Europe

DONETSK, August 9. /TASS/: The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is prepared to provide tit-for-tat response to the Ukrainian armed forces' aggression if ceasefire violations in the Donbass region persist, DPR head Denis Pushilin said on Friday.

MOSCOW, August 9. /TASS/: The Russian Finance Ministry hopes that Russia's credit sovereign rating will be upgraded by other rating agencies after the decision by Fitch, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday.

Tyumen, TASS, August 10: A member of the Russian Federal Guard is wounded, after a man opens fire during an identification check in Tyumen, Russian Federal National Guard Troops Service representative Valery Gribakin told TASS on Saturday.

"In Tyumen, a patrol stopped a suspicious citizen at one of the apartment buildings. As the officers approached, the man threw an unknown object in their direction and opened fire, wounding one of the patrolmen," Gribakin said.

10 August 2019; DW: Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of central Moscow to protest the upcoming city council ballot. Independent and opposition candidates have been barred from running.

Thousands of people gathered in the Russian capital Moscow on Saturday to protest the exclusion of opposition and independent candidates from the city council vote.

It is the third consecutive weekend of demonstrations to protest the exclusion.

10 August 2019; DW: A police spokesperson said the twister left a "swathe of desolation" over a large area. Elsewhere, a vortex hit central Amsterdam as awestruck observers caught the incident on video.

A rare tornado ripped through southwestern Luxembourg on Friday, injuring 19 people, including two seriously.

Officials said around 160 buildings were damaged by the twister, which struck the towns of Petange and Kaerjeng, near the border with France and Belgium.

THE HAGUE, Aug 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nearly 400 more people died in the Netherlands than normal during a record-breaking heatwave that swept Europe last month, the country’s statistics agency said.

Dutch temperatures soared to a new high of 40.4 Celsius on July 25, breaking a record dating back to 1944 and rising above the 40 Celsius mark for the first time since records began.

In total 2,964 people died in the week from July 22 to 27, the Dutch Central Statistics Bureau said, adding: “This is almost 400 people more than in an average week in the summer period.”

10 August 2019; DW: The Defense Ministry initially released a lower death toll for the accident on Thursday. Details remain sparse, and it is unclear whether or not radiation was released as a result of the explosion.

Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom announced Saturday that five people had died and another three were injured in an explosion at a missile test site in the Arctic that took place on Thursday.

10 Aug 2019; MEMO: France does not need the permission of other states to try to defuse tensions with Iran, its foreign minister said on Friday after US President Donald Trump accused President Emmanuel Macron of sending “mixed signals” to Tehran, reports Reuters.

LISBON, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese government on Friday wowed to prepay European creditors 2 billion euros of Troika debt by the end of this year, Portuguese Lusa News Agency reported.

Finance Minister Mario Centeno said that "a process of early repayment to European creditors" is already underway for the debt contracted by Portugal under the Economic and Financial Assistance Program between 2011 and 2014 with the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, known as "troika."

PARIS (AP) — The trade war between the United States and China and a broader decline in world economic growth are weakening the demand for oil and pushing prices down, the International Energy Agency said Friday.

The Paris-based agency, which advises many developed countries on energy policies, cut its forecast for oil demand growth this year and next as trade tensions weigh on activity in the energy-hungry manufacturing sectors around the world.