Europe

MOSCOW, September 29. /TASS/: Russia stands for Latin America to be strong, independent and successful, and is willing to develop bilateral cooperation for this purpose, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Russia - Latin America International Parliamentary Conference.

PARIS, Sept 29 (Reuters) - There are no talks with the Taliban to negotiate a peace settlement, Afghan anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Massoud said on Thursday, vowing to step up "guerrilla warfare" to bring the hardline Islamists to the negotiating table.

Speaking in an interview in Paris, Massoud, the exiled leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF), said that the only way for the Taliban to achieve legitimacy would be to hold elections, but there was no prospect of that happening for now.

BUCHAREST, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Romania is moving air defences closer to its Danube villages across the river from Ukraine where Russian drones have been attacking grain facilities, and is adding more military observation posts and patrols to the area, two senior defence sources said.

The measures, along with the deployment of four additional U.S. F-16 fighter jets and an expanded no-fly zone, are a sign of growing concern in Romania and the broader NATO alliance that the Ukraine war could spill over into its territory.

BRUSSELS, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Seven EU countries have ordered ammunition under a landmark European Union procurement scheme to get urgently needed artillery shells to Ukraine and replenish depleted Western stocks, according to the EU agency in charge.

The orders - placed under contracts negotiated by the European Defence Agency (EDA) - are for 155mm artillery rounds, one of the most important munitions in the war of attrition between Ukraine's troops and Russian invaders.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Sweden's prime minister summoned the head of the armed forces and the police commissioner in a bid to stem gang violence, he said on Thursday, following a wave of violence that has taken at least 11 lives in September alone.

Two people were killed in separate shootings in Stockholm on Wednesday, and a woman in her 20s, thought to be an innocent bystander, was killed when a bomb tore up a house in Uppsala in the early hours of Thursday.

MADRID, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The leader of Spain's right-wing People's Party (PP), Alberto Nunez Feijoo, on Friday failed for a second time to win the support of the Spanish Congress to become prime minister.

After being defeated in the first investiture vote on Wednesday with 178 votes against and 172 in his favor, Feijoo lost the second vote in 48 hours with 177 against and 172 in his favor. This slight difference stemmed from Eduard Pujol, a member of the Catalan separatist party Junts per Catalonya, who accidentally voted in favor but quickly retracted his support.

GENEVA, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Systemic racism against people of African descent pervades America's police forces and criminal justice system, and U.S. authorities must urgently step up efforts for reform, a new United Nations (UN) report has said.

The report was issued by the UN International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement on Thursday following its official country visit to the United States earlier this year.

KIEV, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has provided 81 billion euros (85.95 billion U.S. dollars) in aid for Ukraine since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Ukrinform news agency reported Friday, citing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The sum includes financial support and military and humanitarian aid, according to the report.

Since the beginning of this year, Ukraine has received 13.5 billion euros in macro-financial assistance from the EU, according to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry.

(AP) --- Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In remarks released Friday by the Kremlin, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to “deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation” — a term Moscow uses for its war in Ukraine.

MOSCOW, September 28. /TASS/: Russia continues to work on the development of relations with the African continent, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

The Kremlin official recalled that today Russian President Vladimir Putin would hold a meeting with his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir, who is in Russia on an official visit.

"We continue to develop our relations with the states of the African continent," the Russian leader's spokesman said.