Europe

CHEMNITZ, Germany (AP) — Germany’s foreign minister told his fellow countrymen Sunday they’re too lazy when it comes to battling racism and fighting for democracy.

“We have to get off the couch and open the mouth,” Heiko Maas said in an interview with weekly Bild am Sonntag. “Our generation was given freedom, rule of law and democracy as a present. We didn’t have to fight for it; (now) we’re taking it too much for granted.”

MOSCOW, August 31. /TASS/. Russia calls on the Ukrainian authorities to give up the use of terrorist methods as an instrument for the solution of their country’s domestic problems, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement circulated on Friday.

"We urge the Kiev authorities to give up the staking on terrorist methods for resolution of Ukraine’s domestic problems," it said. "We hope the Ukrainian politicians with a sense of responsibility will summon their strength to bridle the ‘party of war’ and to avert an upsurge of confrontation in Donbass."

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The former head of Russia’s security service FSB, lawmaker Nikolai Kovalyov, believes that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) could be behind Friday’s blast that killed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Alexander Zakharchenko.

"The present-day Ukraine views armed terror as an efficient way to put pressure, and actively uses it to deal with its opponents," said Kovalyov, who is also a member of the security committee at the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament.

BOCHAROV RUCHEI, September 1. /TASS/. Azerbaijan has purchased Russian-made military-technical products worth more than $5 bln, President Ilham Aliyev said on Saturday following talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

"We discussed further cooperation in the military-technical sphere. It has great traditions. The cost of the military-technical products purchased by Azerbaijan from Russia exceeds $5 bln, and this tends to grow," he said.

DONETSK, September 2. /TASS/. About 30 thousand people attended the funeral of the Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR], Alexander Zakharchenko, who died on Friday in a terrorist explosion in Donetsk.

The funeral ceremony is taking place in the Donetsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Solovyanenko. Local ministers, MPs, military officers, entrepreneurs, seniors, students and schoolchildren have attended the ceremony.

MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. Cosmonauts are working to fix the problem with a minor air leak discovered on the International Space Station (ISS) and the situation on the orbital outpost is under control, the press office of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Thursday.

BRUSSELS, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has profound disagreements with the United States on trade policy, the European Commissioner in charge of trade Cecilia Malmstrom said on Thursday.

Malmstrom made the remarks when exchanging views with members of the European Parliament during the meeting of the Committee on International Trade (INTA) in Brussels.

"We are not negotiating anything, we have a working group. We have profound disagreements with the United States on trade policy," said the trade chief.

MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. Fragments of Russia’s Progress MS-08 cargo spacecraft, which was deorbited on Thursday following a weeklong experiment, splashed down in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, a Russian Mission Control Center official said.

"Unburied fragments of the Progress MS-08 spacecraft have landed in a non-navigational region of the Pacific Ocean," the source said.

HELSINKI, August 30. /TASS/. European countries should build a new security architecture on the continent together with Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron told a joint news conference with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto on Thursday.

"We discussed many issues, including trans-Atlantic ties and relations with Russia," Macron said. "We want Europe to have strategic and defense autonomy to rebuild European security architecture in a broad sense, like I said several months ago in St. Petersburg, and there is the need to reconsider our relations with Russia."

PARIS; 29 Aug 2018; (AP) — French maritime authorities are appealing for calm after fishermen from rival French and British fleets banged their boats in ill-tempered skirmishes over access to the scallop-rich waters off France’s northern coast.

Maritime official Ingrid Parrot described a muscular confrontation between 35 French boats and five British ones in international waters on Tuesday morning as “very dangerous,” although there were no injuries. She said French maritime authorities “really hope things will calm down.”