Europe

MINSK, December 9. /TASS/: Belarus hopes to receive a sum of about 70 million US dollars as compensation after the incident with contaminated oil, Belarusian Ambassador to Russia Vladimir Semashko said on Sunday commenting on the results of the talks between the two countries’ leaders in Sochi.

"The sum at question is quite big - about 70 million US dollars," BelTA news agency quoted him as saying. According to the Belarusian diplomat, the problem of compensation was raised at the leaders’ talks.

MOSCOW, December 9. / TASS /: A new anthropomorphic robot that will handle waste disposal in radioactive canyons will be tested in Russia in early 2020, said Android Technology Executive Director Evgeniy Dudorov on Monday.

"Now the robot is being manufactured. At the beginning of next year, testing will already take place," Dudorov said.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donbass republics may carry out an all-for-all prisoner exchange before the year ends, Center for Current Politics Director Alexei Chesnakov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Monday.

"An exchange of all designated prisoners is possible, it could take place before the end of the year, around Christmas," the expert pointed out.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky are scheduled to hold a meeting on Monday after the Normandy Four summit in Paris, Kremlin Aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.

"The meeting [between Putin and Zelensky - TASS] will take place. There is an agreement on it. Everything will fit the format that the summit’s organizers, the French, will suggest, obviously after all events [of the summit] end," Ushakov said. Speaking on how long the meeting would last, he noted that "this depends on the leaders."

9 December 2019; AFP: Britain's general election campaign enters its frenetic final stages on Monday, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn desperately seeking votes ahead of Thursday's crucial poll.

Johnson is hoping to regain the Conservative majority lost by his predecessor Theresa May in the last election, just two years ago, while Corbyn is aiming to upset the odds and usher in the first Labour government for nine years.

VALLETTA (Reuters) - Activists barged into the building that houses the office of Malta’s prime minister early on Monday to demand Joseph Muscat’s immediate resignation amid an investigation into the 2017 killing of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Muscat is not directly implicated in the investigation but has said he will resign in mid-January after an election for a new leader of his ruling Labour Party. Testimony by the self-confessed middleman in the murder plan has linked people in the prime minister’s inner circle to attempts at a cover-up.

LONDON (Reuters) - Tullow Oil (TLW.L) shares nearly halved on Monday after Chief Executive Officer Paul McDade stepped down and the energy company scrapped its dividend after failing to meet production targets due to weak performance by flagship assets in Ghana.

The company has been plagued by technical problems at its Jubilee field in Ghana and a delay in completing a well at the TEN offshore field, which led Tullow to cut its estimates for 2019 oil output last month.

Tullow also suffered blows in recent months to its plans to develop oil fields in Uganda and Guyana.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he would try to find a way to honor his promise to oppose Heathrow airport expansion by lying down in front of bulldozers but that it might be difficult for him.

The British parliament has approved an expansion plan for Heathrow, including building the first full-length new runway in the London area for 70 years, but the plans are being challenged in the courts.

Before he won the top job, Johnson opposed Heathrow expansion and promised to lie down before bulldozers to stop it.

VATICAN CITY, Dec 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Pope Francis named Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to a major global Vatican post in a move likely to increase the Filipino’s chances of one day being elected pope himself.

The Vatican said the 62-year-old archbishop of Manila will move to Rome to become head of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, which oversees the Roman Catholic Church’s work in many developing countries.

LONDON, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming reiterated on Sunday that China is committed to the path of its own choice and will never export its development path, model or values.

"China is never interested in the competition of ideologies," Liu wrote in a Sunday Telegraph article, titled "China will play a full part to form open world economy".