Europe

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Moscow regrets Ankara’s decision to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/: Over 50 countries, including Brazil and Saudi Arabia, submitted requests to procure the Russian-made Avifavir anti-coronavirus drug, Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev stated in his column for the Newsweek magazine.

"Avifavir has already been bought not only by Russia's neighbours Belarus and Kazakhstan but also by Colombia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Peru and many other countries with more than 50 countries submitting purchase requests," he said.

BRUSSELS, July 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Five European states and five African countries agreed at a meeting on Monday, to work closer together to curtail human trafficking in Europe and at source, and to establish legal pathways for migrants to reach Europe, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said.

Johansson told the press that the meeting was part of the European Commission’s preparation of a new European Union (EU) pact on migration and asylum.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain faces a potentially more deadly second wave of COVID-19 in the coming winter that could kill up to 120,000 people over nine months in a worst-case scenario, health experts said on Tuesday.

With COVID-19 more likely to spread in winter as people spend more time together in enclosed spaces, a second wave of the pandemic “could be more serious than the one we’ve just been through,” said Stephen Holgate, a professor and co-lead author of a report by Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS).

MADRID (Reuters) - The speaker of Catalonia’s regional parliament Roger Torrent suspects he was spied upon by the Spanish state via phone tapping, a spokesman said on Tuesday, confirming a report first published by the Guardian and El Pais newspapers.

The newspapers said Torrent and two other separatist politicians were warned by researchers working with Facebook’s instant message service WhatsApp that their phones were broken into with a spyware called “Pegasus” made by Israeli company NSO Group.

MINSK (Reuters) - The Belarusian election commission declined on Tuesday to register President Alexander Lukashenko’s two most prominent opponents as candidates for a presidential election next month, all but ensuring victory for the leader in power for 26 years.

Viktor Babariko, a banker who was detained last month, was excluded from the ballot because of a criminal case against him, the election commission said. Valery Tsepkalo, a former ambassador who runs an office park for tech companies, was also rejected, after signatures on a supporting petition were nullified.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker is no longer welcome in the West.

The seven-year lag will please telecoms operators such as BT (BT.L), Vodafone (VOD.L) and Three (0215.HK) which feared they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to rip out Huawei equipment much faster. But it will delay the roll out of 5G.

ROME (AP) — The United Nations says the ranks of the world’s hungry grew by 10 million last year and warns that the coronavirus pandemic could push as many as 130 million more people into chronic hunger this year.

The grim assessment was contained in the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, an annual report released Monday by the five U.N. agencies that produced it.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish President Andrzej Duda declared victory Monday in a runoff election in which he narrowly won a second five-year term, acknowledging the campaign he ran was often too harsh as he appealed for unity and forgiveness.

The close race followed a bitter campaign between Duda and Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski that was dominated by cultural issues. The government, state media and the influential Roman Catholic Church all mobilized in support of Duda and sought to stoke anti-Semitism, homophobia and xenophobia in order to shore up conservative support.

NOVO-OGAREVO, July 13. / TASS /: Russia has managed to prevent a dramatic increase in unemployment during the crisis associated with the coronavirus, said Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects on Monday.

"We did not allow an explosive, as in some countries, dramatic increase in unemployment," President Putin said.

At the same time, the President admitted that "in the early stages of the fight against the epidemic there was a lack of coherence" in actions.