Europe

05 Dec 2019; MEMO: The British Home Secretary Priti Patel has been ranked the eighth worst MP in the last parliament, according to the campaign website change.org.

The new People-Power Index ranks the performance of MPs in the 2017-2019 parliament based on availability to their constituents, participation in parliament and how they bring political attention to mass public campaigns and priority issues.

(Reuters) - Eight people were killed when a three-story building in the southern Polish ski resort of Szczyrk collapsed on Wednesday following a gas explosion, local authorities said on Thursday.

The bodies of four children and four adults, most likely from two families, have been found in the rubble, authorities said.

VIENNA (Reuters) - OPEC and its allies led by Russia on Thursday were moving closer to agreeing one of the deepest output cuts this decade to support crude prices and prevent a glut, sources from OPEC and its allied producers said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets on Thursday in Vienna and with Russia and others, a grouping known as OPEC+, on Friday.

Three OPEC+ sources told Reuters on Thursday the group would discuss increasing current cuts of 1.2 million barrels per day by more than 400,000 bpd.

KIEV (Reuters) - An independent Ukrainian lawmaker said on Thursday he had met U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in Kiev to discuss the alleged misuse of U.S. taxpayer money by Ukrainian state bodies.

In a statement on Facebook accompanied by photos of the meeting, Andriy Derkach said the two had discussed the creation of an interparliamentary group to fight corruption.

MOSCOW, Dec 5 (NNN-TASS) – Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, agreed to develop cooperation in various spheres, primarily in the energy sector.

“All aspects of interaction between Russia and Serbia have a character of genuine strategic partnership,” Putin said, at a joint press conference with Vucic, following their talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

According to the Russian leader, bilateral trade amounted to 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, and it grew 9.5 percent in Jan-Sept this year.

BRUSSELS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The head of the Chinese Mission to the European Union (EU), Zhang Ming, denounced on Wednesday U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's disinformation campaign against China and Chinese tech giant Huawei, calling it a "witch hunt".

"Despite the witch hunt and media hype, not a single country or individual has come up with solid evidence to prove that Huawei poses a security threat," Zhang wrote in a letter to the editor of POLITICO, which ran an op-ed by Pompeo on Monday.

BELGRADE, December 4. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has told national television he plans to discuss Russian gas supplies to Serbian consumers, railway projects and boosting trade between Moscow and Belgrade at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/: Russia’s Aerospace Force tracked 5,000 combat planes in 2019, Aerospace Force Deputy Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant-General Andrei Yudin said on Wednesday.

During its combat alert missions to ensure the country’s aerospace defense in the 2019 training year, the Aerospace Force "detected and monitored over 1,900,000 aircraft, including about 5,000 combat planes, or 8% more compared to the previous year," the Defense Ministry’s Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper quoted him as saying.

MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/: The latest Atlet armored vehicle developed by Military Industrial Company will enter state trials in the spring of 2020, the company’s press office told TASS on Wednesday.

"The Atlet is completing preliminary tests and the stage of state trials is scheduled to begin for it in the spring of next year. One prototype is currently in disassembly and will probably go for state trials. The second prototype will undergo tests for its resistance to shelling and explosions," the company said.

PARIS, Dec 4 (NNN-Xinhua) — French commuters will face travel misery on Thursday as rail and metro workers will go on strike with which labor unions eye to show enough force to make President Emmanuel Macron reconsider his pension reform.

“Thursday will be extremely difficult. The networks will be badly disturbed. We will only succeed to operate about 10 percent of the trains,” Agnes Ogier, national rail operator SNCF’s spokesperson told a press conference on Tuesday.

“We ask our clients to cancel their trips or postpone them if they can,” she added