Europe

PARIS (AP) — European plane maker Airbus saw its deliveries halve during the first six months of the year as travel collapsed during the pandemic and airlines scrounged for cash.

The company, based in France, said Thursday that its deliveries fell almost 50% to 196, with revenue sliding almost 40% to 18.9 billion euros.

It said it was further scaling back production of its A350 long-haul jet, from six a month to five, after trimming from nine a month in April.

PARIS (AP) — As the sun went down, their partying got into full flow, with an unwanted guest: the coronavirus.

An outbreak among 18- to 25-year-olds at a seaside resort on the Brittany coast is crystallizing fears that the virus is flaring again in France, on the back of vacationers throwing COVID-19 caution to the summer winds.

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/: US sanctions against Nord Stream 2 challenge the attractiveness of investing in Europe, Chairman of Executive Board of Austria’s OMV, one of Gazprom’s financial partners on the project, Rainer Seele said during a conference call on Wednesday.

MINSK, July 29. /TASS/: Russian citizens apprehended in Belarus are employees of the "Wagner Private Military Company," BelTA state news agency reports, citing law enforcement agencies of the republic.

According to the news agency, 32 people, whom BelTA calls private military company employees, were apprehended in a holiday center in Belarus Wednesday; one more man was detained in southern Belarus, the report says. An inspection into the apprehended is underway.

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/: Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has castigated claims that Russia is allegedly promoting a coronavirus pandemic ‘disinformation’ campaign, branding it an ongoing neurotic obsession.

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/: The number of new coronavirus infections in the Russian capital has taken a 90-percent dive since the peak of the pandemic, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Wednesday.

"If we take the period from the peak of the incidence, the number of newly-diagnosed COVID-19 cases in Moscow has seen a ten-fold decline. You remember, we had 6,500 [cases]. Today, we have about 650 cases, plus or minus 50," he said at a meeting on the nationwide sanitary and epidemiological situation chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

PARIS, July 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Pharma giants Sanofi and GSK have agreed to supply Britain with up to 60 million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the firms announced Wednesday.

The agreement covers a vaccine candidate developed by France’s Sanofi in partnership with the UK’s GSK and is subject to a “final contract”.

Amid a global race to find a vaccine to halt the pandemic, Sanofi announced “Ongoing discussions with the European Commission, with France and Italy on the negotiation team, and other governments to ensure global access to a novel coronavirus vaccine.”

29 July 2020; MEMO: An Iranian delegation will arrive in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, today to discuss compensation for the families of the Boeing 737 passengers which were killed by an Iranian missile earlier this year.

The Iranian delegation is scheduled to hold talks today and tomorrow concerning the monetary value of the compensation.

LONDON (Reuters) - A lawyer for Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, accused a British newspaper publisher in court on Wednesday of commercially exploiting its legal dispute with her by using court documents as the basis for “sensational” coverage.

Meghan, wife of Queen Elizabeth’s grandson Prince Harry, is suing Associated Newspapers over articles in the Mail on Sunday in February 2019 that included parts of a handwritten letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018.

MINSK (Reuters) - Belarusian law enforcement detained 32 people working for a foreign private military group near Minsk overnight, the Belta news agency reported on Wednesday.

The agency gave no more details.

Private military companies are illegal in Belarus, which is holding a presidential election on Aug. 9.