Europe

GENEVA, Dec 26 (NNN-TASS) — More than 655,000 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus have been recorded globally in the past day, pushing a total number of infections to 78.19 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin.

According to the WHO updates, the coronavirus-related deaths increased by over 11,500 to exceed 1.73 million.

LONDON (Reuters) - China will overtake the United States to become the world’s biggest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously estimated due to the contrasting recoveries of the two countries from the COVID-19 pandemic, a think tank said.

“For some time, an overarching theme of global economics has been the economic and soft power struggle between the United States and China,” the Centre for Economics and Business Research said in an annual report published on Saturday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Saturday approved its main COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, for use by people over the age of 60, Russian news agencies cited the health ministry as saying.

People over 60 have thus far been excluded from Russia’s national inoculation programme, as the shot was tested on this age group separately.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Saturday published the text of its trade agreement with the European Union just five days before it exits one of the world’s biggest trading blocs in its most significant global shift since the loss of empire.

The deal includes a 1,246-page trade agreement, as well as agreements on nuclear energy, exchanging classified information, civil nuclear energy and a series of joint declarations.

MOSCOW (AP) — A top associate of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detained Friday after doorstepping an alleged security operative who has inadvertently revealed details of Navalny’s supposed poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

LONDON (AP) — Around 1,000 British soldiers were spending Christmas Day trying to clear a huge backlog of truck drivers stuck in southeast England after France briefly closed its border to the U.K., then demanded coronavirus tests from all amid fears of a new, apparently more contagious, virus variant.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: The first batch-produced multi-role fifth-generation fighter jet Sukhoi-57 has been delivered to a regiment in the Southern Military District, a source in the defense-industrial complex told TASS on Friday.

"The Aerospace Force has obtained the first batch-produced Sukhoi-57 plane. It was delivered to a regiment in the Southern Military district," the source said, adding that another four such jets would be provided for the Aerospace Force in 2021.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: The United States won’t be willing to abide by collective decisions after Joe Biden takes office as president even if Washington rejoins organizations and agreements it left under Donald Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a video conference meeting with participants in the Dialogue in the Name of the Future event, hosted by the Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund on Friday.

BERLIN, December 25. /TASS/: Vaccination which starts on December 27 in Germany "at first won’t influence the epidemic" of the coronavirus infection, President of the German Association for the Control of Viral Diseases Helmut Fickenscher said in an interview with the DPA news agency on Friday.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 29,018 to 2,992,706 in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Friday.

According to the crisis center, the coronavirus growth rate does not exceed 1%.

The rate is the lowest in the Tuva region (0.5%), the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region, the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous region, the Magadan, Karachay-Circassian, Mari El, Novosibirsk and Kemerovo regions (0.6%).