Europe

LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) - A British police officer on Friday admitted murdering Sarah Everard, whose killing sparked anger, protests and soul-searching across the country about what the authorities and society could do to stop male violence against women.

Wayne Couzens, 48, a serving London officer who guarded diplomatic premises, had previously admitted rape and kidnap.

VILNIUS, July 9 (Reuters) - Lithuania began building a 550-km (320-mile) razor wire barrier on its border with Belarus on Friday after accusing Belarusian authorities of flying in migrants from abroad to send illegally into the European Union.

The government said the military-style wire coil would cost 4.9 million euros ($5.81 million) to put up and run along most of the frontier, which passes over sparsely populated areas and large stretches of forest and marsh.

Cairo, Jul 9 (AP-PTI) The anti-poverty organisation Oxfam says 11 people die of hunger each minute and that the number facing famine-like conditions around the globe has increased six times over the last year.

In a report titled The Hunger Virus Multiplies," Oxfam said Thursday that the death toll from famine outpaces that of COVID-19, which kills around seven people per minute.

ZAGREB, July 8 (Xinhua) -- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said here on Thursday that her institution had approved Croatia's recovery and resilience plan.

"This is a great plan, which has the largest share of GDP (gross domestic product) compared to all other EU member states and is very ambitious," she said while attending a session of the Croatian government.

The plan balances investment and reforms in the economy, administration and health care. Von der Leyen especially praised Croatia for earmarking 20 percent of the funds to digitalization.

LONDON, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trial of the CoronaVac vaccine in more than 10,000 participants in Turkey suggests the efficacy of two doses of the vaccine is 83.5 percent against symptomatic cases of COVID-19, according to a study published on Thursday in The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union handed down $1 billion in fines to major German car manufacturers Thursday, saying they colluded to limit the development and rollout of car emission-control systems.

Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen along with its Audi and Porsche divisions avoided competing on technology to restrict pollution from gasoline and diesel passenger cars, the EU’s executive commission said. Daimler wasn’t fined after it revealed the cartel to the European Commission.

BUCHAREST (AP) — Moldovan voters go to the polls this weekend in a snap parliamentary election that could decide whether the former Soviet republic fully embraces pro-Western reforms or prolongs a political impasse under strong Russian influence.

The landlocked country of 3.5 million — Europe’s poorest, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine — has in recent years lurched from one political crisis to another, dogged by instability and stuck in geopolitical limbo between pro-Western and pro-Russia forces.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A small plane carrying skydivers crashed outside the Swedish town of Orebro on Thursday night, killing nine people, police said.

The dead included the pilot and eight passengers, police said.

Spokesperson Carl-Johan Linde of the Swedish Maritime Administration, which oversees air traffic, told broadcaster SVT the crash must have occurred “in connection” with the plane’s takeoff.

The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority dispatched a team to the the accident site outside Orebro, which sits 164 kilometers (102 miles) west of Stockholm.

MOSCOW, July 8. /TASS/: A Be-200 amphibious plane of Russia’s naval aviation has departed for Turkey to help fight wildfires, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Thursday.

"On the instruction of the president of the Russian Federation, Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergey Shoigu has sent a Be-200 amphibious plane of the Russian Navy’s naval aviation to help the Turkish Republic extinguish fires," the ministry said in a statement.

VLADIVOSTOK, July 8. /TASS/: Moscow has responded harshly to Japan’s nervous reaction to Russia’s development of the southern Kuril Islands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at Far Eastern Federal University on Thursday.