Both facing pressure from Washington, Moscow and Ankara ditched the US dollar when finalizing their landmark S-400 air defense missile systems deal and will do so in the future, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said.

 

“We understand that if we’ll make transactions in [US] dollars, they won’t come through,” Putin told reporters on Wednesday, citing his recent talks with Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “So we thought up another option.”

 

Germany may be Europe’s biggest and strongest economy and is enjoying record employment, but one fifth of its citizens are struggling to make ends meet, a new study reveals.

Some 15.5 million people or 19 percent of the population in Germany were “at risk of poverty” or “social exclusion” in 2017, the Federal Statistics Office said.

 

It’s not only school shootings but also accidents, other assaults and even suicide attempts with firearms that send almost 8,000 American children every year to the emergency room, according to a new study.

Guns were the reason some 75,000 children visited the ER between 2006 and 2014, according to the study, carried out by the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

The European Union's unemployment rate in August stood at 6.8 percent, the lowest figure recorded in the 28-member EU bloc since April 2008, Eurostat revealed on Monday.

 

"The EU28 unemployment rate was 6.8 percent in August 2018, stable compared with July 2018 and down from 7.5 percent in August 2017," the statistical office said in a statement.

 

The Rohingya refugees are “the world’s largest stateless population”, said Ursula Mueller, the UN's assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, as she called on the international community to help their plight.

 

Speaking at a high-level event on the issue of Rohingya at the UN on Friday, Ms Mueller said the Myanmar government “must take real steps forward, clearly demonstrating a commitment to immediate change on the ground”.

 

The cost of eating out or enjoying a night’s stay at a hotel in Saudi Arabia increased at the fastest rate recorded in five years last month, according to government statistics.

 

August’s consumer price data show that restaurant and hotel inflation rose to a new high of 8.4 percent year-on-year in August from 7.6 percent year-on-year in July.

 

Half of the world’s poor are children and 20 per cent of people in Arab states are living in poverty, a new study released by the UN today shows.

 

The Arab countries' poorest state was again Yemen, but statistics from 2013 do not show the intensity of the situation today.

 

Dr Anwar Gargash, the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, had tweeted early Thursday morning, "Good morning to all my followers. The UAE passport has just been ranked as the 9th most powerful passport with visa-free entry to 157 countries world wide."

 

Passport index

A bilateral visa waiver agreement between the UAE and Russia earlier in July had seen the Emirati passport become the 10th most powerful in the world.

 

Bahrain leads the list of the best destinations for expatriates for the second year thanks to great results for working abroad and the ease of settling in, said InterNations, a global information site for people who live and work abroad, in a new report.

 

The kingdom received particularly good ratings for working abroad and the ease of settling in (1st in both categories) as well as family life (7th out of 50 countries), added the Expat Insider 2018 Survey.

 

With almost 10 billion people predicted to be living on earth in 30 years’ time, the food system is working hard to feed a growing world. Here’s how it’s working to do that.

The food industry today faces a daunting task: feeding 10 billion mouths in a fair and sustainable way by 2050. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, food supply must more than double in 30 years to provide for the entire world.