Category World News

On Wednesday, November 19, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

• Authorities in Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, reported that five people were hurt in an apartment building as a result of Russian drone strikes on two central districts, Slobidskyi and Osnovyansk, which set off a fire.
• Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv, reported that 22 residents had been evacuated from one section of the damaged apartment complex, while another drone struck a medical facility, injuring a doctor, and causing damage to the building and nearby cars.
• Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, claimed that in total, seven people were hurt in the attack thanks to 11 drones deployed.
• On Wednesday morning, Russia’s civil aviation authority announced that it was temporarily halting flights at the southern Russian airport, citing only the safety of the situation.
• On Tuesday, the city’s mayor reported that four Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian air defenses on their way to Moscow. Russia’s aviation watchdog reported that Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo, Russia’s two biggest airports, temporarily stopped all air traffic before later reopening.
• In the Donetsk region, which is under Russian control, Ukrainian drone attacks have seriously damaged the power grid. About 65 percent of local residents were without power, according to Denis Pushilin, the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic’s head, who was appointed by Moscow.
• The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces claimed that Ukraine attacked two thermal power stations in Donetsk, which is located in the Russian-occupied territory. Major Robert Brovdi claimed that his forces had struck the Starobeshivska and Zuivska power plants.
• Ukraine called it a “significant development” when it used ATACMS missiles from the United States to attack Russian military installations. The military continued to use long-range strike capabilities, including systems like ATACMS, according to a statement from the military.
• According to his ministry’s outlet, Zvezda, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov regularly inspects troops fighting in eastern Ukraine. Belousov presented awards to military personnel in a video posted by Zvezda.

military assistance

• To help Ukraine maintain its current Patriot missile air defense systems, the Trump administration approved a $ 105 million deal. Upgrades to M901 and M903 launchers, which can simultaneously fire more missiles, are included in the sale.
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced on Tuesday that Spain will provide Ukraine with a new $ 710 million military aid package.
• Along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Sanchez said, “Your fight is ours,” adding that Vladimir Putin’s “neoimperialism” aims to “weaken the European project and everything it stands for.”

Regional security

• Members of parliament expressed concern that the United Kingdom lacks a strategy for defending itself from military assault, and that at least 13 locations have been identified as new manufacturing facilities, according to a report.
• Authorities have located two Ukrainian nationals, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who had a history of colliding with Russia and caused an explosion on a Ukrainian railway line.
• According to Tusk, “the most crucial information is that we have located the perpetrators of the sabotage,” according to Tusk. We are certain that the railroad infrastructure violation and the rail explosion attempt were made with the intention to end railroad traffic.

• After Warsaw placed the explosion on a railroad en route to Ukraine on the hands of two Ukrainian citizens who it claimed were being recruited by Russian intelligence, Poland was accused of succumbing to Russian xandria.
• Soldiers from the NATO alliance gathered in Nowa Deba, Poland, to practice counterdrone skills on Tuesday. They included members from the US, the UK, and Romania.
• According to a draft document that the Reuters news agency saw, the European Commission will make a new proposal to accelerate the development and purchase of cutting-edge defense technologies.

Ceasefire

• Zelenskyy promised to “reactivate” the diplomatic dialogue to put an end to the Russian-Russian conflict. Later, Selenskyy announced that he would travel to Turkiye on Wednesday to try to resume discussions with Russia about ending the Ukrainian conflict.
• Since their July meeting in Istanbul, there haven’t been any face-to-face discussions between Kyiv and Moscow.
• Another Ukrainian official involved in the meeting’s preparations, according to the AFP news agency, Steve Witkoff, a US special envoy, is scheduled to attend the discussions with Zelenskyy in Turkiye.
• At the UN climate conference in Brazil, Ukrainian deputy minister for economy, environment, and agriculture Pavlo Kartashov announced that the country plans to receive $ 43 billion in climate compensation from Russia to support a planet-friendly rebuild.
• The climate shockwaves of this aggression will be felt far beyond our borders and into the future, according to Kartashov, who lives in Ukraine directly.

diplomacy and politics

• A major opposition party physically prevented lawmakers from removing two ministers from parliament on Tuesday because of a corruption investigation and demanded that the entire cabinet be removed.
• Zelenskyy traveled to Spain for one day on Tuesday, and he got to see Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a painting that depicts the horrors of war, and specifically the German and Italian forces’ bombardment of civilian targets.

Economy

• Rostec, a Russian state conglomerate, reported that as a result of the Ukraine war, domestic orders had fallen by half since 2022. Russia’s defense exports were second only to the US in the world up until 2022, but the volumes dropped because we had to give our army the majority of our production, Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov told reporters.
• As Moscow looks for new revenue sources to boost its economy during its nearly four-year conflict with Ukraine, Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved new tax increases. The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, gave the crucial second reading to a bill increasing the value-added tax from 20% to 22%.

Sanctions

• According to sources with knowledge of the situation, US oil company Exxon Mobil and rival Chevron Corp are considering options to purchase shares of sanctioned Russian oil company Lukoil’s international assets.
• According to the sources, Exxon is considering options for Lukoil assets in Kazakhstan, where both the US and the Russian company own stakes in the Karachaganak and Tengiz fields. Another partner in these assets, Chevron, is also researching purchase options.

A bill allowing the release of government documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein has been approved by the US Congress.

The Senate quickly approved the measure by unanimous consent even before it was formally transmitted to the chamber on Tuesday in a 427-to-1 vote.

President Donald Trump will sign the bill into law once it is officially approved, according to the president’s statement.

Given his connections to powerful figures in the media, politics, and academia, including ties to Trump, the case of Epstein, a financier who sexually abused girls and young women for years, has sparked controversies in the US for years.

Trump initially opposed the release of the files, calling the late sex offender a “hoax,” before reversed course&nbsp this month.

The files should be released immediately so the president and his Department of Justice can access them without waiting for Congress to pass it. They are permitted to make them public.

Democrats Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, the bill’s sponsor, and Republicans Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have been supporting the bill, gathered outside the US Capitol to speak with Epstein’s survivors.

To achieve this victory, we battled the president, the attorney general, the FBI director, the House speaker, and the vice president. Let’s give them some credit as well because they’re on our side right now, Massie told reporters.

One of the survivors, Jena-Lisa Jones, took a photo of herself at the time she met Epstein, who was 14 years old.

When I was a child, I. I was in the ninth grade. I was optimistic about life and what it would bring me. She claimed that he had taken a lot of my stuff.

In 2008, Epstein first admitted guilt to the charges of soliciting prostitution with a minor. He was permitted to work for 12 hours a day after serving 13 months in a minimum-security facility. Critics claimed that the punishment was too severe for the offence.

Federal authorities reopened the case against Epstein after the Miami Herald’s investigation into the case, detained him, and charged him with sex trafficking minors in 2019.

He was discovered dead in his New York City jail cell two months later. His death was declared a suicide.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew&nbsp, Prince Andrew, and former US President Bill Clinton were among Epstein’s collaborators over the years.

Epstein continued to have close personal connections with powerful people even after his first conviction, including Larry Summers, a former head of Harvard University, who recently expressed regret for keeping ties to the sex offender.

Trump criticized an ABC News reporter on Tuesday, pointing out that Epstein was a significant donor to Democratic politicians and asked him why he wouldn’t release the files on his own.

“You just keep working on the Epstein files,” the statement read. The US president claimed that what the Epstein is is a Democrat hoax.

When asked why Trump refused to release the documents earlier in the day, Massie asserted that Epstein’s connections were above partisan politics.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, an Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon has claimed the lives of at least 13 people.

The Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, which is located near Sidon, is where a drone strike struck a car on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese state-run National News Agency.

According to the ministry, the attack left at least four people dead, adding that “ambulances are still transporting more wounded to nearby hospitals.”

Israel claimed to have struck Hamas members who were stationed in a training facility in the refugee camp.

The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee stated in a statement that “all terrorist organizations operating in the region are included when we declare that we will not tolerate any threat on our northern border.” We will continue to fight back with force against Hamas’s threats to our security by gaining traction in Lebanon.

Hamas disputed Israel’s claim, calling it a “fabrication,” and pointing out that the organization lacks training facilities in Lebanon’s refugee camps.

A statement read, “The Zionist bombardment was a barbaric aggression against our innocent Palestinian people as well as Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

Two people were killed earlier in Lebanon when Israeli strikes on cars in the south of the nation were reported as two dead earlier on Tuesday.

Since starting its war on Gaza in October 2023 after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel, Israel has killed a number of officials from Palestinian groups, including Hamas, in Lebanon.

At least 69 Palestinians, 483 Palestinians, and 170 or 706 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war against Gaza. In Israel, on October 7, 2023, the Hamas-led attacks claimed the lives of 1, 139 people, and more than 200 were taken prisoner.

Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel the day after it launched its conflict against Gaza, prompting Israeli shelling and airstrikes against the country. The conflict escalated to a full-fledged conflict in late September 2024, which Israel escalated to.

In Lebanon, hundreds of civilians were killed in the conflict between Israel and Israel, among them. 127 people were killed in Israel, including 80 soldiers, overall.

Late in November 2024, a United States-brokered ceasefire brought the conflict to an end, but since then, Israel has launched numerous airstrikes against Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of attempting to resurrect its forces.

Since the ceasefire, Israeli military actions have claimed the lives of more than 270 people and about 850 others.

According to Lebanese political analyst Karim Emile Bitar, “the Lebanese government consistently violates the ceasefire in Lebanon,” it would be unfair to lay the blame at this point on the Lebanese government. The Lebanese government “asked the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah above and beyond what was necessary” in a historically historic statement.