Europe

PARIS (AP) — A French Holocaust survivor has denounced anti-vaccination protesters comparing themselves to Jews who were persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. French officials and anti-racism groups joined the 94-year-old in expressing indignation.

BERLIN (AP) — German officials are defending their preparations for flooding in the face of the raging torrents that caught many people by surprise and left over 190 people dead in Western Europe, but they concede that they will need to learn lessons from the disaster.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: The United States’ actions in Afghanistan in the past 20 years can hardly be called logical, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

SEVASTOPOL, July 16. /TASS/: The crew of the Black Sea Fleet’s Project 636.3 Varshavyanka-class diesel-electric submarine Kolpino practiced breaching a notional enemy’s minefields in drills, the Fleet’s press office reported on Friday.

"The crews of the Black Sea Fleet’s submarine Kolpino and the minesweeper Ivan Golubets held a joint exercise to breach a minefield set up by the notional enemy’s warships in the Black Sea," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: The ministers of OPEC+ countries agreed to extend the agreement until the end of 2022 with the main parameter of the deal - the production baseline - changing for some countries at a meeting on Sunday, a source participating in the talks told TASS.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: Russia is implementing the United Nations Security Council resolution when it holds contacts with the Taliban (a radical movement outlawed in Russia), which is listed as a participant in the intra-Afghan talks in this resolution, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

MOSCOW, July 18. /TASS/: Oil production in Russia will reach the pre-crisis level in May 2022, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Sunday.

"It was decided to increase [oil] production to the pre-crisis level. As for Russia, we will reach the pre-crisis level already in May 2022," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

BRUSSELS, July 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — European Union leaders celebrated their coronavirus vaccination programme reaching a higher proportion of its people than in the US, which had outpaced the bloc for months.

“We promised it and it’s done. The EU this week overtook the US as the continent with the most first doses in the world,” Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote on Twitter.

Citing statistics website Our World in Data, France’s Europe minister Clement Beaune wrote that the EU had now given 55.5 percent of people a first dose, compared with 55.4 across the Atlantic.

YEREVAN, July 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Armenia’s constitutional court has ruled that the result of last month’s parliamentary elections, won by the party of acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, be upheld.

Pashinyan’s party won 53.91 per cent of the June 20 vote with former President Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia political bloc, which had challenged the result, trailing with 21.9 per cent.

International observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had said the elections were competitive and generally well-managed.

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Britain is backing 15 new studies into the treatment and diagnosis of "long COVID", a condition that can include dozens of symptoms and last for months after an initial bout of infection with COVID-19.

The projects, which will have nearly 20 million pounds ($27.54 million) of government funding, will focus on better understanding the condition, identifying effective treatments and the best ways to care for those suffering from it.