Europe

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/: The number of coronavirus cases in Russia increased by 9,859 per day, which is the maximum figure since May 15. The total number of people infected in the country has reached 1,204,502, the operational headquarters to combat the spread of coronavirus told reporters on Saturday.

According to the headquarters, the daily growth rate was 0.8%.

KIEV, October 3. /TASS/: Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), has been hospitalized in Kiev with double pneumonia caused by COVID-19, his wife Marina Poroshenko said on Saturday.

"Pyotr Alexeevich has been taken to one of Kiev’s hospitals that treat coronavirus patients. In spite of the fact that my husband suffers from double pneumonia, he has a strong willpower that he demonstrates in his fight against the disease," she said on the YouTube channel of Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party.

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/: The Russian Embassy in Berlin received a refusal from the German Foreign Ministry on a request for consular access to blogger Alexey Navalny, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

"There are no answers to the questions asked by the Russian side through the political dialogue or through the diplomatic channels. The Russian Embassy in Berlin has received a refusal from the German Foreign Ministry for assistance in providing consular access to Navalny," the diplomatic department noted.

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/: Poisoning of water in the area of Khalaktyrsky beach in Russia’s Kamchatka region, according to preliminary data, was caused by oil products leak from a commercial tanker, which was eliminated. The ownership of the vessel has not yet been established, a source in the emergency services of the Far East region told TASS on Saturday.

LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister Dominic Raab said the European Union no longer has the power to treat Britain poorly, and any deal on its future relationship with the bloc must be fair.

“Yes, we want a Free Trade deal with the EU, but any deal must be fair. The days of being held over a barrel by Brussels are long gone,” Raab said in a speech broadcast on Saturday as part of the Conservative Party’s annual conference.

LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the head of the EU’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen, agreed in a phone call on Saturday to step up Brexit talks to close “significant gaps” barring a new trade partnership.

The two sides have said this week’s round of talks aimed at getting a new, post-Brexit trade agreement from 2021 made some progress but not a breakthrough.

The EU says a deal must be sealed by the end of the month to leave enough time for ratification by the end of this year.

VENICE, Italy (Reuters) - A long-delayed flood barrier system successfully protected Venice from a high tide for the first time on Saturday, bringing big relief to the lagoon city after years of repeated inundations.

“Today, everything is dry,” mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter. “Pride and joy.”

The network of 78 bright yellow barriers that guard the entrance to the delicate Venetian lagoon lifted from the sea bed as the tide, driven by strong winds and rain, started to climb.

02 Oct 2020; MEMO: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held a third phone call in six days since fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Kremlin said on Friday, Reuters reported.

Putin and Pashinyan expressed serious concern about the involvement of what the Kremlin termed illegal armed groups from the Middle East in the fighting.

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Sweden has the highest proportion of drug-related deaths in the European Union, according to Swedish Television on Friday, citing the latest European Drug Report published by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

According to the report, in 2018 Sweden registered 81 cases of drug-related deaths per 1 million citizens aged 15 to 64. That is nearly four times higher than the EU average of 22.3 deaths per 1 million citizens.

MOSCOW, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in a telephone conversation on Friday expressed concern over the involvement of illegal armed groups in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"Both sides expressed serious concern about the ongoing large-scale hostilities, as well as the involvement of illegal militants of armed groups from Syria and Libya in them," the statement read.