Europe

LONDON (AP) — Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through a rainy London on Saturday to demand Israel stop its bombardment of Gaza, and similar calls were heard in cities around the world as the Israel-Hamas war entered its third week.

On the day a trickle of aid entered Gaza, where more than 1 million people have left their homes because of the conflict, protesters gathered in at Marble Arch near London’s Hyde Park before marching to the government district, Whitehall.

MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/: Russian forces have destroyed 500 Ukrainian combat aircraft and more than 250 helicopters since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

ST. PETERSBURG, October 20. /TASS/: Low-power nuclear reactors and small compact nuclear power plants have become one of the major trends in modern world energy, and only Russia can present concrete achievements in the form of projects that are currently being implemented in this area, according to Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev.

PARIS, October 20. /TASS/: The current Ukrainian authorities will have to concede the loss of territory if they want to achieve peace, preserve their sovereignty and avoid further escalation of the conflict, Jacques Sapir, a specialist in global economics and research director of the Paris-based Higher School of Social Sciences (·cole des Hautes ·tudes en Sciences Sociales) said on the website of the quarterly Front Populaire magazine.

"The scale of human losses speaks to the obvious urgency of negotiations, even on a smaller scale, on establishing a ceasefire," he believes.

MOSCOW, October 20./TASS/:  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov discussed the activity of the 3+3 consultative regional platform on the South Caucasus during a telephone call, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"The foreign ministers discussed key issues of bilateral relations, along with the regional and international agenda," the Foreign Ministry said. The two diplomats also "got on the same page regarding the activities of the 3+3 consultative regional platform," it added.

MOSCOW, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday that remarks by U.S. President Joe Biden comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Palestinian militant group Hamas were "unacceptable".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the current moment was a potentially dangerous one, and that the threat to Russian citizens would grow exponentially once Israel started its expected ground operation in Gaza.

OSLO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A Chinese container vessel and a Russian-flagged ship investigated over damage to a gas pipeline in the Gulf of Finland were also present at the sites, and at around the time two telecoms cables sustained damage, vessel tracking data showed.

Early on Oct. 8, a gas pipeline and a telecoms cable connecting Finland and Estonia were broken, in what Finnish investigators say may have been deliberate sabotage.

On Tuesday, Sweden said a third link, connecting Stockholm to Tallinn, had been damaged at roughly the same time as the other two.

HELSINKI/VILNIUS, Oct 20 (Reuters) - An investigation into the damage to the Balticonnector gas pipeline is currently focused on the role of the Chinese NewNew Polar Bear container vessel, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said on Friday.

Early on Oct. 8, a gas pipeline and a telecoms cable connecting Finland and Estonia were broken, in what Finnish investigators said may have been sabotage, though they have yet to conclude whether it was an accident or a deliberate act.

(AP) --- A Russian-American journalist was ordered Friday to be detained for another three days on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent, Russian media reported.

Alsu Kurmasheva, an editor for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, appeared in court in the central Russian city of Kazan, according to the state news agency Tass.

She is the second U.S. journalist detained in Russia this year, after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges in March.

by Anadolu Agency

A number of councillors from the UK’s main opposition Labour Party have resigned in the past days in protest over party leader, Keir Starmer’s support for what he called Israel’s “right” to cut power and water supplies to Palestinians living in Gaza.