Europe

MOSCOW, March 5. /TASS/: Russia has never refused to cooperate with American partners and will respond constructively to positive signals on their part, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases grew by 11,022 in the past 24 hours, the total number of infected people has reached 4,312,181, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Saturday.

In relative terms, the growth rate stands at 0.26%, as follows from the data provided by the crisis center.

The lowest growth rates were recorded in Tuva (0.04%), Ingushetia and the Magadan Region (0.07%).

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aide Maxim Oreshkin who has tested positive for COVID-19 had no face-to-face contacts recently, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.

"No, there were no [face-to-face] contacts," he said.

On Saturday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that Oreshkin had tested positive for COVID-19, adding that he keeps in touch with the presidential aide.

DUBLIN, March 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney is to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on Sunday in his role as a UN Security Council facilitator of the nuclear deal agreed in 2015 between Iran and major world powers.

Iran has so far refused to take part in a meeting brokered by the European Union between world powers and the United States on reviving its 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Six people died and more than 30 were injured in an accident involving a Ukrainian bus in southeastern Poland, local medical rescue services said.

Earlier on Saturday state news agency PAP reported that the bus, with 57 people on board, fell into a ditch at night. The injured were taken to local hospitals and the remaining passengers were brought to a local school.

A spokesman at local medical ambulance services in Przemysl confirmed the information, adding that the bus was travelling to Ukraine.

GENEVA, March 5 (Xinhua) -- World Health Organization (WHO) officials said on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused more "mass trauma" than World War II and warned of its lasting consequences.

"The world has experienced mass trauma because World War Two affected many, many lives," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual press conference.

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) and the United States have agreed to suspend the tariffs imposed over the Airbus-Boeing disputes, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday after a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden.

The two leaders agreed to suspend the tariffs, both on aircraft and non-aircraft products, for an initial period of four months, von der Leyen said in a statement.

MILAN (AP) — The virus swept through a nursery school and an adjacent elementary school in the Milan suburb of Bollate with amazing speed. In a matter of just days, 45 children and 14 staff members had tested positive.

Genetic analysis confirmed what officials already suspected: The highly contagious coronavirus variant first identified in England was racing through the community, a densely packed city of nearly 40,000 with a chemical plant and Pirelli bicycle tire factory a 15-minute drive from the heart of Milan.

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization called Friday for patent rights to be waived until the end of the coronavirus pandemic so that vaccine supplies can be dramatically increased, saying these “unprecedented times” warrant the move.

At a press briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries with their own vaccine capacity should “start waiving intellectual property rights ” as provided in special emergency provisions from the World Trade Organization.

GENEVA, Mar 05 (APP): Pakistan has called for keeping a close watch on India’s state-directed “tools of terror” in Jammu and Kashmir where women and girls are among the primary victims of it’s deadly counter-terrorism measures, saying their plight must be addressed.