Europe

VIENNA, October 5. /TASS/: Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi is heading for Kiev, he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

"On our way to Kiev for important meetings. The need for a Nuclear Safety and Security Protection Zone (NSSPZ) around Zaporizhzhya (Zaporozhye - TASS) Nuclear Power Plant is now more urgent than ever," Grossi tweeted.

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia must be part of investigations into last week's explosions in the two Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

"So far, from those news conferences which took place in Denmark and Sweden, we've heard disturbing statements that any cooperation with the Russian side is ruled out," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

BERLIN, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Germany's BKA federal police assumes explosions in the Nord Stream pipelines last week were "a targeted act of sabotage" and said it is probable that state actors were involved, the Spiegel weekly reported, citing a letter to industry representatives.

The BKA said in the letter that it did not yet have any findings about who was behind the sabotage but "against the background of the high complexity of the execution of the act and corresponding preparation, the action of state actors seems probable", Spiegel reported.

ZURICH, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is following the situation at Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) closely, SNB Governing Board member Andrea Maechler told Reuters on Wednesday.

Switzerland's second-biggest bank saw its shares slide by as much as 11.5% and its bonds hit record lows on Monday, before clawing back some of the losses, amid concerns about its ability to restructure its business without asking investors for more money. 

KIEV, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree to put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), which rules out holding any negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky's press service reported Tuesday.

The document, published on Zelensky's website, said that Ukraine's NSDC deemed holding talks with Putin "impossible."

BRUSSELS, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- The ministers of finance and economic affairs of the European Union (EU) member states, meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday, agreed to include energy self-sufficiency in their national recovery and resilience plans.

REPowerEU, a plan proposed by the European Commission in May, aims at strengthening the Union's strategic autonomy by diversifying energy supplies, thus weaning the bloc off its dependency on Russian fossil fuels. It also aims to boost energy saving and the production of clean energy.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries decided Wednesday to sharply cut production to support sagging oil prices, a move that could deal the struggling global economy another blow and raise politically sensitive pump prices for U.S. drivers just ahead of key national elections.

Energy ministers cut production by a larger-than-expected 2 million barrels per day starting in November after gathering for their first face-to-face meeting at the Vienna headquarters of the OPEC oil cartel since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — A switch back to coal and other fossil fuels by several countries to weather an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine shouldn’t compromise efforts to curb greenhouse emissions, United Nations officials said Wednesday.

Sonja Leighton-Kone, a senior official with the United Nations Environment Program said lending a sympathetic ear to the energy “shock” many countries are suffering doesn’t mean the goal of a speedy switch to clean energy can’t be achieved.

MADRID (AP) — A trial opened Wednesday in Spain over a 2013 train derailment that killed 80 passengers and injured 145 others, amid tensions at the court entrance between victims and one of the defendants.

The driver of the long-distance train that crashed against a concrete wall near Spain’s northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela and a former railway security director are accused of professional negligence.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to design better medicines, including ones that target diseases such as cancer more precisely.

Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal were cited for their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions, which are used to make cancer drugs, map DNA and create materials that are tailored to a specific purpose.