Europe

MOSCOW, January 25. /TASS/. Russia is implementing a project on upgrading the Cuban railway network that carries a price tag of about 2 bln euro, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told reporters on Friday.

"We have advanced in implementing the project to upgrade Cuba’s railway network. The price of this project is nearly 2 bln euro. It will take seven years and will play a key role in the economy of Cuba. We agreed to break it down into two phases, optimize required loan resources, and we will begin specific work on the project soon," the official said.

BRUSSELS, January 25. /TASS/. NATO believes that US strike drones and target missiles for ballistic defense do not violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday.

"These issues have been discussed for several years, the question of UAVs, ballistic and target missiles, which are used to test ballistic defense. These systems are not in violation of the INF treaty," the NATO chief said, responding to a question from TASS at a press conference on the results of the Russia-NATO Council session in Brussels.

MOSCOW, January 25. /TASS/. The Progress MS-09 cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, was deorbited and splashed down in a non-navigable area of the Pacific Ocean, the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building TsNIIMash (the main research center of the Roscosmos corporation) informed TASS.

"Wreckage from the Progress MS-09 spacecraft that did not burn up in the atmosphere splashed down in a non-navigable area of the Pacific Ocean," the research center said.

The spacecraft undocked from the ISS at 15:55 Moscow time.

OSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. Appointing new US special envoy for Venezuela is an attempt to directly manage the situation in the Latin American country, Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday.

WASHINGTON, January 26. /TASS/. The United States has asked Russia to assist in determining the right agenda on certain aspects of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and Moscow is ready to contribute along with other participants in the six-party process, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov told reporters on Friday after talks with his US colleagues in Washington.

MOSCOW, January 25. /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned Russian citizens who are going abroad about the threat of harassment by the US law enforcement bodies and intelligence agencies in a statement on Friday.

ATHENS, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Greece's parliament approved on Friday the historic agreement reached last summer which resolves a nearly 28-year-old dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) over the use of the name Macedonia.

153 MPs voted in favor of the deal and 146 against, with one abstention. The roll-call vote in the 300-member assembly was broadcast live on Greek national television ERT.

MOSCOW, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday urged the United States to abandon plans of placing weapons in outer space and thus prevent a new arms race.

"We once again call on Washington to show prudence and abandon such irresponsible adventures that would have extremely negative consequences for the entire international community and for the United States itself," the ministry said in a statement.

25 Jan 2019; AFP: A new industrial revolution is under way on the outskirts of Dublin.

Fortunes are being made in clusters of anonymous warehouses housing vast data centres.

"Data is the new oil, definitely," said Brian Roe, commercial director of Servecentric, a data centre company.

Roe is a new breed of prospector, presiding over one node in a network of 48 data centres in Ireland.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/.Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has called for imagining a situation where the US president might facing regime change like the one that is now unfolding in Venezuela. On his Facebook page, Medvedev pondered what the American people might think of such a scenario on their own soil.

"Just imagine for a moment how the American people would react to the news the budget crisis (shutdown) has produced a situation in which, say, the speaker of the House of Representatives has declared himself a new president," he speculated.