Europe

29 Nov 2018; AFP: German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer said Thursday it would slash 12,000 jobs in a major restructuring following the mammoth takeover of Monsanto, enabling it to save 2.6 billion euros ($3 billion) a year from 2022.

The planned job cuts will affect about one in every ten of the group's 118,200 posts, "a significant number of them in Germany", said the group in a statement.

Bayer swallowed Monsanto in one of Germany's biggest ever corporate takeovers at a cost of $63 billion in June.

PARIS (AP) — French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will meet with some protesters’ representatives on Friday in an effort to calm tensions over rising taxes, a first since the movement started two weeks ago.

The government’s move comes amid calls for a new actions Saturday across France, including on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where a protest last weekend degenerated into violence.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian officials on Friday barred Russian males between the ages of 16 and 60 from traveling to the country in the latest escalation of tensions between the neighbors.

The long-simmering conflict bubbled over Sunday when Russian border guards rammed into and opened fired on three Ukrainian vessels near the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The vessels were trying to pass through the Kerch Strait on their way to the Sea of Azov. The Russians then captured the ships and their 24-member crew.

Kiev; 28 Nov 2018; GANASHAKTI:  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday warned of the threat of "full-scale war" and said Russia had sharply increased its military presence on their shared border as tensions escalate between the ex-Soviet neighbours.

The crisis also threatened growing diplomatic fallout with US President Donald Trump warning that he may cancel a long-awaited summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday called on the United States to stop imposing unilateral sanctions and seek common ground with its partners.

"It seems to me that we need to achieve a positive result for ourselves, not trying to harm the partners, but trying to find joint areas of activity in order to work together more effectively," Putin said at the Russia Calling investment forum.

28 Nov 2018; DW: A government report says Britain risks severely damaging its economy if lawmakers fail to approve a proposed Brexit deal. Staying in the European Union would be a far better option, the UK's treasury chief argued.

The British government on Wednesday published a report that spelled out a devastating scenario for the economy if Britain leaves the European Union in March 2019 without a deal.

LONDON (AP) — Leaving the European Union without a divorce deal could plunge Britain into its deepest recession in nearly a century, with the economy shrinking 8 percent within months as unemployment and inflation soar, the Bank of England warned Wednesday.

The stark projection came the same day the government’s own economists said the country will be poorer after Brexit than if it had stayed in the EU, no matter what sort of trade deal it secures with the bloc.

MADRID (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping issued an impassioned defense Wednesday of free markets’ ability to combat economic uncertainty as he sought allies amid his nation’s worsening trade dispute with the United States.

In a speech to lawmakers in Spain, where Xi is on a state visit before attending the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Argentina, the Chinese president said the world is facing “instability, uncertainty and hot topics without precedents in our history.”

BERLIN (AP) — The European Union’s executive branch proposed Wednesday that the bloc should cut its emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050, a measure scientists say needs to be adopted worldwide in order to avoid catastrophic global warming.

The European Commission is the first major economy to set its sight on achieving climate neutrality in the next three decades. But the plan, which was announced days before a global climate summit , is far more ambitious than the national targets set so far by many of the EU’s 28 member states.

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday blamed the latest standoff with neighboring Ukraine on the presidential ambitions of Ukraine’s leader, as the Russian military announced it was boosting its defenses in Crimea.

Ukraine, for its part, released what it said was the exact location where its ships were fired on Sunday by Russia, showing that they were in international waters approaching Kerch Strait from the west, not from the east, as Putin suggested.