The Russian state news agency Tass says a court in St. Petersburg has ordered the seizing of assets of Germany's Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in Russia. The order is in response to a lawsuit over the planned construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal in the Baltic Sea. The banks were among the guarantors in the contract for the building of a gas processing plant by a multinational firm and the German company Linde. But the project was canceled after Western sanctions, with the banks withdrawing their guarantees. In a statement Deutsche Bank said  it has made a provision for approximately 260 million euros ($283 million) under an indemnification agreement.
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The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is providing a $100,000 annual sponsorship to each Aces player for this season and 2025. The sponsorship is higher than the earnings of six Aces players, according to Spotrac. The sponsorship does not violate the WNBA’s salary cap because the authority did not orchestrate the sponsorship with the club. But other teams are likely to raise questions about the fairness of the sponsorship and whether it violates the spirit of the cap rules.
Vendors, mostly Haitians, sell and buy goods at a market in the border town of Dajabon, Dominican Republic, Friday, May 17, 2024. As violence and political turmoil grip neighboring Haiti, the Dominican Republic will hold elections Sunday that have been defined by calls for more crackdowns on migrants and finishing a border wall dividing the countries. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
U.N. experts say South Sudan is close to securing a $13 billion loan from a company in the United Arab Emirates, despite the oil-rich country’s difficulties in managing debts backed by its oil reserves. The panel of experts says in a report to the U.N. Security Council that loan documents it has seen indicate that the deal would be South Sudan’s largest-ever oil-backed loan. The experts monitor an arms embargo against South Sudan. The oil section of their report obtained by The Associated Press this week says that “servicing this loan would likely tie up most of South Sudan’s revenue (for) many years, depending on oil prices.”
The Lewes Board of Public works announced an electric rate increase starting in June this year for both people living in the town and businesses.
Federal wildlife officials have declared a rare lizard in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas an endangered species. The Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that future energy development, sand mining and climate change could lead to extinction of the dunes sagebrush lizard in one of the world’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basins. The decision caps two decades of legal and regulatory skirmishes between the U.S. government, conservationists and the oil and gas industry. Environmentalists see it as providing the lizard a lifeline for survival. Industry leaders say it ignores years of significant voluntary efforts by the states and private companies to protect the species.
Children play amongst fallen tree branches at an apartment complex in the 4600 block of Sherwood in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Houston. Fast-moving thunderstorms pummeled southeastern Texas for the second time this month, killing at least four people, blowing out windows in high-rise buildings, downing trees and knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP)
A witness at Sen. Bob Menendez's bribery trial says the cost of certifying that meat sent to Egypt follows Islamic dietary requirements skyrocketed after a single U.S. company was given a monopoly in a cozy deal prosecutors say Menendez arranged. James Bret Tate is a U.S. diplomat who was based in Cairo for several years. He explained to a Manhattan federal court jury Friday how Halal meat certification ended up in the hands of a single U.S. company rather than many. Prosecutors say the Democrat was behind the creation of the monopoly as a payback for bribes he received from a friend of his wife.
Commuters in Buenos Aires are being hit by an abrupt 360% increase in subway fares. It's one of the most dramatic price hikes in libertarian President Javier Milei's harsh budget austerity campaign in Argentina. A judge on Thursday lifted an order that had temporarily blocked the scheduled increase in subway fares. That cleared the way for the change to take effect Friday morning. Public transport fares are a sensitive issue across Latin America where outrage triggered by subway price hikes have unleashed mass protests in the past. The overnight fare hike in Buenos Aires from 125 pesos or 14 cents to 574 pesos or 64 cents exacerbated a painful cost of living crisis in Argentina.
The United Auto Workers union faces the latest test of its ambitious plan to unionize auto plants in the historically nonunion South when a vote ends at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The voting Friday at an assembly plant and a battery-making facility comes a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen’s assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that election, VW workers voted overwhelmingly to join the union, drawn by the prospect of substantially higher wages and other benefits. The UAW had little success before then recruiting at nonunion auto plants in the South.
