Europe

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization said Friday that the drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections around the world was encouraging, but cautioned against relaxing restrictions that have helped curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of reported infections globally has declined for the fourth week in a row, and the number of deaths also fell for the second consecutive week.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: Thanks to mass vaccination against the novel coronavirus infection, Russia is about to take the epidemic under control, Oksana Drabkina, the Russian Health Ministry’s chief visiting therapist, said on Friday.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: The Sputnik V Light anti-coronavirus vaccine reduces the likelihood of severe forms of the disease but doesn’t exclude them completely, Alexander Gintsburg, director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Health Ministry, the vaccine developer, said on Friday.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: The US and European countries are not interested in good relations between Russia and Germany, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Soloviev LIVE Youtube channel.

"I am confident that the Americans, just like other countries on the European continent, do not need good relations between us and Germany," he said. "The English do not need them, as a matter of fact, either, just like the West did not need a united Germany at the time."

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: Russia is ready to cut ties with the EU if Brussels initiates it, but for its part, Moscow is calling for cooperation, the Russian Foreign Ministry told TASS on Friday.

"We are ready to cut ties if it happens on the initiative of the EU. For our part, we strongly call on the EU to establish equal and mutually respectful cooperation, which is what [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov] said," the ministry noted.

MOSCOW, February 12. /TASS/: Russia should be ready for hostile acts from the European Union but would not want to sever ties with Brussels, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday, commenting on the remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said that Moscow is ready cut ties with the EU if Brussels chooses to impose sanctions that endanger sensitive sectors of the Russian economy.

12 Feb 2021; MEMO: The foreign ministers of seven countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Greece and Cyprus) are scheduled to meet for a summit termed the "Friendship Forum" in Athens on Thursday, to discuss developments in the Mediterranean and Middle East regions.

THE HAGUE, Feb 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The International Criminal Court’s member countries are set to elect a new chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal on Friday, a gruelling job whose current holder is under US sanctions.

Four candidates from Britain, Ireland, Italy and Spain are vying to replace outgoing prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who has led controversial probes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Afghanistan.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish police said they have arrested 13 people in the last week, while German police have arrested one more, on suspicion of attempting to make explosives and planning a terrorist attack in either Denmark or Germany.

“These people could be inspired by militant Islamism,” the chief of operations in the Danish intelligence service, Flemming Dreyer, told a press briefing on Friday.

“We have found the ingredients and parts needed to make a bomb,” Dreyer added.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Some 300 elected parliamentarians in Myanmar called on the United Nations on Friday to investigate “gross human rights violations” committed by the military since its Feb. 1 coup, including arrests of civilian leaders and shooting protesters.

In a letter read out to the Human Rights Council in Geneva by Britain’s ambassador Julian Braithwaite, they said the junta had also “placed restrictions on people’s freedom of speech by preparing a telecommunications bill intended to control access to the Internet and mobile services.