Europe

(Reuters) --- The European Union is willing to discuss a proposal, now backed by the United States, to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.

The head of the EU executive said the bloc's vaccination effort was accelerating, with 30 Europeans inoculated per second, while exporting more than 200 million vaccine doses to the rest of the world.

(Reuters) --- Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Russia was considering supplying 1 million shots of the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to Armenia, the RIA new agency reported.

Russia had already sent 15,000 doses of the vaccine to the former Soviet republic last month, Lavrov was quoted as saying at a meeting with his Armenian counterpart.

Armenia's population is fewer than 3 million people.

(Reuters) --- The European Union on Thursday added Israel to the list of countries who's citizens will be allowed to visit for leisure, as Europe seeks to revive travel and salvage summer tourism from tough COVID-19 restrictions. 

Reopening to Israeli tourists comes as the EU is moving to ease its current blanket ban on non-essential travel from foreign countries, with only a handful of exceptions, including New Zealand and Australia.

(Reuters) --- Britain is sending two navy patrol boats to the British Channel Island of Jersey after France suggested it could cut power supplies to the island if its fishermen are not granted full access to UK fishing waters under post-Brexit trading terms.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged his "unwavering support" for the island after he spoke with Jersey officials about the prospect of the French blockade.

BERLIN, May 5 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that the EU-China investment treaty was an "important undertaking" despite "all the difficulties that will certainly arise in the ratification process."

"It is a very important undertaking because it gives us more reciprocity in market access, because we have decided to comply with the labor standards of the International Labor Organization and other things with which trade can be developed to the benefit of both parties," said Merkel at a digital conference of the Union Party parliamentary group.

DUBLIN, May 5 (Xinhua) -- A member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland on Wednesday called on the European Union (EU) to cooperate with China instead of being "led along by the nose by the Americans" into confrontation with China.

Mick Wallace, an incumbent MEP from the south constituency of Ireland, made the calls by tweeting a video speech he made at an April meeting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament, a legislative body of the EU.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Thursday authorized the United States, Canada and Norway to join a major military project aimed at speeding up the deployment of troops and military equipment around Europe.

At a meeting in Brussels, EU defense ministers gave the greenlight for the three to join the 27-nation bloc’s “military mobility” project, led by the Netherlands and aimed at easing bureaucratic procedures that slow troop deployments considerably, whether by land, sea or air.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court has sentenced a Ugandan former child soldier who turned into a brutal rebel commander to 25 years’ imprisonment, with judges saying that his own abduction as a schoolboy and history as a child soldier prevented him being sentenced to life.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — On the frontlines of the battle against Russia-backed separatists and in the halls of government in Kyiv, Ukrainians hold strong hopes for Thursday’s visit of the U.S. Secretary of State — increased military aid and strong support for NATO membership among them.

By visiting so early in his tenure, before any trip to Russia, Antony Blinken is signaling that Ukraine is a high foreign-policy priority for President Joe Biden’s administration. But what he can, or will, deliver in the meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is unclear.

BERLIN, May 5. /TASS/: The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is among matters having no common assessment in the Trans-Atlantic aspect, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at an online conference on Wednesday.