Europe

ROME, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Italian police on Saturday announced the arrest of 19 suspects who were part of a criminal network abetting illegal immigration.

Authorities described the ring as a criminal organization which illegally moved migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan into Italy and then helped them reach northern Europe by taking them across the border with France.

05 Dec 2020; MEMO:  The European Union (EU) has called for the "cat and mouse game" with Turkey to stop, adding that it wants a "more stable and more predictable" relationship with the Islamic majority country.

Speaking at a press conference, European Council President Charles Michel announced on Friday: "We need to work together to have that predictable relationship and we're going to use all channels."

MADRID (AP) — As the two mortuary workers pushed a stretcher with a bagged corpse out of the room, the elderly man in the adjacent bed briefly awakened from his dementia. “Is he dead?” he muttered, extending his arm, trying to touch his roommate for the last time.

Reflecting on a scene repeated too many times, one of the workers, Manel Rivera, despaired at the growing number of elderly people dying as the coronavirus resurges.

“The sad thing is,” he said of the surviving man in the Barcelona nursing home, “in a few days we’ll probably come back for him.”

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian pipe-laying ship sailed into position Saturday to resume construction of a German-Russian gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea that the United States has vehemently opposed.

The Akademik Cherskiy vessel reached the area off the coast of Poland where a section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline remains uncompleted, according to ship monitoring data. Another Russian pipe-laying ship, Fortuna, sailed off from the German port of Wismar, apparently heading to a different location where another pipeline section is to be built.

MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/: All Russian regions will join the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus infection at the end of next week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on Friday.

"I would like to say that the vaccination campaign has already been launched in the Russian army, in the city of Moscow. By the end of the week, all regions of the country will join this campaign," she said, adding that President Vladimir Putin tasked the government and regional authorities to kick off free voluntary vaccination campaign against the coronavirus infection.

MOSCOW, December 4. /TASS/: Moldova’s outgoing President Igor Dodon believes that his successor, president-elect Maia Sandu, is trying to destabilize situation in the country by urging citizens to protest on Sunday.

"They won the presidential polls. We recognized the result. We are not making any attempts to hamper them from entering the president’s office. On December 10, literally next week, the Constitutional Court will approve the election results, and the new president will be sworn in on December 24. What’s the problem?" the outgoing president said.

MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/: Russian top diplomat Sergey Lavrov and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov have held a telephone conversation to discuss the implementation of a trilateral statement on Nagorno-Karabakh, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

"The parties discussed progress in the implementation of the November 9 statement adopted by the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, including the parties’ cooperation with Russian peacekeepers, as well as pressing matters on the bilateral agenda and certain international issues," the ministry pointed out.

MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/: Russia’s Health Ministry has fixed the maximum cost price of the coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V at 1,942 rubles for two doses (about $26.20), Alexei Kuznetsov, an aide to the health minister, told reporters on Saturday.

"Russia’s Health Ministry has registered the maximum cost price of a producer for the vaccine to prevent novel coronavirus infection - Sputnik V, which was developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology. It is 1,942 rubles for two doses," he said.

GENEVA, Dec 5 (NNN-SANA) – The fourth meeting of the Small Body of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, concluded here yesterday, after a weeklong discussion.

Geir O. Pedersen, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, told a press conference that, the delegations have agreed that the next meeting will be starting on Jan 25, and they also have agreed on the agenda, which is constitutional principles or basic principles of the future new Syrian constitution.

“During the week, they have rather more precisely discussed a wide range of topics,” the envoy said.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s highest court upheld on Saturday a ban on a demonstration in the northern city of Bremen planned by opponents of lockdown measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus.

Lower courts had already denied permission for the protest, planned for Saturday afternoon, at which 20,000 demonstrators were due to convene in the city centre of Bremen.

Last month, German police unleashed water cannon and pepper spray in an effort to scatter thousands of protesters in Berlin angry about coronavirus restrictions.