Europe

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s newly elected lawmakers are holding their first meetings on Tuesday as their parties digest the fallout of the election that reduced outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bloc to its worst-ever result and start the process of putting together a new government.

PARIS (AP) — France and Greece on Tuesday announced a major, multibillion-euro defense deal, including Athens’ decision to buy three French warships.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a defense and security strategic partnership in a joint news conference in Paris.

“This partnership expresses our will to increase and intensify our cooperation... based on our mutual interests,” Macron said.

Greece will purchase three French frigates to be build by Naval Group in Lorient, in western France, Macron said.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — In a packed intensive care unit for coronavirus patients in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, 55-year-old Adrian Pica sits on his bed receiving supplementary oxygen to help him breathe. “I didn’t want to get vaccinated because I was afraid,” he said.

Around 72% of adults in the 27-nation European Union have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but a stubbornly low uptake of the shots in some eastern EU nations now risks overwhelming hospitals amid a surge of infections due to the more contagious delta variant.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated murders. It has also made its founder, Andrew Anglin, a millionaire.

Anglin has tapped a worldwide network of supporters to take in at least 112 Bitcoin since January 2017 — worth $4.8 million at today’s exchange rate — according to data shared with The Associated Press. He’s likely raised even more.

KIEV, September 27. /TASS/: Kiev is concerned of a huge reduction or a complete halt of gas transit to Hungary via Ukraine on the back of the long-term gas supply contract bypassing Ukraine inked between Budapest and Gazprom, CEO of the Operator of Ukrainian Gas Transport System Sergey Makogon wrote in Facebook on Monday.

"Despite the contract [on gas transit to Europe between Russia and Ukraine] by 2024, we expect a further significant reduction or a complete halt of transit to Hungary via Ukraine," the top manager said.

MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/: Russia is closely following Germany's elections and hopes for the continuity of Berlin's policy in bilateral relations, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Monday.

"It goes without saying that the elections in Europe's largest country are a process, an event that rivets the attention of the whole world. We, too, have been watching with great attention what is happening and what the results are. It goes without saying that we hope for continuity in our bilateral relations," he stressed.

MOSCOW, September 27./TASS/: The commission for international cooperation and support for compatriots abroad that will be led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will engage in the implementation of the foreign policy section of the party’s national program, the deputy secretary of the United Russia Party General Council, Andrei Klimov, told TASS on Monday.

MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/: The Houthi movement carried out an armed attack in the Al-Abdiyah district in the south of Marib in Yemen, resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe in the region, a statement by the Embassy of Yemen in Moscow reported on Monday.

PARIS, Sept 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — France will double the number of vaccine doses it will send to poorer countries to 120 million, President Emmanuel Macron pledged, in a video broadcast during the Global Citizen concert in Paris.

  “The injustice is that in other continents, obviously, vaccination is very late…,” he said. “We have to go faster, stronger.

  “France pledges to double the number of doses it is giving,” he added. “We will pass from 60 million to 120 million doses offered.”

BRIGHTON, England, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The opposition Labour Party would make rebuilding Britain's ties with the European Union its top trade priority, putting the bloc above U.S and Indo-Pacific deals in the post-Brexit era, its trade policy chief Emily Thornberry said on Monday,

Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson is only two years into a possible five-year term, but Labour is using its annual conference in southern England to bill itself as a credible alternative government with Britain beset by fuel shortages, empty shelves and soaring energy prices.