Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices hovered near three-month peaks on Thursday, buoyed by falling U.S. crude inventories and thawing trade relations between the United States and China.

Brent crude futures edged up 10 cents to $66.27 a barrel by 0957 GMT, heading for a sixth straight day of gains if prices on Thursday end in positive territory.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained 6 cents to $60.99 a barrel.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he expects his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump’s to remain in office despite the House of Representatives voting to impeach Trump on Wednesday.

Putin said the allegations against Trump are “dreamt up” and that he believes the U.S. Senate is unlikely to remove Trump from office.

Putin added that Russia is ready to agree on a new START arms treaty with the United States, but that there has been no response to Russian proposals.

BELGRADE, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- A new section of Serbia's international E-763 highway has been completed three months ahead of deadline by a Chinese company, and opened for traffic at a ceremony in the outskirts of Belgrade on Wednesday.

The ceremony was attended by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, and Chinese Ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo.

GENEVA, Dec 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Campaigners filed a complaint with the UN against Italy over a teenage migrant who was sent back to Libya in 2018 along with other migrants, where he was shot, beaten and subjected to forced labour.

The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) lodged the case with the UN Human Rights Committee aiming to challenge the practice of EU coastal states like Italy engaging commercial ships to return vulnerable people to unsafe locations.

The NGO says it is the first case of its kind to target so-called privatised push-backs.

PARIS, Dec 19 (NNN-TASS) — Russia’s Soyuz-ST-A carrier rocket launched from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana has successfully orbited five European space vehicles, including the CHEOPS telescope intended to study exoplanets.

The flight operator Arianespace held a live broadcast of the space mission on its website on Wednesday, reported Russian news agency TASS.

The Russian carrier rocket blasted off at 11:54 a.m. Moscow time. About 10 minutes after the liftoff, the Fregat-MT booster separated from the Russian launch vehicle in the normal mode.

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/: Five Japanese vessels carrying over six tonnes of illegally poached octopus have been detained off Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific Ocean, the Russian Federal Security Service’s Border Service said on Wednesday.

The Japanese vessels, which were poaching near the Kuril Islands, were detained during the checks on December 17. "In order to establish all circumstances of violations and amid deteriorating weather conditions, the Japanese ships were escorted to the Yuzhno-Kurilsk maritime terminal," the statement said.

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/: Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi considers it necessary for Tokyo and Moscow to expand cooperation on the energy project Arctic LNG 2.

"Trade turnover between Japan and Russia has slightly decreased this year, though personally I consider the possibility of developing mutually beneficial trade exceptionally large," he said at the 15th plenary session of the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic issues on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/: NATO military exercises in the Baltic States, Poland, and in the Black and Baltic Seas indicate that the Alliance is preparing for a large-scale conflict, Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasinov told foreign military attaches on Tuesday.

PARIS, December 18. /TASS/: A Russian Soyuz-ST-A carrier rocket with four satellites and Europe’s Cheops telescope intended to search for exoplanets has successfully blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, the flight operator Arianespace announced in a live broadcast on Wednesday.

The launch is a concluding mission for Arianespace in 2019. Within four hours after the liftoff, the Fregat-MT booster will orbit Europe’s Cheops telescope, the Italian Cosmo-SkyMed radar satellite and also three small satellites: the European OPS-SAT and the French EyeSat and ANGELS.

18 December 2019; AFP: Hundreds of thousands of French protesters took to the streets Tuesday in a pension reform standoff that has sparked nearly two weeks of crippling transport strikes, with the government vowing it will not give in to union demands to drop the overhaul.

Police said they fired tear gas in Paris after protesters hurled projectiles at them, with 30 people arrested in the French capital.