Author: News Desk

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday he did not ask his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden for help to defeat his leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in this year’s election. “There is no such thing,” Bolsonaro said in a radio interview. He met with Biden for the first time last week during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. Bloomberg News reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter, that the far-right leader had asked Biden to help his re-election bid in October.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has filed an appeal against a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that people have a right to know the facts of the war. A Moscow court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million roubles ($88,000) for refusing to remove what it termed disinformation from Russian-language Wikipedia articles on the war including “The Russian Invasion of Ukraine”, “War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine” and “Massacre in Bucha”. “This decision implies that well-sourced, verified knowledge on Wikipedia that is inconsistent with Russian government accounts…

Ukraine’s central bank said the situation in the war with Russia will determine whether its key interest rate can be cut from the current level of 25% or whether further hikes will be necessary. On June 2, the central bank sharply raised its main interest rate to 25% from 10%, tightening monetary policy for the first time since the Feb. 24 Russian invasion to tackle double-digit inflation and protect incomes and savings during the war. “With a prolonged military confrontation, inflationary risks will increase significantly,” it said in minutes of the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting which was…

A German government spokesperson declined to confirm a media report on Monday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz would travel to Kyiv on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Online magazine Focus, citing Italian newspaper La Stampa, earlier reported that the three European leaders would travel to the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, adding a specific date to a Bild am Sonntag report on Sunday that they planned to go before a Group of Seven summit at the end of June. “We still do not confirm that,” the spokesperson said. Scholz, who has not been to Kyiv…

The Bahrain Institute for Political Development (BIPD) has called on those wishing to run for the upcoming parliamentary and municipal elections to register for its election candidates’ training programme through the institute’s website, bipd.org, as part of the specialised phase of the National Programme for Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, “Darrib” (Training 2). Held in person, the programme will kick off on June 19 at the BIPD’s premises in Umm Al-Hassam. According to BIPD, participants must be Bahrainis aged 30 at least. They must be potential candidates for the upcoming parliamentary or municipal elections, and must have filled in the registration…

Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) met with Bahrain Association of Banks (BAB). Alba CEO Ali Al Baqali presented the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Roadmap’s 6 priority areas and initiatives – Decarbonisation, Green Energy & Aluminium, Circular Economy & Secondary Aluminium,  Employee Welfare, Collaboration, Partnership and Transparency, Communications & Due Diligence. “Alba, an ESG corporate activist, is charting its journey to meet Bahrain’s Net Zero Emissions by 2060,”  Al Baqali said. “We believe that small acts, when multiplied by millions of stakeholders, can have a bigger impact and together collectively is the only Right Choice to realize our nation’s objectives under the leadership…

Russian forces have blown up a bridge linking the embattled Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk to another city across the river, cutting off a possible evacuation route for civilians, local officials said on Sunday. Sievierodonetsk has become the epicentre of the battle for control over Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas. Parts of the city have been pulverised in some of the bloodiest fighting since the Kremlin unleashed its invasion on Feb. 24. Ukrainian and Russian forces were still fighting street-by-street there on Sunday, the governor of Luhansk province, Serhiy Gaidai, said. Russian forces have taken most of the city but Ukrainian…

Beijing’s most populous district Chaoyang announced three rounds of mass testing to quell a “ferocious” COVID-19 outbreak that emerged at a bar in a nightlife and shopping area last week, shortly after the city relaxed curbs imposed during an outbreak in April. City health officials said that so far there have been 166 confirmed cases linked to the outbreak that began at the Heaven Supermarket bar in the Sanlitun area on Thursday, 145 of them bar patrons. Mass testing would take place between Monday and Wednesday in Chaoyang district, where the bar is located, officials told a press briefing. The…

The leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region of Ukraine said on Sunday there was no reason to pardon two British nationals who were sentenced to death last week after being captured while fighting for Ukraine. A court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic on Thursday found Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner – and Moroccan Brahim Saadoun – guilty of “mercenary activities” seeking to overthrow the republic. Britain says Aslin and Pinner were regular soldiers and should be exempt under the Geneva Conventions from prosecution for participation in hostilities. The pro-Russian separatists who control Donetsk say they committed grave crimes…

Bahrain’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows increased by US$1.766 billion in 2021, marking a 73% year-on-year increase and surpassing the global FDI average growth, according to the 2022 World Investment Report issued by the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD). According to the report, the Kingdom’s inward FDI stocks increased by 6% from 2020, reaching US$33.47 billion in 2021. With a GDP value of US $38.8 billion in 2021 according to the Information & eGovernment Authority of Bahrain, Bahrain’s FDI stock relative to GDP reached 86 %, ranking as the highest in GCC and surpassing the global average…