Europe

MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/: Moscow is ready to facilitate efforts to resolve a migrant crisis on the border between Belarus and the European Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Rossiya-1's "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" show.

MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Russia has started supplying India with S-400 air defence missile systems, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday citing Dmitry Shugayev, the head of the Russian military cooperation agency.

The supplies put India at risk of sanctions from the United States under a 2017 U.S. law aimed at deterring countries from buying Russian military hardware.

"The first supplies have already been started," Interfax cited Shugayev as saying on Sunday at an aerospace trade show in Dubai.

MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei discussed a migrant crisis on the Polish border and European sanctions against Minsk by phone on Sunday.

Borrell wrote on Twitter that he had raised "the precarious humanitarian situation at the border with the EU".

"Peoples lives must be protected and humanitarian agencies allowed access," he wrote. "The current situation is unacceptable and must stop. People should not be used as weapons."

PARIS, Nov 14 (Reuters) - There are serious steps being taken in Libya towards compromise over an election planned for December as part of a peace process, the country's Presidency Council head Mohamed al-Menfi told Reuters.

"We must be optimistic and think that the elections will be on time with the agreement of Libyans," he said in an interview.

"Now there are serious steps to make a consensus to hold the election on time on Dec. 24," he added, without giving any details.

ARGUINEGUIN, Spain, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Spanish coastguards found the bodies of eight African migrants in a boat which was drifting in the sea off Spain's Gran Canaria island on Sunday, the Canary Islands government said.

Sixty-two migrants, all of them men except a 12-year-old boy, were rescued by coastguards.

Three people who were critically ill were flown by helicopter to a hospital in Gran Canaria. Nine others were treated by the Spanish coastguard as they were taken to the island.

LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - One person was killed and another was injured in a vehicle explosion outside the Women's Hospital in Liverpool in northern England on Sunday, police said, adding that counter-terrorism officers were leading the investigation.

Merseyside Police said in a statement that they understood that the car involved was a taxi which had pulled up at the hospital shortly before the explosion occurred.

Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said police were called to reports of a car explosion just before 1100 GMT on Sunday.

BUDAPEST, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been re-elected president of the ruling Fidesz party with an overwhelming majority here on Sunday.

Orban was re-elected as the only candidate for a period of two years during a congress of Fidesz, to lead the party in next spring's general elections.

ROCCELLA JONICA, Italy (AP) — The Italian Coast Guard has rescued more than 300 young men and boys, most of them from Egypt, from a storm-battered fishing boat in rough seas off the southern “toe” of Italy’s mainland.

The rescue began Saturday night and ended early Sunday when the 303 migrants, soaked and shivering, stepped on to the port of Roccella Jonica in the the Calabria region.

MOSCOW (AP) — For most of his 27 years as Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko’s repressions and truculent statements frequently offended the West. This year, that belligerence is directly affecting Europe.

His government forcefully diverted an airliner flying between Greece and Lithuania that was carrying a political opponent. As the European Union imposed sanctions for that action, Belarus responded by easing its border controls for migrants from the Middle East and Africa, allowing them to head for the EU frontier.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish authorities reported Sunday that a group of migrants who tried to cross the border from Belarus attacked Polish police officers with stones, hitting one in the helmet.

Police said that incident occurred Saturday evening near Kolonia Klukowicze, a village close to the border with Belarus. The impact of the stone was so forceful that “the helmet protecting the policeman’s head was damaged,” police said.