meeting in Brussels
AP, Brussels
NATO says its ambassadors will hold talks with Russia’s envoy next week in a rare meeting of the NATO-Russia Council.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s office said Friday that the meeting at NATO Headquarters in Brussels is scheduled for Oct. 26.
Developments in Afghanistan, the situation in Ukraine and reducing the risks of clashes and accidents during military exercises or border surveillance are expected to be discussed.
Norway govt gets 1st woman FM
AP, Copenhagen
Norway’s prime minister has presented three new government ministers in a minor reshuffle of her two-party coalition following a general election last month.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Friday that Ine Eriksen Soereide has been reassigned from defense minister to foreign minister. The move makes the 41-year-old Eriksen Soereide the first woman to be Norway’s top diplomat.
May will ‘honor commitments’ to EU
Reuters, Brussels
Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday she had told fellow EU leaders that Britain would honor its commitments to the Union on Brexit and that other countries would not lose out in the current budget plan.
Asked whether she had told leaders over dinner on Thursday that she was ready to increase Britain’s financial offer, May told reporters that she had repeated points made in a speech at Florence last month. EU leaders said May had made no new pledges and repeated her view that many of the EU’s demands had “no legal framework”.
4 demonstrations killed in Kenya
AP, Nairobi
Kenya’s national police say four people have been killed in recent opposition demonstrations as the fresh presidential election approaches next week.
Friday’s statement says the deaths occurred between Oct. 2 and Monday in what it calls “confrontations between rioters and police officers.”
The statement comes after Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International this week said police killed 67 people in opposition protests in the days after August’s election results were announced.
S Korea to push ahead with nuclear power plants
AFP, Seoul
South Korea on Friday decided to push ahead with the construction of two new nuclear reactors after months of heated debate over whether the country should start weaning itself off atomic energy.
A state commission, based on a survey of 471 jurors selected across the country, recommended finishing construction of the Shin Kori-5 and Shin Kori- 6 reactors near the southeastern city of Ulsan.
