Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices were broadly stable on Thursday as a massive hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico made landfall in the heart of the U.S. oil industry, forcing oil rigs and refineries to shut down.

Brent crude LCOc1 futures for October, which expire on Friday, rose 6 cents, or, 0.1% to $45.70 a barrel by 0942 GMT. The more active November Brent contract LCOc2 was virtually flat at $46.17 per barrel.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures fell 8 cents or 0.2% to $43.31 a barrel.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday it was launching a probe into the hospitalization of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny over what his allies suspect was a poisoning, TASS news agency reported.

Navalny is in a medically induced coma in a Berlin hospital where he was airlifted on Saturday after collapsing during a flight.

The German clinic treating him said its initial medical examination pointed to poisoning, though Russian doctors who had treated Navalny in a Siberian hospital have contradicted that diagnosis.

MOSCOW, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday it had detained a soldier on suspicion of passing state secrets to the Ukrainian military intelligence service.

The soldier belonging to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces was detained in the Siberian city of Barnaul, the FSB said in a statement, adding it has initiated a criminal case against the detainee on the grounds of high treason.

If found guilty, the suspect will face a prison term of 12 to 20 years, in accordance with Russian law. 

BERLIN/BRUSSELS, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union (EU) for foreign affairs and security policy, said on Wednesday he would present a wide set of options for solving the disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean over natural gas deposits.

Attending a video press conference following an informal meeting of the EU defense ministers of in Berlin, Borrell said, "as there is still work in progress," the purpose is not to consider which kind of sanctions would be presented against Turkey.

BERLIN (AP) — Foreign Minister Heiko Maas agreed with his Israeli counterpart Thursday that an effort must be made to extend a weapon embargo on Iran, while stressing Germany still sees the landmark 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers as the best way to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

With a current U.N. arms embargo on Iran due to expire on Oct. 18, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told reporters in Berlin an extension was needed to prevent Iran from getting “more advanced weapons systems and spreading them around the Middle East.”

PARIS (AP) — A mother and her three children scanned the school supplies in a Paris supermarket, plucking out multicolored fountain pens, crisp notebooks – and plenty of masks. Despite resurgent coronavirus infections, similar scenes are unfolding across Europe as a new school year dawns.

Virus or no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back into classrooms, to narrow the learning gaps between haves and have-nots that deepened during lockdowns – and to get their parents back to work.

26 Aug 2020; MEMO: Russia, Turkey and Iran – who form the Astana trio – have announced their intention to hold another round of peace talks on Syria, according to a joint statement following the third meeting of the Constitutional Committee of Syria held in Geneva yesterday.

MOSCOW, August 26. /TASS/: Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not comment on the words of the leader of Belarusian opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya that a "peaceful revolution" is happening in the republic.

MOSCOW, August 26. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to participants and guests of the opening ceremony of the cross years of Russian-Chinese scientific, technical and innovative cooperation. The message was published on the Kremlin website on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, August 26. /TASS/: The Kremlin does not see any grounds for the deterioration of ties between Russia and the West amid the incident with blogger Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma in a German clinic.

"First, we don’t want this. Second, there are no grounds for this," Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, answering a question if Moscow was afraid that ties with Western states would worsen amid the incident.