Europe

31 July 2020; MEMO: The United States should not stop United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from naming a new UN Libya envoy to replace Ghassan Salame who quit nearly five months ago, Germany’s UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen said on Thursday.

Reuters reports that Salame, who headed the UN political mission and was charged with trying to mediate peace, quit because of stress after his last effort at peacemaking in the war-torn, oil producing country failed.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has instructed the Russian Government to submit the proposals to change the legislation considering the amendments that had been proposed but not included in the Constitution by December 15. As the Kremlin official website reported on Friday, he assigned this task after meeting with the members of the working group on proposals for amendments to the Russian Constitution which took place on July 3.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that amends Russian electoral legislation, including providing an option to hold a vote for several days, but no more than three. The document was published on the official legal information website.

31 July 2020; MEMO: Ukraine said on Friday that its first round of talks with Iran about the downing of a Ukrainian airliner shortly after takeoff in Tehran in January had been constructive, and that it was determined “to bring Iran to justice”, Reuters reports.

All 176 people on board – including 57 Canadians – were killed when Iranian forces struck the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 jet. Iran said they mistook the passenger plane for a missile at a time of high tensions with the United States.

31 July 2020; MEMO: Senior British Muslim Conservative party life peer Lord Sheikh has won his libel case against UK media company Associated Newspapers, regarding an article published in August 2018 accusing him of appearing at a “hate conference” held in Tunisia.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday it hoped that more than 30 Russian private security contractors detained in neighbouring Belarus and accused of plotting acts of terrorism would soon be released.

Russia a day earlier demanded an explanation over what it called Minsk’s wrongful arrest of the group, an incident that risks worsening already strained relations between Belarus and traditional ally Moscow.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Huawei’s top manager in Germany has appealed to the government not to shut it out of building 5G mobile networks, Der Spiegel said on Friday, after Britain decided to purge the Chinese firm’s equipment from its network on security grounds.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has put off a decision on tougher certification rules until after the summer break, amid pressure from some lawmakers who sympathise with U.S. calls to ban Huawei outright.

ROME, July 30 (Xinhua) -- The number of coronavirus infections is on the rise in three-quarters of Italy's regions, according to a research paper released Thursday by the GIMBE Foundation, with the country as a whole seeing a net week-by-week rise in infections for the first time since April.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Thursday imposed its first-ever sanctions over cyberattacks, slapping them on alleged Russian military agents, Chinese cyber spies and organizations including a North Korean firm.

The six people and three groups hit with sanctions include Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. EU headquarters blamed them in a statement for the 2017 “WannaCry” ransomware and “NotPetya” malware attacks and the “Cloud Hopper” cyberespionage campaign.

MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/: The state commission at the Baikonur spaceport cleared a Proton-M carrier rocket for its launch on July 31, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Thursday.

"Following the reports by State Corporation Roscosmos specialists about the readiness of the space rocket and the ground-based space infrastructure of the Baikonur Cosmodrome for the launch, the state commission made a decision on fueling the Proton-M launch vehicle and confirmed the launch time," Roscosmos said.