Europe

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A court in Belarus on Monday sentenced two leading opposition activists to lengthy prison terms, the latest move in the relentless crackdown Belarusian authorities have unleashed on dissent in the wake of last year’s anti-government protests.

Maria Kolesnikova, a top member of the opposition Coordination Council, has been in custody since her arrest last September. A court in Minsk found her guilty of conspiring to seize power, creating an extremist organization and calling for actions damaging state security and sentenced her to 11 years in prison.

MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that she had begun to receive threats from Alexey Navalny’s supporters after the publication about her containing inaccurate information on the blogger’s resources.

MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 18,645 in the past 24 hours, the total number of infections has surpassed 7 million reaching 7,012,599, based on data provided by the anti-coronavirus crisis center on Sunday.

The relative growth rate stands at 0.27%.

St. Petersburg reported 1,357 daily COVID-19 cases, the Moscow Region - 826, the Sverdlovsk Region - 517, the Rostov Region - 480 and the Voronezh Region - 469.

Currently, 554,668 people in Russia are still undergoing treatment.

MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/: Moscow has received signals from Paris and Berlin regarding the possibility of a meeting on Afghanistan, but holding it in the G7 format was not discussed, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on Sunday.

MOSCOW, September 5. /TASS/: Crimea’s status cannot an issue on the agenda of a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, so there is no progress in preparing the Putin-Zelensky summit, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Rossiya 1 TV channel.

"The matter is that the Crimea issue does not exist for us, while, as we are told by the Ukrainian president’s office, Zelensky wants to discuss Crimea. From what viewpoint? Obviously, not from the viewpoint that it is a region of the Russian Federation," he said.

CERNOBBIO (Italy), Sept 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The challenges to security emerging from the upheaval in Afghanistan should be a wake-up call for the European Union, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, urging the EU to be more ambitious on defence and on global leadership.

“Europe has to become No 3 super-power besides China and the United States. Let’s open our eyes, we are facing threats and we cannot rely anymore on the protection of the United States,” Le Maire told reporters during an annual business conference in Cernobbio on Lake Como.

PARIS, Sept 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The biggest trial in France’s modern legal history begins on Wednesday (Sept 8) over the November 2015 attacks on Paris that saw 130 people slaughtered at bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.

The suicide bombing and gun assault by three teams of extremists, later claimed by the Daesh group, was France’s worst post-war atrocity.

LONDON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - British vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday said a decision had not yet been taken on whether healthy children aged 12- to 15-years-old should be vaccinated against COVID-19, following reports that a rollout could begin in the coming days.

Britain's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on Friday declined to recommend vaccinations for children in that group, taking a precautionary approach due to a rare risk of heart inflammation, but adding the issue was finely balanced. 

MOSCOW, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- The United States is using its investigation into the origins of COVID-19 as a political tool to pressure China and preserve hegemony, according to an article published recently on the portal Geopolitika.ru.

In a workshop that took place in the Russian city of Novosibirsk in August, experts from Germany, Austria, Turkey, Russia and Kazakhstan gathered to discuss Washington's geopolitical motives behind its investigation into the pandemic's origins, according to the article.

CETINJE, Montenegro (AP) — Riot police used tear gas on protesters who fired gunshots in the air and hurled bottles and stones early Sunday in Montenegro before a planned inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the country.

The ceremony scheduled in Cetinje, a former capital of the small Balkan nation, has angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, which declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006.