Europe

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz said on Monday he plans to hold formal coalition talks with the Greens, but warned that a deal bringing the left-wing party into government for the first time was uncertain and would require unusual creativity.

Kurz and his People’s Party (OVP) came first in a parliamentary election on Sept. 29, but need a coalition partner to form a government that commands a majority in parliament. Exploratory talks with the Greens aimed at laying the groundwork for fully fledged coalition talks ended on Friday.

WARSAW (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron’s critical remarks about NATO were “dangerous”, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in an interview published on Sunday evening by the Financial Times.

Macron told The Economist last week that NATO was experiencing “brain death”, citing a lack of coordination and U.S. unpredictability under President Donald Trump. The French leader also expressed doubt about the U.S.-led alliance’s security maxim that an attack on one ally would be treated as an attack on all.

MADRID, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) of acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez led in the general election on Sunday, which also saw the right-wing party Vox make important gains.

The preliminary results once again leave with a divided Congress of Deputies (the lower chamber in the Spanish parliament) in which it is hard to see how political parties will be able to find the support to form a government.

LONDON (AP) — Facebook is opening up a war room to quickly respond to election hoaxes. Twitter is banning political ads. Google plans to crack down on bogus videos on YouTube.

Social media platforms say they are mounting a vigorous campaign against misinformation in the lead up to next month’s general election in the United Kingdom. But digital misinformation experts believe British voters remain vulnerable to the same type of misleading ads and phony claims that played a role in the vote to leave the European Union three years ago.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Exit polls from Sunday’s balloting showed a runoff will be needed Nov. 24 to decide Romania’s presidential contest.

Official results are not expected before Monday, though two exit polls found center-right President Klaus Iohannis collecting nearly 40% of the votes, followed by Viorica Dancila, the recently ousted prime minister, with around 22%. A candidate needs more than 50% of the votes to win the election outright.

ST. PETERSBURG, November 10. /TASS/: An alleged victim of a lecturer of St. Petersburg State University and a historian, Anastasia Eshchenko was gunned down on November 7, a source close to investigation told TASS on Sunday.

"According to the preliminary information, the murder was committed on November 7. The suspect shot the young woman from a traumatic pistol and left the body in the room," the source said.

The murder apparently occurred after a quarrel, he noted.

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/: Applications from volunteers desirous of taking part in the 240-day SIRIUS isolation experience starting at the turn of 2020 will begin next week, chief project manager Mark Belakovsky told TASS.

"We have not yet formally announced a broad recruitment of volunteers and will inform the public about holding it [the experiment - TASS] next week," Belakovsky said.

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/: The Russian Ministry of Economic Development will submit to the government a looking-forward privatization plan in coming days, Deputy Minister Oksana Tarasenko told reporters on Saturday.

"We will submit a draft looking-forward [privatization] plan in the day ahead. In particular, we can present an extra list [of assets]. Nevertheless, we expect a meeting in the government at the level of the first deputy prime minister in charge of privatization," Tarasenko said.

ST. PETERSBURG, November 9. /TASS/: Divers engaged in searches for the remains of an alleged victim of Oleg Sokolov, a historian and battle reenactor detained in St. Petersburg on Saturday on suspicion of murder, found remains of another unknown person in the Moika River, the St. Petersburg Search and Rescue Service told TASS.

"Other remains were found but not of the girl searched for," the source said. Divers will continue searching on Sunday.

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to hold three separate meetings on the sidelines of BRICS summit in Brazil, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.

"Three separate meetings are scheduled," Peskov said, noting that the schedule was being worked out.

Putin is expected to meet with all participants in Brasilia, he added.

Earlier, the Kremlin spokesman told TASS that Putin could hold a separate meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on the sidelines of BRICS summit.