Europe

(Reuters) - The European Union’s new trade chief has told the U.S. to withdraw tariffs on more than $7 billion of EU products or face additional duties on exports to Europe, as he urged a settlement to the dispute over Airbus SE and Boeing Co, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

Repairing the transatlantic relationship would be EU's top priority, and the U.S. should withdraw its Airbus-related tariffs as a confidence-building measure, the EU's new trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis told on.ft.com/2GEqmap the FT.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce new measures to tackle a growing coronavirus crisis on Monday, moving to work more closely with local leaders from England’s worst affected areas.

With Johnson reluctant to repeat a national lockdown that would further hurt a struggling economy, the government is trying to contain a surge in cases, as well as growing anger, in parts of northern and central England.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The euro zone economy is entering a “tougher” phase as the continuation of the recent rebound will depend on how quickly a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic can be controlled, the European Central Bank’s chief economist said in an interview published on Sunday.

“The next phase is going to be tougher,” Philip Lane told the Wall Street Journal.

“The big question, and this is why there is so much uncertainty, is: how quickly can the current dynamic, with rising cases, be stabilised.”

VILNIUS, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- The first round of the Lithuanian parliamentary elections began here on Sunday to elect 141 members of the Baltic country's parliament for a four-year term.

According to Lithuania's Central Electoral Commission (CEC), 1,754 candidates from 17 parties attended the elections of Seimas, the unicameral parliament of Lithuania. Over 2.4 million of voters are eligible to vote this year.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda urged Lithuanians to vote actively and responsibly in the parliamentary elections for the country's prosperity.

LONDON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Another 15,166 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 590,844, according to official figures released Saturday.

The coronavirus-related deaths rose by 81 to 42,760, the data showed.

Britain's coronavirus reproduction number, also known as the R number, is now between 1.2 and 1.5, slightly down from between 1.3 and 1.6 last week, according to the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

LONDON, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- China has managed to wrest control of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was attributed to speedy response and its culture among others, medial journal The Lancet has reported.

Comparing the pandemic developments in China and some Western countries, an article published in the journal on Thursday said that "a centralised epidemic response system" has primarily well-placed China to tackle the disease.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian president on Saturday visited a prison to talk to opposition activists, who have been jailed for challenging his re-election that was widely seen as manipulated and triggered two months of protests.

President Alexander Lukashenko spent more than four hours talking to his jailed political foes at the Minsk prison that belongs to Belarus’ State Security Committee, which still goes under its Soviet-era name, KGB.

ROME (AP) — Europe’s second wave of coronavirus infections has struck well before flu season even started, with intensive care wards filling up again and bars shutting down. Making matters worse, authorities say, is a widespread case of “COVID-fatigue.”

Record high daily infections in several eastern European countries and sharp rebounds in the hard-hit west have made clear that Europe never really crushed the COVID-19 curve as hoped, after springtime lockdowns.

VIENNA, October 10. /TASS/: OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has welcomed Russia’s role in convening the talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Moscow, which resulted in ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in a press statement on Saturday.

The statement says that the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office emphasized the significance of a humanitarian pause to exchange prisoners of war, detainees, and the bodies of those killed in fighting.

MOSCOW, October 10. /TASS/: Toxic substances from the Novichok group were developed in no less than 20 Western countries and they currently have 140 substance options, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a commentary on Saturday.

"As for the chemical warfare agent called Novichok in the West, its structure and mass-spectrum were presented for the first time in 1998 in the spectral database of the American Standards Institute," the commentary says.