Europe

KYIV (Reuters) - The World Bank has approved a $350 million loan for Ukraine in support of reforms that are critical to its economic recovery and to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the bank said.

Ukrainian government said earlier this month it expected to receive this loan by the end of June after securing a $5 billion loan program from the International Monetary Fund on June 9.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank’s government bond purchases are necessary and the benefits far outweigh the side effects, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel said on Saturday, pushing back on a court challenge from her native Germany.

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled last month that the ECB overstepped its mandate with 2 trillion euros worth of government bond buys over the past five years and ordered the Bundesbank to quit the programme, unless the ECB could prove within three month that the purchases were proportional.

BRUSSELS, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The EU’s top competition authority approved the massive bailout of Lufthansa by the German government, saving the airline from bankruptcy, but under conditions.

The European Commission said an injection of 6.0 billion euros by Berlin to keep the company afloat was allowed, but that Lufthansa would have to give up prized slots at the Frankfurt and Munich airports to ensure fair competition.

STOCKHOLM, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) —Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has rejected a warning from the World Health Organization that included Sweden among countries in Europe at risk of a Covid-19 resurgence.

The WHO on Thursday said several countries and territories were seeing a rise in infections. Eleven were in the UN agency’s Europe region.

Dr Tegnell told Swedish TV it was a “total misinterpretation of the data”.

LONDON, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Britain will ditch a 14-day quarantine period for people arriving from countries it deems to be lower risk for COVID-19 , the government said.

Official travel advice against all but essential travel outside Britain will also be eased for some countries and regions.

Taken together, these changes will make it easier for Britons to travel abroad for summer holidays.

MOSCOW, June 26 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic is retreating in Russia, President Vladimir Putin said Friday at a meeting with the volunteer movement "We Are Together."

"The volume of tasks for volunteers is starting to decrease slightly. You really did your job honestly. We can only be glad to say thanks again," Putin said.

Russia has confirmed 6,800 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, marking the lowest number of daily infections since the end of April.

BARCELONA, Spain, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at the University of Barcelona, one of Spain's most prestigious universities, had detected the presence of the novel coronavirus in waste water samples collected here on March 12, 2019, the university said in a statement on Friday.

"These results, sent to a high impact journal and published in the archive medRxiv, suggest the infection was present before knowing about any case of COVID-19 in any part of the world," the statement said.

LONDON (AP) — A male suspect stabbed and wounded a police officer before he was shot dead in Glasgow on Friday. Authorities are not treating the incident that left five other men wounded as terrorism, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

26 June 2020; MEMO: A German court ruled in favour of Kuwait Airways, after an Israeli citizen filed a lawsuit against the company for cancelling his reservation as he was not allowed to enter the Gulf state.

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida reported yesterday that a Munich court ruled that the airline’s decision to cancel the reservation made by the Israeli national is legal, in support of a previous verdict issued by the Landshut court in Germany.

26 June 2020; MEMO: The Belgian parliament today passed a resolution urging the government to call on the European Union to impose sanctions against Israel if it proceeds with its plan to annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank.