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Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday asked the international community to cover an expected budget deficit of $38 billion next year for his war-torn country, with Moscow's invasion also badly hitting the economy. At an international reconstruction conference for Ukraine in Berlin, Zelensky urged European leaders to offer greater financial support for his country more than eight months after Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine. "At this very conference we need to make a decision on assistance to cover next year's budget deficit for Ukraine," Zelensky said via video-link. "It's a very significant amount of...

President Biden said the United States "has never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas," after the Labor Department announced Friday that inflation hit a new four-decade high in May. The Labor Department said Friday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods, including gasoline, groceries and rent, rose 8.6% in May from a year ago. Prices jumped 1% in the one-month period from April. Those figures were both higher than the 8.3% headline figure and 0.7% monthly gain forecast by Refinitiv economists. The president, from the Port of Los Angeles...