Europe

MOSCOW, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it was considering what "further steps" to take in connection with its allegation that Britain was responsible for an attack on the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines.

Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that British navy personnel had blown up the Nord Stream pipelines in September, an assertion that London said was false and designed to distract from Russian military failures in Ukraine.

BERLIN, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Serbia must decide whether it wants to join the European Union or enter into a partnership with Russia, Germany told Belgrade on Tuesday, two days before six Western Balkan countries are scheduled to discuss closer cooperation in Berlin.

"The need for a decision is coming to a head in view of geopolitical developments," a German government representative said in reference to Russia's war in Ukraine.

GENEVA (AP) — Up to 1,600 fans of the teams that qualified for this year’s World Cup are being recruited for an all expenses-paid trip to Qatar to sing in the opening ceremony and stay for at least two weeks promoting positive social media content about the soccer tournament and the host nation.

LONDON (AP) — Former U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who led Britain’s response to COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, was suspended by the Conservative Party on Tuesday after signing up to a reality TV show.

Hancock, who is no longer in government but remains a member of Parliament, is to compete on “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here.” The show sends a group of famous people, often C-list celebrities, to the Australian rainforest, subjects them to trials involving spiders and snakes, and allows the public to vote them out one by one.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek rescue teams searched for dozens of migrants reported missing Tuesday after the overloaded sailboat they were on capsized and sank in rough seas off an island near Athens, authorities said.

The incident overnight was the latest in a series of recent shipwrecks involving migrant boats that have left dozens of people dead or missing in Greek waters.

Nine survivors, all men, were discovered on an uninhabited islet south of the island of Evia and told authorities there had been around 68 people on board the sailboat when it sank.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The decorative candles Yaroslav Vedmid bought more than a year ago were never meant to be lit, but the dried wax that now clings to them attests to how they’ve been used almost nightly — a consequence of power cuts across Ukraine.

31 October 2022; MEMO: Lebanon has been officially informed of Russian President Vladimir Putin's approval of a donation of 25,000 tonnes of wheat to the crisis-hit country, Lebanese Public Works Minister, Ali Hamie, told Reuters on Monday.

Russia would also donate 10,000 tonnes of fuel oil to Beirut, Hamie said.

MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 5,781 over the past day versus 6,803 cases confirmed in the previous day, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Monday.

Thus, the number of new detected cases became the lowest since July 20 when 5,685 new infections were recorded. In all, 21,429,506 coronavirus infections have been recorded in Russia since the onset of the pandemic.

MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/: Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has praised the set of measures his ministry developed to respond to sanctions pressure on Russia. According to him, the country has "found an antidote" to sanctions. He said this in a documentary on the formation of the domestic financial system "History of Russian Finance", posted on the site of the Start online cinema.

MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/: The Russian armed forces wiped out over 2,500 Ukrainian servicemen and foreign mercenaries during its special military operation in Ukraine over the last week, according to TASS calculations based on daily briefings by Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov. This is more than one and a half times as many as a week earlier.