Europe

BUCHAREST, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Romanian coalition government led by Prime Minister Florin Citu collapsed on Tuesday, losing a censure motion initiated by main opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) and supported by all oppositions in the parliament plus the second largest party in the newly-split ruling coalition.

The motion was passed by 281 votes in favor, much more than the required minimum of 234, or 50 percent plus one in the 467-seat bicameral parliament.

LONDON (AP) — AstraZeneca, the drugmaker that developed one of the first COVID-19 vaccines, has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the emergency use of a first-of-a-kind antibody treatment to prevent the disease.

The Anglo-Swedish company said Tuesday that the treatment, known as AZD7442, would be the first long-acting antibody combination to receive an emergency authorization for COVID-19 prevention. If authorized, the drug would likely be limited to people with compromised immune systems who don’t get sufficient protection from vaccination.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian actor and a film director rocketed to space Tuesday on a mission to make the world’s first movie in orbit.

Actor Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko blasted off for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three space missions. Their Soyuz MS-19 lifted off as scheduled at 1:55 p.m. (0855 GMT) from the Russian space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan and successfully reached the designated orbit.

PARIS (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Paris as the Biden administration seeks to repair damage to relations caused by excluding America’s oldest ally from a new Indo-Pacific security initiative.

Blinken is meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and President Emmanuel Macron’s national security adviser on Tuesday to try to restore trust between the countries, particularly as it relates to countering growing challenges from China.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The 2021 Nobel Prize for physics is being announced Tuesday, an award that has in the past honored discoveries about fundamental forces of nature and cosmic phenomena.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will announce the recipient at about 11:45 a.m. (0945 GMT; 5:45 a.m. EDT).

It is common for several scientists who work in related fields to share the prize. Last year, the prize went to American Andrea Ghez, Roger Penrose of Britain and Reinhard Genzel of Germany for their research into black holes.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Conservative government is facing calls to tighten the country’s defenses against “dirty money” after a massive leak of offshore data showed how London, in particular, is the destination of choice for some of the world’s richest and most powerful people to conceal their cash.

The cache of almost 12 million files, which has been dubbed the “Pandora Papers,” was published Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its media partners, including Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the BBC.

PARIS (AP) — The old music box factory had been abandoned for years on the outskirts of the Swiss mountain town, with paint curling at the edges of its dingy grey and yellow walls.

It was the perfect hiding place for the young French mother and her 8-year-old daughter at the heart of Operation Lima, an international child abduction plot planned and funded by a French group with echoes of the far-right extremist movement QAnon.

MOSCOW, October 4./TASS/: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan plans to visit Russia, and preparations are underway for his in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Monday.

Earlier on Monday, Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko met with President of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan, saying that a face-to-face meeting of Putin and Pashinyan was prepared.

MOSCOW, October 4. /TASS/: Russia is unable to use one of the docking ports of the ISS to its full extent due to cracks in the transitional chamber of the Zvezda module, the general designer of Russia's Energia corporation, associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Solovyov said on Monday.

ZAGREB, October 4. /TASS/: The Foreign Ministry of North Macedonia believes that declaring as persona non grata a staffer of the North Macedonian embassy in Moscow cannot be justified in a retaliation for a similar measure against a Russian diplomat, the Foreign Ministry reported on Monday.