Europe

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s defense ministry says 63 of its soldiers have been killed by a Ukrainian strike on a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where military personnel was stationed.

Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a Russian defense ministry statement said Monday.

The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government on Monday condemned incidents on New Year’s Eve in which police officers and firefighters were attacked, mostly with fireworks.

People across Germany on Saturday resumed their tradition of setting off large numbers of fireworks in public places to see in the new year. That followed two years in which sales of fireworks were banned as part of efforts to avoid overloading hospitals and discourage large public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI ’s body, his head resting on a pair of crimson pillows, lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday as thousands of people filed by to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago.

As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher after its arrival at the basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target civilian infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion.

The barrage was the latest in a series of relentless year-end attacks, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Monday that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight. All of them were destroyed, according to air defense forces.

MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/: In 2023, Kazakhstan is passing the chairmanship of the CIS to Kyrgyzstan.

The republic’s President Sadyr Japarov vowed that, as chairman, his country will pay special attention to bolstering good-neighborly relations and trust between CIS member states.

The decision on Bishkek’s chairmanship was made on October 14 at a CIS summit in Astana. Russia and Kazakhstan will be co-chairing.

MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/: Starting January 1, Russia will take the helm as chairman of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – an organization that united Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Russian Federation back in 2015.

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, January 1. /TASS/: The members of the International Space Station (ISS) crew celebrated the New Year with a cake and a space-version of a traditional Russian salad, TASS special correspondent and Roscosmos cosmonaut Dmitry Petelin reported.

According to him, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Anna Kikina and himself made the Olivier salad, a traditional Russian New Year's dish also known as the Russian salad. However, the crew had run out of green peas that had to be replaced with corn.

MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/: The Russian Ground Forces will take part in eight international military exercises at Russian training ranges in 2023, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/: The Russian Armed Forces carried out a high-precision strike on Ukrainian defense industry sites involved in the production of combat drones on December 31, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday.

"On December 31, 2022, the Russian Armed Forces employed long-range high-precision air-launched weapons to target Ukrainian defense industry facilities involved in the production of combat unmanned aerial vehicles that are used to carry out terrorist attacks on Russia," he noted.

Jan 1 (Reuters) - For much of the global economy, 2023 is going to be a tough year as the main engines of global growth - the United States, Europe and China - all experience weakening activity, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday.

The new year is going to be "tougher than the year we leave behind," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on the CBS Sunday morning news program "Face the Nation."

"Why? Because the three main economies - the U.S., EU and China - are all slowing down simultaneously," she said.