Europe

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Delegates from the party of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed prominent conservative Friedrich Merz as the Christian Democratic Union’s new leader Saturday as the center-right party seeks to redefine itself.

Merz received 94.6% of the vote from 983 delegates who cast ballots during an online party convention. The vote was mostly a formality since he won 62.1% in balloting among the party membership in December, defeating two centrist contenders.

HELSINKI (AP) — The Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will send U.S.-made anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine in a move that Washington says it is fully endorsing amid Kyiv’s escalating tensions with Russia

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a tweet posted on Saturday that Washington saluted the three NATO nations and former Soviet republics “for their longstanding support to Ukraine”.

LONDON (AP) — Revelations that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff partied while Britain was in a coronavirus lockdown have provoked public outrage and led some members of his Conservative Party to consider ousting their leader.

If they manage to push Johnson out — or if he resigns — the party would hold a leadership contest to choose his replacement.

Here’s a look at who could rise if Johnson falls:

RISHI SUNAK, TREASURY CHIEF

MOSCOW (AP) — With tens of thousands of Russian troops positioned near Ukraine, the Kremlin has kept the U.S. and its allies guessing about its next moves in the worst security crisis to emerge between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

Amid fears of an imminent attack on Ukraine, Russia has further upped the ante by announcing more military drills in the region. It also has refused to rule out the possibility of military deployments to the Caribbean, and President Vladimir Putin has reached out to leaders opposed to the West.

22 Jan 2022; MEMO: Negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal are "on right track" and a final deal might be reached soon, an EU official said on Friday and reported by Anadolu News Agency.

"We are on the right track for a final agreement," a senior EU official said about the negotiations in the Austrian capital, Vienna, to bring the US and Iran back to the 2015 nuclear deal.

The official pointed out that the slow pace of negotiations may put a "good solution" in danger.

MINSK, January 21. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko warned the West against attacking the Union State.

"We do not want war. Neither us, nor the Russians. But we build our security in order to protect ourselves. Should they not simply keep poking us constantly, but deploy their armies against us, threaten us, then we will hit so hard it won’t be pretty. It is impossible to defeat us," he told journalists Friday, adding that "this is not a threat, merely a warning."

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/: Russia’s demand for NATO to withdraw foreign troops, weapons and equipment also applies to Bulgaria and Romania as the two countries were not NATO members in 1997, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in response to media questions collected for top diplomat Sergey Lavrov’s press conference. The ministry’s responses were published on its website on Friday.

GENEVA, January 21. /TASS/: A recent report penned by the US Department of State in the run-up to the Geneva meeting about Russia’s so-called ‘disinformation’ on Ukraine is impossible to comprehend, and Moscow has already expressed its reaction on this score, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

"These papers, which the [US] Department of State specifically prepared for today’s meeting, are impossible to read," Lavrov said following his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/: Russia is ready to defend its legitimate security interests, but there are no grounds to take its actions as an attempt to form some kind of exclusive zone of influence, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Friday in response to media questions received at the press conference of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"Russia, like the United States and other countries, has legitimate interests, in particular in the field of security," the ministry noted.

MOSCOW, January 21. /TASS/: Russia will make serious political decisions, if the US reply to Moscow’s proposals on security guarantees is disappointing, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in a live broadcast on the Rossiya-24 TV Channel on Friday.

"There is no formal and written reply from the United States and NATO to our proposals yet. If this reply is disappointing, we will have to make serious political decisions, about which our president warned the opponents from the other side, including publicly," the senior Russian diplomat said.