Reuters

By Felix Light

TBILISI (Reuters) - Grigory Sverdlin says he has seen this story before.

A Russian activist now living in exile in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Sverdlin has watched over the past month as thousands of Georgian protesters have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to a draft law on "foreign agents".

Domestic critics dub the bill "the Russian law" and say it is a copycat of Russian legislation that has... (continue reading...)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. import prices rose by the most in two years in April amid rising costs for energy products and other goods, suggesting that domestic inflation could remain elevated for a while.

Import prices surged 0.9% last month, the largest increase since March 2022, after an upwardly revised 0.6% rise in March, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected import prices,... (continue reading...)

ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish court convicted former leading officials from the pro-Kurdish HDP party, including co-leader Figen Yuksekdag, on Thursday for instigating 2014 protests triggered by an Islamic State attack on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.

The verdict was likely to fuel political tensions in Turkey around the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is facing potential closure in a separate court case and has been succeeded in parliament... (continue reading...)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is blocking imports from 26 cotton traders or warehouse facilities that it says are linked to forced Uyghur labor, a U.S. government notice posted online on Thursday said.

The move adds the entities to the United States' forced labor entity list for their involvement with the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to the notice published in the Federal Register.

(Reporting by... (continue reading...)

By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Thursday moved to block Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives from obtaining audio recordings of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur over his retention of classified records.

In a letter to the chairmen of the House of Representatives Judiciary and Oversight committees, the Justice Department said Biden had asserted executive... (continue reading...)