Europe

LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The British lawmaker Owen Paterson, who was found guilty of breaking paid lobbying rules, has decided to resign from parliament, the BBC reported on Thursday.

"I maintain that I am totally innocent of what I have been accused of and I acted at all times in the interests of public health and safety," he said according to the BBC.

PARIS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - France said on Thursday it could still act with its partners against Iran at an upcoming meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's board after Tehran said it would return to nuclear talks with world powers at the end of November.

Western powers scrapped plans in September for a resolution criticising Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency after Tehran agreed to prolong monitoring of some nuclear activities and invited IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran for talks on key outstanding issues.

PARIS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - France and Britain moved to defuse their dispute over fishing on Thursday, with sanctions off the table for now but all options still possible should talks fail, French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said.

Beaune was speaking after meeting British Brexit minister David Frost in Paris after France and Britain came to the brink of a cross-Channel trade war over fishing.

STOCKHOLM, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson moved a step closer to becoming Sweden's first woman prime minister on Thursday when the ruling Social Democrat party elected her as its leader in place of Stefan Lofven.

Lofven, the current prime minister, wants to step down before national elections due in September 2022. 

His minority coalition with the Green Party has struggled to survive since coming to power in 2014 and Andersson would need backing from the Greens as well as the Left and Centre parties to also succeed Lofven as leader of the country.

GLASGOW, Britain, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- China and the United States continue their dialogue and exchanges on tackling climate change here at the ongoing 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

China is represented by Xie Zhenhua, China's special envoy for climate change, and Zhao Yingmin, head of the Chinese delegation to COP26 and vice minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and the United States by John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — OPEC and allied oil-producing countries will decide Thursday how much oil they think the global economy needs, with President Joe Biden urging Saudi Arabia and Russia to increase production and lower U.S. gasoline prices — so far to no avail.

The OPEC+ alliance, made up of OPEC members led by the Saudis and non-members led by Russia, has moved cautiously to restore production cuts made during the coronavirus pandemic, aiming to support prices that collapsed during the COVID-19 downturn and have since surged to seven-year highs.

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Several major coal-using nations have pledged for the first time to phase out their use of the heavily-polluting fossil fuel or to speed up existing plans to do so, while others announced commitments to end investment in new coal-fired power plants.

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — The dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions from the pandemic lockdown has pretty much disappeared in a puff of coal-fired smoke, much of it from China, a new scientific study found.

A group of scientists who track heat-trapping gases that cause climate change said the first nine months of this year put emissions a tad under 2019 levels. They estimate that in 2021 the world will have spewed 36.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, compared to 36.7 billion metric tons two years ago.

MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/: Russia and the United States are gradually restoring communication channels, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said in a live broadcast of the Rossiya-24 TV Channel on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/: NATO's attempts to dictate its architecture of security to the Asia-Pacific Region are destructive, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Wednesday.

"We believe that NATO's attempts at dictating its vision of security architecture to the region are destructive and may seriously destabilize the situation in the APR," she said.