Europe

BRUSSELS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The European Union's executive called for an investigation on Thursday into illegal migrant pushbacks after a report by German media outlets Der Spiegel and ARD documented what they said were Greek and Croatian officials carrying out such operations.

The joint report said Greek and Croatian special forces sometimes concealed their identity during such operations, which at times were violent.

GENEVA, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Bahrain, Russia and other members of the U.N. Human Rights Council pushed through a vote on Thursday to shut down the body's war crimes investigations in Yemen, in a stinging defeat for Western states who wanted to keep the mission going.

Members narrowly voted to reject a resolution led by the Netherlands to give the independent investigators another two years to monitor atrocities in Yemen's conflict.

BRUSSELS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The expulsion of eight members of Russia's mission to NATO is not linked to a particular event, but the alliance needs to be vigilant in the face of "malign" Russian activity, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

Stoltenberg said the eight, whose expulsion was announced on Wednesday, were "undeclared Russian intelligence officers". 

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Russia will invite representatives of the Taliban to international talks on Afghanistan that it plans to host in Moscow on Oct. 20, President Vladimir Putin's special representative on Afghanistan said on Thursday.

Zamir Kabulov, the representative, did not provide further details on the planned talks in comments carried by Russian news agencies.

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine and said it should be given to children across Africa in the hope that it will spur stalled efforts to curb the spread of the parasitic disease.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it “a historic moment” after a meeting in which two of the U.N. health agency’s expert advisory groups recommended the step.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Two leaders of a Kosovo veterans association pleaded innocent Thursday to charges including obstructing justice and intimidation of witnesses, as their trial opened at a court in The Hague.

Hysni Gucati, who was chairman of the Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans Association when he was arrested last year, and his deputy, Nasim Haradinaj, both face charges of obstructing justice and intimidation in September last year for allegedly revealing information including the identity of potential witnesses at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court.

MADRID (AP) — The airport on the Spanish island of La Palma shut down again Thursday due to ashfall from a volcano that has been erupting for almost three weeks.

Scientists said the course of the eruption was unpredictable. It settled down in recent days, but the volcano in the Canary Islands continues to spew lava, and 16 earthquakes of up to magnitude 3.5 shook the area over the previous 24 hours, the National Geographic Institute said.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The 2021 Nobel Prize for literature is being announced Thursday, an award that has in the past honored poets, novelists and even a songwriter, Bob Dylan.

The Swedish Academy will announce the recipient in Stockholm at about 1 p.m. (1100 GMT; 7 a.m. EDT). Winners are famously hard to predict. This year’s favorites, according to British bookmakers, include Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o, French writer Annie Ernaux, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Canada’s Margaret Atwood and Antiguan-American writer Jamaica Kincaid.

MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/: Guerrilla warfare against the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) conducted by the resistance movement in Afghanistan rages on in the valleys of the country’s northeast Panjshir Province and in the neighboring districts of Baghlan Province, Leader of the National Congress Party of Afghanistan supporting the resistance, Abdul Latif Pedram reported on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/: It would take significant effort to stabilize the Russian-US dialogue on missile weapons and strategic stability and achieve new tangible results in this sphere, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Wednesday.