More now from the chairman of the European Research Group (ERG). He saw Mordaunt this morning and said she was “very chipper” and “in the zone”. In 2013, an image went viral appearing to show a room of university students in Bangkok taking test papers while wearing "ear flaps" - sheets of paper stuck to either side of their head to obscure their vision. irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru She was inspired by a technique reportedly used in Thailand some years previously. "It suggests autocracy is in their blood, it's in their water or it's in their culture," she says. Since Russia invaded Ukraine eight months ago, Western governments supportive of Kyiv tend to speak about the war in black-and-white terms with little sympathy for countries hovering between the West and Moscow. There is significant military activity. A logistical supply line forms an artery towards Ukraine's continued counteroffensive. Alyona says when she first met a Russian soldier, he asked her "who allowed you to live so well?" Her family's wooden house was left nearly empty after the Russians took everything away. But his son is driving a strident ethno-nationalism that seeks to unite the Chinese at home and drive away foreign powers who are, in Beijing's view, trying to encircle and weaken China. His Chongqing model, however, was arguably the prototype for what Xi would soon unleash on the whole of China.