Europe

MINSK, August 12. /TASS/: Belarussian Anti-Monopoly Control and Trade Ministry has outlawed wholesale and retail trade in pyrotechnic products starting from August 12, the news agency BelTA said on Wednesday.

"In connection with a resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers we are asking trade outlets to take urgent measures to enforce strict compliance with the aforesaid resolution and to prevent wholesale and retail trade in pyrotechnic products in the territory of Belarus," the ministry’s news release runs.

MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/: Foreign specialists’ criticism of the Russian vaccine against the novel coronavirus is groundless and should be attributed to competition, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko told a news briefing on Wednesday.

"Some foreign colleagues, who must have felt certain competition and competitive edges of Russia’s product, have been trying to express opinions that we find totally groundless," he said.

MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/: Combat unmanned aerial vehicles, capable of striking enemy positions with high-precision projectiles, will enter service with Russia’s Aerospace Forces next year, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces Lt. Gen. Sergei Dronov said.

"Next year, the troops will start receiving multi-purpose long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, capable not only of conducting aerial survey but also of striking enemy facilities with high-precision projectiles," Dronov said in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

MINSK, August 12. /TASS/: Mobile web access has been restored in Minsk after a three-day interruption, the quality of service on the whole has significantly improved, TASS correspondent reported on Wednesday.

Around 6:30 am (same time in Moscow), users in Minsk began to receive previously undelivered text messages. The majority of sites were accessible, including news outlets. Mobile applications became available as well.

MOSCOW, Aug 12 (NNN-Xinhua) — German and Russian foreign ministers rejected US sanctions threat against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.

“No state has the right to dictate Europe’s energy policy with threats, and this will not succeed,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters on Tuesday following a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union on Wednesday withdrew preferential market access to Cambodian products such as garments and footwear, hitting about a fifth of the country’s exports to the bloc over “serious and systematic concerns related to human rights”.

The EU first announced the move in February and the bloc’s Brussels-based executive said on Wednesday Cambodia made no amends since then, meaning the decision was now effective.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday the first batch of its Covid-19 vaccine would be ready for some medics within two weeks and rejected as “groundless” safety concerns aired by some experts over Moscow’s rapid approval of the drug.

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine, after less than two months of human testing.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said its latest round of trade talks with the United States made positive progress in many areas, and that both sides agreed negotiations should continue at pace in the coming months.

After leaving the European Union earlier this year Britain is trying to tie up swift trade deals with major partners like the United States to capitalize on its new freedom to strike bilateral deals rather than EU-wide ones.

“Positive progress continues to be made in many of the areas covered by an agreement,” the British trade department said in a statement.

BRUSSELS, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has agreed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with eight non-EU partners to help their businesses limit the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, MoU have already been agreed with Albania, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Ukraine, the Commission said in a press release. Four of them, namely Kosovo, Moldova, North Macedonia and Ukraine, have formally signed the documents.

LONDON (AP) — The British economy has fallen into recession after official figures Wednesday showed it contracting by a record 20.4% in the second quarter as a result of lockdown measures put in place to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

The slump recorded by the Office for National Statistics follows a 2.2% quarter-on-quarter contraction in the first three months of the year. It was toward the end of that period — on March 23 — that the U.K. joined other countries in Europe in locking down its economy.