'Our new normal'
| 'Our new normal'  A massive tornado moves across Caruthersville, Missouri on Friday. (SCV / Michael Gordon)
 Could powerful storms like the ones that flattened parts of the central United States this weekend offer a taste of our climate-changed future?
More than 100 people are feared dead after at least 50 tornadoes were reported across Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he expected the death toll to eventually rise to more than 100 in his state alone, as emergency responders work through the damage.  CNN video shot Saturday shows extensive tornado damage in Mayfield, Kentucky. "This is going to be our new normal," said Deanne Criswell, the top US federal emergency management official, to CNN on Sunday. "The effects we are seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation."  CNN video shows a collapsed Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. However, research on the role that climate change is playing in the formation and intensity of tornadoes is not as robust as for other types of extreme weather like droughts, floods and even hurricanes. The short and small scale of tornadoes, along with an extremely spotty and unreliable historical record for them, makes understanding relationships to long-term, human-caused climate change very difficult.  Video shot Saturday by KAIT shows flattened housed in Trumann, Arkansas. The world and America South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has Covid-19.
Hong Kong's extreme quarantine rules are ruining life for airline crews.
What Putin wants Tensions between the Kremlin and the West are locked in a worrying cycle, with no sign yet that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been moved by threats of economic retaliation if his troops invade neighboring Ukraine.
G7 foreign ministers sent stark signals from their meeting in Liverpool at the weekend. "We've been clear that any incursion by Russia into Ukraine would have massive consequences for which there would be a severe cost," British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said, bolstering previous US statements.
The showdown is a test for the Biden administration, whose rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan led some to question Washington's stomach for wielding power abroad. Also undermining long-term influence is the possibility that Donald Trump, or another isolationist Republican will be back in power in 2025. The White House has however done an effective job in corralling allies to multiply diplomatic pressure on Moscow after US President Biden's virtual summit with Putin last week.
Stiffening the line, Truss said democratic nations must wean themselves off Russian energy — a clear reference to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. The diplomatic offensive is designed to force Putin to confront this question as he masses soldiers and materiel on the Ukraine border: Is the domestic propaganda value of another invasion worth a destabilizing economic backlash from the West?
A statement from the Russian embassy in London hitting back at the G7 reiterated previous Kremlin assurances that Russia has no intention of invading – yet disconcertingly also appeared to offer a rationale doing so. "While Russia does not have a slightest intention to attack Ukraine, the situation in (the) Ukrainian civil war is indeed getting more explosive, with the irresponsible and unreserved military support some NATO countries and the UK in particular are giving to Kiev," the statement said.
The West's chorus of threats could work. But it is risky, since the hostile rhetoric may make it more difficult for Putin to climb down without a tangible payoff.  'I would really like that' Biden has seen a glimmer of hope for a way out, but it's a huge gamble. Putin told the US President last week that he'd like to sit down together in person, according to a clip released Sunday by Russian state television. "We will definitely meet, I would really like that," Putin said. The disclosure came after it emerged that the US's top State Department official for Europe, Karen Donfried, will travel to Russia and Ukraine this week.
Putin has, of course, used this tactic before, leveraging a massive troop deployment in the spring on Ukraine's border to get Biden to agree to meet him in Geneva. Another in-person summit would confer the global superpower recognition that Putin, who bemoaned the demise of the Soviet Union, craves for Russia. Such ego-soothing treatment could provide an off-ramp from current tensions. But the shrewd Russian leader could also simply pocket the concession, then go ahead and invade anyway, handing Biden a place among history's most abject appeasers.
Looks like both presidents face an excruciating choice. Thanks for reading. On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron makes an official visit to Budapest. A European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting takes place in Brussels. Paraguay's President Mario Abdo BenÃtez meets with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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