Section: Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)
Rouble to feel extra pressure as central bank returns to market
Russia will resume buying dollars next week for the first time since a brief burst in 2015, but sources told Reuters the purchases will go ahead only after a reluctant central bank won assurances it could distance itself from the operations. People involved in discussions of the planned purchases said the bank had feared investors would regard...
Ukraine clashes flare for fifth day despite global concern
Ukraine’s military began distributing food on Thursday to crowds of local residents in a frontline town battered by five days of violence that has sparked global condemnation and concern. Government forces and Russian-backed separatists have been exchanging mortar and rocket fire around the flashpoint eastern town of Avdiivka that sits just...
Russia stripped of London relay silver for doping
Russia’s 4x400m women’s relay team was stripped of its London 2012 silver medal yesterday after the IOC named one of its athletes as a doping cheat. Using new technology the International Olympic Committee is retesting hundreds of stored samples from the 2012 and Beijing 2008 Games as part of its drive to clean up the drug-tainted...
EU’s Tusk warns of Trump govt ‘threat’
EU chief Donald Tusk warned yesterday that US President Donald Trump’s administration was a “threat” facing the bloc, along with China, Russia, and radical Islam.In a strongly-worded letter to EU leaders ahead of a summit in Malta, Tusk said the bloc must take “spectacular steps” to stay together and should take advantage of Trump’s...
Ukraine, Russia trade blame over surge in fighting
Ukraine and Russia blamed each other yesterday for a surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine in recent days that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.The Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists accuse each other of launching offensives in the government-held...
Clashes in Ukraine flashpoint town rage for third day
Fighting has claimed the lives of at least 13 civilians and fighters on both sides since Sunday …read more Source: Gulf...
East Ukraine fighting surges despite truce
A sudden surge in clashes between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels killed at least six people yesterday despite a tattered truce in Ukraine’s war-scarred east. The overall death toll reported for the past two days rose to 11 after the bloodiest outburst of violence since the former Soviet republic and its foes agreed an...
From Ukraine with love: Postcards pay tribute to war dead
Fighting has killed more than 9,600 people in eastern Ukraine since it began in 2014 …read more Source: Gulf...
Ukraine says more soldiers killed in deadliest clashes in weeks
Five Ukrainian soldiers were killed and nine wounded as a result of an offensive by pro-Russian separatists over the weekend, the Ukrainian military said on Monday – the deadliest fighting in eastern regions since mid-December. The toll included three servicemen whose deaths were reported on Sunday, when Ukraine said it had repelled an...
A big one for Big Brother
That vial of cesium-135 seized during a nuclear smuggling bust in Moldova in 2015? Phil Williams can shower you with decades of context showing how traffickers in one of Europe’s most lawless and poorest states might have gotten involved in trying to sell radioactive materials to the Islamic State. Tom Congedo can tell you just how...
