Bulgaria and Romania are trying to ensure the continued operation of their Lukoil-owned refineries ahead of the introduction of US sanctions on November 21, it was reported yesterday. The Bulgarian parliament last Friday afternoon approved a bill allowing the government to appoint a special manager at the Burgas refinery, the country's largest oil refinery. Lawmakers voted on the document in just 30 seconds. At the same time, Bulgaria asks the United States for an exception from sanctions.

The Chief Prosecutor's Office of Istanbul released an indictment against the former mayor of the city, Ekrem Imamoglu, who was detained in March this year. On charges of corruption, he is seeking a prison sentence of up to 2,352 years. This was reported by Turkish publications NTV and TRT Haber . According to media reports, 402 people are involved in the case of the former mayor of Istanbul, of which 105 are detained.

A Munich court found OpenAI to have violated German copyright laws and ordered it to pay compensation for using copyrighted song lyrics, The Guardian writes . According to the ruling, the company used copyrighted lyrics from popular artists to train its language model without permission from the copyright holders. The lawsuit was brought by the German copyright management organization GEMA, which represents the interests of about 100 thousand composers, lyricists and publishers.

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced the suspension of the so-called Caesar Act, which provided for sanctions against the former Syrian government. This happened after the visit of Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to the White House and his meeting with American leader Donald Trump. Sanctions will be suspended for 180 days starting November 10.

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist and Turing Award winner, is set to leave the company in the coming months. The French-American scientist plans to found his own startup and is in preliminary talks to raise funding, people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times. As the publication notes, LeCun’s departure occurs against the backdrop of a radical reformatting of Meta’s AI strategy by its founder and leader Mark Zuckerberg.

Qian Zhimin, accused of fraud and money laundering and having fled prosecution in China to London, was jailed for 11 years and 8 months at Southwark Crown Court. The BBC reports this. During a search of her Hampstead mansion, where Zhimin spent about a year, British police made one of the largest seizures of cryptocurrency in British history - law enforcement officers seized hard drives and laptops on which tens of thousands of bitcoins were found.

The youngest son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Hannibal, has been released from custody in Lebanon after nearly a decade of being held without trial. This was reported by Reuters with reference to the Lebanese National News Agency. Hannibal Gaddafi was detained by Lebanese authorities in 2015. A few days earlier, he had been kidnapped by armed men in Syria, where he was living in exile with his wife and children.

A Turkish Air Force military transport plane with 20 servicemen on board crashed on the border of Georgia and Azerbaijan, Anadolu Agency reports . According to the Turkish Ministry of Defense, there were a crew and 20 personnel on board. Search and rescue operations are currently underway in the region.

Two bunkering (refueling) barges - Rina and Zircone - have been operating in the Baltic Sea for years, mainly in the Danish Straits. They are based in the ports of Riga, Klaipeda and Paldiski and serve Russian tankers heading to oil export terminals in Primorsk and Ust-Luga, from where it in most cases goes to the shores of India, Indonesia and Malaysia, writes The Maritime Executive.

Mobile Internet restrictions introduced in Ulyanovsk and some cities in the region due to the threat of drones will remain in effect permanently until the end of the war in Ukraine. The Minister of Digital Development of the region, Oleg Yagfarov, announced this at a special press conference, the publications 73.Online and Ulpravda reported at the end of last week. Local authorities linked the shutdowns to the corresponding decision of the federal authorities.

The Venezuelan authorities have developed two scenarios of action in the event of an American invasion - a guerrilla war and an operation to “anarchize” cities. This was reported by Reuters, citing sources and internal documents. The first scenario, “long-term resistance,” involves the dispersal of small mobile units in more than 280 points across the country for sabotage, sabotage, and protracted guerrilla warfare using Igla-S man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems and old Russian weapons.

The lawyer of the former police officer, Colonel of Center “E” Ivan Repin sent complaints to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation about the systematic use of torture against him by law enforcement officers of the Yaroslavl region, writes the human rights project “Public Verdict”. According to her, a criminal case has been opened against him for accepting a bribe.

The State Duma supported the proposal of the Prosecutor General and agreed to strip the immunity of United Russia deputy Anatoly Voronovsky and to initiate a criminal case against him for receiving a bribe on an especially large scale. As Vedomosti reported , citing a source in the lower house, the corresponding resolution has entered into force and will be sent to Prosecutor General Alexander Gutsan.

Vocalist of the street group Stoptime, 18-year-old Diana Loginova (stage name Naoko), received administrative arrest for the third time - this time for 13 days, Fontanka reports . The Leningradsky District Court found her guilty under Article 20.2.2 of the Administrative Code on organizing a mass gathering of people that violated public order. The reason for drawing up the protocol was a video recording of her speech on Sennaya Square, which was published in one of the news publications.

The recycling collection was not canceled, although it seemed to have achieved its goals. The government retained the state support system based on it and introduced an additional mechanism of special investment contracts (SPIC), tightening localization requirements.