Europe

LONDON (AP) — The new U.K. Treasury chief on Sunday insisted Prime Minister Liz Truss retains control of her government despite having to roll back her signature economic policies weeks into her premiership.

Jeremy Hunt was drafted in to lead the Treasury after Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng amid rising pressure following the turbulent market reaction to the new administration’s “mini-budget.”

“The prime minister’s in charge,” Hunt, a former foreign and health secretary, told the BBC when he was asked whether he now held all the power at Downing Street.

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — Malta on Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of the car bomb slaying of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia with calls for justice, just two days after two key suspects reversed course and pleaded guilty to murder on the first day of their trial.

The archbishop of the small Mediterranean island nation, Charles Scicluna, celebrated a morning Mass in the small Bidnija church near where Caruana Galizia lived, making several references to the need for justice even when it makes the powerful uncomfortable.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Pro-Kremlin officials on Sunday blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack that struck the mayor’s office in a key Ukrainian city controlled by the separatists as Russia’s war nears the eight-month mark.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said Russian rockets struck a city across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, wounding six people.

The attacks on both sides came as Russia has lost ground in the nearly seven weeks since Ukraine’s armed forces opened their southern counteroffensive.

LONDON (AP) — When Liz Truss was running to lead Britain this summer, an ally predicted her first weeks in office would be turbulent.

But few were prepared for the scale of the sound and fury -– least of all Truss herself. In just six weeks, the prime minister’s libertarian economic policies have triggered a financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns and the firing of her Treasury chief.

Now Truss faces a mutiny inside the governing Conservative Party that leaves her leadership hanging by a thread.

MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/: The current US administration does not need talks on cybersecurity issues, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for International Cybersecurity Cooperation Andrey Krutskikh said in an interview with the International Affairs magazine, published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website on Friday.

MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/: The first flu virus of type A (H3N2) case has been registered in Russia on the threshold of a new stage of epidemic rise of incidence, Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) head Anna Popova announced at a meeting of the department's board.

MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 13,384 over the past day to 21,292,200, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Saturday.

As many as 1,657 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day.

Moscow’s COVID-19 cases surged by 911 over the past day, reaching 3,218,535, according to the anti-coronavirus crisis center. St. Petersburg’s COVID-19 cases increased by 911 over the past day against 963 a day earlier, reaching 1,777,128.

MINSK, October 15. /TASS/: The Ukraine conflict may be resolved within a week, and that depends on the United States and the United Kingdom, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with NBC, excerpts of which were quoted by BelTA news agency on Saturday.

"It all depends on the US and the UK. If tomorrow you realize that we need to sit down at the negotiating table and find a solution, believe me, we will find a solution within a week," Lukashenko said.

BELGRADE, October 15. /TASS/: The North Atlantic Alliance has already suffered a defeat in Ukraine, associated with the collapse of the Western project to turn Ukraine into "anti-Russia", Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in an interview with TASS.

"NATO has already been defeated in Ukraine. This defeat is connected with the collapse of the project of turning Ukraine into ‘anti-Russia’,"Grushko said.

NICOSIA, Oct 15 (NNN-Xinhua) — The construction of an electricity link between Asia and Europe was launched at an event in Cyprus on Friday.

European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades attended the event in Nicosia, which marked the start of the 2.5 billion euro (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) project.

The EuroAsia Interconnector will link up the electricity grids of Israel, Cyprus and Greece, and will also transfer electricity from renewable sources in Israel to Europe.