MOSCOW (Reuters) -- The Russian rouble hit three-week highs against the euro and U.S. dollar in volatile trading on Tuesday, continuing to climb despite recent interest rate cuts and a looming economic crisis. At 1415 GMT, the rouble was up 1.8% against the euro at 5 9.03, fading slighting from an early gain of 3.6%, its strongest level since May 25.. Against the dollar, the rouble added 0.4% to trade at 56.54, having dipped from multi-year peaks with a session low of 55.6 on the Moscow Exchange earlier on Tuesday. The Russian currency has been supported by capital controls that Russia imposed in late February after sending tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, though the recent strength has triggered policymakers to rethink their economic response to Western sanctions. After the rouble became the world’s best-performing  currency, authorities eased capital controls and scrapped a requirement for export-focused companies to convert their foreign-currency revenues.

 

 

*** 

SYDNEY (AFP) -- Australians were warned to expect blackouts across the densely populated east coast on Tuesday, as an energy crisis grips one of the world’s biggest coal and gas producers. Australia’s energy market regulator warned there could be a power shortfall in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, which are home to more than 13 million people. Newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blamed the energy crisis on the previous government, which was in power for nearly a decade.  Australia is one of the world’s top three producers of gas and coal, but about a quarter of the east coast’s coal-fired power stations are currently offline because of outages and maintenance. Russia’s operation in Ukraine has also seen export demand for Australian gas spike, mopping up any potential surplus that could ease the domestic shortfall.

 

*** 

MEXICO CITY (AFP) -- Heavily armed attackers stole 20 freight containers, some carrying gold and silver, from a port in western Mexico in a heist of “unprecedented” proportions, authorities said. The burglary, described by local media as “the theft of the century,” took place on June 5 in a private compound of a commercial port in the city of Manzanillo on Mexico’s Pacific coast. After incapacitating the port’s security teams, the assailants used cranes and trucks to move the containers, said state security spokesman Gustavo Adrian Joya.  National customs head Horacio Duarte Olivares said the area where the burglary occurred was not under the jurisdiction of the Navy, which is in charge of port surveillance.

 

*** 

OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) -- Burkina Faso on Tuesday began three days of national mourning after suspected takfiris killed at least 50 civilians in one of the worst attacks since the military seized power in January. Strongman, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, issued a decree late Monday ordering the entire country to observe the period of mourning until midnight on Thursday. The landlocked Sahel state is in the grip of a seven-year-old takfiri insurgency that has claimed more than 2,000 lives and forced some 1.9 million people to leave their homes. The attack targeted the village of Seytenga in the Sahel region overnight Saturday. On Monday, the government said the army had found 50 bodies and warned that the toll may rise. The EU warned that the attack may have left “more than 100 civilian victims” and condemned the incident, calling for “light to be shed on the circumstances of this killing”.

 

*** 

DUSHANBE (Reuters) -- One Tajik border guard was killed and three were wounded in a clash with Kyrgyz border guards on Tuesday, four Tajik security sources told Reuters, a new bout of violence between Russia’s Central Asian allies. Clashes along the poorly demarcated and often debated frontier between the two former Soviet republics which both host Russian military bases are common, but occasionally escalate to full-scale hostilities involving heavy weaponry. According to Tajik sources and a statement by the Kyrgyz border guards, the firefight broke out in the Kekh area close to the Tajik city of Isfara where a similar incident took place on June 3. 

 

***

LONDON (Dispatches) -- Britain on Tuesday marked 40 years since Argentine forces surrendered after 74 days of conflict on the Falkland Islands which Argentinians call Malvinas, with many veterans still paying the physical and mental price of the grueling South Atlantic war. In Britain and the Malvinas, the anniversary of the start of the conflict on April 2 was muted. Islanders in particular see the war as nothing to celebrate. Carol Betteridge, of veterans’ charity Help for Heroes, recalled that “for many of those who fought so far from home, the physical and mental wounds they received during the conflict affect them every day -- not just on anniversaries.” “The lack of proper support for mental health means that many Falklands veterans buried their issues and ‘soldiered on’ as they were expected to,” said Betteridge, the charity’s head of clinical and medical services.  “This is why, 40 years on, we still have Falklands veterans coming to us for help for psychological wounds that they have struggled with for so long.”