Europe

Vienna, Oct 2 (AFP) The UN's nuclear watchdog Tuesday refused to "take at face value" Israel's claims that Iran is harbouring a secret atomic warehouse, fending off pressure to inspect the allegedly suspect site.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the claim in front of the UN General Assembly last week.

Without explicitly referring to Netanyahu's claim, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano insisted that the agency's independence was "of paramount importance" for its work.

Naumburg; 2 Oct 2018; DW: Three youths in Saxony-Anhalt allegedly stabbed a journalist and made the Hitler salute outside a supermarket. The victim is reportedly in hospital where he is receiving treatment for a six-centimeter-deep stab wound.

A freelance journalist was reportedly stabbed in an attack by three teenagers in Naumburg in the northeastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, local media reported.

2 Oct 2018; DW: Some 200 police officers have raided the headquarters of a Shiite Islamic association near the port city of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, France has frozen Iranian state assets after a June bomb plot.

French authorities raided the headquarters of an Islamic Shiite association and the homes of its leaders near the northern city of Dunkirk during the early hours of Tuesday morning.

MOSCOW, October 1. /TASS/. Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika thinks that the US and the UK refuse extradition of Russian citizens accused or suspected of crimes, because their economies benefit from Russian billions leaving the country.

"The reasons (for refusing extradition) are not always political. These countries (the US, the UK) benefit from billions withdrawn from Russia remaining in their economy," Chaika stated.

He noted that "these countries’ officials do not care about the origin of money that our escaped citizens pour into their economy."

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. Russia is looking at building a lunar station jointly with Chinese partners, CEO of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said.

"China is a serious partner. I don’t rule out that as soon as we agree the outlines of our lunar program with the Americans, it is our manned lunar program, the formation of a research station on Moon’s surface is likely to be carried out with our Chinese partners. They can be equal partners already in the coming years," he told Russia’s TV Channel One.

STOCKHOLM, October 2. /TASS/. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to scientists Arthur Ashkin of the US, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday.

"The inventions being honored this year have revolutionized laser physics," the Academy said in a statement.

1 Oct 2018; DG: Germany's state prosecutor has ordered the arrest of six men charged with forming a far-right terror group known as "Revolution Chemnitz." The men are accused of planning attacks on migrants in eastern Germany.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark; 1 Oct 2018; (AP) — The man at the center of a sex abuse and financial crimes scandal in Sweden that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature was convicted of rape and sentenced Monday to two years in prison.

Jean-Claude Arnault, 72, a major cultural figure in Sweden, had faced two counts of rape for the same woman in 2011. He was found guilty of one rape but was acquitted of the other because the victim said she was asleep at the time and judges said her account wasn’t reliable. Arnault had denied the charges.

MOSCOW, October 1. /TASS/. Russia’s electromagnetic weapons have begun to be tested in the field, the first deputy CEO of the radio-electronic technologies concern KRET, Vladimir Mikheyev, told TASS on Monday.

He said that microwave weapon systems "exist and develop with success."

"Testing is conducted non-stop in laboratory conditions and at test sites," Mikheyev said when asked if such weapons had been tested already. He added that active research was underway into systems of protection from electromagnetic weapons.

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Two scientists have shared 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Nobel committee announced here on Monday.

The Nobel assembly at the Karolinska Institute has decided to award the 2018 physiology or medicine prize jointly to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.