Europe

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has been given a chance to address the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s concerns on uranium particles found at undeclared, old sites and Washington will watch closely, the United States told the watchdog’s board on Thursday.

“Iran has now been given another opportunity by the Director General to offer up the necessary cooperation before this Board next meets,” the U.S. statement to the board said, shortly after diplomats said plans for a resolution criticising Iran had been scrapped.

PARIS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 3,810,316 people in France have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after 26,788 positive cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours, the biggest daily increase since Feb. 24, official figures showed on Wednesday.

The number of people who lost their lives to the coronavirus increased by 322 to reach 87,542, the seventh highest in the world.

The number of hospitalized patients fell by 152 within a day to 25,111, while the number of serious cases rose again by 51 to 3,637, taking up 70 percent of the country's 5,100 resuscitation beds.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said Wednesday that Britain’s “unilateral action” on trade rules will breach international law and is threatening legal action as post-Brexit tensions continue to escalate between the two sides.

Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič said in a statement that UK’s decision to unilaterally extend a grace period on checks for goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland amounts to “a violation” of the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol.

GENEVA, Mar 03 (APP): Decrying India’s massive disinformation campaign against Pakistan, a Pakistani diplomat on Tuesday drew UN Human Rights Council’s attention to New Delhi’s failure to respond to the widely reported Indian grave rights abuses in occupied Kashmir that evoked international condemnation.

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Interior Ministry agencies react within legal bounds to attempts to involve underage children in unauthorized street rallies.

"The fact that underage children are dragged into illegal and unauthorized street rallies is a violation of law," the president noted Wednesday when opening an extended meeting of the Russian Interior Ministry. "There should definitely be a reaction to it within legal bounds."

MOSCOW, February 26. /TASS/: There is no threat to Russian blogger Alexey Navalny’s security or health in the penal colony, where he will serve his sentence over the Yves Rocher case, Federal Penitentiary Service Director Alexander Kalashnikov said Friday.

"I guarantee that there is no threat to [his] health or life," he told journalists.

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/: Russia confirmed 10,535 COVID-19 cases in the past day, and the total case tally hit 4,278,750, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Wednesday.

In relative terms, the growth rate in new cases reached 0.25%.

The lowest growth rates were registered in the Tuva Republic (0.03%) and the Magadan Region (0.04%).

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/: The latest sanctions by the United States and the European Union against Russian individuals and organizations are intervention in Russia’s internal affairs, Russian presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov told the media on Wednesday, adding that such restrictions were unacceptable.

"We regard any such restrictions as absolutely unacceptable," Peskov said. "They cause considerable harm to relations, which are already in a deplorable condition."

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party said on Wednesday it was leaving the largest centre-right political group in the European Parliament after the faction moved towards suspending it in a tug-of-war over Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s democratic record.

Fidesz’s departure from the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the parliament is likely to reduce Orban’s clout in Brussels following a long conflict over his perceived backsliding on the rule of law and human rights.

LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC and other oil producers, a group known as OPEC+, are considering rolling over production cuts into April instead of raising output as oil demand recovery remains fragile due to the coronavirus, three OPEC+ sources told Reuters.

OPEC+ ministers hold a full meeting on Thursday.

The market has been expecting OPEC+ to ease production cuts by around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from April.

OPEC leader Saudi Arabia has also been expected to end its voluntary production cut of an additional 1 million bpd.