Month: November 2023

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 that began after news spread that a 5-year-old girl was receiving emergency medical treatment at a Dublin hospital following the attack outside a school. At least 100 people took to the streets, some armed with metal bars and covering their faces. Harris described the protesters …

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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 ruble’s exchange rate as the economy weathers the effects of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed as a consequence. The last time it raised the rate — to 15%, doubled that from the beginning of the year — the bank said …

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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 47th mechanized brigade, told Agence France-Presse. “They are trying to exhaust our lines with constant waves of attacks,” he said. He declined to provide his full name for security reasons. It is a strategy similar to the one Russia used against Bakhmut, a city it …

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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 was arrested on abuse-of-power charges that rights groups say were politically motivated. “The idea of a united, strong, democratic, European, free Georgia was a driving force of the Rose Revolution and its leader, Saakashvili,” a leader from his United National Movement (UNM) party, Tina Bokuchava, …

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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 beating down inflation that hit an eye-watering 61.36% last month. However, the bank said its rate hikes would soon end. “The current level of monetary tightness is significantly close to the level required to establish the disinflation course,” the bank said. “Accordingly, the pace of …

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Ukrainian traders’ union UGA said on Thursday that parliament’s “ill-considered” plans to change grain trading rules could completely halt Ukraine’s key grain exports. On November 21, a bill passed its first reading in parliament that would change rules on the taxation of grain export transactions and could also introduce minimum export prices for grain. The bill is designed to minimize tax evasion on certain agricultural products, such as grain and oilseeds. “UGA is concerned about a possible complete halt in grain exports from Ukraine due to the adoption by the parliament of ill-considered legislative changes to grain and oilseed exports …

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