Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices hit their highest since late February on Thursday after a fall in U.S. stockpiles added further support following the unilateral decision by Saudi Arabia to cut output.

Brent crude was up 18 cents, or 0.3%, at $54.48 a barrel at 1015 GMT after earlier touching $54.90, levels not seen since before the the first COVID-19 lockdowns in the West.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) rose as far as $51.28 and was last up 33 cents, or 0.7% at $50.96.

BRUSSELS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen called for a peaceful transition of power in the United States on Wednesday night, as violence erupted at the U.S. Capitol during a massive protest against the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"Peaceful transition of power is at the core," Von der Leyen tweeted. "Joe Biden won the election."

LONDON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Britain reported a further 1,041 coronavirus-related deaths in the latest 24-hour period, the highest since April, official figures showed Wednesday.

This brought the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain to 77,346, the data showed.

Meanwhile, the number of daily confirmed cases of coronavirus in Britain hit 62,322 on Wednesday, the highest since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

MINSK, January 6. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that the question of his presidency can be decided only by means of elections, if some do not like to see him in the capacity of the head of state.

"I would like to see a calm and quiet country," Lukashenko told an audience while visiting the Gorizont plant in Minsk.

"You surely wish the same. If you dislike your current president, only elections can resolve this issue. Only elections. I insist on this, however strongly some may dislike this," the news agency BelTA quotes Lukashenko as saying.

GENEVA, January 6. /TASS/: Proliferation of the highly contagious novel coronavirus strain, first detected in Britain, has now been confirmed in 41 countries and territories, the World Health Organization said in its COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update on Tuesday evening.

BELGRADE, January 6. /TASS/: Serbia’s Parliament Speaker Ivica Dacic and Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin have received Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine at the Belgrade-based Torlak Institute of Virology.

MOSCOW, January 6. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus spread rate sank on Wednesday to below 0.9 for the second time since the start of the pandemic, according to TASS estimates based on the anti-coronavirus crisis center’s data.

The figure declined from 0.91 to 0.89. Last time this level was recorded on May 19 and did not go down further since then.

In Moscow the coronavirus spread rate stood at 0.76 for the second day, the lowest level since June 20.

LISBON, Jan 6 (NNN-XINHUA) – Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, met here yesterday, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, marking the beginning of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This is Portugal’s fourth presidency of the Council. Germany handed over the six-month rotating presidency to Portugal, at the start of the year.

Costa said, at a press conference, this is an enormous honour and that it will be “six months of intense work.”

LONDON (Reuters) -British new car sales fell nearly 30% last year in their biggest annual drop since 1943 as lockdowns to curb the spread of the coronavirus hit the sector, an industry body said on Wednesday.

Demand stood at 1.63 million cars in 2020, according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). It was particularly hard hit by a 97% fall in April, the first full month of a national lockdown.

Dealerships gradually reopened in June on differing dates across the United Kingdom’s four nations.

LONDON (Reuters) -WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange will discover on Wednesday if he will be allowed to taste freedom after years of self-incarceration and jail time, following victory in his battle to avoid extradition from Britain to the United States.

A British judge on Monday rejected a request from U.S. authorities for Assange, 49, to be sent across the Atlantic to face 18 criminal charges of breaking an espionage law and conspiring to hack government computers.