Europe

19 Sep 2021; MEMO: Mediterranean nations must lead the way in addressing climate change, the Greek prime minister said, warning that the cost of doing nothing was unimaginable, with mankind possibly struggling to survive beyond the turn of the next century, reports Reuters.

BERLIN, September 17. /TASS/: Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) will take into account the opinion of the European Commission when making the final decision on registering Nord Stream 2 AG as an independent transport operator, the agency’s representative told TASS on Friday.

Nord Stream 2 AG is the operator of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states confirmed their adherence to the establishment of a multipolar world order, says the SCO Dushanbe anniversary declaration published Friday.

MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 20,329 in the past 24 hours reaching 7,254,754. The number of new daily cases surpassed 20,000 for the first time since August 22, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Saturday.

The relative growth rate stands at 0.28%.

Another 1,791 cases were confirmed in St. Petersburg, 915 in the Moscow Region, 505 in the Sverdlovsk Region, while the Voronezh and Samara regions reported 488 new cases each.

THE HAGUE, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Dutch defense minister has resigned over the government’s handling of evacuations from Afghanistan, announcing her move one day after the Netherlands’ foreign minister stepped down.

Both high-profile figures were accused by legislators of bearing responsibility for the government’s slow response to the surge of the Taliban in Afghanistan and muddled management of evacuations.

“I wanted to finish our mission to bring those who are still in Afghanistan and who count on us to safety,” Bijleveld said.

LONDON, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — England set out measures to boost international travel on Friday, abandoning expensive COVID-19 testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers, scrapping its traffic light system and adding eight countries to its safe list.

Travellers returning to England from Turkey, Pakistan, and the Maldives will not have to quarantine on their return as they are removed from the so-called COVID red list for travel, British transport minister Grant Shapps said.

MOSCOW, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Allies of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny accused Telegram of censorship on Saturday after the popular messaging app followed Google and Apple (AAPL.O) in restricting access to their voting campaign in Russia's parliamentary election.

The activists have already accused Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple of buckling under Kremlin pressure after they removed an app from their stores that Navalny's allies had hoped to use against the ruling party at the election. 

LONDON, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Different epidemic waves are brought about by different variants of SARS-CoV-2. The major sources of these variants can travel cross border and exist in animal reservoirs, an article has said.

The article published this week on News Medical, an open-access medical and life science hub, showed a bell-shaped curve, which is typical of a seasonal viral respiratory infection, was observed in Asia. Comparatively, the bell-shaped curve recorded in Western countries experienced one or two peaks.

KIEV, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine is developing a plan to bring down the country's shadow economy to 25 percent of GDP over the next three years, First Vice Prime Minister Oleksiy Lyubchenko said on Friday.

"Today, according to the Ministry of Economy's preliminary calculations, the shadow economy reached 30 percent of the GDP. At the moment, we have gathered to work out proposals for de-shadowing the economy in all sectors," Lyubchenko told a meeting of an interdepartmental working group.

ATHENS, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of nine Mediterranean European Union member states (EUMED 9) held talks here Friday, calling for closer cooperation to face various common challenges.