Europe

TBILISI, Nov 9 (Reuters) - The prison hospital treating Georgia's hunger-striking former president Mikheil Saakashvili lacks proper medical equipment and fellow inmates there have threatened and abused him, a Georgian human rights official said on Tuesday.

"Particular attention should be paid to the environment in which Mikheil Saakashvili is placed, which grossly violates human rights," Public Defender Nino Lomjaria, Georgia's rights ombudsman, said in a statement.

GLASGOW, Nov 9 (Reuters) - New national pledges to tackle climate change this decade would lead to around 2.4 degrees Celsius of global warming this century, far above safe levels, analysts predict.

Climate Action Tracker (CAT) said on Tuesday that the promises by countries attending the U.N. summit in Glasgow to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 would still allow the Earth to heat up far beyond the United Nations target by 2100.

KAPCIAMIESTIS, Lithuania, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Lithuania's parliament on Tuesday declared a state of emergency at the country's border with Belarus and at camps hosting migrants who arrived from there, a tally of votes showed.

The state of emergency, which begins at midnight local time (2200 GMT) in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday and is to last a month, allows border guards to use "mental coercion" and "proportional physical violence" to prevent migrants from entering Lithuania.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian island north of Japan has become a testing ground for Moscow’s efforts to reconcile its prized fossil fuel industry with the need to do something about climate change.

More than two-thirds of Sakhalin Island is forested. With the Kremlin’s blessing, authorities there have set an ambitious goal of making the island — Russia’s largest — carbon neutral by 2025.

09 Nov 2021; MEMO: Germany today urged the European Union to help Poland protect its borders as thousands of irregular migrants seek to enter the country from Belarus.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of engaging in a form of "hybrid" warfare and using migrants as a weapon to destabilise European countries.

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Unlike some of her European colleagues, Leonore Gewessler arrived at the U.N. climate conference with a clean conscience.

The 27-hour journey by sleeper train from Vienna to Brussels, and then on to Glasgow, Scotland, spared Austria’s climate minister the kind of criticism many VIPs faced for taking planes to a conference that’s all about cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“Wherever possible I try to choose the climate friendly option,” said Gewessler, whose portfolio also include transport.

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed with Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns Russian-US relations, the diplomatic crisis, regional conflicts and cybersecurity in a phone conversation, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday.

"Such a phone conversation did take place," he said in response to a corresponding question.

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/: Russia’s Ministry of Energy has confirmed the death of its former minister Sergei Shmatko, aged 55. Nikolai Shulginov, the current minister, has offered his condolences.

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/: Russia and Germany have good prospects for the expansion of cooperation in the energy area amid the global energy transition, Head of the State Duma (lower house) energy committee Pavel Zavalny said at the Russian-German Potsdam Meetings conference held in Moscow on Monday.

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/: Moscow has denounced the failed terrorist plot to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and is ready to strengthen cooperation with Baghdad in the fight against terrorism, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.