Europe

SOFIA, July 15 (NNN-Xinhua) — The recently established There Is Such A People party has won the snap parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, ending the 12-year dominance of the GERB party, according to final results announced on Thursday.

There Is Such A People, which was founded in 2019 by the TV host and singer Slavi Trifonov, received 24.08 percent of the votes at the elections on Sunday, and will have 65 seats in the 240-member National Assembly, the Central Election Commission said.

14 July 2021; MEMO: A surge of coronavirus cases in several Middle Eastern countries could have dire consequences, aggravated by the spread of the Delta variant and low vaccine availability, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

15 July 2021; MEMO: The Palestinian affairs specialist for BBC Monitoring, Tala Halawa, was fired last month over a tweet criticising the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2014, three years before being hired by the British news outlet.

MOSCOW, July 15 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's government to help Belarus weather western sanctions imposed during Minsk's crackdown on political opponents, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko travelled to Russia, a close ally, to hold talks with Putin on Tuesday. The European Union and United States have imposed punitive measures on Belarus in recent months.

BUCHAREST, July 15 (Reuters) - A Black Hawk helicopter belonging to the U.S. military made an emergency landing on a Bucharest street on Thursday, tearing down two public street lights and stopping traffic but making no casualties.

The helicopter was part of a group of six which were rehearsing ahead of events to mark Romanian Air Force day and the end of Romanian military presence in Afghanistan on July 20-21. Footage from eyewitnesses show it suddenly losing altitude and flying low above cars until landing nearby in a downtown roundabout which traffic police had cleared.

BRUSSELS, July 15 (Reuters) - The European Union's top court ruled on Thursday that Poland's system for disciplining judges undercuts the bloc's laws, part of an escalating battle over democratic rules that risks Warsaw losing some of its key development funding.

Poland's ruling nationalists set up a disciplinary chamber at the Supreme Court in a sweeping overhaul of the judiciary already condemned by the Brussels-based EU executive, which acts as the guardian of laws across the bloc's 27 member states.

BRUSSELS, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Wednesday unveiled a comprehensive roadmap for realizing the European Union's (EU) ambitious target of reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and to become climate-neutral by 2050.

The massive package of legislative updates, dubbed "Fit for 55," was presented by the EU's climate policy chief Frans Timmermans, who said that the EU aimed to "give humanity a fighting chance."

BERLIN (AP) — More than 20 people have died and dozens of people are missing in Germany and neighboring Belgium after heavy flooding turned streams and streets into raging torrents, sweeping away cars and causing buildings to collapse.

Storms across parts of western Europe in recent days caused rivers and reservoirs to burst their banks, resulting in flash floods as rain-soaked soil failed to absorb any more water.

LONDON (AP) — Here’s some of what happened while the world was distracted by the coronavirus: Hungary banned the public depiction of homosexuality. China shut Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper. Brazil’s government extolled dictatorship. And Belarus hijacked a passenger plane to arrest a journalist.

COVID-19 has absorbed the world’s energies and isolated countries from one another, which may have accelerated the creep of authoritarianism and extremism across the globe, some researchers and activists believe.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Russia’s United Engine Corporation (part of the Rostec state tech corporation) delivered two AL-55I turbojet engines to India’s HAL Corporation for the final stage of certification tests of the Indian HJT-36 combat trainer plane, the Rostec press office announced on Wednesday.

The United Engine Corporation carried out work to bolster the potential of the two engines that had logged over 5,000 hours of operation during bench tests. The customer’s representatives were present at the acceptance/delivery trials, the press office said in a statement.