Europe

LONDON, June 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Coronavirus-related deaths worldwide passed a grim milestone of 4 million on Thursday as many countries struggle to procure enough vaccines to inoculate their populations.

While the number of new cases and deaths have abated in countries like the United States and Britain, several nations have vaccine shortages as the Delta variant becomes the dominant strain around the world.

It took more than a year for the COVID-19 death toll to hit 2 million, while the next 2 million were recorded in just 166 days.

BERLIN, June 18 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling conservatives will promise "a decade of modernisation" on Monday in an election programme intended to see off the fading challenge of their Green Party rivals.

The manifesto will counter the Greens' offer of a "new start" and show the conservatives closing ranks after a divisive battle over who should be their candidate to replace Merkel, who will step down as chancellor after a Sept. 26 federal election.

OSLO, June 18 (Reuters) - Norway will begin on Sunday the third major phase of its plan to reopen society from the pandemic as COVID-19 infections continue to decline, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Friday.

From June 20, Norwegians will be allowed to receive up to 20 guests in their homes, double the current level, while bars and restaurants will no longer have to close at midnight, she said.

"Norway is on track and we're ready for step three," Solberg told a news conference.

BARCELONA/MADRID, June 18 (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is poised to pardon the jailed leaders of Catalonia's failed 2017 independence bid, betting the time has come for a political gamble that he hopes will ultimately cement his legacy.

Opinion polls show about 60% of Spaniards - as well as all the country's main opposition parties - oppose freeing the nine politicians and activists sentenced to long terms in 2019 for their role in the chaotic and at times violent events that triggered Spain's biggest political crisis in decades.

LANZAROTE, Spain, June 18 (Reuters) - More than 40 African migrants were rescued after their boat ran aground on the rocky coast of Lanzarote in Spain's Canary Islands late on Thursday, emergency services said, while over 100 people on two more boats made it safely to other islands.

At least three people died and at least two more were missing, including a six-year old girl. Rescue workers with a helicopter were searching the coast around Lanzarote's northern region of Muelle de Orzola for them on Friday morning.

LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered an embarrassing defeat in a election on the outskirts of London on Friday, when his governing Conservative Party lost a previously safe parliamentary seat to the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives had comfortably held the leafy, affluent Chesham and Amersham constituency in southern England since its creation in 1974, capturing more than 50% of the vote on every occasion. At the last poll in 2019, Conservative Cheryl Gillan, who died this year, won by a majority of 16,223 votes.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has now given at least one coronavirus vaccine shot to more than half its population but officials urged people Friday to remain cautious and slow the spread of the more contagious delta variant.

COVID-19 infections have declined sharply in Germany over the past few weeks, on some days dropping below 1,000 per day for the first time since September. On Friday, the national disease control center said 1,076 new cases were reported in the past 24 hours, and there were only 10.3 cases per 100,000 residents over the past week.

17 June 2021; MEMO: People across Spain are calling for more to be done to address racism in the country after the brutal murder of a Moroccan immigrant in the southern region of Murcia, Anadolu Agency reports.

Younes Bilal, 37, was shot point-blank range by a former military officer while spending time with friends at a cafe in the town of Mazarron on Sunday, according to local media reports.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency says war, violence, persecution and human rights violations caused nearly 3 million people to flee their homes last year, even though the COVID-19 crisis restricted movement worldwide as countries shut borders and ordered lockdowns.

In its latest Global Trends report released on Friday, UNHCR says the cumulative total of displaced people has risen to 82.4 million — roughly the population of Germany. It marks the ninth straight annual increase in the number of people forcibly displaced.

LONDON (AP) — Scotch single malt whisky makers breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after the United States agreed to suspend tariffs on one of Scotland’s main exports in the wake of the resolution of a long-standing transatlantic trade row over subsidies to aircraft companies Boeing and Airbus.

President Donald Trump imposed the 25% tariffs on select products of the European Union, including Scotch single malt whiskies, in October 2019 as part of the trade dispute. While the U.K. is no longer an EU member, it belonged to the bloc when the tariffs were introduced.