Author: Steven Sahiounie

The country’s holdings, including those frozen by Western sanctions, have surpassed $540 billion, Russia has risen to fourth place among the world’s largest economies in terms of foreign exchange reserves, RIA Novosti calculations published on Saturday show. In the first nine months of the year, Russia’s holdings, including those frozen by the West due to Ukraine-related sanctions, rose to $540 billion, Central Bank data shows. This allowed Russia to displace India, which had occupied fourth place since last summer. India’s holdings as of the end of September amounted to $532 billion. The two countries have been competing with each other…

Ghana will buy crude with gold instead of the US currency. Ghana’s vice president, Mahamudu Bawumia revealed this week that the government wants to pay for oil imports with gold instead of US dollars. He explained the plan as an attempt to protect the country’s dwindling foreign currency reserves. Official data shows Ghana’s gross international reserves have fallen from $9.7 billion at the end of 2021 to around $6.6 billion at the end of September 2022. The reserves could reportedly cover just three months of the country’s goods and services imports — half a month short of the government’s target for…

The FTX platform’s bankruptcy has underscored the need for stricter oversight, according to IOSCO The crash of the FTX exchange has made regulating the cryptocurrency industry a more urgent matter, according to the new chair of the global securities watchdog IOSCO. Jean-Paul Servais told Reuters that targeting such ‘conglomerate’ platforms will be the focus for 2023. In an interview with the news agency, he said regulating crypto platforms could draw on principles from other sectors which handle conflicts of interest, such as at credit rating agencies and compilers of market benchmarks, without having to start from scratch. While regulators have…

AL KHOR, Qatar — The U.S. men’s national team outplayed and at times even dominated England at the World Cup on Friday night, and before we get to the result or the implications, it’s worth letting that sink in. The Americans outran and outclassed the Englishmen. They outthought and almost overwhelmed a 2022 World Cup favorite. They proved that progress is very real and the future is very bright, but, after 90 intense minutes at the Al Bayt Stadium, they had nothing to show for it. They drew with heavily favored England 0-0, and will go into Tuesday, the final day of Group B,…

Lionel Messi has spent his career trying to dribble out from under Diego Maradona’s sizable shadow.Messi has scored more goals, won more titles, played in more World Cups and been arrested fewer times than Maradona. But Maradona won a World Cup, the one prize Messi is lacking.So Saturday, with his window of opportunity for matching that rapidly closing, Messi once again found magic in his powerful left foot, scoring in the 64th minute to start Argentina to a 2-0 victory over Mexico that revived his team’s chances of getting out of the group stage while all but dashing Mexico’s.“It was…

Actress Alyssa Milano was blasted on Twitter, including by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, after saying that she “gave back” her Tesla and replaced it with a Volkswagen. “I gave back my Tesla,” Milano, a prominent supporter of Democrats on Twitter, posted Saturday. “I bought the VW ev. I love it. I’m not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter. Publicly traded company’s products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy doesn’t seem to be a winning business model.”Twitter users, many of them conservative, criticized Milano over the tweet with many pointing out Volkswagen’s ties to the Nazi…

CNN — Updated Covid-19 boosters that carry instructions to arm the body against currently circulating Omicron subvariants offer some protection against infections, according to the first study to look at how the boosters are performing in the real world. However, the protection is not as high as that provided by the original vaccine against earlier coronavirus variants, the researchers say. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the new data “really quite good.” “Please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated Covid-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself,…

The Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customers and Ports Security in the UAE has altered the process by which visitors can apply for entry permit extensions in the country. Visitors can now apply for visit extensions directly through the government website or smartphone app, according to reports in the Arabic newspaper Emarat Al Youm. It comes as the authority looks to digitize operations in order to make the process more user-friendly. In addition, the authority has recently joined Tik Tok and Snapchat. If the correct criteria are met, people applying for updated entry permits online or via the app may…

Somali security forces backed by international partners killed 15 al-Shabab militants in a sting operation carried out in southern Somalia on Friday. The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism said in a statement issued in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, that the 15 al-Shabab militants had survived Wednesday’s joint operation in which the troops killed 49 al-Shabab fighters. It said the security forces backed by the international partners later tracked the 15 militants and neutralized them in the area of Bulo Madina located in the Lower Shabelle region. In a separate attack on Friday, the ministry said scores of al-Shabab…

After his father died of Covid last fall, Donkan Martinez was overwhelmed by grief and turned to an unlikely outlet: virtual reality. The 24-year-old found himself wading into an emerging field of virtual mental health care, via a service called Innerworld, which offers peer-led mental health support through its app. The idea is to bring the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, into the metaverse and enable users to interact with others as anonymous avatars through voice- and text-based chat. CBT aims to help patients change unhealthy thinking or behavioral patterns by developing relevant skills and coping strategies. The American…