Europe

KYIV, Sept 16 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia on Friday of committing war crimes in Ukraine's northeast and said it was too early to say the tide of the war was turning despite rapid territorial gains by his forces this month.

The Ukrainian leader also told Reuters in an interview that the outcome of the war with Russia, now in its seventh month, hinged on the swift delivery of foreign weapons to his country.

MOSCOW, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had launched strikes on Ukrainian positions in several parts of Ukraine, and accused Kyiv of carrying out shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Russian forces conducted their strikes in the Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, according to the ministry, which added that Ukrainian forces had carried out an unsuccessful offensive near Pravdyne in Kherson.

MUNICH, GERMANY, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Germany's Oktoberfest, the largest folk festival in Germany, started Saturday here in Munich, Bavaria, after a two-year COVID-induced break.

Covering an area of 34.5 hectares, the festival is expected to receive millions of visitors from all over the world with special Oktoberfest beers and hearty specialties like fried sausages and pork knuckles.

At noon, the Mayor of Munich Dieter Reiter tapped the first Oktoberfest beer barrel, marking the opening of the Munich Oktoberfest, which will last until Oct. 3.

MOSCOW (AP) — The security chiefs of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan sat down for talks Saturday to stop fighting on the border between the two countries that so far has killed at least 24 people and wounded over 100.

The Kyrgyz border service announced the new round of talks as the two ex-Soviet nations traded blame for shelling that resumed Saturday morning after what appeared to be a brief respite overnight.

MOSCOW (AP) — The president of Kazakhstan on Saturday signed constitutional amendments that extended the presidential term to seven years and brought back the old name of the country’s capital.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — An honor guard fired a three-gun salute toward cloudy skies as friends and comrades-in-arms gathered in Kyiv to bid farewell to a Russian woman who was killed while fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war with her native country.

Olga Simonova, 34, was remembered for her courage and kindness at a funeral in the Ukrainian capital on Friday.

Simonova’s coffin was draped in the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, with a cuddly toy lion on top. Her nom de guerre was “Simba,” like the main character in the Disney cartoon “The Lion King.”

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — After his headline performance at Hungary’s Sziget Festival last month, pop star Justin Bieber held a grandiose party for his staff in a luxurious countryside setting — a 19th century castle owned by the son-in-law of the country’s prime minister.

The castle, to the critics of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is emblematic of the corruption, nepotism and largesse of which the populist leader and his government have been accused for years — the kinds of behavior which now threaten to cost Hungary billions in European Union funding.

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of people spent London’s coldest night in months huddled in line to view the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, and authorities warned Saturday that arriving mourners face a 16-hour wait.

A tide of people wanting to say goodbye streamed into Parliament’s Westminster Hall, where the queen’s coffin is lying in state, draped in her Royal Standard and capped with a diamond-studded crown. The numbers have grown steadily since the public was first admitted on Wednesday, with a queue that snakes around Southwark Park and stretches out at least 5 miles (8 kilometers).

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin mounted on the battlefield and in the halls of global power as Ukrainian troops pushed their counteroffensive Saturday to advance farther into Ukraine’s partly recaptured northeast.

At a high-level summit in Uzbekistan, Putin vowed to press his attack on Ukraine despite recent military setbacks but also faced concerns by India and China over the drawn-out conflict.

Berlin, Sep 15 (PTI) Even a single exposure to alcohol may permanently change the shape of nerve cells and lead to addiction, according to a study conducted in animals.

Neurons or nerve cells are the fundamental units of the brain and nervous system responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world.

The researchers found that, in particular, alcohol affects the structure of the synapses as well as the dynamics of the mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses.