Gen. Bernard "Monty" Montgomery addressing British troops.
AP
The invasion of Normandy, France, on D-Day was a massive and complex military operation involving hundreds of thousands of military personnel.
Allied war planners spent months preparing for the assault, drafting up numerous plans for the spearhead into German-occupied northwestern Europe.
One commanding general, Britain's Gen. Bernard Montgomery, kept it simple, scribbling out his plans for the largest land, air, and sea operation in military history on a single sheet of paper.
The Allied invasion of the Nazi-occupied French coast of Normandy on D-Day was one of the most complex military operations ever undertaken, but amid the intense preparation and planning for history's largest combined land, air, and sea operation, one commanding general kept it simple, scribbling out his war plans on a single piece of paper.
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops, supported by thousands of ships and aircraft, either parachuted into France or stormed its beaches beginning on June 6, 1944. Allied war planners spent months planning the invasion, the beginning of the Allied spearhead into German-occupied Europe known as Operation Overlord.
British Gen. Bernard "Monty" Montgomery served as a ground commander for Anglo-American forces under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
His penciled battle plan for D-Day took up no more than one piece of paper and included a note that said: "The key note of everything to be SIMPLICITY."
Montgomery's plans for D-Day.
Imperial War Museums
Montgomery's plans, which were labeled "Most Secret," were released for the first time in 2016 by the Imperial War Museums for the 72nd anniversary of the invasion.
The museum also released a handwritten draft of the general's speech to Allied troops, which officers read aloud to the invading forces just before the assault began.
"The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe," the speech said. "The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land, and air forces of the Allies."
"Good luck to each one of you," Montgomery concluded his message. "And good hunting on the mainland of Europe."
The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC rescinded its endorsement of former Rep. Mondaire Jones after he endorsed Rep. Jamaal Bowman's primary opponent.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is dropping its support for former Rep. Mondaire Jones.
It comes after Jones, a former caucus member, endorsed Rep. Jamaal Bowman's primary challenger.
Jones is running in a closely-watched House race in New York against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus's (CPC) political arm has rescinded its endorsement of former Rep. Mondaire Jones.
Jones, a former member of the progressive caucus who's set to take on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in one of the most closely watched House races this year, is no longer listed as one of the PAC's endorsed candidates on its website.
The move comes after Jones endorsed Rep. Jamaal Bowman's moderate primary challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, earlier this week. A source close to the PAC told Business Insider that the board held a vote on the matter earlier this week amid outrage from progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
"I have no regrets about standing up for what I firmly believe in," Jones told Business Insider in a statement.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman is facing a tough primary challenge from Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images; Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Jones is running in a district directly north of Bowman's that also includes parts of Westchester County, which is home to a large population of Jewish voters.
"I have known and worked with George Latimer for years," said Jones. "I used to represent thousands of people in what is now New York's 16th Congressional District, and have deep relationships there."
As he announced his endorsement of Latimer, Jones specifically cited Bowman's positions on Israel, including his immediate call for a cease-fire after the Hamas attack, and his past characterization of reports of sexual violence during the October 7 Hamas attack as "propaganda."
"I have been horrified by his recent acceptance of the DSA endorsement, his denial of the sexual assault of Israeli women by Hamas on October 7, and his rush to call for a ceasefire before Israel could hardly begin to defend itself against the worst assault on Jews since the Holocaust," said Jones. "Over the past few months, I have had countless conversations with Jewish residents in my district and across the Lower Hudson Valley who feel anxiety, anger, and fear due to Rep. Bowman's words and actions. I will always stand up for my Jewish constituents."
The move was also seen as an attempt by Jones to separate himself from Bowman's more strident brand of progressive politics as he seeks to appeal to swing voters on his own race. It also benefits Latimer, who has faced charges of racism from progressives as he seeks to unseat a Black incumbent in a majority-minority House district.
Jones was a member of the Progressive Caucus when he previously served in Congress from 2021 to 2023 — and his former colleagues are now livid with him.
Jones and Bowman appeared together at a gun violence prevention-related event in Westchester County in April 2023.
Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Just Majority
"I'm just horrified by it. I'm so disappointed," Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the progressive caucus, told Business Insider on Tuesday. "Jamaal Bowman is our top incumbent protection race, and so to have another endorsed candidate attack our top candidate is really terrible."
Jayapal said at the time that the PAC board was "discussing how we want to respond."
Jones said that he "will continue to be a champion for the policies I have long advocated."
"I will continue to talk about these important issues on the campaign trail and invite all of my former colleagues to support my campaign to take back the House and save democracy itself in what is broadly considered one of the 10 best Democratic pick-up opportunities in the nation. Time is running out," Jones added.
Amid New York's tumultuous redistricting in 2022, Jones was drawn into a district with another top Democrat and opted to run for an open House seat based in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with the CPC's support. He ultimately lost that primary to now-Rep. Dan Goldman.
Jones is now running in one of his party's top pick-up opportunities for 2024 — President Joe Biden won Lawler's district in 2020. The CPC originally endorsed Jones for the seat in August 2023.
It is unclear how the loss of progressive support will affect his chances in November. Lawler has been eager to highlight Jones's past progressive positions, including his past praise for Bowman.
The European Union just made its first cut to interest rates in five years.
The European Central Bank lowered its main interest rate from 4% to 3.75%.
Officials tend to lower interest rates when inflation is under control and they want to lift growth.
The European Union has become the latest global economy to cut its benchmark interest rate.
The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Thursday that it would lower its main interest rate from 4% to 3.75%, marking its first reduction since 2019.
Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at Premier Miton Investors, said in a research note to clients:
"In one of the most flagged central bank interest rate decisions for some time, the ECB followed Canada into the rate cutting cycle. However, the path for further cuts is unlikely to be as predictable or smooth."
"Eurozone inflation is proving more resilient than hoped, as it is in the US and UK, which has to influence the ECB, although they will be keen to keep providing stimulus to the economy, it needs it. As has been the case all the way through the cycle, they have a tight rope to walk," he said.
For example, US inflation surged to a 40-year high of over 9% in the summer of 2022. The US central bank responded by hiking interest rates from nearly zero in early 2022 to over 5% currently, and has yet to make its first cut.
Screengrab from a video of a Ukrainian drone taking out a Russian tank, released on May 5, 2024.
X/@DefenceU
A Ukrainian drone found an easy way to get around a Russian tank's "turtle" defenses, a video shows.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said those inside forgot to close the tank's hatch.
Russia has outfitted some of its tanks with elaborate defenses, with mixed results.
A dramatic video shared by Ukraine's defense ministry on Wednesday showed an aerial drone finding a simple way around a Russian tank's formidable "turtle" defenses.
The footage, captured by Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, shows the drone racing toward a Russian tank before sneaking through an open hatch at the front of the armored vehicle, before blowing up.
"Occupiers made a 'turtle' tank but forgot to close a hatch… Ukraine's drone pilots don't forgive such mistakes," Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said in the accompanying text.
Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, which shared a longer version of the video on Wednesday, said the attack took place near the city of Bakhmut.
It described the tank as sentencing itself to death when it drove onto a dam previously mined by its soldiers. Pilots of the brigades's Black Raven unit then took out the paralyzed tank, it said.
It didn't specify when the attack took place.
Occupiers made a 'turtle' tank but forgot to close a hatch… 🇺🇦 drone pilots don't forgive such mistakes.
Russia has resorted to outfitting some of its tanks with crude metal structures to try to combat deadly threats on the battlefield, including exploding drones.
One "turtle" tank was spotted fitted out with a tent-like metal structure, while another one was seen with pallets on it.
Improvised armor can be as simple as a chain-link cage wrapped around the outside of a vehicle, often referred to as "cope cages." Military observers question their effectiveness.
These makeshift and often unwieldy efforts are intended to provide a last-ditch defense against inbound projectiles such as artillery, anti-tank missiles, or small drones.
But in a post on X in April, Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that modifications show Russians are adjusting to the battlefield, where Ukraine has a lot of first-person-view drones but not enough anti-tank missiles, mines, and artillery.
"So sacrificing observation and the ability to rotate the turret on one tank per platoon that can jam many FPVs frequencies at once makes sense," he said.
A Russian soldier stands guard at the Luhansk power plant.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images
Russian soldier Dmitry Lobovikov killed seven soldiers with a grenade while drunk.
He was found guilty of murder at a Russian court on Wednesday.
Lobovikov said it was an accident caused by "stupidity and alcohol."
A Russian soldier was sentenced to 23 years in prison after killing seven of his soldiers with a grenade, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Dmitry Lobovikov, a former junior sergeant in the Russian military, threw a grenade into one of the rooms in the Belgorod barracks where his fellow soldiers were sleeping in January 2023, according to the outlet, cited by The Moscow Times and Novaya Gazeta Europe.
It killed seven people and injured 16 others.
Lobovikov was found guilty of murder by a jury at the 2nd Western District Military Court on Wednesday.
Court spokesperson Irina Zhirnova told TASS that Lobovikov was sentenced to 23 years in a high-security prison colony, fined 70,000 rubles, or around $788, and stripped of his military rank after being found guilty of murder.
There are varying reports on the cause of the incident. Lobovikov said that he was intoxicated and that it was an accident that could be attributed to "stupidity and alcohol," TASS reported.
Additionally, Lobovikov's lawyers said in court that he had lost consciousness after consuming alcohol with sedatives, causing the grenade to slip out of his hands, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.
However, a Kommersant report, cited by Newsweek, said the incident occurred after Lobovikov took the pin out of a grenade and became frustrated with one soldier who didn't know how to put it back in.
Before the incident, Lobovikov had attempted to reprimand the same troops for poor behavior, according to a post by RBC cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe.
He was found guilty of attempted murder and murder of multiple accounts, in addition to deliberate destruction of property by explosion, TASS reported.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that the jury noted he was "deserving of leniency."
Lobovikov's sentencing comes amid low morale and high criminal rates among the Russian army. The country's military personnel were convicted of 116 murders in 2023, according to data published by Russia's Judicial Department of the Supreme Court.
Conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and desensitization to violence could be leading factors exacerbated by alcohol and drug use, according to a statement by the UK defense ministry cited in a previous Business Insider report.