Europe

REYKJAVIK. Iceland (AP) — The Biden administration is leading a campaign against Russian attempts to assert authority over Arctic shipping and reintroduce a military dimension to discussions over international activity in the area.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The sight of hundreds of migrants swimming or climbing fences separating the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from the rest of Africa this week is a stark reminder of just how dependent the European Union can be on the whims of countries it chooses to pay to enforce its migration policy.

Since well over 1 million migrants entered the EU in 2015, most of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, the world’s biggest trading bloc has spent vast sums trying to ensure that migrants no longer set out for Europe on arduous overland treks or dangerous sea journeys.

20 May 2021; MEMO: Spain has sent around 4,800 of the 8,000 migrants who crossed into its African enclave of Ceuta back to Morocco, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said yesterday.

Relative calm has returned to the beaches of Ceuta where a record influx of migrants had arrived on its shores from Morocco starting Monday, after Moroccan security forces appeared to relax border controls.

Paris, May 20 (AP-PTI) Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy goes on trial on Thursday on charges that his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid was illegally financed, a scandal that has thrown his conservative party into turmoil.

Sarkozy, 66, is facing allegations that he spent almost twice the maximum legal amount of 22.5 million euros ( 27.5 million) on the presidential race he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande. He has denied wrongdoing.

MINSK, May 19. /TASS/: The Department of Internal Security of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus initiated criminal cases over death threats and insults towards Prosecutor General Andrey Shved, the Office announced Wednesday.

MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/: Russia’s Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) has ratified a Russian-Kazakh agreement on defense cooperation, signed at a meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers, Sergei Shoigu and Nurlan Yermekbayev, in October 2020.

According to the agreement, Russia and Kazakhstan will cooperate on a wide range of issues, including military education and training, the supply of weapons and equipment, bilateral and multilateral drills and peacekeeping activities.

GENEVA, May 19. /TASS/: Over 4.8 million novel coronavirus cases and over 85,000 deaths were registered worldwide in the past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said a weekly bulletin released in Geneva early on Wednesday.

MINSK, May 19. /TASS/: Two pilots were killed after a Yak-130 combat training plane of the Belarusian Air Force crashed near Baranovichi in the western Brest Region, the republic’s Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday.

"A Yak-130 military plane based out of the Lida assault aviation base has crashed near Baranovichi. Unfortunately, both pilots have died. There are no other victims or damage. The Emergencies Ministry’s forces have eliminated the consequences of the crash," the ministry said in a statement.

MOSCOW, May 19./TASS/: Russia knows for sure that the registration of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine is stalled by ‘signals from the corridors of power’ in Brussels, Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, told Channel One television on Wednesday. This is immoral amid the pandemic, he stressed.

19 May 2021; MEMO: Morocco was justified in relaxing controls at the border between it and Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta in view of Madrid's decision to admit a sick Western Sahara independence leader to hospital, Reuters reported a minister in Rabat suggesting.

Around 8,000 migrants entered the enclave on Monday and Tuesday by swimming in or climbing over the fence, and Spain deployed troops there to patrol the border.