Europe

MOSCOW, Oct 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia rejected the idea of involving the United States in talks to help resolve the conflict between the Kiev government and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no support for the idea of Washington joining the Normandy Format talks to settle the conflict, which involves Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

A diplomatic breakthrough last week potentially opened the way for an international summit between the countries aimed at finding a way to end the fighting.

GENEVA, Oct 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States fell to second place behind Singapore in the World Economic Forum’s flagship Global Competitiveness Report, with the slippage linked in part to President Donald Trump’s trade wars.

The WEF, organisers of the glitzy annual gathering of business and political elite in Davos, have released an annual competitiveness report since 1979 that assesses which economies are well placed to see productivity and long-term growth.

ROME, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) must take on the challenges of providing jobs and prosperity while combating climate change and managing migration, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and European Council President-elect Charles Michel told reporters at a joint press conference in Rome on Tuesday evening.

The two leaders spoke ahead of a bilateral meeting at Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italy's prime minister.

Conte called for the EU to have "more internal solidarity and to be stronger in the world".

MINSK, October 8. /TASS/: NATO and US growing presence in the Black and Baltic Sea is dangerous and it is necessary to work out rules of behavior in these regions, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council's temporary Commission on Information Policy and Communications Alexei Pushkov said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/: The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) will open its first foreign representative office in Saudi Arabia, according to the press release issued by the fund.

MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on awarding the Order of Courage to NASA astronaut Nick Hague and other state decorations to staff members of Russian companies in the rocket and space sector.

The decree published on the official legal information portal says that US citizen Hague is to be awarded "for courage and high professionalism shown while performing his duties in the conditions of an increased risk to life when an emergency situation occurred at the Baikonur cosmodrome."

MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/: This year’s largest drills of the Pacific Fleet’s marines have ended in Kamchatka. More than 4,000 people took part in them at different stages. The marines prevented the landing of the "enemy" troops ashore and trained to seize the "enemy" airfield, the Pacific Fleet’s press service reported on Tuesday.

8 October 2019; AFP: A nucleus of four EU countries was trying Tuesday to coax more reluctant member states to take a share of rescued asylum-seekers, a day after another Mediterranean migrant boat tragedy.

Germany, France, Italy and Malta were seeking support from colleagues in an EU interior ministers' meeting in Luxembourg for an agreement they worked out September 23 in Malta meant to serve as a six-month, stop-gap plan pending a long-delayed reform of the EU's asylum policy.

LONDON (Reuters) - Julian Smith, the British minister for Northern Ireland, said any threat to withdraw security cooperation with Ireland was unacceptable and not in the interests of the province or the wider United Kingdom.

A Downing Street source was quoted in The Spectator magazine on Tuesday as saying that security and defense cooperation would inevitably be affected if the European Union tries to keep the United Kingdom in the EU against its will.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday rejected the idea of involving the United States in talks to help resolve the conflict between the Kiev government and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no support for the idea of Washington joining the Normandy Format talks to settle the conflict, which involves Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

A diplomatic breakthrough last week potentially opened the way for an international summit between the countries aimed at finding a way to end the fighting.