Tuesday, 26 July 2022 — Indian Punchline
A 1894 image of Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers by Maurice Leloir, the French illustrator, watercolourist and writer
As the conflict in Ukraine slouches toward Odessa, the war gets elevated to the sphere of a romantic adventure. If Alexander Dumas was alive, the idea might have struck him to write a sequel to his Three Musketeers, the historical novel written in 1844, which has heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice, highlighting the absurdities of the Ancient Régime in a setting when the debate in France between republicans and monarchists was still fierce.
![US President Joe Biden (L) meets Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (R) in Tel Aviv on 14 July 2022 [Israeli Government Press Office/Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AA-20220714-28413763-28413762-US_PRESIDENT_JOE_BIDEN_IN_ISRAEL____.jpg?resize=1200%2C799&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
US President Joe Biden (L) meets Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (R) in Tel Aviv on 14 July 2022 [Israeli Government Press Office/Anadolu Agency]
Combines work on a wheat field near the village of Talniki in Siberia (File photo). For the first time since the days of the tsars, Russia has emerged in recent years as the world’s largest wheat exporter
chip Photo:VCG
The Google campus-network room at a data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Photo: Connie Zhou/A
