Europe

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/:  It is necessary to move toward restoring the work of the Middle East "quartet" in order to settle the current crisis in the region, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/: Russian forces destroyed an electronic warfare station and an ammunition depot of the Ukrainian army in the Kherson area, eliminating roughly 50 enemy troops over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Thursday.

"The following targets were destroyed: an electronic warfare station and an ammunition depot near the town of Berislav in the Kherson Region," the ministry said in a statement.

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) as well as of the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, the IOC said in a statement on Thursday.

"The Russian Olympic Committee is suspended with immediate effect until further notice," the statement reads.

MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/: The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, has approved a federal constitutional law rescinding the requirement to officially inform the secretary general of the Council of Europe concerning the imposition or revocation of martial law and states of emergency in Russia.

PARIS, Oct 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Consumers discard or possess disused electronic goods containing raw materials critical for the green energy transition and worth almost $10 billion every year, the United Nations said.

Toys, cables, electronic cigarettes, tools, electric toothbrushes, shavers, headphones and other domestic gadgets contain metals like lithium, gold, silver and copper.

Demand is expected to soar for these materials due to their crucial role in rapidly growing green industries such as electric vehicle battery production.

PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron will meet political party leaders on Thursday and address the nation on TV to call for unity and try to prevent any spillover of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in France, where there has been a rise in antisemitic acts.

France has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish populations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has in the past contributed to tensions between the two.

BRUSSELS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Defence ministers at NATO's Brussels headquarters watched stunned as their Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant on Thursday showed them "shocking" and "horrific" video from the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, diplomats said.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules Gaza in retribution for the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, when hundreds of militants breached the boundary fence and stormed nearby Israeli communities on Saturday.

BRUSSELS, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- As the world's attention shifted to Israel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Brussels on Wednesday to ask Western countries to continue their aid to Ukraine.

"We spoke about priorities for Ukraine, for defending how to survive during this next winter," Zelensky told reporters before attending a meeting with NATO defense ministers.

"We need some support from the leaders. That is why I am here today," he said, with the presence of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

MOSCOW, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and two others injured when a drone was shot down by air defense forces over southern Russia's Belgorod region on Thursday, the regional governor said.

"The bodies of two people were recovered from the rubble by operational services -- a man and a woman," Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod region, said on his social media channel, adding that a child could still be trapped under the rubble.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian authorities said Thursday they found a crater from a suspected drone that may have exploded on impact on its territory near the border with Ukraine, reviving concerns about possible spillover of Russia’s war in Ukraine onto a NATO member country.

The pre-dawn discovery of the crater three kilometers (1.8 miles) west of the village of Plauru, which sits across the Danube River from the Ukrainian port of Izmail, was made after the Romanian Defense Ministry said it detected a series of drones heading towards Ukrainian river ports.