Europe

VIENNA, May 24. /TASS/: Lufthansa Group authorized its air carriers to fly via the Belarusian airspace, Austrian Airlines, a subsidiary of the German holding, told TASS on Monday.

MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/: Moscow is always ready to come to Minsk’s aid especially against the backdrop of the external pressure exerted over the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in the interview with the Argumenty i Facty newspaper.

MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/: Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has remained tight-lipped over the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk. He said the situation should be tackled by international civil aviation structures.

"Perhaps, I’ll have to say this right of the bat. I will not provide any comments on the Ryanair flight," he told journalists on Monday.

MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/: Russia has registered 8,406 new confirmed COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, bringing the total count to 5,009,911 cases, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told journalists on Monday.

According to the crisis center, the relative increase of new infections is at the level of 0.17%. The lowest daily growth rates were seen in the Republic of Tuva (0.03%) and the Kamchatka Region (0.04%).

MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent greetings to participants, organizers and guests of the 24th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, noting that Moscow is interested in closer economic, scientific, and technical cooperation with its foreign partners and ready to share experience in various areas.

The British far-right extremist Tommy Robinson joined a pro-Israel rally in London on Sunday, alongside an estimated 1,500 Zionists voicing their support for the occupation state. The counter-demonstration followed Saturday's pro-Palestine march in the capital where more than 200,000 people marched through the West End to a rally in Hyde Park. Demonstrations were held across Britain and around the world against the Israeli occupation and brutal military assault on Gaza.

(Reuters) --- The COVID-19 pandemic is being perpetuated by a "scandalous inequity" in vaccine distribution, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday as he set new targets for protecting people in the poorest countries.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that no country should assume that it's "out of the woods", no matter its vaccination rate, as long as the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants spread elsewhere.

(Reuters) --- Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson is critically ill after being shot in the head in south London in the early hours of Sunday, her political party said.

London's Metropolitan Police appealed for witnesses after offices found a woman, who they said was thought to be in her 20s, suffering a gunshot injury in Peckham.

Police said the woman, who they have not named, remained in hospital with life-threatening injuries.

(Reuters) --- The Scottish government is facing a new legal challenge over its February rejection of a motion to investigate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s all-cash purchases of two golf courses, reviving an effort to force Trump to disclose how he financed the deals.

(Reuters) --- European leaders threatened to limit international air traffic over Belarus and possibly target its ground transport as well, after a Ryanair plane was forced to land in an incident denounced by Western countries as "state piracy".

Western leaders reached for the strongest language to condemn Sunday's incident, in which a Belarusian warplane intercepted a flight between Greece and Lithuania and forced it down in Minsk, where a dissident journalist was arrested.