Europe

19 October 2023; MEMO: An Irish Member of the European Parliament criticised the EU for hypocrisy on the issue of Palestine, Anadolu Agency reports.

In an interview with Anadolu, Mick Wallace regretted that Israel had the support of not just the US but also the EU.

“The violence is directly linked to the Occupation,” the MEP said. “If we want to stop the violence, we have to stop the Occupation.”

19 October 2023; MEMO: Germany, on Thursday, advised its citizens to leave the West Bank now due to intensifying violence in the region, Anadolu Agency reports.

“We recommend all German nationals to leave the West Bank now,” the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement, warning against travelling to Israel and the Palestinian Territories “due to the escalation of violence in the region.”

ROME, October 19. /TASS/: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has noted a decrease in the number of attacks in the vicinity of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).

He noted that the IAEA is fulfilling a containing role, acknowledging, however, that it had failed to achieve the more ambitious goal of completely demilitarizing the area around the ZNPP.

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/: Russian air defense forces shot down a Ukrainian Su-25 ground attack plane and a Mi-8 combat helicopter over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Thursday.

"Air defense capabilities shot down a Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 attack plane near the city of Dnepropetrovsk and a Mi-8 helicopter near the settlement of Zagryzovo in the Kharkov Region," the ministry said in a statement.

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/: The West is seeking after establishing control over the global economy but the majority of countries understand that qualitative development is impossible in such conditions, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at the Made in Russia 2023 International Export Forum.

Fierce competition is underway in the world for the technology leadership and "for control over the global economy, in the first instance from the side of Western financial institutions," the Prime Minister noted.

ROME, Oct 19 (NNN-XINHUA) — Italy on Wednesday temporarily suspended the European Union’s Schengen rules for open travel, reactivating dormant border controls with Slovenia amid heightened tensions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

As of late Wednesday, some other European Union (EU) states also announced similar moves, due to concerns over extremist violence and migration.

MOSCOW, Oct 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia on Thursday sent 27 tonnes of humanitarian aid for civilians in the Gaza Strip to be transported from Egypt, Moscow’s emergency situations ministry said.

“A special plane has taken off from the airport at Ramenskoye near Moscow for El-Arish in Egypt. The Russian humanitarian aid will be handed over to the Egyptian Red Crescent to be sent to the Gaza Strip,” deputy minister Ilya Denisov said in a statement.

Denisov said the aid comprised “wheat, sugar, rice (and) pasta”.

ROME, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will become an honorary citizen of Rome by early next year following a vote this week by its local assembly, the city's former mayor Virginia Raggi said on Thursday.

Assange, 52, has been in London's high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019 and is wanted in the United States over the release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables in 2010.

His supporters see his prosecution as a politically motivated assault on journalism and free speech.

KYIV, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Vira Levko, a judge in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, typically handles dozens of administrative cases and several criminal hearings every day. And she says there are others who are far busier than her.

When Levko tells colleagues abroad about her workload, they find it hard to believe.

"They don't understand how a judge can hold so much information in their head," she told Reuters at the Dniprovskyi district court.

KYIV, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Kyiv's forces have made some headway against Russian forces in southern Ukraine but face new Russian attacks around the eastern town of Avdiivka, the Ukrainian military said on Thursday.

In an update on Kyiv's more than four-month-old counteroffensive in the south and east, military spokesperson Oleksandr Stupun reported an advance of 400 metres (0.25 mile) to the southwest of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region.