Europe

MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/. The United States seeks to disrupt the investigation into the chemical attack by terrorists in Syria’s Aleppo on November 24 and the US State Department’s allegations that this incident was staged obviously pursue this goal, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.

YEREVAN, December 7. /TASS/. Armenia’s former President Robert Kocharyan has been placed under arrest and is kept at a pre-trial facility in the building of Armenia’s National Security Service in Yerevan, the service's head Artur Vanetsyan said on Friday.

"Robert Kocharyan was arrested under a court ruling. As far as I know, he is being kept at the Yerevan-Center penitentiary," Vanetsyan said.

MOSCOW, December 8. /TASS/. Ukrainian sailors detained during the Kerch incident cannot be considered prisoners of war, as they are accused of committing a general crime, Head of the Investigative Department of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Mikhail Shishov said at a briefing on Saturday.

PARIS, December 9. /TASS/. The so-called "yellow vest" protests are a disaster for France’s economy, French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire told reporters on Sunday.

"This is a disaster for trade and for our economy," Le Maire said, according to AFP. He called the current situation in the country a social and democratic crisis. "This is also a crisis of our nation," the minister noted.

TEL AVIV, December 9. /TASS/. Israeli and Russian experts may gather for another meeting to discuss coordination on Syria in the coming days in Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a government meeting on Sunday.

"I talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday. We agreed that the delegations of Russian and Israeli armies on coordination on Syria will meet as soon as possible. I hope this will be in the coming days, most likely in Moscow. And our meeting with President Putin will be held later," Netanyahu said, according to his press service.

PARIS, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron told his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump not to interfere in French internal affairs after Trump had taken a fresh swipe on twitter at "Yellow Vests" demonstrations, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said on Sunday.

"I say to Donald Trump and the President of the Republic also told him: we do not take part in American debates, let us live our life of nation," Le Drian told RTL radio, Le Monde newspaper and LCI.

9 Dec 2018; DW: A Belgian museum housing items looted from the African continent during the colonial era is reopening near Brussels. Curators hope that it can now overcome its image as a colonialist holdover.

Belgium's Africa Museum, which has faced criticism in the past for an uncritical depiction of the country's sometimes brutal colonial past, reopened on Saturday after a five-year restoration.

RIMBO, Sweden (AP) — Yemeni rebel delegates at talks underway in Sweden to try end their country’s ruinous civil war reported progress on Saturday on the key issues of reopening the airport at the capital, Sanaa, and the implementation of an agreement reached earlier this week on the exchange of prisoners.

U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, struck a positive note, saying in a brief statement read to reporters that the two sides were demonstrating a “positive spirit” in the talks, held at a castle in the town of Rimbo, north of Stockholm.

PARIS (AP) — The rumble of armored police trucks and the hiss of tear gas filled central Paris on Saturday, as French riot police fought to contain thousands of yellow-vested protesters venting their anger against the government in a movement that has grown more violent by the week.

A ring of steel surrounded the president’s Elysee Palace — a key destination for the protesters — as police stationed trucks and reinforced metal barriers throughout the neighborhood.

7 Dec 2018; DW: The explosion destroyed the toilet, demolished the stall and shattered windows. Police do not know where the boy got the explosives and say he's lucky to have escaped without seriously injuring himself or others.

A 10-year-old student in the western German city of Duisburg caused serious damage at his elementary school on Friday morning when he used an extremely powerful firecracker to blow up a toilet.