News Line

Moscow is committed to agreements with Ankara on Syria made at the official level, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. It said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks on Tuesday that Ankara’s military operation in Syria is aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar Assad were not a direct quotation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is traveling to Turkey on Wednesday where he will hold a bilateral meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on December 1. Remarks by Erdogan about the Syrian leader will be a topic of discussion during Lavrov’s visit, TASS quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying earlier on Wednesday. “That will be a good topic to clarify the intentions,” he said.

Information on numerous international investigations into terrorism groups compiled by Europol was accidentally left online, unguarded by any password, a Dutch television program reported on Wednesday. The television program Zembla cited the Europol’s adjunct director Wil van Gemert as acknowledging the incident. According to the program, the leak was caused by a former employee who took dossiers home, against Europol policy, and put them on a hard drive connected to the Internet without realizing it was accessible to anyone. Zembla did not republish the dossier, which it said contained information about 54 different police investigations, including the names and telephone numbers of suspects. Van Gemert was quoted saying it did not appear that the dossier had been seen by anyone other than Zembla researchers, but he could not rule it out. (Reuters)

Russia’s proposed law on online movie theaters is not expected to backfire on users of the US-based video-sharing website YouTube, the Russian presidential adviser for internet development affairs, German Klimenko, said on Wednesday. Russian media reported earlier in the day that YouTube may leave Russia if it adopts a law on limiting the share of foreign owners of audiovisual services with professional content, TASS said. “Speaking on movie theaters – this is about commerce, and YouTube is still a story about simple things, about our service and our data. So I don’t think that our users will face any hardships,” Klimenko told the Life Zvuk radio station.

Former director of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, who after taking refuge in the US declared that he had eliminated some doping samples, had been trying to induce athletes into taking unknown substances, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee (SKR), Ilya Lazutov, said on Wednesday. “Rodchenkov is known to have been persuading them to take substances possessing unknown properties,” TASS quoted Lazutov as saying. Testimonies to that effect had been made by several athletes, he said, without disclosing their names. The SKR has made an inquiry in the US to obtain evidence from former director of the anti-doping laboratory, Lazutov said.

Norway’s Justice Ministry has decided to extradite Russian computer programmer Mark Vartanyan to the US, Dozhd TV reported, citing the accused’s father. The extradition is expected within three to four weeks, according to Erik Vartanyan. The computer programmer was detained in September last year, over accusations that he distributed the Citadel virus used for hacking personal data.

Outgoing CIA Director John Brennan has said it would be the "height of folly" for US President-elect Donald Trump to tear up Washington's deal with Tehran because it would make it more likely that Iran and others would acquire nuclear weapons. "It could lead to a weapons program inside of Iran that could lead other states in the region to embark on their own programs," Brennan said in an interview with the BBC aired on Wednesday. Brennan also said that in dealing with the Syrian crisis, Trump should be cautious in trying to work with Russia. (Reuters)