Europe

TASS, October 24: The Kremlin is confident that Moscow's rejection of relations with NATO due to the alliance’s aggressive stance is not a big deal.

BERLIN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - German police said on Sunday they had stopped more than 50 far-right vigilantes armed with pepper spray, a bayonet, a machete and batons who were trying to patrol the Polish border to stop migrants from entering the country.

The vigilantes were following a call by the Third Way, a far right-party with suspected links to neo-Nazi groups, for its members to stop illegal crossings near the town of Guben on the German-Polish border.

LONDON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Britain and the European Union held "constructive" technical discussions on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but substantial gaps remain on the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), according to a British government source.

"The talks this week were constructive and we've heard some things from the EU that we can work with - but the reality is that we are still far apart on the big issues, especially governance," the source said on Saturday night.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned plea to end the practice of returning migrants rescued at sea to Libya and other unsafe countries where they suffer “inhumane violence.”

Francis also waded into a highly contentious political debate in Europe, calling on the international community to find concrete ways to manage the “migratory flows” in the Mediterranean.

“I express my closeness to the thousands of migrants, refugees and others in need of protection in Libya,″ Francis said. ”I never forget you, I hear your cries and I pray for you.”

PALERMO, Italy (AP) — Italy’s right-wing former interior minister, Matteo Salvini, went on trial Saturday charged with kidnapping for refusing in 2019 to allow a Spanish migrant rescue ship to dock in Sicily, keeping the people onboard at sea for days.

It is the first trial to go ahead against Salvini for his actions preventing migrant landings while he served as interior minister from 2018-2019 in an uneasy coalition between the populist 5-Star Movement and his right-wing League.

MOSCOW, October 23. /TASS/: Confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by an all-time high of 37,678 in the past 24 hours to 8,205,983, the federal anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Saturday.

Russia registered its all-time highs of the coronavirus case tally for the third straight time. The coronavirus growth rate equaled 0.46%, the latest data show.

MOSCOW, October 23. /TASS/: Businessman Telman Ismailov, who is accused of murders and abductions in Russia, has been granted political asylum in Montenegro, since the Zurich prosecutors’ office dropped the money laundering proceedings against him, Marina Rusakova, Ismailov’s lawyer, told TASS on Saturday adding that this factor was decisive in her client’s release from extradition detention.

MOSCOW, October 23. /TASS/: The expulsion of two Russian diplomats from the unrecognized republic of Kosovo will not entail consequences for their legal status, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website on Saturday.

"We proceed from the fact that this step of Pristina’s administration will not entail any consequences for the legal status of the mentioned Russian diplomats," she said.

MOSCOW, October 23. /TASS/: Moldova’s gas crisis has been caused by the Moldovan authorities, as the debt for the supplied gas amounts to $433 million, Spokesman for the Russian gas giant Gazprom Sergei Kupriyanov said.

"Currently, the situation with the supply of Russian gas to Moldova is very thorny. The Moldovan authorities are entirely to blame for this. We are talking about the crisis of non-payment by Moldova for Russian gas," he said.

He explained that the republic had accumulated a debt for the already delivered gas.

PARIS, Oct 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States and three European powers agreed in consultations in Paris on the need for Iran to return quickly to talks amid growing alarm over a delay.

Rob Malley, the US envoy on Iran, spoke with his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany on how diplomacy “continues to provide the most effective pathway” on Iran, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.