Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell more than 3% on Tuesday, hit by concerns that new pandemic curbs and slow vaccine rollouts in Europe will hold back a recovery in demand, while a stronger dollar also weighed.

Brent crude futures dropped by $2.20, or 3.4%, to $62.42 a barrel by 0948 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell by $2.10, or %3.4, to $59.46 a barrel.

The market structure was also pointing to weakness, with the front-month Brent spread flipping into a small contango for the first time since January.

LONDON (Reuters) - A Scottish parliamentary committee said on Tuesday First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had misled it over evidence she gave on her handling of sexual harassment complaints, the latest twist in a row that could sink her hopes for an independent Scotland.

Sturgeon has been under intense scrutiny over what she did and did not do when she learnt of complaints by several women against her predecessor Alex Salmond - once her close friend and ally in the independence cause, now an implacable enemy.

23 Mar 2021; MEMO: Britain will reduce the size of the army from 76,500 to 72,500 by 2025, defence minister Ben Wallace said on Monday, unveiling plans for what he described as a more active force to better tackle the "threats of the future", Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, the government published its integrated review, a document laying out its post-Brexit foreign and defence policy priorities which said Britain had to be "better-equipped for a more competitive world".

BUDAPEST, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) sanctions against individuals and entities in China and Myanmar are "pointless" and "harmful", Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.

The EU imposed unilateral sanctions on relevant Chinese individuals and entity on Monday, citing the so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang.

LISBON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese Minister of State, Economy and Digital Transition Pedro Siza Vieira said on Monday that there is a "great concern" about the "integrity of the European Union (EU) single market after the COVID-19 pandemic."

The remarks were made at a press conference after the meeting of the Competitiveness Council, which was held virtually under the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU and brought together ministers from European countries in this sector.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has extended its lockdown measures by another month and imposed several new restrictions, including largely shutting down public life over Easter, in an effort to drive down the rate of coronavirus infections.

Speaking early Tuesday after a lengthy video call with the country’s 16 state governors, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that restrictions previously set to run through March 28 will now remain in place until April 18.

MOSCOW, March 22. /TASS/: South Korea’s CAS500-1 Earth’s remote sensing satellite launched atop a Russian Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome has been successfully delivered into the designated orbit with the help of the rocket’s Fregat booster, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Monday.

"After the thruster of the Fregat booster was ignited twice, the South Korean CAS500-1 Earth’s remote sensing satellite detached in the final orbit in the normal mode," Roscosmos said on its Twitter.

MOSCOW, March 22. /TASS/: Russia’s Technodinamika Group (part of the state tech corporation Rostec) has launched the production of the country’s first domestic aircraft simulators with a motion system that gives the feelings of a real flight, Technodinamika CEO Igor Nasenkov told TASS on Monday.

"They make it possible to get actually a full set of acceleration feelings inherent in a real flight, that is, to feel all the changes of the speed and motion experienced by the vestibular system," the chief executive said.

MOSCOW, March 22. /TASS/: Russia has documented 9,284 cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall case count to 4,466,153, the anti-coronavirus crisis center informed reporters on Monday.

The relative daily increase rate has reached 0.21%.

In the past 24 hours, 1,586 cases of COVID-19 were documented in Moscow, 865 in St. Petersburg, 646 in the Moscow Region, 339 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, 240 in the Rostov Region, 204 in the Voronezh Region.

Currently, there are 293,577 active cases of COVID-19 in Russia.

BRUSSELS, March 22. /TASS/: Foreign Ministers of the 27 European Union members have approved new sanctions against 11 natural persons, including from Russia and China, who the union believes to be complicit in human rights violations, a source in one of the delegations to the European Council told TASS Monday.

"The blacklist has been approved. It includes 11 people, including citizens of Russia, China and Libya," the source noted.