ISLAMABAD, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan's peace and reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, will hold talks here on Tuesday with Pakistani officials to discuss ways of cooperation in reconciliation in Afghanistan.

A Pakistani official told Xinhua that the U.S. special representative will meet Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and other senior officials at the ministry.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said Khalilzad will "explore how best to reach a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan."

MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/. Russia has sent a note to the Dutch Ambassador to Russia Renee Jones-Bos, in which it stated that the expulsion of Russian citizens from the Netherlands in April is a provocation related to Moscow’s position in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Russian Foreign Ministry informed on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Global trade tensions may lead to a sharp slowdown in economic activity, UN Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Liu Zhenmin warned on Monday.

Global trade tensions continue to escalate, Liu told the UN General Assembly's Second Committee, which is in charge of economic and financial affairs.

While the direct impact on trade flows remains limited, world trade growth has eased to about 4 percent in 2018 after expanding by more than 5 percent in 2017, said Liu.

MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/. Japan’s ELSA-d satellite intended to demonstrate the project of capturing and removing space junk from orbit is expected to be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from the Baikonur spaceport in early 2020, the Glavkosmos Launch Services operator said on Monday.

"The Tokyo-based company Astroscale Japan has concluded a contract with Glavkosmos Launch Services to launch its ELSA-d satellite aboard a Soyuz-2 carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Currently, the takeoff has been scheduled for early 2020," the Russian operator said.

MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. Russia will fight against attempts of other countries to inhibit its activity on the international arena, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote in the article for the Voprosi Ekonomiki (Economic Questions) magazine published on Tuesday.

"Every time when our country becomes active on the international arena, it always faces hard attempts to hinder us. We cannot ignore these tendencies, and we will actively fight for a good place in world economy and world politics," Medvedev said.

MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts global growth at 3.7% both for this year and next year, 0.2 percentage points below the last assessments, according to the World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- A study published on Monday in the journal Cancer showed that weight loss was linked to lower risk of developing invasive breast cancer for postmenopausal women.

Obesity has been strongly related to breast cancer risk, but previous studies examining whether weight loss might reduce postmenopausal women's risk resulted in mixed results.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. internet giant Google said Monday that it is shutting down the consumer version of its own social networking site Google+ due to low usage and a bug discovered in March last year that could leak the data of about half a million of its users.

"The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds," said Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View in northern California.

CARACAS, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's Prosecutor General Tarek William Saab on Monday confirmed the suicide of an opposition councilman Fernando Alban, who jumped from the building of the National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) where he was detained.

The councilman would appear later in the day before the courts for alleged involvement in the failed assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in August.

MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. The Anti-Terrorist Squad of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and the country’s Military Intelligence have arrested an engineer working for the Russian-Indian BrahMos Aerospace joint venture on espionage charges, the Times of India reported.

"The arrested engineer, Nishant Agarwal, was a senior systems engineer at BrahMos Aerospace’s unit at Butibori, near Nagpur. In his mid-20s, Agarwal headed the Hydraulics-Pneumatics and Warhead Integration wing of BrahMos’ production department," the paper writes.

Dholpur (Rajasthan), Oct 9 (PTI) Taking his attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi to poll-bound Rajasthan, Congress president Rahul Gandhi Tuesday said demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, which he referred to as Gabbar Singh Tax, had destroyed India's economy.

Addressing a rally in Dholpur's Mania area, Gandhi said the prime minister had declared during elections that he wanted to be a 'chowkidar' but never clarified who he wanted to guard. The Congress president alleged that he benefited 15-20 industrialists of the country instead of farmers.

New Delhi, Oct 8 (PTI) A 26-year-old autorickshaw driver was stabbed to death allegedly by his passengers over charging extra fare at night and carrying an additional passenger at Connaught Place here, police said Monday.

The deceased was identified as Jahangir Alam who used to live alone in Joga Bai extension, Jamia Nagar. Alam's family including his wife, children and mother, live in Malda in West Bengal, a police officer said.