Europe

BELGRADE, April 23. /TASS/: Zeljka Cvijanovic, president of Republika Srpska (a Bosnia and Herzegovina entity), awarded Russian military specialists, who provided assistance to the republic in fighting the coronavirus epidemic, medals and certificates of merit, the press service of the President’s Office announced Thursday.

MOSCOW, April 23./TASS/: The Russian side has not yet received from the Department of State the list and addresses of the Russian school students remaining in the US, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday.

23 April 2020; AFP: Two alleged former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany on Thursday accused of crimes against humanity in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Prime suspect Anwar Raslan, an alleged former colonel in Syrian state security, stands accused of carrying out crimes against humanity while in charge of the Al-Khatib detention centre in Damascus.

23 April 2020; AFP: Nicotine could protect people from contracting the coronavirus, according to new research in France, where further trials are planned to test whether the substance could be used to prevent or treat the deadly illness.

The findings come after researchers at a top Paris hospital examined 343 coronavirus patients along with 139 people infected with the illness with milder symptoms.

They found that a low number of them smoked, compared to smoking rates of around 35 percent in France's general population.

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Global economic activity all but ground to a halt this month as government-imposed lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic took a particularly heavy toll on the world’s service industry, surveys showed on Thursday.

The outbreak, which has infected more than 2.6 million people and killed more than 180,000 globally, has also crippled manufacturing, shutting factories and upending supply chains.

ROME, Apr 23 (NNN-XINHUA) – The COVID-19 pandemic claimed over 25,000 lives in locked-down Italy, bringing the total number of active infections, fatalities and recoveries so far to 187,327, according to the latest data, released by the country’s Civil Protection Department.

Wednesday saw 437 new deaths, bringing the total to 25,085 fatalities, since the pandemic first broke out in the Lombardy region on Feb 21.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin is not concerned about whether measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus will affect his approval rating because the fight against the disease is currently his top priority, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with CNBC.

"During his political career, Putin has never showed fear about losing his popularity... He still enjoys an overwhelming majority of support among the population, but this is the last thing he thinks about," he said.

GENEVA, April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization (WHO) said that all available evidence suggests that the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and it was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that his government was trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in Wuhan in central China.

VIENNA, April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The OPEC alliance of oil producers said “several” member states, and some of its allies in the OPEC+ grouping, held a teleconference Tuesday to discuss the plunge in oil prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The organisation tweeted that ministers held an “informal teleconference to brainstorm the current dramatic oil market situation” but it was not clear whether Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, took part.

LONDON, April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting scheduled to take place in the Rwandan capital Kigali in June has been postponed due to COVID-19, the organisation said.

A new date for the event, which takes place every two years, would be announced in due course, the body’s London-based secretariat said in a statement.

The last CHOGM was held in the United Kingdom in 2018.