Europe

YEREVAN, August 18. /TASS/: Armenia is willing to restart the negotiating process at the highest level to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Wednesday at a government meeting.

"The OSCE Minsk Group has repeatedly said that the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiating process should be resumed in full. We welcome these statements and this position and are ready to participate in the talks at the highest level," he said.

BERLIN, August 18. /TASS/: Afghanistan, Belarus and Ukraine will be the focus of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Moscow on Friday, August 20, Germany’s Government Spokesperson Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday.

"It will definitely be about major international issues: the conflict in eastern Ukraine, for which Russia can do more than it is doing, and Belarus," he said.

When asked if Afghanistan will be touched upon, he said, "I would expect so."

18 Aug 2021; MEMO: EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has said that the European bloc should talk with the Taliban movement in Afghanistan because it won the war there, Anadolu has reported.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 20,914 in the past 24 hours, reaching 6,663,473, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Wednesday.

The relative growth rate stands at 0.31%.

St. Petersburg reported 1,636 new cases, Moscow — 1,590, the Moscow Region — 1,240, the Nizhny Novgorod Region — 521 and the Smolensk Region — 516.

The number of patients who are undergoing treatment has dropped for the first time since June 3 and currently stands at 551,527, based on data provided by the crisis center.

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/: The West is leaving behind a new humanitarian and political crisis in Afghanistan as its legacy to the world and to future generations, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

"At present, we are seeing once again that the Western community, which is safeguarding some of its own Western values, is again bequeathing yet another crisis to the world and to future generations," the Russian diplomat said in an interview with the Solovyov-Live YouTube channel.

LONDON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The world should give the Taliban the space to form a new government in Afghanistan and may discover that the insurgents cast as militants by the West for decades have become more reasonable, the head of the British army said on Wednesday.

The leaders of the Taliban will show themselves to the world, an official of the Islamist movement said on Wednesday, unlike during the last 20 years, when its leaders have lived largely in secret. 

VALLETTA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - One of Malta’s wealthiest businessmen, Yorgen Fenech, has been indicted for the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, prosecutors said in court documents filed on Wednesday.

No date for the trial has yet been set.

Fenech has been under arrest since November 2019, accused of complicity to murder. He has since been undergoing a pre-trial compilation of evidence where he pleaded not guilty.

BERLIN, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Germany's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) have overtaken the Greens and are closing the gap with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives less than six weeks before a federal election, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday.

Support for the conservative bloc led by Armin Laschet, who has been widely seen as frontrunner to succeed Merkel as chancellor after the Sept. 26 election, has ebbed since the end of June, when it was polling at 28%-30%.

VILNIUS, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The European Union has a responsibility to accept Afghan refugees and cannot leave people who worked for the bloc in Afghanistan to "face revenge", European Parliament President David Sassoli said on Wednesday.

He said refugees arriving from Afghanistan, which is now in the hands of the Taliban, should be distributed evenly among EU member states.

LONDON, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Britain reported another 170 coronavirus-related deaths, the highest number of fatalities recorded in one day since March 12, according to official figures released Tuesday.

The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 131,149. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

Another 26,852 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 6,322,241.