Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Uber drivers in Britain should receive the minimum wage for the whole time they are logged on to the app, two former drivers said on Wednesday after winning a court battle which could reshape the gig economy.

Following a UK Supreme Court defeat last month, the Silicon Valley-based company reclassified its more than 70,000 drivers in Britain as workers, meaning they are guaranteed entitlements such as holiday pay.

Uber said drivers will be at least 15% better off after the changes, if they opt into the pension plan.

BRUSSELS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission proposed on Tuesday to accelerate the delivery of ten million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for the second quarter of 2021.

The proposal came on the heels of an agreement with the vaccine manufacturer, but it remains to be approved by the European Union (EU) member states in the joint Steering Board, the executive arm of the EU said in a statement.

PARIS, March 16 (Xinhua) -- France has entered "a form of third wave (of the coronavirus pandemic) characterized by numerous virus variants," Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Tuesday, stressing that his government still considers vaccination a top priority of its strategy to stem the spread of the virus.

"The outbreak is going into extra time," he told a hearing at the National Assembly, the lower house of France's Parliament, which observed a moment of silence in memory of the 90,000-plus victims of the pandemic one year after the first national lockdown.

17 Mar 2021; MEMO: Russia is ready to boost cooperation with Turkey in all fields, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. Her comments marked the centenary of the Friendship and Fraternity Treaty signed by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on 16 March 1921.

16 Mar 2021; MEMO: The UK will increase its nuclear deterrent capacity by 40% in response to the "evolving security environment," according to a review published on Tuesday.

The 114-page document, titled "Global Britain in a competitive age," revealed the plans of rising the cap on its stockpile of nuclear warheads from 180 to 260.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Police seized high-quality forged banknotes produced at a printing office at a university in Bulgaria’s capital, authorities said Tuesday.

In a joint operation with the U.S. Secret Service, Bulgarian police detained two people and seized a printing machine and equipment for printing money, along with large amounts of counterfeit U.S. dollar and euro notes.

“The value of the seized currency is impressive. The material evidence speaks of serious criminal activity,” Sofia police chief Georgi Hadzhiev said Tuesday.

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: Unprecedented efforts are made from overseas to make countries abandon their plans to purchase Russian coronavirus vaccines, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, refusing to name the specific states.

"The scale of pressure in many countries is unprecedented, harsh, stripped of any diplomatic subtlety and so on. It truly takes place," he said. Peskov them refused to clarify whether he is talking about the US and its allies. "I would not want to specify anything here," the spokesman added.

MINSK, March 16. /TASS/: A joint Belarusian-Russian combat training center for the Air Force and air defense forces will be set up in Belarus under the agreements reached by the defense ministries of both countries, the Belarusian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: The 2014 referendum on the status of Crimea was legitimate from the standpoint of international law and Ukrainian legislation, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Tuesday.

"That referendum was legitimate essentially, from the standpoint of international law and from the standpoint of Ukraine’s own laws," the Kremlin spokesman said. "It was absolutely legitimate and legal."

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) will block the Twitter social network in Russia in a month if the service does not delete the prohibited information, the agency’s deputy head Vadim Subbotin told TASS.

"If Twitter does not comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor, the requirements of Russian legislation, respectively, we will consider an option to completely block the service on the territory of Russia," he added.