Europe

GENEVA (Reuters) - Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, in a speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday, demanded the country’s authorities end violence against protesters and set up a free and fair presidential election.

Tsikhanouskaya fled her homeland for Lithuania amid a police crackdown in Belarus following the Aug. 9 presidential election, which official results said incumbent Alexander Lukashenko won by a landslide.

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Polish President Andrzej Duda has told Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda he is considering imposing national sanctions on Belarus, the Lithuanian president’s office said on Friday.

“The Polish leader said he is considering to impose national sanctions on Belarus,” the office in a statement after the two leaders talked over the phone.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday authorities were ready to impose further COVID-19 restrictions in the greater Athens area due to a surge in coronavirus cases.

The rise in infections in recent months has forced authorities to gradually reimpose bans and measures including the mandatory use of face masks in all enclosed public and private places.

Health authorities reported 359 new infections on Thursday, more than half of them in the greater Athens area, Attica, where about one third of the country’s population lives.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A U.N. investigator warned of the possibility of “another Iron curtain” descending in Europe during an urgent debate on the human rights situation in Belarus in Geneva on Friday.

The all-day talks, called by Germany on behalf of the European Union (EU), was interrupted repeatedly by the delegations of Belarus, Russia, China and Venezuela raising procedural objections.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Three women, two of them from Africa, advanced to the second round of selection to become the next director-general of the World Trade Organization as the field was cut from eight to five, the Geneva-based body said on Friday.

The WTO is looking for a new director-general to replace Brazilian Roberto Azevedo, who stepped down a year earlier than expected at the end of August.

The 25-year-old trade body has never had a leader who is female or from Africa.

MOSCOW, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko stressed "the inadmissibility of any interference in the internal political processes" in Belarus during a phone talk Thursday with U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan.

Rudenko also emphasized the inadmissibility of "attempts to destabilize" the situation in Belarus and "impose unilateral mediation services from outside," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

18 Sep 2020; MEMO: About 1,150 refugees and migrants have been moved from the streets on Greece’s island of Lesvos to a new temporary facility, an official said Thursday, Anadolu Agency reported.

The new facility will be in the Kara Tepe camp, near the island’s port, government spokesperson Stelios Petsas said Thursday.

A fire at Moria camp last week left more than 12,000 people without shelter, sanitation, food and water, to sleep in fields and nearby cemeteries.

18 Sep 2020; MEMO: About 1,150 refugees and migrants have been moved from the streets on Greece’s island of Lesvos to a new temporary facility, an official said Thursday, Anadolu Agency reported.

The new facility will be in the Kara Tepe camp, near the island’s port, government spokesperson Stelios Petsas said Thursday.

A fire at Moria camp last week left more than 12,000 people without shelter, sanitation, food and water, to sleep in fields and nearby cemeteries.

GENEVA, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- The list of candidates running to become the next director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was narrowed to five after 164 members completed the first round of consultations, the WTO said on Friday.

They are Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from Nigeria, Yoo Myung-hee from the Republic of Korea, Amina Mohamed from Kenya, Mohammad Maziad Al-Tuwaijri from Saudi Arabia, and Liam Fox from Britain. 

Berlin, Sep 18 (AP/PTI) Germany is providing 22 million euros (USD 26 million) to improve security of synagogues and other Jewish sites in the country following an anti-Semitic attack last year.

The government pledged to step up security after a right-wing extremist tried to force his way into a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, killing two passers-by after he failed to get in.