Europe

GENEVA (Reuters) - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged policymakers on Wednesday to use their response to the coronavirus pandemic to tackle climate change.

“Looking ahead, policies should lay the foundation for a low-carbon, resilient recovery that would create millions of jobs while help address the climate crisis,” she told an International Labour Organization conference.

“We are especially concerned that the crisis will jeopardise the important development gains of the last years,” she added.

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - Airbus (AIR.PA) workers began a brief strike on Wednesday over plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs in response to the coronavirus crisis, which has stripped demand for jets as airlines cope with a plunge in tourism and business travel.

Unions said up to 8,000 workers were expected to join the action scheduled to last 1.5 hours in Toulouse, France, where employees were preparing to march alongside one of the runways at Toulouse-Blagnac airport overlooked by Airbus headquarters.

The airport was due to remain open.

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions targeting Huawei Technologies have had no immediate impact on the Chinese firm’s ability to supply 5G equipment to the UK, Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said on Wednesday.

“These restrictions actually haven’t had an impact on Huawei’s capability to supply to the UK’s 5G and fibre solution at this moment,” Zhang told reporters on a call.

“We need to talk about the long term impact, it takes time, it takes months.”

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission has struck deals with drugmakers Roche (ROG.S) and Merck KGaA (MRCG.DE) to secure supplies of experimental treatments for COVID-19, a Commission source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The deals cover Roche’s arthritis medicine RoActemra and Merck’s multiple sclerosis drug Rebif - both seen as potential treatments for COVID-19 - and will secure supplies to any of the 27 EU member states willing to buy them, the source said.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is determined to expand its attempts to regulate online hate speech even as Facebook (FB.O) promises to do more to clean up its site after a global advertiser boycott, with politicians saying the issue is too important to leave to self-regulation.

A German law in force since 2018 demands that social networks delete or block obviously criminal content within 24 hours of receiving a complaint or face a hefty fine.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - A group of opposition supporters stormed the Serbian parliament building in Belgrade on Tuesday in a protest against a lockdown planned for the capital this weekend to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday evening that stricter measures including the lockdown of Belgrade over the weekend would be introduced because of the rising number of coronavirus infections.

Opponents blame the increase on the government and say people should not have to pay the price for another lockdown.

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi Sunak will announce on Wednesday his next moves to prevent a wave of job cuts from snowballing into a full-blown unemployment crisis in the world’s sixth biggest economy.

He is already on course to take state borrowing to World War Two levels as he subsidises 9 million jobs - equivalent to more than a third of private-sector workers - alongside other emergency measures.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s future access to the European Union financial market must take into account how far it will diverge from the bloc’s rules, a European Commission official said on Wednesday.

After leaving the EU in January, Britain retains full access to the bloc until the end of 2020 under a transition deal with its former partners, with both blaming each other for missing an end of June deadline for assessments on access from 2021.

ATHENS, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The relocation program of unaccompanied refugee minors from Greece to other EU member states continues despite the COVID-19 challenge, after it was launched a few months ago by the Greek government and the European Commission, Greek officials said here Tuesday.

Greece's Alternate Minister for Immigration and Asylum Giorgos Koumoutsakos wished a better future to 25 minors who departed from Athens international airport for Portugal, repeating Athens' plea for more European solidarity on this matter.

07 July 2020; MEMO: Russia’s Kremlin yesterday called on Turkey to maintain Hagia Sophia’s status as a UNESCO world heritage site and not to return it into a mosque as it was before the end of the Othman Empire, TASS news agency reported.

Speaking to reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We by all means hope that Hagia Sophia’s status as a world heritage site will be taken into consideration.”