Europe

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway’s foreign ministry on Wednesday said it had decided to expel a Russian diplomat following the recent arrest in Oslo of a Norwegian citizen suspected of espionage.

Norwegian police on Monday said the Norwegian man was suspected of illegally handing information to a Russian intelligence officer.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The suspected perpetrator of a series of car crashes on a Berlin motorway on Tuesday evening has cited Islamist motives but appears to have acted alone, German police and prosecutors said on Wednesday.

“Comments made by the suspect after his criminal acts suggest a religious Islamist motivation,” the joint statement from the Berlin police and the public prosecutors office said.

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A U.N.-backed tribunal on Tuesday convicted one member of the Hezbollah militant group and acquitted three others of involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri 15 years ago.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon said Salim Ayyash was guilty as a co-conspirator of five charges linked to his involvement in the suicide truck bombing. Hariri and 21 others were killed and 226 were wounded in a huge blast outside a seaside hotel in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005.

Paris, Aug 18 (AP) France's government is conferring with unions on Tuesday about requiring masks in workplaces to contain growing virus infections.

France's High Council for Public Health recommended obligatory masks in all workplaces this weekend as the country's daily infection count jumped past 3,000 for the first time since May.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: The Russian government has approved state corporation Rosatom’s voluntary contributions to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Technical Cooperation Fund of up to 2 million euro annually, an August 14 government decree, published on Russia’s official legal information website, reads.

Rosatom was also tasked with coordination of technical cooperation with the IAEA and with overseeing the use of the said voluntary contributions.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: The Precision Instrument-Making Systems research and production corporation (part of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos) has signed a contract to place a non-request measuring station of the SM-Glonass satellite navigation system in the municipality of Colorado do Oeste (the state of Rondonia in Brazil), Roscosmos reported on Tuesday.

MURMANSK, August 18. /TASS/: The Northern Fleet’s marines held tactical drills on the Taimyr Peninsula for landing an amphibious assault force onto an unequipped shore to defend a vital industrial facility in the Arctic, the Fleet’s press office reported on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: India through its embassy in Moscow has established contact with the Russian developer of the Sputnik V vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection, The Indian Express daily reported on Tuesday citing the government sources.

"The Indian Mission is engaging separately with the Russian side through our embassy in Moscow. We are now awaiting the safety and efficacy data of this vaccine for Covid-19," the source specified.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Belarus with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a telephone conversation initiated by Berlin, the Kremlin press service said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The parties thoroughly discussed the situation in Belarus following the presidential election," the statement reads. "Russia pointed out that foreign attempts to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs were unacceptable and could further escalate tensions," the Kremlin press service added.

MADRID (Reuters) - European banks are unlikely to recover from the coronavirus crisis before 2022, European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday.

The recovery of the bloc’s economy will be a fundamental factor in European banks’ solvency, de Guindos said in a lecture at the University Menendez Pelayo.