Author: Steven Sahiounie

The price of Urals crude is planned to be fixed at $15 per-barrel below Brent next year The Russian government plans to continue reducing the discount of Russia’s flagship Urals blend of crude oil to the Brent benchmark, RBK business daily reported on Monday, citing a draft of the federal budget for 2024-26. According to the report, the discount is expected to gradually decrease from the current $20 per barrel to $6 in 2026. Next year, the discount will stand at $15 per barrel and in 2025 it is expected to be $10. Moscow has changed the way it assesses…

The meeting started around noon Moscow time Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is holding talks in Moscow with his Tunisian counterpart Nabil Ammar. The meeting started around noon Moscow time. In July, Ammar visited St. Petersburg as head of the Tunisian delegation at the Russia-Africa summit. Russia and Tunisia are actively developing trading and economic relations, with the volume of mutual trade growing every year. Russia exports grains, ammonia and soybean oil, while Tunisia supplies textiles, footwear, machinery and electrical equipment, rubber, dates, fresh vegetables, fish and seafood to Russia. Source: TASS

Also, the Belarusian leader said he had discussed what he said were major bilateral projects in a telephone conversation with Putin on Monday Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he would meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Kyrgyzstan in mid-October. “[Putin and I] will meet in Kyrgyzstan on October 15,” Lukashenko told visiting Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko. Also, Lukashenko said he had discussed what he said were major bilateral projects in a telephone conversation with Putin on Monday. “Yesterday, I talked with the Russian president. <…> I should say we discussed two projects,” the Belarusian leader said, adding…

“We express our solidarity with the brotherly people of the Republic of Cuba and our full support for their government,” Maria Zakharova added Russia resolutely condemns the recent attack on the Cuban embassy in the United States and insists that a probe into the circumstances behind it be conducted as soon as possible, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a comment. “We resolutely condemn the September 24 attack on the embassy of Cuba in the United States at which two Molotov cocktails were reportedly thrown,” the Russian diplomat said. “[The attack] must not be left unpunished and those…

The former president says that Republican candidates are “wasting time” on ridiculous debates that nobody is watching. Donald Trump, former US President and 2024 presidential candidate, criticized the Republican Party’s primary debates during a speech in South Carolina, labeling them as pointless due to low viewership. Trump pointed out that the last Republican debate, which marked the start of the 2024 primary season, had the lowest ratings in history. “They’re wasting a lot of time with these ridiculous debates that nobody is watching,” Trump said. Instead of participating in the debate, Trump chose to be interviewed by former Fox News host Tucker…

The Israeli occupation forces arrested on Tuesday at dawn four Palestinians, east of Ramallah city in the West Bank. Wafa News Agency stated the occupation troops stormed Silwad town, east of the city and they arrested four Palestinians young men. On Monday, three Palestinians were arrested in Beit Hanina, north of occupied Jerusalem. Source: SANA

The Ukrainian president previously claimed organizing elections would be impossible given the national circumstances Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky might not run for re-election next year, his wife, First Lady Elena Zelenskaya, told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, even as with no opposition, the outcome of any election is almost certainly a foregone conclusion. Zelensky banned all opposition political parties less than a month into Russia’s military operation and consolidated all potentially adversarial media outlets into one state-backed platform. No potential presidential challengers have come forward either. However, Zelenskaya said that her husband’s decision on whether to run again may be influenced by the difficulties of…

Head of Syrian delegation to 78th session of UN General Assembly, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh discussed with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin means of boosting the strategic relations binding the two friendly countries and the importance of coordination on various issues, especially developments related to the situation in Syria. Both sides stressed the necessity of respecting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the withdrawal of foreign forces present in Syria illegally. Sabbagh underlined the importance of continuing to combat against terrorism until eliminating it completely and the immediate lifting of unilateral measures imposed on Syria, stressing the importance of the…

Xiaodong Feng, Mixin’s founder, immediately outlined a compensation plan but would only reimburse up to 50% of users’ assets for now. Mixin Network, a Hong Kong-based decentralized cross-chain transfer protocol, is drawing controversy over the disclosure of a $200 million hack. On Sept. 23, the database of Mixin’s cloud service provider was breached by hackers, resulting in the loss of $200 million in assets on its mainnet. Deposits and withdrawal services were immediately suspended on the protocol. However, developers said transfers would not be affected as the investigation continues. In a post on Sept. 25, Zhuoer Jiang, CEO of Bitcoin mining pool…

OpenAI collaborated with professional voice actors to train the models to speak. The generative artificial intelligence (AI) space continues to heat up as OpenAI has unveiled GPT-4V, a vision-capable model, and multimodal conversational modes for its ChatGPT system. With the new upgrades, announced on Sept. 25, ChatGPT users will be able to engage the chatbot in conversations. The models powering ChatGPT, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, can now understand plain language spoken queries and respond in one of five different voices. According to a blog post from OpenAI, this new multimodal interface will allow users to interact with ChatGPT in novel ways: “Snap a…