Europe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is 92% effective at protecting people from COVID-19 according to interim trial results, the country’s sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow rushes to keep pace with Western drugmakers in the race for a shot.

The initial results are only the second to be published from a late-stage human trial in the global effort to produce vaccines that could halt a pandemic that has killed more than 1.2 million people and ravaged the world economy.

PARIS (Reuters) - France’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that an attack had taken place at a ceremony marking the end of World War One in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, and that several people had been wounded as a result of an explosive device.

“The embassies that were involved in the commemoration ceremony condemn this cowardly attack, which is completely unjustified. They call on the Saudi authorities to shed as much light as they can on this attack, and to identify and hunt down the perpetrators,” said the French Foreign Ministry.

Geneva, Nov 11 (AP/PTI) A senior US government official complained Tuesday that the World Health Organization has not shared enough information about its planned mission to China to investigate the animal origins of the coronavirus.

Garrett Grisby of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services griped that the criteria for WHO's China mission had not been shared with other nations. He spoke during a weeklong meeting of the U.H. health agency's member countries.

BRUSSELS, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday called for enhanced efforts across the European Union (EU) to fight terrorism in a "rapid, coordinated and joint" approach, noting many European cities have been troubled by the problem.

Macron made the plea at a joint press conference together with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after he hosted a virtual meeting discussing the matter.

VIENNA, November 10. /TASS/: If Joe Biden is elected US President, he could very quickly offer Russia to extend New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) for five years without any preconditions, Professor of International Relations at the University of Innsbruck and expert on arms control, Russian and US foreign policy Gerhard Mangott told TASS.

NOVO-OGARYOVO, November 10. /TASS/: The Armed Forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan will remain on the positions they currently hold, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

"The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia will stay on the positions they hold, along the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the corridor linking Nagorno-Karabakh with the Republic of Armenia, a peacekeeping contingent of the Russian Federation is being deployed," Putin stressed, speaking about a joint statement signed with the Azerbaijani president and the Armenian prime minister.

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 20,977 to 1,817,109 in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Tuesday.

The daily number of cases remained over 20,000 for the fifth day in a row. 

On Monday, Russia recorded 21,798 cases, the highest daily number since the start of the pandemic.

As many as 5,902 coronavirus patients were identified in Moscow in the past day, 1,485 in St. Petersburg, 685 in the Moscow region, 402 in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and 341 in the Arkhangelsk region.

VIENNA, Nov 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Austrian police made 30 arrests in more than 60 raids on Monday as part of an anti-terrorism operation, but there was no link to a deadly attack in Vienna a week ago in which a convicted extremist killed four people, prosecutors said.

Austria has formally remanded in custody 10 suspects in connection with the attack by a 20-year-old gunman who had previously been convicted of trying to join the Daesh group in Syria. Police shot him dead minutes after he opened fire on bars and bystanders in central Vienna.

MADRID, Nov 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Spain’s High Court on Tuesday open the trial of three suspected militants linked to a 2017 attack in Barcelona which killed 14 people: Spain’s deadliest in over a decade.

A single attacker drove a rented van into crowds on Barcelona’s central La Rambla boulevard, causing 14 deaths and injuring over a hundred people. Another man was killed during the attacker’s getaway.

BRUSSELS, Nov 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The European Union will impose tariffs on imports of US$4 billion in US goods from Tuesday, while hoping that president-elect Joe Biden will foster a sharp improvement in transatlantic ties.

The bloc will exercise the right to counter-measures awarded to it last month by the World Trade Organization in a case against US planemaker Boeing, part of a long-running US-EU battle over civil aviation subsidies.