Europe

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was ready to take “bold decisions” to rebuild the economy after the coronavirus pandemic as his Conservative Party meets Sunday for its first annual conference since 2019.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that Germans must keep working for democracy, as the country celebrated the 31st anniversary of the reunification of East and West.

In what is expected to be one of her last major speeches, the outgoing chancellor said that “mentally and structurally, unification hasn’t been completed yet.”

ROME (AP) — A blaze, possibly sparked by a gas canister explosion, destroyed part of an historic bridge spanning the Tiber River in Rome before firefighters extinguished the flames early Sunday.

Firefighters said the fire erupted before midnight Saturday near the Ostiense neighborhood and by 4 a.m. Sunday they had completed their work.

No one was injured in the fire that involved the Industry Bridge, but three nightclubs near the riverside neighborhood popular with young people were evacuated as a precaution, Italian state TV said.

ROME (AP) — Millions of people in Italy started voting Sunday for new mayors, including in Rome and Milan, in an election widely seen as a test of political alliances before nationwide balloting just over a year away.

The two days of voting end on Monday and the first results are expected afterwards. But many voters will have to wait two weeks to learn who their mayor will be.

Runoffs will be held Oct. 17-18 in municipalities with more than 15,000 people between the top two vote-getters if no single candidate garners more than 50% of the ballots.

MINSK, October 2. /TASS/: Opposition politician Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was not forced to flee the country, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with CNN.

"I swear by my children that Tikhanovskaya was not fleeing anywhere. She asked me to take her to the Lithuanian border, not only her but a few other people too, which is what I did. So she didn't flee. Do you want proof? We can give you proof. This is yet another fake," he said.

GENEVA, October 2. /TASS/: Russia and the US discussed the issue of the mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccination certificates in Geneva on Saturday. American representatives "heard Russia’s arguments," Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told journalists at a briefing following talks.

"They heard the arguments, they realize that this is rational because the approval of a vaccine to be sold on the market and the approval of a jab for the prevention of the COVID-19 disease directly are different processes," the health minister noted.

MINSK, October 2. /TASS/: Belarus and Russia have a shared policy and pursue joint goals which the West cannot prevent them from achieving, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with CNN as quoted by the BelTA news agency on Saturday.

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/: New AUKUS alliance between the US, the UK, and Australia as well as the four-sided dialogue on security between the US, Japan, India, and Australia (Quad) are directed at eroding the long-standing universal formats of cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region existing under the auspices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the 29th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy on Saturday.

GENEVA, October 2. /TASS/: All obstacles preventing the certification of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus by the World Health Organization (WHO) have been removed, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said at a briefing in Geneva in response to a question by TASS.

MOSCOW, Oct 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia’s electricity exports monopoly Inter RAO said on Friday that it would double its October supplies to China after a request from the world’s No.2 economy as it grapples with power cuts.

China is scrambling to deliver more coal to utilities to restore supply, as nearly two-thirds of Chinese provinces struggle with power rationing. The three northeast provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin – home to nearly 100 million people – have been particularly hard hit.