Europe

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz strongly condemned a firebomb assault on a synagogue in Berlin on Wednesday, saying, “We will never accept when attacks are carried out against Jewish institutions.”

Assailants threw two Molotov cocktails early Wednesday at the synagogue in the center of the German capital, police said, as antisemitic incidents in the country have been rising following the violent escalation in the Middle East.

PARIS (AP) — The Palace of Versailles was evacuated for security reasons on Wednesday for the third time since the weekend, the former royal chateau said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. It was among a spate of evacuations in the past five days around France, including three airports that were also forced to close for security checks.

The Chateau of Versailles apologized to visitors on X for being forced to clear out visitors from the sumptuous 17th-century palace “for security reasons.”

LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has begun charging a $1 fee to new users in the Philippines and New Zealand, in a test designed to cut down on the spam and fake accounts flourishing on the site formerly known as Twitter.

The company said late Tuesday that it has started trying out the annual subscription method for new and unverified accounts. The program, dubbed Not a Bot, won’t apply to existing users.

It’s not clear why it only applies to New Zealand and the Philippines or why those countries were chosen.

MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/: The resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) urging the international community to recognize Vladimir Putin's presidency as illegitimate after his current term ends in 2024 is part of the West’s information war against Russia and has no legal standing, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

BRUSSELS, October 17. /TASS/: The only thing Brussels has managed to achieve through its anti-Russian sanctions is to make more enemies for the EU worldwide, a trend that is likely to continue, Thierry Mariani, a French member of the European Parliament, said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/: Russian forces have destroyed over 250 Ukrainian combat helicopters since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday.

STOCKHOLM, October 17. /TASS/: Sweden has received data on damage to the underwater telecommunication cable running between Estonia and Sweden, Civil Defense Minister Karl-Oskar Bolin said at a press conference.

"We cannot assess what caused the damage," he said. "But we can state that this damage occurred in a time and space close to the reported damage to the gas pipeline [between Finland and Estonia]," the minister pointed out.

MOSCOW, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Russia's parliament took the first step on Tuesday towards revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and its top lawmaker warned the United States that Moscow might even abandon the pact altogether.

Russia says the aim is to restore parity with the United States, which has signed but never ratified the 1996 treaty, and that it will not resume testing unless Washington does.

PARIS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - France's Palace of Versailles re-opened to visitors on Tuesday afternoon after closing for a few hours for security reasons, the Chateau de Versailles said on social media network X.

BFM TV, citing police sources, had said earlier that a bomb squad had been dispatched to the site.

The local police body for Versailles said later that the police operation had finished and an earlier security cordon that had been put in place had now been lifted.

Oct 17 (Reuters) - A passenger on a rubber boat adrift in the Mediterranean Sea called a rescue hotline on June 23 to plead for help. The boat – carrying 14 migrants from the Middle East and Africa – was out of fuel in choppy waters. And a male passenger had just drowned.

The craft was about 70 nautical miles off the coast of Malta, within the small island country’s search and rescue zone, according to position data recorded by Alarm Phone, the hotline operator. Within these zones, countries are obligated under international law to coordinate search and rescue operations.