After getting tanks, Ukraine wants fighter jets and longer-range missiles | Shortly after President Biden announced Ukraine would be getting the Western-made tanks it sought, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was demanding fighter jets and longer-range missiles. ● Ukrainian officials have been lobbying for months to receive F-15 or F-16 fighter jets from the US and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACAMS), munitions with a range of up to 190 miles. The US has held off on providing such arms due to concerns they could be used to target Russian territory. But the US has previously ruled out other equipment that it eventually sent to Ukraine, including the M1 Abrams tanks that Biden just announced the US would be supplying.

The US and Germany might be at war with Russia, but that is news to Croatia, said Zoran Milanovic | Commenting on the German foreign minister’s declaration that Europe is “fighting a war against Russia,” Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday that this was news to him, and wished Berlin better luck than in WWII. 💬 “If we are at war with Russia, then let’s see what we need to do. But we won’t ask Germany for its opinion,” Milanovic added. “Let them figure out who is the actual chancellor over there. I’ve been in politics for a long time, and our country has been through a lot, but I’ve never seen this kind of madness before.” Unless the US and Russia are holding some kind of talks, the world is “slowly sliding into World War Three,” Milanovic added. “Some people think it has already begun, but I have my reservations.”

■ Germany ‘at war’ with Russia – FM (01/25/23)

Behold this 2003 Sydney Morning Herald article. It’s a relic from another age:

Farce mask: it’s safe for only 20 minutes

Retailers who cash in on community fears about SARS by exaggerating the health benefits of surgical masks could face fines of up to $110,000.

NSW Fair Trading Minister Reba Meagher yesterday warned that distributors and traders could be prosecuted if it was suggested the masks offered unrealistic levels of protection from the disease. …

Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus.

“Those masks are only effective so long as they are dry,” said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.

“As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.”

Professor Cossart said that could take as little as 15 or 20 minutes, after which the mask would need to be changed. But those warnings haven’t stopped people snapping up the masks, with retailers reporting they are having trouble keeping up with demand.

John Bell from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who owns a pharmacy in Woollahra, Sydney, said mask supplies were running low. …

“I think they’re of marginal benefit,” he said. “In a way they give some comfort to people who think they're doing as much as they can do to prevent the infection.” …