In the crypt of a 283-year-old London church, you would not normally expect to see displays of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish next to shelves of tinned food, toilet rolls and nappies, and customers with baskets doing their weekly shop.

But from September, that will be the scene at the City of London’s first social supermarket, which is to open in the vaults of Christ Church Spitalfields, a Nicholas Hawksmoor-designed church close to the financial district. It will replace a food bank set up during the pandemic that has been used by 20 to 70 families a week during the past year.

Small social supermarkets have been springing up across the UK in recent years, some of them having started out as food banks. (At a social supermarket users pay for their groceries, but get a large discount.) They cater for low-income families – in the case of Christ Church these are referred by the local primary school – and pay a membership fee and/or a weekly fee for their shop.

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Great idea and sustained hard work from the team at ⁦@ccspits⁩ ⁦@dioceseoflondon⁩ ⁦@StepneyLives⁩.

Social supermarkets offer choice and self-esteem to hard-up workers. https://t.co/MiI9AkHpTx

— Joanne Woolway Grenfell (@joannegrenfell) May 16, 2022

Eighty years ago the second Battle of Kharkov was raging in what was then the western Soviet Union. The Red Army had heroically driven the Nazi Wehrmacht back from the gates of Moscow. It gathered in a bulge west of Izyum, a town to the south of Kharkov, as Ukraine’s second city was then known. The subsequent Soviet offensive, launched on May 12th, was a disaster. Soviet armies were driven back and encircled. Over 170,000 Soviet troops were killed. Nikita Khrushchev later focused on the battle when denouncing his predecessor as Soviet leader, Stalin. “This is Stalin’s military ‘genius’,” he sneered, citing the crude tactics of frontal assault. “This is what it cost us.”

The Russian army is once again gathered around Izyum. And once more it is on the retreat from Kharkiv, as the city is now called, after another underwhelming campaign. It has been a month since Russia, having abandoned its assault on Kyiv, launched a fresh offensive in the eastern Donbas region. The idea was to encircle Ukrainian troops in a large salient stretching from Izyum in the north to the city of Donetsk in the south, in part by driving south from Izyum.

There have been minor successes. Russia has taken almost all of Luhansk province—it held only the southern part before the war—bar a salient around the well-defended city of Severodonetsk. It has also pushed south of Izyum, taking villages towards Barvinkove, an important rail junction, and the industrial cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Yet progress has been achingly slow—one or two kilometres a day—and casualties heavy. The war is now dominated by grinding artillery duels, rather than swift mechanised offensives. Much of Donetsk province is still in Ukrainian hands.

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An update on the war. Russian progress in Donbas has been slow, grinding & costly. Ukrainian counter-attacks around Kharkiv have been impressive, but broader counter-offensives will be harder. Pentagon calls it “stalemate”; other suggest it remains fluid.https://t.co/HKR3r4UX6z

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) May 16, 2022

“This really is, I think, putting me in nine locations at one time or has the potential to do that and make it much more personal than if it was just a video or kind of a flat-screen,” Bazet told Fox 13 News.

The hologram producing device can be operated with an iPad or cell phone and can be used to play pre-recorded videos as well. However, the tech doesn’t come cheap, starting at a hefty price tag of $100,000.

Bazet said, “We’ll do whatever we can to actually reach and impact as many people as we can, and, in this case, try a new technology like this.”

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Pastor Randy Bezet of Bayside Community Church located in Bradenton, Florida, is using something straight out of Star Trek to preach the word of God simultaneously to the church’s nine campuses.

Read more: https://t.co/Zb4if8ZIvJ

— Ed Stetzer (@edstetzer) May 16, 2022

Listen to it all or there are others ways to do so there.

….he also suggests it is possible the nation could be in for a period of “stagflation,” a word Mr. Bernanke says was invented in the 1970s.

“Even under the benign scenario, we should have a slowing economy,” he said. “And inflation’s still too high but coming down. So there should be a period in the next year or two where growth is low, unemployment is at least up a little bit and inflation is still high,” he predicted. “So you could call that stagflation.”

He is particularly aware that runaway inflation can quickly become a political issue — possibly putting the Federal Reserve in the cross-hairs of the public — in a way that even unemployment doesn’t evoke. “The difference between inflation and unemployment is that inflation affects just everybody,” he said. “Unemployment affects some people a lot, but most people don’t respond too much to unemployment because they’re not personally unemployed. Inflation has a social-wide kind of impact.”

Mr. Bernanke appears to be somewhat concerned about the credibility of the Federal Reserve in the public consciousness, especially given the aggressive approach that he took in 2008 and that Mr. Powell continued during the pandemic. “I had this fantasy conversation in my head between Jay Powell and William McChesney Martin, where I think Martin probably would have had apoplexy or something because of the different things that intervening chairs have done,” he said, referring to Mr. Martin, the chair of the Federal Reserve from 1951 to 1970.

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Bernanke is hopeful that Powell, the current Federal Reserve chairman, can help tame inflation without having to put in place the extreme measures that Volcker did in the 1970s or send the economy into recession.

Ben Bernanke Sees ‘Stagflation’ Ahead https://t.co/rZ2EuGbfUN

— Sean Graf (@seangraf) May 16, 2022

O God, steadfast in the midst of persecution, by whose providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church: As the martyrs of the Sudan refused to abandon Christ even in the face of torture and death, and so by their sacrifice brought forth a plenteous harvest, may we, too, be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This Sunday, March 16, is the day of commemoration for the Martyrs of Sudan. https://t.co/j6mJHgHY8p @StylianidesEU @EwelinaUO @gafconference @CarolinaLumetta @BaronessCoxNews @DavidAltonHL @EduardHabsburg @ericmetaxas @andrewklavan @SudanSunrise @FoleyBeach @ShidelerK @The_ADLW

— TweetsbyFaithAlone-GDsThreshingSledge(Isaiah41:15) (@Cuchulain09) May 14, 2021

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Sunrise over Downtown Charleston! #chswx pic.twitter.com/7OwkMx3dTI

— JoeyLive5 (@JoeySovine) May 16, 2022

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

–1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker #birds #nature #wildlifephotography #NaturePhotography #wildlife #TwitterNaturePhotography pic.twitter.com/gWbt1vfN4s

— Kelly Flanagan Wildlife Photos (@KFlanaganphotos) May 16, 2022