Europe

VIENNA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Energy ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Wednesday rejected accusations that they were "endangering the global energy market" and causing "energy poverty in the West" with their latest oil production cut.

OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, held its ministerial meeting on Wednesday and announced a major production cut of 2 million barrels per day (bpd) starting November as oil prices have recently tumbled over recession fears. The cut equals around 2 percent of this year's global oil demand.

KYTHIRA, Greece (AP) — Bodies floated amid splintered wreckage in the wind-tossed waters off a Greek island Thursday as the death toll from the separate sinkings of two migrant boats rose to 22, with many still missing.

The vessels went down hundreds of miles apart, in one case prompting a dramatic overnight rescue effort as island residents and firefighters pulled shipwrecked migrants to safety up steep cliffs.

The shipwrecks further stoked tension between neighbors Greece and Turkey, who are locked in a heated dispute over maritime boundaries and migration.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux, who has mined her own biography to explore life in France since the 1940s, was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for work that illuminates murky corners of memory, family and society.

Ernaux’s autobiographical books explore deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a changing web of social and class relationships. Much of her material came out of her experiences being raised in a working-class family in the Normandy region of northwest France.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched two missile attacks that hit apartment blocks in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, killing one person and trapping at least five in the city close to Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, the governor of the mostly Russian-occupied region said.

The missile strikes, the first before dawn and another in the morning, came just hours after Ukraine’s president announced that the country’s military had retaken three more villages in one of the regions illegally annexed by Russia, the latest battlefield reversal for Moscow.

KUBINKA, October 5. /TASS/: It will be extremely difficult or even impossible to stabilize the situation on the global food markets without Russia’s participation, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Wednesday.

"The real progress" is visible in a lot of agricultural lines in Russia, the Prime Minister noted. "Evaluating these results, we see Russia is not merely able to support itself but also to make a serious contribution to global food security, working proactively on international markets," Mishustin said.

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/: The EU countries will have to face the truth and admit that they were betrayed by their allies in the situation involving the Nord Stream incidents, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Wednesday.

She drew attention to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak’s statement that Russia was ready to supply gas through the undamaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline string.

GROZNY, October 5. /TASS/: Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has set a record on the number of sanctions, imposed against any one person in the world, according to a certificate, presented to Kadyrov by the Russian Book of Records editor-in-chief Stanislav Konenko.

October 5 marks the 204th anniversary of the city of Grozny and Kadyrov’s 46th birthday.

VIENNA, October 5. /TASS/: Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi is heading for Kiev, he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

"On our way to Kiev for important meetings. The need for a Nuclear Safety and Security Protection Zone (NSSPZ) around Zaporizhzhya (Zaporozhye - TASS) Nuclear Power Plant is now more urgent than ever," Grossi tweeted.

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia must be part of investigations into last week's explosions in the two Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

"So far, from those news conferences which took place in Denmark and Sweden, we've heard disturbing statements that any cooperation with the Russian side is ruled out," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

BERLIN, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Germany's BKA federal police assumes explosions in the Nord Stream pipelines last week were "a targeted act of sabotage" and said it is probable that state actors were involved, the Spiegel weekly reported, citing a letter to industry representatives.

The BKA said in the letter that it did not yet have any findings about who was behind the sabotage but "against the background of the high complexity of the execution of the act and corresponding preparation, the action of state actors seems probable", Spiegel reported.