Europe

GLASGOW, November 1. /TASS/: Both the developed counties and emerging economies should create coalitions on decarbonization and a stage-by-stage abandonment of coal use, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said speaking at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"I urge developed countries and emerging economies to build coalitions able to create the financial and technological conditions to accelerate the decarbonization of the economy and the phase out of coal," he said.

ORYOL, Russia, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Ambulance attendant Roman Stebakov has come face-to-face with COVID-19 many times - but he'd rather take his chances with the disease than get himself injected with Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

"I won't get vaccinated until, I don't know, they break me and vaccinate me by force. I don't see the point in it, there are no guarantees it's safe," says the paramedic from Oryol, 300 km (185 miles) south of Moscow.

GENEVA, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Britain said on Monday that it had requested that the U.N. Human Rights Council convene an emergency session on Sudan following last week's military coup.

The request was sent to the president of the 47-member Geneva forum on behalf of 18 member states, more than the one-third required to convene a special session. It was backed by 30 countries with observer status, including the United States.

OSLO, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The Nobel Peace Prize laureates will be able collect their awards in Oslo in December, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, unlike in Stockholm where the other Nobel ceremonies have been cancelled due to the pandemic for the second year running.

Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, who braved the wrath of the leaders of the Philippines and Russia to expose corruption and misrule, won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, in an endorsement of free speech under fire worldwide.

LONDON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Britain gave France 48 hours on Monday to back down in a fishing row that threatens to spiral into a wider trade dispute between two of Europe's biggest economies or face tortuous legal action under the Brexit trade deal.

Post-Brexit bickering over fish culminated last Wednesday in the French seizure of a British scallop dredger, the Cornelis Gert Jan, in French waters near Le Havre. Paris has threatened sanctions from Nov. 2 that could snarl cross-Channel trade.

ROME, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Bilateral relations between China and the United States in the past few years have suffered an all-round impact due to the wrong China policy pursued by the United States, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Sunday during his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday emphasized the need to strengthen the country’s air defenses amid NATO’s military activities near Russia’s borders.

Speaking during a meeting with military officials and arms makers in the southern Russian city of Sochi, Putin specificially noted the deployment of NATO’s U.S.-led missile defense components in Eastern Europe and increasingly frequent missions by NATO ships near Russian waters in the Baltic and Black Seas.

LONDON (AP) — The chief executive of British bank Barclays stepped down Monday following a report by United Kingdom regulators into his past links with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Jes Staley has previously said he “deeply regrets” his relationship with Epstein, who killed himself at a federal jail in New York in August 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial. There is no suggestion that the 64-year-old Staley knew anything about Epstein’s alleged crimes.

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson opened a global climate summit Monday, saying the world is strapped to a “doomsday device.”

Johnson likened an ever-warming Earth’s position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond — strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.

31 Oct 2021; MEMO: US President Joe Biden told Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan his request for F-16 fighter jets had to go through a process in the United States and expressed a desire to handle disagreements between the two countries effectively, Reuters reported.