Europe

VLADIVOSTOK, October 14. /TASS/: Massive drills to repel the "enemy" assault force have started in the Primorsky and Sakhalin Regions. Up to 8,000 people are taking part in it, the press service of the Eastern Military District told reporters on Monday.

MOSCOW, October 14. /TASS/: Reports claiming that the Russian Aerospace Forces have targeted Syrian hospitals are a result of manipulations on the part of terrorists and British special services, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov informed on Monday.

MOSCOW, October 14. /TASS/: The Kremlin believes that the issue of returning Crimea to Ukraine won’t be up for discussion in any format, including at the Normandy Four summit, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.

Peskov commented on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s idea put forward last week during his press marathon in Kiev on discussing the Crimean issue at the Normandy Four (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) summit.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - U.S.-based economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work in fighting global poverty that has helped millions of children by favouring practical steps over theory.

French-American Duflo becomes only the second female economics winner in the prize’s 50-year history, as well as the youngest at 46. She shared the award equally with Indian-born American Banerjee and Kremer, also of the United States.

LONDON (Reuters) - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday defended his stance on Turkey’s attack on Kurdish militants in northeastern Syria as he came under pressure from some members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to be tougher with Ankara.

Splits in the military alliance have emerged after NATO member Turkey began its offensive in Syria last week, with the governments of EU countries that are also NATO members suspending weapon sales to Turkey.

LONDON (Reuters) - Queen Elizabeth set out Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agenda for his government on Monday, including an Oct. 31 Brexit, a new deal with the European Union, and a host of domestic policies designed to win over voters ahead of an expected election.

The so-called Queen’s Speech is the highlight of a day of elaborate pageantry in Westminster and is used to detail all the bills the government wants to enact in the coming year. It is written for the 93-year old monarch by the government.

MADRID, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish Supreme Court on Monday sentenced Oriol Junqueras, former deputy leader of the Catalan regional government, to 13 years in prison for sedition and the misuse of government funds for his role in the Catalan independence referendum on Oct. 1, 2017, which was declared illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court.

The former speaker of the Catalan regional parliament Carme Forcadell and other former members of the assembly have been given sentences to between nine and 12 years in prison.

PARIS, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- French police on early Monday detained five people related to the man who carried out a deadly knife attack in the Paris police headquarters earlier this month, local media reported.

The five people were arrested in Val d'Oise department in north Paris, and they are believed to have ties with the attacker, state-run France info radio reported, citing a source close to the investigation.

BUDAPEST, Oct 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hungarian opposition won the race for the post of Budapest mayor and those of some major cities while the ruling party Fidesz won the majority of mayor posts of smaller cities, according to the results of the National Election Office (NVI).

The turnout was high for local elections, close to 50 percent, according to NVI.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s conservative governing Law and Justice party won the most votes in Sunday’s election in the deeply divided nation and appeared, according to an exit poll, to have secured a comfortable majority in parliament to govern for four more years.

The exit poll, conducted by the research firm Ipsos, projected that Law and Justice won 43.6% of the votes. That would translate into 239 seats, a majority in the 460-seat lower house of parliament.