Europe

PARIS, May 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Ten European nations issued a joint statement, regretting the United States’s withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty, which they consider “a crucial element of the confidence-building framework that has been created over the past decades to increase transparency and security across the Euro-Atlantic area.”

LONDON (Reuters) - The United Kingdom has drawn up plans to require employers to cover 20% to 30% of furloughed employees’ wages from August to reduce the vast burden of the coronavirus crisis on government finances, The Times newspaper reported.

The United Kingdom on May 12 extended its job retention scheme - the centrepiece of its attempts to cushion the coronavirus hit to the economy - by four months but told employers they would have to help to meet its huge cost from August.

PARIS, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Ten European nations on Friday issued a joint statement regretting the United States' withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty, which they consider "a crucial element of the confidence-building framework that has been created over the past decades to increase transparency and security across the Euro-Atlantic area."

PARIS, May 22 (Xinhua) -- France has decided to organize the delayed second round of mayoral elections on June 28, which Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Friday is "reversible" if the coronavirus epidemic situation turns against it.

"On May 27, we will present a decree calling voters to the polls on June 28," Philippe said at a joint press conference with Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

LONDON (AP) — David Waugh is putting down barrier tape and spraying yellow lines on the ground outside the main door of his school near Manchester.

Waugh, who oversees five schools in northwestern England, already has painted yellow arrows to ensure that children follow a one-way path around the building when they return next month from an extended break due to the coronavirus pandemic.

LONDON (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic is interrupting immunization against diseases including measles, polio and cholera that could put the lives of nearly 80 million children under the age of 1 at risk, according to a new analysis from the World Health Organization and partners.

In a new report issued on Friday, health officials warned that more than half of 129 countries where immunization data were available reported moderate, severe or total suspensions of vaccination services during March and April.

MOSCOW, May 22. /TASS/: The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome Friday, carrying a Ministry of Defense spacecraft, the Ministry announced Friday.

"At 10:31 Moscow time, the Aerospace Forces’ Space Forces crew successfully completed launch of a Soyuz-2.1b middle class carrier rocket with a Ministry of Defense spacecraft from launch pad 4 of site 43 of the Plesetsk Cosmodrome," the Ministry reported.

MOSCOW, May 22. /TASS/: Unofficial testing of a coronavirus vaccine on volunteer employees of the Gamalei National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology finished successfully and caused no side effects, the Center’s director Alexander Gintzburg told TASS Friday.

SIMFEROPOL, May 22. /TASS/: Chairperson of the Ukrainian community of Crimea Anastasiya Gridchina has called on the world community to protect the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.

Gridchina addressed the UN Security Council at an informal video conference on Thursday organized by the Russian permanent mission. According to her, the discrimination of the Russian-speaking population is now especially noticeable at schools and kindergartens of Ukraine, where children are forced to communicate exclusively in the Ukrainian language.

MOSCOW, May 22. /TASS/: The United States’ withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty harms NATO’s European member-states because it is highly likely that they would take the cue from Washington. When deprived of the possibility of conducting flights over Russia, they will become more dependent on US intelligence data, Editor-in-Chief of the Arsenal of the Fatherland journal Viktor Murakhovsky told TASS on Friday.