Europe

LONDON, Aug 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A 40-year-old Irish haulier pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese men, women and boys found dead in the back of a refrigerated truck near London last year.

Ronan Hughes became the second man to plead guilty over a case that shocked Britain and Vietnam and shone a light on the illicit human smuggling trade. The other is Maurice Robinson, from the British province of Northern Ireland, who was driving the truck when the bodies were found.

ROME (Reuters) - A rescue boat funded by British street artist Banksy has issued urgent calls for help, saying it is stranded in the Mediterranean and overloaded with migrants who it has been unable to bring ashore.

The Louise Michel, named after a French feminist anarchist, started operating last week. It is trying to find a safe port for the 219 migrants it has picked up off the coast of Libya since Thursday.

MOSCOW, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned the U.S. decision to blacklist Russian research institutes, recalling that Washington itself was carrying out suspicious research both in the United States and abroad.

"We consider the inclusion of three Russian research institutes in the U.S. restrictive lists to be blatant," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

BERLIN, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that Germany and the European Union (EU) wanted to continue the conversation with China and set an example for multilateralism.

Merkel made the remarks at her routine press conference after the summer vacation every year, when she answered a question raised by Xinhua about how Germany would strengthen cooperation with China to tackle common challenges like unilateralism.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Far-right activists burned a Quran in the southern Swedish city of Malmo, sparking riots and unrest after more than 300 people gathered to protest, police said Saturday.

Rioters set fires and threw objects at police and rescue services Friday night, slightly injuring several police officers and leading to the detention of about 15 people.

The violence followed the burning Friday afternoon of a Quran, near a predominantly migrant neighborhood, that was carried out by far-right activists and filmed and posted online, according to the TT news agency.

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian navy conducted major war games near Alaska involving dozens of ships and aircraft, the military said Friday, the biggest such drills in the area since Soviet times.

Russia’s navy chief, Adm. Nikolai Yevmenov, said that more than 50 warships and about 40 aircraft were taking part in the exercise in the Bering Sea, which involved multiple practice missile launches.

“We are holding such massive drills there for the first time ever,” Yevmenov said in a statement released by the Russian Defense Ministry.

KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 28. /TASS/: Russia’s Defense Ministry is developing a helicopter type attack drone capable of participating in combat operations alongside crewed helicopter gunships, as follows from a presentation made by the Russian Armed Forces’ Central Research and Development Institute at the Army-2020 forum.

KIEV, August 28. /TASS/: Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated that Kiev may join EU sanctions against Belarus.

"We haven’t seen the EU sanctions yet but we support their [EU] approaches. We’ll draw our conclusions when we’ll see these sanctions," the top diplomat said at a briefing on Friday.

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/: Russia expels a senior diplomat working at the Norwegian Embassy. The diplomat must leave Russia in three days, the Russian Foreign Ministry informed on Friday.

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes that Russia’s backup law enforcement units will not be used in Belarus, and that the situation in Minsk will not deteriorate, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov informed reporters on Friday.

"It is important to understand, and the president has stressed this, that this is a backup unit, there is no need to use it. President Putin hopes that it will never be used. And we hope that Belarus will not face such an urgent situation," the spokesman stated.