Month: November 2024

NOVI SAD, Serbia — Protesters threw flares and red paint Tuesday on the City Hall building in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in rage over last week’s collapse of a concrete canopy at the railway station that killed 14 people. Police responded by firing tear gas canisters.  The protesters surrounded the building in central Novi Sad, breaking windows and throwing stones and other objects despite calls by organizers to remain calm. Special police troops were deployed inside the building.  Some of the angry protesters wearing masks, believed to be soccer hooligans who are close to the populist government, tried to …

READ MORE

In Turkey, listeners of Acik Radyo are protesting after regulators revoked the Istanbul-based station’s license. For nearly 30 years, Acik sought to bridge the country’s divides. Analysts say the action against it is part of a wider government media crackdown. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul. …

READ MORE

MALMO, Sweden — A Swedish court sentenced a far-right politician Tuesday to four months in jail for two counts of “incitement against an ethnic group” after making hateful comments at political rallies two years ago.  The Danish-Swedish 42-year-old man, who was not named but has been identified by Swedish media as Rasmus Paludan, founder and head of the Danish nationalist anti-immigration party Stram Kurs, had been previously convicted and sentenced by a Danish court on a similar charge, the Malmo District Court said.  In 2022, Paludan made his offensive remarks directed at Muslims, Arabs and Africans during protests that he led …

READ MORE

LONDON — Russia is “flagrantly violating” its agreements with the OPEC oil cartel by concealing the true amount of oil it is producing and selling, according to a new report that says the profits are funding Moscow’s war on Ukraine. The investigation by the Ukrainian Center for Defense Reforms asserts that Russia is breaching an OPEC agreement to cut oil production. The think tank is chaired by Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former chief adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister. Oil cut “In 2016, amid declining oil prices and to stabilize the market, OPEC reached an agreement with ten additional oil-producing countries, including …

READ MORE

SEDAVI, Spain — Francisco Murgui went out to try to salvage his motorbike when the water started to rise.  He never came back.  One week after catastrophic flooding devastated eastern Spain, Maria Murgui still holds out hope that her father is alive and among the unknown number of the missing.  “He was like many people in town who went out to get their car or motorbike to safety,” the 27-year-old told The Associated Press. “The flash flood caught him outside, and he had to cling to a tree in order to escape drowning. He called us to tell us that he …

READ MORE

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — An Iranian official claimed Tuesday that Iranian-German prisoner Jamshid Sharmahd died before Tehran could execute him — directly contradicting the country’s earlier announcement he had been put to death. The comment by Asghar Jahangir came after Germany shut down all three Iranian consulates in the country over Sharmahd’s death, leaving only the embassy in Berlin open. Germany later disputed Jahangir’s remark. Meanwhile, even Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has offered his own criticism of Germany’s response to Sharmahd’s death as tensions remain high between Tehran and the West over its rapidly advancing nuclear program and the …

READ MORE

Ukraine’s military said Tuesday it shot down two Russian guided missiles as well as 48 of the 79 drones that Russian forces used in overnight attacks. The intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kyiv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions, the Ukrainian air force said. Ivan Fedorov, governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, said Tuesday a Russian attack killed at least six people and wounded 16 others. Fedorov said on Telegram that Russia hit an infrastructure facility. Officials in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region also reported a Russian attack that injured two people and damaged three apartment buildings. Russia’s Defense Ministry …

READ MORE