Europe

SOFIA, Oct 14 (NNN-XINHUA) — Bulgaria’s four-month-old government led by Nikolai Denkov on Friday survived a no-confidence motion filed by the opposition parties.

The motion was backed by 71 deputies of the ultra-nationalist Revival party, a coalition led by Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the There Is Such People (ITN) party, while 143 deputies voted against it in the 240-member Parliament.

The opposition filed the motion on Oct. 5 over the government’s green transition plans.

KYIV, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Fighting along the northern portion of Ukraine's eastern front has "significantly worsened" in recent days, the commander of Kyiv's ground forces said on Saturday.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, who was visiting Ukrainian troops in the area, said Russian forces had regrouped after suffering losses and were attacking around the village of Makiivka and towards the city of Kupiansk.

LONDON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in central London on Saturday, calling for an end to Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip which was triggered by last weekend's rampage in Israel by the Hamas militant group.

Protesters, many of them waving Palestinian flags and signs saying "Free Palestine," gathered close to Oxford Circus from where they planned to head to Downing Street, the official residence and office of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

PARIS, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Louvre Museum in Paris was closed on Saturday for security reasons.

"For security reasons, the Louvre Museum is closing its doors today," announced the museum's account on X, formerly Twitter.

According to French news channel BFMTV, the museum received messages about bomb threats. The closure of the museum was due to verification measures in the framework of France's national security alert system Vigipirate.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland is holding an election Sunday that many view as its most important one since the 1989 vote that toppled communism. At stake are the health of the nation’s democracy, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country on NATO’s eastern flank that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine.

ARRAS, France (AP) — France will mobilize up to 7,000 soldiers to increase security around the country after a teacher was fatally stabbed and three other people wounded in a school attack by a former student suspected of Islamic radicalization, the president’s office said Saturday.

Some schoolchildren, parents and personnel returned to the Gambetta-Carnot school in the northern city of Arras as it reopened Saturday morning to reconnect and seek support, after the attack Friday that rattled France in a context of global tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

14 October 2023; AA: In an interview published Saturday, the EU’s top diplomat compared Gaza to Ukraine and said some of Israel’s military response violates international law,.

“We’ve said it in Ukraine, and we say it in Gaza: you cannot cut off water and all utilities to an entire population,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told Spanish daily El Pais. “We must keep repeating, pressuring and insisting (that Israel comply with international law).”

14 October 2023; AA: Attacks on medical facilities are prohibited under international humanitarian law, a UN human rights spokesperson told Anadolu on Saturday on the Israeli order for a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate.

12 October 2023; AA: Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom called the burning of the Muslim holy book Quran a "despicable act" and said such actions aimed at sowing division should not be allowed to succeed.

The burning of holy books, including the Quran, is a despicable act, Billstrom told Anadolu in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

11 October 2023; AA: Despite international journalists and news agencies debunking allegations that Palestinian resistance group Hamas "beheaded babies" in Israel, the claim continued to make headlines on Wednesday in Israeli and Western media, receiving millions of social media views.

Even as thousands of people have been killed in the conflict between the Israeli army and Gaza-based Hamas' armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the disinformation front of the conflict persists on social media.