Europe

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/: Russia fully lifts restrictions on flights to the Dominican Republic, South Korea and the Czech Republic starting Friday. A respective decision was made by the anti-coronavirus crisis center in the middle of August. Those are the first three countries, to which Russia has fully resumed flights since restrictions were started to be imposed amid the pandemic, with the remaining countries still covered by the mechanism of flight quota arrangement. Moreover, the center has decided to increase quotas for regular flights to Egypt starting Friday.

ROME, August 27. /TASS/: Russia and Italy support the full implementation of the Minsk Accords on settling the conflict in Ukraine and the positions of both parties are identical on this issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a joint press conference following talks with his Italian counterpart Luigi di Maio on Friday.

VIENNA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - A Vienna court on Friday found disgraced former far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache guilty of corruption and sentenced him to 15 months in jail in a case involving party donations from the owner of a private clinic.

At issue was whether a quid pro quo was involved in two donations to the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) of 2,000 euros ($2,350) and 10,000 euros by Walter Grubmueller, the owner of a Vienna private clinic and a friend of Strache's.

BRUSSELS, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The European Union on Friday started a procedure to remove the United States from a list of countries whose citizens can travel to the 27-nation bloc without additional COVID restrictions, diplomats told Reuters.

One diplomat said other countries that would be removed from the safe travel list were Kosovo, Israel, Montenegro, Lebanon and North Macedonia.

The decision on new EU travel restrictions for foreigners would become final on Monday should no EU country object, the sources, as well as two more EU officials, added.

LONDON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) which is due to be hosted in Glasgow in November, organisers said on Friday.

World leaders are due to meet at the summit to try to flesh out commitments made in Paris in 2015 aimed at stabilising the planet's climate and to speed up action to limit climate change.

Queen Elizabeth said in 2019 that she was impressed by young people's dynamism towards fighting environmental destruction.

ROME, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was discharged from Milan's San Raffaele hospital on Friday after an overnight stay for a check up, a source from his Forza Italia party said.

Berlusconi, 84, has been in and out of hospital since contracting coronavirus last September. He said at the time that it was "the most dangerous challenge" of his life.

The four-times prime minister and billionaire businessman underwent major heart surgery in 2016 and has also survived prostate cancer.

GENEVA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.N. officials appealed for $800 million to fill a chronic funding gap for Afghanistan on Friday, with a senior aid official describing the situation as "catastrophic" with at least one third of people expected to be facing hunger.

"Humanitarian needs are catastrophic, are at large-scale and are increasing," Wafaa Saeed Abdelatef of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said at a virtual briefing. "These humanitarian needs are coming from decades of conflict, compounded by drought and COVID-19."

GENEVA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Up to half a million Afghans could flee their homeland by year-end, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday, appealing to all neighbouring countries to keep their borders open for those seeking safety.

As a crisis unfolds in the country, a few thousand Afghans have been recorded as entering Iran daily, while traders continue going back and forth from Afghanistan to Pakistan, said Kelly Clements, deputy U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

LONDON, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Some patients in the United States with a range of debilitating symptoms of COVID-19 but no positive diagnosis have had to wait for months before receiving proper treatments, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, or long COVID, affects about 10 percent to 30 percent of people infected with the virus, said the report, noting that the medical condition can last more than a year and can come with more than 200 possible symptoms, including extreme fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath, and affect 10 organ systems.

26 Aug 2021; MEMO: Turkey and the United Kingdom will cooperate to ensure regional stability, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said late yesterday following an explosion at Afghanistan's Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport, Anadolu Agency reports.

Taking to Twitter, Raab said that he spoke with his Turkish counterpart Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu over the phone about the security situation and strategic priorities in Afghanistan.