Europe

DONETSK, August 1. /TASS/: Four militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) were killed in the Ukrainian armed forces’ shelling on Friday, the DPR Defense Ministry reported on Saturday.

"The Ukrainian army opened fire in the area of the settlement of Petrovskoye yesterday evening. One DPR fighter was wounded. The ambulance vehicle that was sent to evacuate him was also attacked," the statement says.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin warned about provocations being plotted from outside at the upcoming parliamentary elections in September 2021 and presidential elections in 2024 in Russia.

"Our opponents are preparing to the fullest," Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said in a live broadcast of the Solovyov Live YouTube channel shown on the Rossiya-1 TV Channel.

"This will be both in 2021 and 2024, of course," Naryshkin said in response to a question about when such provocations might be staged.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: New confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia grew by 22,804 in the past 24 hours to 6,288,677, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

The relative coronavirus growth rate equaled 0.36%, the latest figures show.

In particular, 1,911 new coronavirus cases were registered in St. Petersburg, 1,658 in the Moscow Region, 535 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 520 in the Sverdlovsk Region and 486 in the Voronezh Region in the past day, the latest figures show.

MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/: Clinical trials of another Russian coronavirus vaccine, Betuvax-CoV-2 developed by the Institute of Human Stem Cells, may begin in September after a Russian health ministry issues a corresponding permit, the press service of the National Technological Initiative (NTI) Platform told TASS on Sunday.

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Britain's Finance Minister Rishi Sunak has pressed for an easing of travel restrictions to offer respite to the tourism sector amid concerns that the country is not reaping the benefit of its vaccination programme, the Sunday Times reported.

Sunak had written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning of the impact that Britain's strict border controls were having ahead a meeting of ministers on Thursday to consider changes, the newspaper said, citing a source familiar with the letter.

The Treasury declined to comment.

MILAN, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Italy reported five coronavirus-related deaths on Sunday, down from 16 the day before, the health ministry said, and the daily tally of new infections fell to 5,321 from 6,513.

Italy has registered 128,068 deaths linked to COVID-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eighth-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.355 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 1,954 on Sunday, up from 1,851 a day earlier.

MOSCOW, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Russian cosmonauts have given a video tour of the interior of a research module which briefly threw the International Space Station out of control on Thursday a few hours after docking.

Russian space officials said a software glitch and possible lapse in human attention were to blame for the mishap that caused the entire space station to pitch out of its normal flight position 250 miles above the Earth with seven crew members aboard.

MOSCOW, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) agree that the COVID-19 origin tracing should not be politicized, Sputnik reported Friday citing Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program.

"The one consistent thing we've heard from all countries has been 'let's not politicize the science,' and the next thing that happens is the science is politicized," Ryan said.

01 Aug 2021; AA: For the third week in a row, anti-vaccine and anti-health pass demonstrations continued in France amid rising COVID-19 infection rates.

Saturday’s protests, according to the Interior Ministry, saw an estimated 184 rallies with 204,090 demonstrators across the country, a figure higher than the previous weeks.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: The likelihood of displacing the Delta strain of coronavirus with the Lambda variant is doubtful, a representative of the Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology told TASS.

Earlier, Japanese biologists discovered that the lambda strain has a stronger infectivity and is able to hide from the immune system.