Month: November 2023

Kyiv was rocked by a massive drone attack early Saturday, using Iranian-designed Shahed drones. Five people, including a child, were wounded in the attack, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko’s Telegram post. Ukraine’s air force said the attack was the largest drone attack since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. The British Defense Ministry said Saturday in …

Pope Francis canceled his morning audiences on Saturday because of mild flu, the Vatican said in a statement. The 86-year-old pontiff holds regular meetings with Vatican officials on Saturdays as well as private audiences. Earlier this month, the pope skipped reading a prepared speech for a meeting with European rabbis as he was suffering from …

A Russian lawmaker and staunch supporter of President Vladimir Putin has denied media allegations that he adopted a missing 2-year-old girl who was removed from a Ukrainian children’s home and changed her name in Russia. Sergey Mironov, 70, the leader of political party A Just Russia, asserted on social media that the Ukrainian security services …

The Israeli government said Friday that it would summon the Belgian and Spanish ambassadors following remarks by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his Belgian counterpart Alexander de Croo on the war between Israel and Hamas.  The announcement came after the two leaders criticized Israel for the suffering of Palestinian civilians under Israeli military operations …

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Friday that China’s cooperation is vital on an issue that has divided it and much of Europe: ending the war in Ukraine. She encouraged China to continue working on its Ukrainian peace proposal while also ensuring that Chinese entities do not aid Russia in what she called “the ongoing …

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday announced a plan to endorse a national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence, emphasizing that it’s essential to prevent a Western monopoly. Speaking at an AI conference in Moscow, Putin noted that “it’s imperative to use Russian solutions in the field of creating reliable and transparent artificial intelligence …

Irish police arrested 34 people after suspected far-right protesters in central Dublin attacked police, damaged shops and set fire to vehicles Thursday night following the stabbing of three children by an unidentified man earlier in the day. The head of the Irish police, Commissioner Drew Harris, said one officer was seriously injured in the violence …

The shelves at Moscow supermarkets are full of fruit and vegetables, cheese and meat. But many of the shoppers look at the selection with dismay as inflation makes their wallets feel empty. Russia’s Central Bank has raised its key lending rate four times this year to try to get inflation under control and stabilize the …

Russia, which had bombarded the eastern city of Avdiivka for weeks, is now sending waves of troops toward the destroyed but strategically important spot in eastern Ukraine — and suffering terrible losses, Ukrainian senior officials and soldiers said Thursday. “The fields are just littered with corpses,” Oleksandr, a deputy of a Ukrainian battalion in the …

Hundreds of supporters from Georgia’s main opposition party gathered Thursday in the capital, Tbilisi, demanding their ex-leader’s release from prison on the 20th anniversary of the country’s pro-democracy revolution. Mikheil Saakashvili spearheaded the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003 and led the Black Sea nation for nine years before going into exile. After his return, he …

Turkey’s central bank delivered another huge interest rate hike on Thursday as it tries to curb double-digit inflation that has left households struggling to afford food and other basic goods. The bank pushed its policy rate up by 5 percentage points, to 40%, marking its sixth big interest rate hike in a row focused on …