Europe

STOCKHOLM, April 25 (Xinhua) -- The funding for military research and development (R&D) of the United States, the world's largest military spender, rose by 24 percent over the past decade, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday.

The U.S. funding for military R&D rose by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 percent over the same period, the SIPRI said in a report.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Only a few months ago, Robert Golob was virtually unknown in politics, didn’t belong to any party, but had a clear goal: to remove Slovenian right-wing populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa from power and stop a democratic backslide in the tiny Alpine state.

On Sunday, the Freedom Movement, a liberal green party formed by Golob only in January, won Slovenia’s general election, more than 10 percentage points ahead of Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic party as people turned out massively to vote for change.

PARIS (AP) — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen gathered her party’s troops on Monday, not to mourn her loss a day earlier in the French presidential election but to plot out how to orchestrate a victory in June’s parliamentary vote and capture a majority of seats in the National Assembly.

LONDON (AP) — Four people were found stabbed to death Monday at a home in south London, British police said. A man has been arrested.

The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called by neighbors to reports of a disturbance at around 1:40 a.m. and forced their way into a home in the Bermondsey area. Inside they found three women — in their 30s, 40s and 60s — and a man in his 60s “suffering what are believed to be stab injuries.”

All four were pronounced dead at the scene.

BERLIN (AP) — The co-leader of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party said Monday that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose ties to the Russian energy industry have left him increasingly isolated at home, should leave the party.

Saskia Esken, one of two co-leaders of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio that “Gerhard Schroeder has been acting for many years now only as a businessman, and we should stop seeing him as an elder statesman, as a former chancellor. He earns his money with work for Russian state companies.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a string of attacks against Ukrainian rail and fuel facilities Monday, striking crucial infrastructure far from the front line of its eastern offensive.

Meanwhile, two fires were reported at oil facilities in western Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border. It was not clear what caused the blazes.

As both sides in the 2-month-old war brace for what could be a grinding battle of attrition in the country’s eastern industrial heartland, top U.S. officials pledged more help to ensure Ukraine prevails.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: Russian missile and artillery troops hit 423 targets in Ukraine overnight as part of the special military operation, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday.

"The missile and artillery troops performed 423 fire tasks during the night," Konashenkov said, adding that particularly, 26 command posts, 367 strongpoints and places of the amassment of manpower and military equipment, as well as 25 gun lines were hit.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin plans a face-to-face meeting with members of the Council of Legislators of the Federal Assembly in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, April 27, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to TASS.

"Yes, [the event] is being readied," he said when asked whether the president plans to participate in the meeting face-to-face.

The Council of Legislators will gather on April 27 in the Tauride Palace in Russia’s second-biggest city. The head of the state traditionally speaks at those events.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 8,446 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of infected to 18,137,137, the federal anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

In absolute terms the increase in new cases has become the lowest since May 26, 2021, whereas in relative terms it totaled 0.05%.

The number of coronavirus patients taken to hospital in the past 24 hours amounted to 1,352, down by 49.6% compared with the previous day. On the previous day 2,682 coronavirus patients were taken to hospital.

PARIS, April 24. /TASS/: France’s incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, has 52.59% in the presidential election runoff with 55% of the votes counted, as follows from the early returns the Interior Ministry has uploaded to its website on Sunday.

Marine Le Pen, of the National Rally party, has 47.41%. The turnout is estimated at 73.76%.