Europe

NOVO OGARYOVO, October 27. /TASS/: Russia’s proposal regarding a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles remains on the table and is becoming increasingly relevant, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

"As you know, Russia declared a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in the Asia Pacific Region and other regions of the world, and called for a serious conversation on this issue with all interested states," Putin said, speaking at the East Asia Summit.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch authorities are investigating 33 suspected deaths of people who bought a "suicide powder" from a member of a right-to-die group in the Netherlands, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The number of cases surfaced in procedural hearings ahead of a possible trial of several members of the group calling itself Cooperative Last Will. The number is expected to rise after another member of the group told a newspaper he had sold the powder to more than a hundred people.

BERLIN, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Germany's pandemic-related state of emergency looks set to expire next month after the three political parties in talks to form the next government said on Wednesday they did not support extending it.

The state of emergency that enabled the federal and state government to impose measures like lockdowns and curfews without a parliamentary vote is set to lapse on Nov. 25 unless parliament agrees to extend it.

MOSCOW, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Russia's top diplomattold Afghanistan's neighbours on Wednesday to refuse to host U.S. or NATO military forces following their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Kremlin is worried by the risk of Islamist militants spilling into Central Asia from Afghanistan and bristles at the idea of the West gaining a foothold in a region that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

MOSCOW, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia has reported 36,582 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 8,352,601, the official monitoring and response center said on Wednesday.

The nationwide death toll grew by 1,123, the highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic, to 233,898. The number of recoveries increased by 29,151 to 7,242,735.

Meanwhile, Moscow, Russia's worst-hit region, reported 5,789 new cases, taking its total to 1,786,570.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union raised the stakes Wednesday in a standoff with Poland over judicial independence and the primacy of EU law, with the bloc’s top court fining Poland $1.2 million a day to prevent what it called “serious and irreparable harm” to the EU’s legal order and values.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — The Republic of Moldova has turned to a non-Russian natural gas supplier for the first time as the former Soviet republic seeks to avert a looming gas shortage this winter after failing to renew a long-term supply contract with Moscow.

On Tuesday, Moldova received a million cubic meters of gas from Poland in a move aimed at diversifying its energy supply following years of strong Russian influence over the small nation of 3.5 million people.

LONDON (AP) — The U.S. government is scheduled to ask Britain’s High Court on Wednesday to overturn a judge’s decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should not be sent to the United States to face espionage charges.

In January, a lower court judge refused an American request to extradite Assange on spying charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of secret military documents a decade ago.

ROME (AP) — The leaders of Russia and China aren’t coming. Turkey nearly set off a diplomatic incident on the eve of the meeting. And the United States, Australia and France will be at the same table for the first time since Washington pulled the rug out from under Paris’ $66 billion submarine deal Down Under.

27 Oct 2021; MEMO: The Kremlin said today that its fears about Turkey's decision to sell strike drones to Ukraine were being realised and that the Turkish drones risked destabilising the situation in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was commenting on media reports that Ukrainian government forces had successfully deployed a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone to strike a position in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed separatists.