Europe

(Reuters) --- President Vladimir Putin has said Russia would be ready to hand over cyber criminals to the United States if Washington did the same for Moscow and the two powers reached an agreement to that effect.

Putin made the comments in an interview aired in excerpts on state television on Sunday ahead of a June 16 summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva. Ties between the powers are badly strained over an array of issues.

13 June 2021; MEMO: Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed in Vienna on Saturday as the European Union said negotiations were "intense" and Germany called for rapid progress, reports Reuters.

The sixth round of talks began as usual with a meeting of remaining parties to the deal – Iran, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany, and the European Union – in the basement of a luxury hotel.

VIENNA, June 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States should stop shilly-shallying by moving decisively to complete and thorough sanction-lifting, a Chinese envoy said Saturday as a new round of talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), started.

FALMOUTH, England (AP) — Britain accused European Union leaders on Sunday of holding the “offensive” view that Northern Ireland is not fully part of the United Kingdom, as Brexit cast a shadow over the Group of Seven summit.

Britain and the EU are in a spat over post-Brexit trade arrangements that could see British sausages banned from entering Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. that borders the 27-nation bloc. The dispute is raising political tensions in Northern Ireland, where some people identify as British and some as Irish.

VIENNA (AP) — European Union negotiators said international talks that resumed Saturday on the Iran nuclear agreement were on track to revive the deal, which crumbled after the United States withdrew in 2018.

Senior diplomats from China, Germany, France, Russia, and Britain concluded a 90-minute meeting with Iranian representatives at a hotel in the Austrian capital.

“We are making progress, but the negotiations are intense and a number of issues (remain), including on how steps are to be implemented,” EU representative Alain Matton told reporters in Vienna.

HELSINKI (AP) — Finland’s local elections Sunday are seen as a first test for its popular young Social Democratic Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who took office 18 months ago shortly before the pandemic and whose party is behind in the polls.

The vote to renew local councils in Finland’s more than 300 municipalities, from the northern Lapland region to the autonomous territory of Aland Islands in the south, is viewed as a key indication of parties’ popularity ahead of the country’s 2023 parliamentary election.

PRAGUE, June 12. /TASS/: Slovakia, which received the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine on March 1 and began using it on June 7, does not plan to purchase further batches of it, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivan Korcok said in an interview with French TV channel France-24.

According to him, the Slovak authorities are not planning new purchases of Sputnik V. There was not as significant interest in receiving vaccinations with the Russian drug as expected among the republic’s residents.

MOSCOW, June 12. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia increased by 13,510 per day to 5,193,964. This is the biggest increase since February 15, according to the data published on Saturday by the federal operational headquarters to combat coronavirus.

In relative terms, the increase in the number of cases was 0.26%.

The lowest growth rates were recorded in Russia’s Tuva Republic (0.04%), the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (0.05%).

MOSCOW, June 12. /TASS/: The number of people vaccinated against coronavirus in Russia has reached 18 mln people, while no cases of serious complications have been recorded. This suggests that vaccination in the country should be wider, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.

"It seems to me that this is quite convincing proof that vaccination should be wider," Putin said.

The volume of manufactured coronavirus vaccines in Russia makes it possible to vaccinate everyone who wants it, Putin said.

MOSCOW, June 12. /TASS/: The absence of plans to hold a joint press conference of the presidents of Russia and the United States - Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden - following the summit in Geneva on June 16 does not mean low expectations from this meeting, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.

"No, it absolutely does not," he said.