bne_newspaper_November_30_2018

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2 Top Stories
7 The Regions This Week 11 Chart
12 Central Europe
14 Southeast Europe
17 Eastern Europe 20 Eurasia
23 Opinion
27 Lists24 Lists
November 30, 2018 www.intellinews.com
Shipping in Kerch straits comes to a halt as tensions between Russia and Ukraine flare
Ben Aris in Berlin
Automatic Identification System (AIS) data that tracks ships at sea shows that dozens of ships are standing still unable to move through the Kerch straits that join the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov after Russia’s coast guard rammed a Ukrainian naval tug at the weekend, sending Russian- Ukrainian relationships to a new low.
Tensions have flared since the incident.
The Ukrainian navy said the tug and its two accompanying patrol boats were on their way from the Ukrainian port of Odesa in the west of the Black Sea to the port of Mariupol on the Ukrainian coast in the Sea of Azov.
See page 2
Hungarian ruling party tightens grip on media
bne IntelliNews
The right-wing media portfolio owned by busi- nessmen close to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has been transferred to a foundation overseen by a loyalist of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, lead- ing to an unprecedented concentration of media power, local media reported on November 28. The approval of the transfer by the media authority
is more or less a done deal as Fidesz-appointed
Since 2010, Orban has turned down requests to be interviewed by "unfriendly" media.
members are in a majority in the regulatory body.
On Wednesday, Talentis Group, the company owned by Lorinc Meszaros, a former gas fitter from Orban’s home village Felcsut, announced a string of takeovers of several right-wing pub-
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