Europe

VALLETTA, June 19 (NNN-Xinhua) — The number of migrants arriving in Malta by boat dropped by one-third in 2020, the country’s statistics office said on Friday.

The National Statistics Office said that the number of migrants arriving in Malta dropped by 33 percent to 2,281 from the previous year’s number of 3,405.

The office said that almost 85 percent of the people brought to shore were citizens of African countries while the remaining were citizens of Asian countries.

19 June 2021; MEMO: French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Friday welcomed what he described as the end of verbal altercations between Paris and Ankara, and demanded in return real initiatives from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a series of contentious issues.

Le Drian told BFM TV: "There is a truce in verbal attacks. It is a good thing, but it is not enough," considering that the bilateral ties between the two sides are "in a stage of recovery".

GENEVA, June 18 (Reuters) - The Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Friday.

Soumya Swaminathan also voiced disappointment in the failure of CureVac’s (5CV.DE) vaccine candidate in a trial to meet the WHO’s efficacy standard, in particular as highly transmissible variants boost the need for new, effective shots.

BERLIN, June 18 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron called on Friday for European Union countries to coordinate their COVID-19 border reopening policies and guard against new variants of the virus.

Macron said EU countries must be careful not to allow new variants to spread, adding that the EU was watching developments in Britain, which has seen a steep rise in the weekly reported cases of the Delta variant. 

MOSCOW, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Nine people were killed after a plane made an emergency landing in Russia's Kemerovo Oblast in southwestern Siberia, according to media reports on Saturday.

"According to my information, two crew members and seven paratroopers were killed, that is, a total of nine people," TASS news agency reported, citing the Kemerovo branch of the Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation, and Navy (DOSAAF).

"There were 17 parachutists and two crew members on board," the source said.

BRUSSELS, June 18 (Xinhua) -- The relationship between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) is at a crossroads, warned Maros Sefcovic, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of inter-institutional relations and foresight, on Friday.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia’s leader is facing a tough challenge at the polls after a humiliating defeat for Armenian forces in last year’s fighting with Azerbaijan over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the early election for Sunday, seeking to assuage public anger over the peace deal he signed in November that triggered months of protests demanding his resignation.

MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/: Russia will completely withdraw from the Treaty on Open Skies on December 18, 2021, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

"Russia has notified all the member states about its decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty six months after sending a notice. Therefore, this will occur on December 18, 2021," the statement says.

MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/: Almost 42,000 people signed up for vaccination against coronavirus in Moscow over the past day, which is four times more than usual, Anastasia Rakova, deputy mayor of the capital for social development, told reporters on Friday.

SIMFEROPOL, June 18. /TASS/: About 90 single-family homes and apartment houses have been flooded in Yalta, a resort city in Crimea, after heavy rains, and rescuers have evacuated 49 people, the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s Main Directorate in Crimea reported on Friday.