By Tatiana Gomozova and Alexander Paramoshin RAZUMNOYE, Russia (Reuters) – Irina Markevich used to sleep in summer with her windows and balcony open at night. Nowadays she shuts them before going to bed in order to block out the sound of explosions. The blasts – some distant, some uncomfortably close – have become a daily…
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -Russia on Thursday denied Ukrainian accusations that it backed pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and discriminates against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, accusing Kyiv instead of “blatant lies” at the U.N.’s top court. Ukraine has asked the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order Russia to halt alleged…
MOSCOW (Reuters) – One of Russia’s longest-serving and most respected human rights campaigners went on trial on Thursday, facing the prospect of three years in jail if convicted of repeatedly discrediting Russia’s armed forces, his organisation said. Oleg Orlov has since 1999 been one of the leaders of Memorial, which won a share of the…
By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday gave a boost to Jack Daniel’s in its trademark dispute with a dog accessory company that sold a parody chew toy resembling the distiller’s widely recognized black-label whiskey bottle. The 9-0 decision authored by liberal Justice Elena Kagan threw out a…
By Aziz El Yaakoubi and Humeyra Pamuk RIYADH (Reuters) -Washington will press ahead with efforts to normalize diplomatic ties between its main Middle East allies Saudi Arabia and Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday. But he declined to say whether the United States would back Riyadh’s nuclear ambitions. At a joint news…
LONDON (Reuters) -Global payments processors Visa and Mastercard have fought off a new set of lawsuits over fees charged to retailers, with a London tribunal ruling on Thursday that the proposed collective cases cannot proceed for now. The two firms already face a long list of lawsuits in London over so-called multilateral interchange fees, which…
By Dominique Vidalon and Mathieu Rosemain PARIS (Reuters) – A trio of French businessmen readied on Thursday to make a new offer for debt-laden supermarket chain Casino after exclusive tie-up talks between Casino and smaller retail rival Teract collapsed. In a joint statement, telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel, investment banker Matthieu Pigasse and entrepreneur Moez-Alexandre Zouari…
By Viktoriia Lakezina and Max Hunder KHERSON, Ukraine (Reuters) -Hundreds of Ukrainians were rescued from rooftops on Thursday, two days after waters from a huge breached dam submerged villages, fields and roads in the southern region of Kherson, as Kyiv dismissed reports its counteroffensive had begun. Drone video showed areas where often only the roofs…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called on Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to double the number of U.S. personnel available to help fight wildfires raging in Canada and to mitigate the risk to American air quality. The chamber’s top Democrat said he would send a letter to Vilsack laying out…
By Gloria Dickie LONDON (Reuters) -El Nino has officially returned and is likely to yield extreme weather later this year, from tropical cyclones spinning toward vulnerable Pacific islands to heavy rainfall in South America to drought in Australia and in some parts of Asia. After three years of the La Nina climate pattern, which often…
