Europe

(Reuters) --- British warships will sail for the Black Sea in May amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the Sunday Times newspaper reported, citing senior naval sources.

The deployment is aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine and Britain's NATO allies, the newspaper reported.

One Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate will leave the Royal Navy's carrier task group in the Mediterranean and head through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, according to the report.

(Reuters) --- Greece cannot ignore its differences with Turkey over territorial disputes in the Mediterranean and other issues but while a solution is difficult, it is not impossible, its foreign minister told a newspaper on Sunday.

The two countries are NATO allies but at odds over many issues, including competing claims over the extent of their continental shelves in the Mediterranean, air space, energy resources and ethnically split Cyprus.

(Reuters) --- World powers should draw "clear red lines" with Russia and consider possible sanctions against Moscow when they're crossed, French President Emmanuel Macron told U.S. news network CBS in an interview.

"We have to define clear red lines with Russia," Macron said, according to a video excerpt of the interview to be aired later on Sunday.

ROME, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The regional health commission in Italy's Lombardy said Saturday that public confidence in the country's use of the AstraZeneca vaccine has been hindered by safety fears.

Giovanni Pavesi, director-general of the Lombardy Region Welfare Department, told health officials and reporters, mostly via video hookup, that reports of health concerns tied to the AstraZeneca vaccine have resulted in people turning down that vaccine.

VIENNA, April 17 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Saturday urged all parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to immediately start negotiating the specific formula of sanction-lifting.

Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, made the appeal here after attending a new round of meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission.

ROME (AP) — A judge on Saturday ordered former Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial on kidnapping charges for having refused to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people onboard at sea for days.

Judge Lorenzo Iannelli set Sept. 15 as the trial date during a hearing in the Palermo bunker courtroom in Sicily.

Salvini, who attended the hearing, insisted that he was only doing his job and his duty by refusing entry to the Open Arms rescue ship and the 147 people it had saved in the Mediterranean Sea.

BERLIN (AP) — Pressure mounted Saturday on the two contenders hoping to lead German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc into September’s national election to end their power struggle and agree which of them will run to succeed her.

Armin Laschet, the leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, and Markus Soeder, the head of its smaller Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, have both declared their interest in running for chancellor.

PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech Republic announced Saturday that it was expelling 18 Russian diplomats who it has identified as spies in a case related to a huge ammunition depot explosion in 2014.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the move is based on “unequivocal evidence” provided by the Czech intelligence and security services that points to the involvement of Russian military agents in the massive explosion in an eastern town that killed “two innocent fathers.”

“The Czech Republic is a sovereign state and must adequately react to those unprecedented findings,” Babis said.

MOSCOW (AP) — A doctor for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, says his health is deteriorating rapidly and the 44-year-old Kremlin critic could be on the verge of death.

Physician Yaroslav Ashikhmin said Saturday that test results he received from Navalny’s family show him with sharply elevated levels of potassium, which can bring on cardiac arrest, and heightened creatinine levels that indicate impaired kidneys.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” he said in a Facebook post.

17 Apr 2021; MEMO: The relations between Russia and Turkey are "developing", a Kremlin spokesman said today, Anadolu Agency reports.

Suspension of the flights from Russia to Turkey does not mean chilling in the bilateral relations, the restrictions were put due to the worsening coronavirus situation in Turkey, Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.