Europe

MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/: The Russian COVID-19 Sputnik V jab is in high demand all over the world due to its high efficiency and safety, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev stated on the Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday.

"We definitely see an absolutely excessive demand for the Russian vaccine across the world, and this is due to the fact that it shows the best results both in terms of efficiency and safety," Dmitriev said.

BERLIN, May 30. /TASS/: President of the European Union Parliament David Sassoli has called for tightening anti-Russian sanctions, he said in an interview published in the newspapers of Germany’s Funke media group on Sunday.

"We have to tighten the sanctions against Russian officials, but also establish closer contacts with the population and civil society and support Russian dissidents, NGOs and independent media," Sassoli said.

MINSK, May 30. /TASS/: Opposition blogger Roman Protasevich, who was detained at an airport in Minsk, is in a detention facility of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB), and has received the first delivery from his relatives, the Vesna human rights center unregistered in the country said on its Telegram channel.

"Roman Protasevich has been transferred to the KGB detention facility," the report said on Sunday. "There is also information that the first delivery from his sister has arrived, but a book was taken away," it noted.

MADRID, May 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — International cruise ships will be able to dock in Spanish ports from June 7, the Spanish government said, lifting a ban imposed when the Covid-19 pandemic began.

The measure will be lifted due to the easing of the virus in Europe where most cruise passengers come from, as well as rising vaccination numbers, a transport ministry statement said.

It was also due to the falling numbers of virus cases in regions where most cruise ships dock.

(Reuters) --- Russia will move ahead with a second $500 million loan to Belarus next month, following talks between the two countries' leaders amid uproar in the West over the grounding of a passenger jet in Minsk and the arrest of a dissident blogger.

President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko held a second day of talks, as well as a yacht tour, in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Saturday, as the Russian leader showed his longstanding ally support in this latest standoff with the West.

(Reuters) --- The decision to lift final lockdown measures in England on June 21 will be made after data on infection, hospitalisation, vaccination and new variants are assessed, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Sunday.

"We will share the evidence with the country on the 14th of June to basically explain exactly where we are on infection rates, on hospitalisation, and of course, sadly, on deaths," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr.

"We have to be cautious; we have to look at the data and share it with the country."

ROME (AP) — The three suspects in Italy’s cable car disaster that killed 14 people were allowed to leave prison Sunday after a judge indicated that most of the blame fell on a service technician who intentionally disabled the car’s emergency brake because it kept locking spontaneously.

Judge Donatella Banci Buonamici said there wasn’t sufficient evidence suggesting the owner of the Mottarone cable car company, Luigi Nerini, or the maintenance chief, Enrico Perocchio, knew the technician had deactivated the brake on several occasions even before the May 23 disaster.

MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/: Kabul is ready to purchase weapons from Moscow, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Russia Said Tayeb Jawad said in an interview with TASS.

"We are hoping that Russia will consider repairing the existing Russian equipment, especially helicopters," the ambassador said.

"Our cadets are getting training here, especially from the Ministry of Interior, which is good," he noted.

The diplomat also expressed hope that Russia would provide an opportunity for Afghanistan to train its pilots and mechanical engineers.

MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/: Russia has documented 9,289 cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total case count to 5,053,748, the federal anti-coronavirus crisis center informed reporters on Saturday.

The relative daily increased rate reached 0.18%.

In the past 24 hours, 3,241 COVID-19 cases were documented in Moscow, 846 in St. Petersburg, 750 in the Moscow Region, 180 in the Rostov Region, 149 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 148 in the Voronezh Region.

Currently, there are 262,457 active cases of COVID-19 in Russia.

PRAGUE, May 29. /TASS/: Fifty-four employees of the Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic laid off by the Czech government have left the country on Saturday, Russian Embassy Spokesperson Nikolai Bryakin told TASS.

"The first group of 54 employees of the Russian Embassy in Prague laid off on the initiative of the Czech side, accompanied by their family members, left the territory of the Czech Republic," he said.

The second group of embassy employees and their families is set to leave the Czech Republic on May 31.