Europe

BERLIN, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Chancellor Angela Merkel announced steps to ease the coronavirus lockdown, saying the first phase of the pandemic had passed but there was still a long way to go.

Germany went into lockdown in March to slow the spread of the virus. Its reproduction rate has been falling for several days, and Merkel said it was now consistently below 1 – meaning a person with the virus infects fewer than one other on average.

MOSCOW, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Vladimir Putin said Russia should not rush to lift coronavirus-related restrictions, warning that any haste in removing preventative measures could undo their work so far.

Putin said governors would have the responsibility of deciding how to proceed in their own regions.

The country’s coronavirus crisis response centre said earlier on Wednesday that the number of cases had risen by more than 10,000 for a fourth consecutive day and now stood at 165,929.

Russia has recorded 1,537 coronavirus-related deaths.

LONDON, May 06 (APP): British Labour Friends of Kashmir chairman and member parliament (MP) Andrew Gwynne expressing his deep concerns over human right abuses in Indian occupied Kashmir has said that Kashmir dispute is an issue of social justice and human rights.

WARSAW, May 7. /TASS/: The presidential elections in Poland, due on May 10, will not take place, leaders of the ruling coalition announced on Wednesday night.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the ruling Law and Justice party, and his coalition partner Jaroslaw Gowin, who leads the Agreement political party, plan that after May 10, 2020, the Supreme Court would declare the elections void because it did not happen.

"The speaker of the parliament will announce new presidential elections at the earliest possible date," reads a statement, released by the Polish Press Agency.

MOSCOW, May 6. /TASS/: The Russian Foreign Ministry condemns the April 30 armed attack on the Cuban embassy in Washington, which took place against the backdrop of continuous negative rhetoric targeting the island nation’s government, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, May 7. /TASS/: The second submarine to serve as a basic carrier of Russia’s Poseidon nuclear-capable underwater drones will be floated out approximately in late June, a defense industry source told TASS on Thursday.

"The Khabarovsk [Project 09852] will be floated out in late June at the earliest. There is no exact date so far," the source said.

The Russian Navy’s press service did not comment on the information. The Sevmash shipyard where the submarine is being built was not immediately available for a comment.

MINSK, May 6. /TASS/: The Belarusian foreign ministry has stripped off accreditation of a TV crew working for Russia’s Channel One after a report on the coronavirus developments in Belarus shot by the group came out, Belarus 1 TV reported Wednesday.

GENEVA, May 6. /TASS/: The number of people infected with the novel coronavirus worldwide has increased by more than 71,000 in the past 24 hours, while the overall death toll grew by almost 4,000, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

As of 11:00 Moscow time on May 6, as many as 3,588,463 novel coronavirus cases and 247,503 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 71,463 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 4,102.

ZURICH/GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday that countries emerging from restrictions to halt the new coronavirus must proceed “extremely carefully” or risk a rapid rise in new cases.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said countries needed to ensure they had adequate measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 respiratory disease like tracking systems and quarantine provision.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s 27 leaders on Wednesday gave their “unequivocal support” for the six Balkan countries to eventually become members of the bloc and offered them more financial support as Brussels seeks to check Chinese largesse.

The EU says it has not been given enough credit for the 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion) it is providing, an amount officials said outweighs medical supplies Beijing and Moscow sent to Serbia and Bosnia in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic.