Europe

(Reuters) --- Armin Laschet, Chancellor Angela Merkel's would-be successor, desperately needs his Christian Democrats to win a regional vote on Sunday to avoid questions resurfacing about whether he is the right candidate to lead them into September's federal election.

The sparsely-populated eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt is home to just 2.2 million people, but Sunday's election has outsized significance as the last regional vote before Germans elect a government for the post-Merkel era on Sept. 26.

03 June 2021; MEMO: Europe is testing a "sound cannon" – which gives off a high-pitched noise as loud as a jet engine – to deter people arriving and seeking refuge, according to a video made by DW News which captures the truck and the sound.

Between 2021 and 2027 the EU plans to invest almost €35 million ($42.7 million) in border control, according to the report.

Besides the sound cannon they will buy cameras and drones and an Interrogation AI.

KIEV, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday discussed the security situation in Donbass with a delegation of visiting U.S. senators.

"This meeting is very important for us, as it reaffirms that the United States is our strategic partner. Especially now, at a very tense time," said Zelensky.

The senators said that the United States is closely monitoring the security situation in the east of the country and supports Ukraine in a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

LONDON, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Samples from a study suggesting that COVID-19 was circulating outside China by October 2019 have been re-tested at the World Health Organization's (WHO) request, a Reuters report quoted two scientists leading the research as saying on Tuesday.

While COVID-19 was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, a study published last year suggested antibodies to either the virus or a variant had been detected elsewhere prior to the first confirmed report of the virus in China.

PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech coalition government led by populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis was facing a parliamentary no-confidence vote Thursday over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Five opposition parties also requested the vote as prosecutors are looking into whether to indict Babis over alleged fraud involving European Union funds. A recently published EU report concluded that Babis has a conflict of interest over EU subsidies involving his former business empire in a separate case.

Babis denies any wrongdoing.

BERLIN (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled Thursday that Germany “systematically and persistently” exceeded limits on nitrogen dioxide, a harmful gas produced by diesel engines, in many regions between 2010 and 2016.

The European Court of Justice faulted Germany for exceeding annual limits on NO2 in 26 out of 89 areas assessed — including the Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Duesseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart areas. It found that hourly limits also were exceeded in Stuttgart and the Rhine-Main area, which includes Frankfurt.

LONDON (AP) — Buckingham Palace barred ethnic minorities from office jobs during the 1960s, the Guardian newspaper reported Thursday, citing documents in Britain’s National Archives.

The revelation, published on the newspaper’s front page, was based on papers showing that Queen Elizabeth II’s chief financial manager told civil servants in 1968 that it was not the palace’s practice to hire “coloured immigrants or foreigners” for clerical posts and other office jobs.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A dissident journalist arrested when Belarus diverted his flight said in a video from prison that he has been set up by an unidentified associate.

The footage of Raman Pratasevich was part of an hour-long TV program aired late Wednesday by the state-controlled ONT channel. In the film, the 26-year-old Pratasevich is also shown saying that protests against Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko are now pointless amid a tough crackdown and suggesting that the opposition wait for a more opportune moment.

02 June 2021; MEMO: Libya is at a crucial turning point in the political stabilisation process, Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, announced yesterday.

"To Italy, the Government of National Unity represents the whole Libyan nation, through which we can coordinate our investment plans on Libyan soil," Di Maio said during the Italian-Libyan Business Forum held in the Italian capital city of Rome.

02 June 2021; MEMO: The BBC has removed a series of educational videos about Palestine and the origins of the ongoing Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing, following pressure from a pro-Israel lobbyist organisation, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).