Europe

BRUSSELS, Dec 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Belgian police arrested Greek socialist MEP Eva Kaili, one of the vice-presidents of the European Parliament, in Brussels on Friday evening, in connection with an investigation into corruption implicating World Cup hosts Qatar.

The arrest follows the detention of four other suspects earlier Friday, said a source close to the case.

Kaili, who is the partner of one of the four people arrested earlier, was detained for questioning by the police, the source added.

PRISTINA, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Kosovo's president on Saturday announced that local elections in majority Serb areas in the north would be delayed until April, a move aimed at defusing ethnic tensions that have intensified in recent months.

Serb mayors in northern Kosovo municipalities, along with local judges and some 600 police officers, resigned last month in protest over a government decision to replace Belgrade-issued car license plates with ones issued by Pristina.

Elections had been scheduled for Dec. 18 but Serbs said they would boycott the polls.

BERLIN, Dec 10 (Reuters) - German authorities said they had ended a suspected hostage-taking in the eastern city of Dresden on Saturday by what appeared to be a psychologically confused man acting alone, after evacuating a shopping mall in the historic city centre.

The suspected hostage taker, a 40-year-old man, died of the injuries he sustained during the police operation to free the two hostages, who were unharmed, the police said.

POTSDAM, Germany, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday Germany could increase its population strongly in the years ahead as the government seeks to boost immigration to help avert labour shortages and a crisis in its pension system.

The government is working on attracting foreign workers to "keep the show on the road" despite an ageing population, making an estimated 7% rise in population to 90 million by 2070 plausible, Scholz told a citizen forum in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Dec 10 (Reuters) - Viktor Bout, the arms dealer freed in a prisoner swap for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, said he wished her good luck on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi where they were exchanged.

Bout, who spent 14 years in U.S. jail for arms trafficking, money laundering and conspiring to kill Americans, was swapped on Thursday for the basketball star, jailed this year for bringing cannabis vape oil when arriving to play for a Russian team.

BERLIN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- A hostage-taker at a shopping center in the eastern German city of Dresden was arrested on Saturday, local media DPA reported.

The report quoted police as saying that the hostage-taker was caught and injured, and the hostages, an employee and a child, were also rescued unharmed.

According to the report, a man allegedly killed his mother in Dresden and then took hostages in the shopping center. The body of the woman was found in an apartment building by police in Dresden on Saturday morning.

OSLO, Norway (AP) — The winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine shared their visions of a fairer world and denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine during Saturday’s award ceremony.

Oleksandra Matviichuk of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties dismissed calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to retain some of the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories, saying that “fighting for peace does not mean yielding to pressure of the aggressor, it means protecting people from its cruelty.”

ROME (AP) — Batool Haidari used to be a prominent professor of sexology at a Kabul university before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She taught mixed classes of male and female students, and helped patients struggling with gender identity issues.

Her husband owned a carpet factory, and together they did their best to provide a good education for their 18-year-old son and two daughters aged 13 and eight.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have “destroyed” the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, while Ukraine’s military on Saturday reported missile, rocket and air strikes in multiple parts of the country that Moscow is trying to conquer after months of resistance.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: The possibility of restoring the operation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) between Russia and the United States has not yet been discussed, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the daily Izvestia, published on Friday.

"Not for the time being," Peskov replied to the corresponding question.