Europe

BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) - German police have arrested a British man who worked at the British embassy in Berlin on suspicion of passing documents to the Russian intelligence service in exchange for cash, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

German prosecutors said that the apartment and workplace of the man, identified only as David S., had been searched and he would be brought before an investigating judge later on Wednesday.

British police said the man was 57.

MOSCOW, August 10. /TASS/: Speculations by Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Reznikov about reparations Russia might be urged to pay for Crimea's reunification indicate that the authorities in Kiev are becoming aware that the peninsula has been hopelessly lost, the chairman of the State Duma's committee for CIS affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, Leonid Kalashnikov, told TASS on Tuesday.

ROME, August 10. /TASS/: Antibodies to coronavirus after receiving a second dose of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine were developed by 99% of the participants of a joint study by San Marino’s government and Italy’s Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, representative of San Marino’s Institute for Social Security Franco Cavalli told TASS.

BELGRADE, August 10. /TASS/: The Serbian-Russian Economic Forum will take place in Belgrade on October 4-5, the press service Nenad Popovic, the minister in charge of innovation and technology in the Serbian government, head of the intergovernmental committee for cooperation with Russia, announced on Tuesday.

The event is sponsored by the Serbian government, the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and the Russian Export Center.

It is noted that the forum will be the largest of all those held earlier.

RIGA, August 10. /TASS/: The Latvian government approved the proposal of Interior Minister Marija Golubeva to impose a state of emergency along the border with Belarus over an inflow of illegal migrants at a session on Tuesday. The state of emergency will stay in place until November 10.

"The government decision to introduce a state of emergency on the Latvian border has been passed. Security measures on the border will be stepped up immediately," the minister said in a tweet.

GENEVA, Aug 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Guinea confirmed a case of Marburg disease, the World Health Organization said on Monday, the first recorded in West Africa of the lethal virus that’s related to Ebola and, like Covid-19, passed from animal hosts to humans.

The virus, which is carried by bats and has a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, was found in samples taken from a patient who died on Aug 2 in southern Gueckedou prefecture, the WHO said.

OSLO, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Norway's centre-left opposition parties are expected to defeat the incumbent Conservative-led coalition government by a two-to-one margin in next month's election for parliament, a new opinion poll showed on Tuesday.

The Sept. 13 vote could thus end Prime Minister Erna Solberg's quest for a third consecutive term and instead give Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Stoere a chance to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with left-leaning groups.

BRUSSELS, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Six EU member states have sent a letter to the bloc's executive warning against halting deportations of rejected Afghan asylum seekers despite major advances of Taliban militants in their country.

The Taliban, fighting to reimpose strict Islamic law after their 2001 ouster, have made sweeping gains in their campaign to defeat the government as U.S.-led foreign forces pull out, capturing a sixth provincial capital on Monday.

BERLIN, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- BioNTech's revenues jumped to 5.3 billion euros (6.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the second quarter (Q2) of this year, up from 42 million euros in the same period last year, the German biotechnology company announced on Monday.

The company's estimated net income in Q2 skyrocketed to 2.8 billion euros due to sales from its COVID-19 vaccine, following losses of 88.3 million euros in the prior-year period, according to BioNTech.

BioNTech, together with Pfizer, delivered more than one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide in the first half of 2021.

KIEV, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Kiev on Aug. 22, Ukrainian president's press secretary said on his official Facebook page on Monday.

"Federal Chancellor of Germany, Mrs. Angela Merkel intends to visit Ukraine on August 22. The topics of the discussions: security, bilateral relations, and other pressing issues," Serhiy Nikiforov wrote.

On July 12, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Merkel in Berlin during an official visit to Germany.