Europe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will respond with reciprocal measures to British sanctions against 25 Russians, including the country’s top state investigator, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Britain imposed sanctions on 25 Russians and 20 Saudis on Monday as part of post-Brexit measures foreign minister Dominic Raab said were aimed at stopping the laundering of “blood money”.

MOSCOW, July 7 (Xinhua) -- Ivan Safronov, an advisor to the director general of the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, has been detained on suspicion of committing high treason, Roscosmos said in a statement on Tuesday.

It said that the detention of Safronov is not related to his work at Roscosmos.

Roscosmos has been assisting the investigating authorities, the statement said, providing no further details. 

LONDON, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The novel coronavirus has existed worldwide and broke out whenever and wherever favorable conditions occurred rather than starting in China, an Oxford University expert has told The Telegraph.

"I think the virus was already here -- here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions," Dr Tom Jefferson, senior associate tutor at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at Oxford and a visiting professor at Newcastle University, said on Sunday.

LONDON (AP) — More than 200 scientists have called for the World Health Organization and others to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread in the air — a change that could alter some of the current measures being taken to stop the pandemic.

LONDON (AP) — The Chinese ambassador to Britain accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday of meddling in China’s affairs by offering citizenship to 3 million people from Hong Kong following the imposition of a national security law.

Ambassador Liu Xiaoming defended his country’s new national security law against accusations it’s aimed at eroding Hong Kong’s considerable autonomy and curbing dissent. Liu pointed out that the U.K. handed control of the city that was a British colony for more than a century back to Beijing in 1997.

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron ousted his top security official Monday following protests over police brutality, as part of a government shakeup aimed at focusing on France’s post-pandemic economic recovery for the remaining two years of Macron’s term.

MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/: The Federal Security Service (FSB) has apprehended members of a criminal drug-running network which organized supplies to 12 Russian regions. In all, the federal law enforcement agency seized the total of 55 kilos of narcotic substances, the FSB Public Relations Center informed TASS on Monday.

MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/: A complaint about the use of the facial recognition video surveillance system was addressed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, the lawyers of the Agora human rights organization who prepared the document told TASS.

MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/: The Russian Navy will receive about 40 ships and vessels of various classes in 2020, Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov said in an interview with the Defense Ministry’s newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on Monday.

"Overall, about 40 ships and vessels of various classes will be accepted for service with the Russian Navy in 2020," the admiral said, stressing that this suggested the efficient implementation of the military shipbuilding program in Russia.

MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/: Russia’s coronavirus cases rose by 6,611 to 687,862 in the past day, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Monday, adding that the country’s coronavirus growth rate had remained at or below 1% for a week.

Russia identified less than 7,000 new daily cases for the 11th day in a row.

Moscow has recorded the lowest coronavirus growth rate (0.3%). The rate stands at 0.5% in the Moscow, Ingushetia and North Ossetia regions, and at 0.6% in the Dagestan region.