Europe

(Reuters) --- As many as 350,000 Black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for Britain might not have been properly commemorated because of "pervasive racism", a report concluded on Thursday.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) issued an apology after an inquiry it commissioned found hundreds of thousands of mostly African and Middle Eastern casualties from World War One were not commemorated by name, or at all.

(Reuters) --- The NATO military alliance will hold a summit on June 14 in Brussels, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, in the hope of repairing transatlantic ties under U.S. President Joe Biden amid growing tensions with Russia.

After a bruising four years under Donald Trump, who said that the Western alliance was "obsolete" and used NATO summits to portray an organisation in crisis, Biden is seeking to renew ties with the other 29 NATO allies, offering close cooperation.

(Reuters) --- France's foreign minister told Russia on Thursday that the European Union would hold President Vladimir Putin and Russian authorities responsible if hunger-striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny died and said the bloc would impose new sanctions.

The 44-year-old Navalny, who last year survived a nerve agent attack that Russian authorities denied carrying out, is thin and weak after starving himself for three weeks in prison, and his allies say he risks kidney failure or cardiac arrest.

(Reuters) --- The European Commission is working on legal proceedings against AstraZeneca (AZN.L) after the drugmaker cut COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union, sources familiar with the matter said.

The move would mark a further step in an EU plan to sever ties with the Anglo-Swedish company after it repeatedly cut supplies to the bloc, contributing to major delays in Europe's vaccine rollout.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to host his Belarusian counterpart on Thursday for talks on closer integration between the two ex-Soviet neighbors.

The meeting follows allegations of a failed plot to assassinate Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, allegedly involving a blockade of the country’s capital, power cuts and cyberattacks. Belarusian and Russian security agencies arrested the alleged coup plotters in Moscow earlier this month.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank is expected to signal Thursday that even if inflation rises later this year it won’t consider cutting back support for Europe’s economy, which is lagging the U.S. and China amid a drawn-out struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Extended lockdowns amid a resurgence of the virus, coupled with slow vaccination rollouts, have pushed back hopes for what should eventually be a robust rebound.

GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland’s financial markets authority said Thursday it is looking into possible penalties against Credit Suisse after the top-drawer bank announced “significant losses” linked to a U.S.-based hedge fund.

The authority, FINMA, said it will require “various risk-reducing measures” and investigate “possible shortcomings in risk management” at Credit Suisse. The authority said it is appointing an outside agent to look into the issue.

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/: Unfriendly actions against Moscow continue unabated and it looks like some countries have turned it into a new sport, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly on Wednesday.

"Unfriendly actions against Russia are continuing non-stop. Some countries have developed a very bad habit of taking digs at Russia whenever an opportunity arises, and most often without any reason at all. It looks like a new sport: who will manage to say something louder than the others."

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/: Speaker of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament) Valentina Matviyenko is certain that it will be possible to lift COVID-19 restrictions by the fall in the event of mass vaccination in Russia. At the same time, she did not rule out that COVID-19 could become a seasonal illness in the future.

MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/: Hackers from abroad tried to steal Russian coronavirus vaccine inventions, Deputy Director of the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents set up by the Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Murashov said on Wednesday.

"The perpetrators showed special interest in the results of scientific studies and Russian coronavirus vaccine inventions," he said at the conference on IT security Infoforum in Yaroslavl.