Europe

BRUSSELS (AP) — It was late on Christmas Eve last year when the European Union and Britain finally clinched a Brexit trade deal after years of wrangling, threats and missed deadlines to seal their divorce.

There was hope that now-separated Britain and the 27-nation bloc would sail their relationship toward calmer waters.

Don’t even think about it.

Such was the bile and bad blood stirred up by the diplomatic brinkmanship and bitter divorce that, two months from another Christmas, insults of treachery and duplicitousness are flying again.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A group of climate lawyers called Tuesday for the International Criminal Court to launch an investigation into Brazil’s president for possible crimes against humanity over his administration’s Amazon policies.

The AllRise group filed a dossier with the global court alleging that Jair Bolsonaro’s administration is responsible for a “widespread attack on the Amazon, its dependants and its defenders” that affects the global population.

SEVASTOPOL, October 11. /TASS/: The Ivan Papanin-class multi-purpose reefer ship, developed by the St. Petersburg-based company Ugreftransflot, will be able to serve the Northern Sea Route’s infrastructure, and Arctic scientific and military bases without icebreaker support thanks to its hull reinforcement and electric propulsion system, curator of the project and member of the company’s board of directors Victor Kot told TASS on Monday.

MOSCOW, October 11./TASS/: The Chumakov Federal Scientific Center for Research has set a target for October to launch the clinical trials of its CoviVac coronavirus vaccine for the 60+ age group, the center’s Director General Aidar Ishmukhametov told TASS on Monday.

MOSCOW, October 11. /TASS/: The British tabloid The Sun is a very unscientific newspaper, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said while commenting on an article claiming that Russian secret services had allegedly obtained information about the composition of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

"The Sun is a very well-known and a very unscientific newspaper. This is possibly our attitude to these publications," Peskov said.

VIENNA, October 11. /TASS/: Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen swore in Alexander Schallenberg as Austrian Chancellor following the resignation of Sebastian Kurz.

The inauguration took place on Monday at the office of the head of state in Vienna.

Austria’s Former Foreign Minister Schallenberg took over as the republic’s new Chancellor, representing the conservative Austrian People's Party.

MOSCOW, October 11. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday spoke over the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin press service reported.

MOSCOW, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen coughing during a televised government meeting, reassured officials on Monday that he was fine and said he was being tested for COVID-19 virtually every day.

"Don't worry, everything is fine. They test me practically on a daily basis not just for COVID-19 but all kinds of other infections, so it's all good," the Kremlin leader replied when Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the upper house of parliament, expressed concern about his health.

PRAGUE, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Czech President Milos Zeman was in a stable condition in an intensive care unit on Monday, a hospital spokeswoman said, as his illness delayed the initial steps in post-election talks to form a new government.

Zeman, 77, was taken to the hospital on Sunday and was receiving treatment in the hospital's highest-type of intensive care ward due to what the hospital director said were complications related to an undisclosed chronic condition. 

STOCKHOLM, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens won the 2021 Nobel economics prize on Monday for pioneering "natural experiments" to show real-world economic impacts in areas from minimum wage increases in the U.S. fast-food sector to migration from Castro-era Cuba.

Unlike in medicine or other sciences, economists cannot conduct rigidly controlled clinical trials. Instead, natural experiments use real-life situations to study impacts on the world, an approach that has spread to other social sciences.