Europe

LONDON, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- For Alan West, a recently retired sheep farmer and agricultural lecturer based in South East England, concern is growing over Britain's position on the standards of imported meat and the fate of the British farm industry.

Earlier this week, MPs rejected the latest attempt to require imported food to meet domestic legal standards from Jan. 1, 2021.

In the parliament, they struck down a House of Lords (upper house of parliament) amendment to the Agriculture Bill to force trade deals to meet Britain's animal welfare and food safety rules.

PARIS (AP) — A suspect shot dead by police after the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in an attack near Paris was an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee, officials said Saturday.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said authorities investigating the killing of Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday also arrested nine suspects, including the teen’s grandfather, parents and 17-year-old brother.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans to come together like they did in the spring to slow the spread of the coronavirus as the country posted another daily record of new cases Saturday.

“Difficult months are ahead of us,” she said in her weekly video podcast. “How winter will be, how our Christmas will be, that will all be decided in these coming days and weeks, and it will be decided by our behavior.”

Meanwhile, new restrictions went into effect in several other European nations in an effort to staunch the resurgence of the pandemic.

17 Oct 2020; MEMO: Greek media revealed that the authorities in Greece have installed two electronic devices in the border area with Turkey producing loud noise potentially causing deafness, to be used against asylum seekers.

On Thursday, media outlets reported that the Greek government had installed two mobile devices in the Merij border area, capable of emitting powerful sound waves to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country.

17 Oct 2020; MEMO: Europe’s main powers on Friday condemned the Israeli intention to approve thousands of settlement units in illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, a joint statement announced.

PARIS (AP) — For the second time in three weeks, terror struck France, this time with the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in a street in a Paris suburb. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack” and urged the nation to stand united against extremism. The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said.

BRUSSELS, October 16. /TASS/: Reasoning behind the EU’s decisions on introducing anti-Russian sanctions over the incident with Russian blogger Alexey Navalny borders on the absurd, while the decisions themselves infringe on the UN functions, the statement of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union made public on Friday said.

LOSVIDO TRAINING GROUND /Belarus/, October 16. /TASS/: The troops of Russia’s Central Military District employed the latest Silok anti-drone system at the final stage of the Unbreakable Brotherhood-2020 peacekeeping drills of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Belarus, the District’s press office reported on Friday.

The drills are running at the Losvido training range in the Vitebsk Region.

GELENDZHIK, October 16. /TASS/: The Russian PD-8 engine for the SSJ 100 airliner and the Be-200 amphibious plane may be ready in 2022 and the work to mount it on the aircraft is scheduled to begin in 2023, United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Chief Yuri Slyusar said at the Hydroaviasalon 2020 air show on Friday.

"There is hope that we will get the engine in 2022. In 2023, we will primarily mount it on the SSJ 100 and subsequently on the Be-200 to achieve 100% import independence from Ukraine," the UAC chief said.

MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/: The number of COVID-19 fatalities over the past 24 hours increased by 232 compared to 286 the day before, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Friday.

It is for the eighth time that over 200 deaths in one day have been recorded in the country since the beginning of the pandemic and the fifth time since the beginning of the month.

According to the crisis center, in all, 23,723 patients have died. The provisional lethality of the disease (the final one will be determined when the epidemic ends) remains at the level of 1.73%.