Europe

LONDON, Mar 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – An additional tax will be added, to outbound flights from London’s Heathrow Airport, the largest airport in Britain, from Apr, adding pressure on many families, who want to travel abroad after a year of COVID-19 restrictions, local media reported.

LISBON, Mar 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – The Portuguese government announced yesterday that, it had spent 915.9 million euros (1.11 billion U.S. dollars), on fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Official data showed, expenditure on the health system increased by 11.3 percent in Jan, 2021, compared to the same period last year, with most of it being paid for professionals and medical equipment.

The Ministry of Health reported having contracted 981 hospital beds by the end of Jan this year, with 745 beds from the private and social sectors and 236 from the Armed Forces.

PARIS, Mar 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) – France registered 19,952 new cases and 122 related deaths in the past 24 hours, according to figures released by the Public Health Agency yesterday.

The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases stands at 3,755,968, and the total number of fatalities at 86,454, since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Over the past seven days, 9,613 COVID-19 patients were in hospital, of whom, 1,871 were put on ventilators, the agency added.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court will deliver its verdict in the corruption trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, with prosecutors demanding he face jail time.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and remains influential among conservatives, is accused of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling in exchange for inside information on an investigation into his presidential campaign finances.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) first female and first African director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala began work on Monday, ending a six-month leadership void by vowing to unblock negotiations on rules to stop over-fishing.

After a long campaign that was derailed in the latter stages by a Trump administration veto, the 66-year-old Nigerian was confirmed as boss last month, pledging to “forget business as usual” at the body which is struggling to strike new deals and whose arbitration functions are paralysed. [L1N2KL1GE]

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices rose more than $1 on Monday, supported by optimism over COVID-19 vaccinations, a U.S. stimulus package and growing factory activity in Europe despite restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus.

Brent crude was up $1.08 or 1.7% to $65.50 per barrel by 0959 GMT, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude jumped $1.04 or 1.7% to $62.54 a barrel.

Both contracts finished February 18% higher.

GENEVA, Feb 28 (APP): Pakistan has urged the UN Human Rights Council to step up efforts to get access for independent observers into Illegally-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) to conduct an impartial investigation into reports of multiple violations of human rights in the disputed territory.

PRAGUE, February 28. /TASS/: Czech Republic counts on supplies of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus in the near future. The country’s President Milos Zeman told the local CNN Prima on Saturday that he had sent a letter to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin with a request to deliver the vaccine to the republic as soon as possible.

"If I am correctly informed, my request will be satisfied," Zeman said.

MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/: Alexey Navalny has arrived in penal colony number 2 in Pokrov, in central Russia’s Vladimir Region, human rights activist Ruslan Vakhapov, who specializes in defending prisoners’ rights, told TASS.

"According to my information, Navalny has been recently taken to IK-2 in Pokrov. The reports about his arrival in this correctional facility were circulated among the penal colony’s inmates," Vakhapov said. In his words, Navalny’s arrival in this penal colony can be only confirmed after his lawyers’ visit.

PARIS, February 28. /TASS/: Twenty-five years after joining the Council of Europe Russia is set to actively cultivate cooperation with the organization and its member-states, and the rumors on its imminent withdrawal are unfounded, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Ivan Soltanovsky told TASS on Sunday.

"The media regularly circulate rumors without any real basis that Russia will soon withdraw from the Council of Europe. Such escalation of the situation does not benefit the common cause," Soltanovsky stated.