Europe

PARIS, Aug 18 (Reuters) - More French employees than ever quit their jobs at the end of 2021 and start of 2022, as the balance of bargaining power shifts away from employers, a labour ministry study showed on Thursday.

Over one million quit between October and March, the study by the ministry's Dares research body showed, 90% of whom had coveted permanent labour contracts offering some of the highest level of job protection in the world.

LVIV, Ukraine, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he agreed the parameters of a mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at talks on Thursday with the U.N. secretary-general and Turkey's leader.

Zelenskiy told a news conference after the talks in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv that Russia should immediately withdraw its forces and stop shelling from the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

MOSCOW, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Two Russian astronauts ended their spacewalk earlier than planned on Wednesday as one of them had a battery issue with his spacesuit, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said.

Cosmonauts Oleg Artemiev and Denis Matveev, members of the 67th long-term expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), closed the exit hatch of the Poisk small research module at 20:54 Moscow time (1754 GMT), completing their spacewalk that lasted 4 hours and 1 minute.

According to the plan, work overboard the ISS should last 6 hours and 44 minutes.

LONDON, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- The inflation rate in the United Kingdom (UK) soared to a new 40-year high in July, official data showed Wednesday. Both households and businesses were under mounting pressure and the country's central bank is expected to raise interest rates further.

POOR FAMILIES BEARING BRUNT

The UK's Consumer Prices Index rose by 10.1 percent in the 12 months to July, up from 9.4 percent in June, as rising food prices made the largest upward contribution to the change between June and July, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

17 August 2022; MEMO: Turkiye's Communications Directorate held a panel in Paris to emphasise the critical need for a UN Security Council reform, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Many officials from Turkiye, including Deputy Director of Communications, Cagatay Ozdemir, attended the panel, along with diplomats from the Turkish Embassy in Paris.

17 August 2022; MEMO: Britain's Conservative Party leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak claimed on Monday that there is a "very strong case" for moving the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and formally recognising the latter as the "historic capital city" of the occupation state. His comment was made during a Q&A session with members of Zionist lobby group Conservative Friends of Israel.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — It was early one morning when life under Russian occupation became too much for Volodymyr Zhdanov: Rocket fire aimed at Ukrainian forces struck near his home in the city of Kherson, terrifying one of his two children.

His 8-year-old daughter “ran in panic to the basement. It was 2 o’clock in the morning and (she) was really scared,” said Zhdanov, who later fled the city on the Black Sea and has been living in Kyiv, the capital, for the past three weeks.

17 August 2022; MEMO: The European Union and United States said, on Tuesday, they were studying Iran's response to what the EU has called its "final" proposal to save a 2015 nuclear deal after Tehran called on Washington to show flexibility, Reuters reports.

A US State Department spokesperson said the United States was sharing its views on Iran's response with the European Union after receiving Tehran's comments from the bloc.

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of train workers in Britain began a fresh round of strikes Thursday, paralyzing rail service across the country in an ongoing dispute over pay and work conditions exacerbated by a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

MILAN (AP) — Fashion designer Giorgio Armani and dozens of others were forced to flee from their vacation villas overnight as firefighters worked to extinguish the remnants of two wildfires on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria on Thursday.

A photo shows flames that appear to encroach on Armani’s villa, but his press office said they stopped short of the property. Armani and guests evacuated to a boat in the harbor overnight.