Europe

PRAGUE, Aug 9 (Reuters) - The Czech government delayed appointing a new head of its BIS counterintelligence agency on Monday in a move seen as allowing Prime Minister Andrej Babis to keep the country's president on his side going into an October election.

President Milos Zeman has attacked the BIS's work on numerous occasions, berating it for warning about the intelligence activities of his Chinese and Russian allies in the country.

BRUSSELS, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Calling for "massive" pressure to fight climate change after Monday's dire report by a U.N. science panel, activist Greta Thunberg said she plans to go to this year’s global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, after all.

The major U.N. conference will test countries' ambition to limit global warming, which a landmark scientific report on Monday warned was dangerously close to escalating beyond the limits countries agreed on.

KYIV/LONDON/WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - A defiant President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday a Belarusian sprinter defected at the Olympic Games only because she had been "manipulated" by outside forces and shrugged off a coordinated barrage of new Western sanctions.

At an hours-long news conference on the anniversary of an election which opponents said was rigged so that he could win, Lukashenko denied being a dictator and said he had defended Belarus against opponents plotting a coup.

LONDON, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- Many of the top universities in Britian have refused to bring back full face-to-face teaching in the autumn, despite government advice that they can lift all COVID-19 restrictions, local media reported Sunday.

According to The Sunday Times report, 20 of the leading 24 Russell Group universities said a proportion of undergraduate teaching will continue to be held online, which means they will offer blended learning to mix the online and face-to-face teaching for classes, seminars and lectures.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian leader on Monday charged that the opposition was plotting a coup in the runup to last year’s presidential election that triggered a monthslong wave of mass protests demanding his resignation.

President Alexander Lukashenko held his annual press conference on Monday, the one-year anniversary of the vote that handed him a sixth term in office but was denounced by the opposition and the West as rigged.

In his opening remarks, Lukashenko defended the election and accused the opposition of preparing a coup.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Firefighters and residents battled a massive forest fire on Greece’s second largest island for a seventh day Monday, fighting to save what they can from flames that have decimated vast tracts of pristine forest, destroyed homes and businesses and sent thousands fleeing.

The smoke and ash from the fire on Evia, a rugged island of forests and coves almost touching the Greek mainland, blocked out the sun, turning the sky orange as the blaze rampaged across the northern part of the island.

BERLIN (AP) — A U.N.-appointed panel of experts is releasing a key report Monday summarizing the latest authoritative scientific information on climate change.

The report will provide governments with up-to-date facts on the current impacts and future risks of global warming ahead of a U.N. climate summit in November in Glasgow.

It will also examine how various options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will affect the pace of climate change over the coming decades.

MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/: Names of star constellations may be used to denote new strains of the novel coronavirus if Greek letters currently used for the purpose are not enough, WHO’s technical chief for COVID-19, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, told The Telegraph.

"We’re actually considering star constellations," she said, adding that the option of naming coronavirus variants after Greek gods and goddesses was also considered, but rejected.

In Kerkhove’s opinion, the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet may not be enough to denote emerging variants of interest or concern.

MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/: Russia has registered 22,866 new confirmed COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours. The total number of infections has reached 6,447,750 cases, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told journalists on Sunday.

According to the crisis center, the relative increase of new infections is at the level of 0.36%.

MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin will participate in a video conference within the framework of the United Nations Security Council on maritime security conducted at the initiative of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, the Kremlin press service reported on Sunday.