Europe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday that his country would return to talks with Armenia after the acute phase of military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh region ends, Russian news agency TASS cited him as saying.

Aliyev, who spoke to Russian President Putin by phone, said in an interview with Russian state television that Turkey had the right to participate in mediation.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Time magazine that Armenia would agree to a ceasefire only if Turkey discontinued its engagement and mercenaries were withdrawn.

LONDON (Reuters) - Last month was the world’s hottest September on record, with unusually high temperatures recorded off Siberia, in the Middle East, and in parts of South America and Australia, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.

Extending a long-term warming trend caused by emissions of heat-trapping gases, high temperatures this year have played a major role in disasters from fires in California and the Arctic to floods in Asia, scientists say.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union could quickly sanction people in Russia who are involved in developing nerve agents like that used to poison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday.

“It would be possible to sanction very quickly individuals who, for example, are known to be involved in the development of chemical warfare agents - and that is a discussion we will have in the European Union in the coming days,” Maas told German lawmakers.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany and its European Union partners will agree in the coming days a joint response to the poisoning in Russia of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent in the banned Novichok family, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday.

“It is a serious violation of civic rights committed with a chemical nerve agent, and we firmly believe that this cannot remain without consequence,” Maas told German lawmakers in Berlin, where Navalny has been treated.

07 Oct 2020; MEMO: Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis yesterday said his country welcomes Turkey’s moves to de-escalate tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, adding that Ankara needs to show a stronger commitment to improving mutual relations.

BRUSSELS, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Tuesday published its annual enlargement package assessing the implementation of reforms in the countries aspiring to join the European Union (EU), together with a plan to hand out more economic help for these nations.

The package included country-specific reports on the progress of the six Western Balkans and Turkey, giving assessments and guidelines.

GENEVA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- World merchandise trade is expected to fall by 9.2 percent in 2020, followed by a 7.2-percent rise in 2021, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Tuesday in its revised trade forecast.

In April, the WTO had predicted a decline in the volume of world merchandise trade for 2020 between 13 percent and 32 percent as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal economic activity and life around the world.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The 2020 Nobel Prize for chemistry is being announced Wednesday, an award that has frequently honored work which led to practical applications in wide use today — such as last year’s win for the brains behind the lithium-ion battery.

A panel at the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm will announce the recipient some time after 11:45 a.m. (0945 GMT; 5:45 a.m. EDT).

BERLIN (AP) — A Russian man accused of the downtown Berlin daylight murder of a Georgian on Moscow’s orders was going on trial Wednesday, in a case that has contributed to growing friction between Germany and Russia.

Vadim K., alias Vadim S., is accused of being contracted by “state agencies of the central government of the Russian Federation” to carry out the killing in a small park only a few hundred meters (yards) from the Berlin district court where his trial is being held, according to the indictment.

MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/: The number of COVID-19 infections in Russia over the past 24 hours increased by 11,615, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Tuesday.

This is the highest growth since May 11. Then 11,656 cases were confirmed nationwide in one day which became the highest growth during the entire epidemic.

In all, during the epidemic 1,237,504 people have been infected in Russia. According to the crisis center, the daily growth remains at 0.9% for three days.