Europe

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: The United States seeks to provide assistance to militants under its control in Syria’s Rukban refugee camp at the expense of the UN, the Russian and Syrian joint coordination headquarters said in a statement on Wednesday.

"It is clear that the Americans need humanitarian aid to be delivered to the camp solely to achieve their own goals, that is, to provide the illegal armed groups controlled by them with food and essential supplies at the expense of the UN, which will enable them to further delay the process of disbanding Rukban," the statement reads.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: A teenager detained in the Tyumen region planned to carry out a mass murder at a school in April, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.

"According to investigators, the young man had a criminal intent to kill an unlimited number of people at an educational facility in the Tyumen region," the statement reads. Law enforcement officers stopped the teenager from implementing his criminal plot, the Investigation Committee added.

SEVASTOPOL, April 22. /TASS/: The teams of S-400 ‘Triumf’ anti-aircraft missile systems shielded economically vital facilities on the Crimean Peninsula during drills, the Black Sea Fleet’s press office reported on Wednesday.

The personnel of the Southern Military District’s surface-to-air missile formation "held a special exercise for the air defense of vital facilities of the economy’s civil sector," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: Creating a readily available vaccine for the coronavirus will take months, the World Health Organization's representative in Russia Melita Vujnovic said in an interview with TASS.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: The overwhelming majority of Moscow Region’s residents adhere to the self-isolation measures introduced to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyev said on Rossiya-24 channel on Tuesday.

"Statistical data shows that the majority of people are adhering to the self-isolation regime. <…> We are working on it, trying to convince people that it is important and necessary currently," he stated.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: As of April 21, Russian banks issued interest-free loans to small and medium-sized businesses to support employment in the amount of about 4 bln rubles ($51.61 mln), press service of the Ministry of Economic Development said.

"According to monitoring data for 15 banks that have signed an agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development, as of April 21, about 4 bln rubles were issued for more than 1,800 applications for interest-free loans to support employment," the statement said.

MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/: The number of coronavirus cases in Russia has risen by 5,236 over the past day to nearly 58,000 in all regions, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Wednesday.

At the moment, 4,420 people have recovered and another 513 people have died.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday faced a call for an inquiry into his government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis after failing to fully explain partial death data, limited testing or the lack of equipment for hospitals.

The novel coronavirus outbreak, the worst health crisis since the 1918 influenza pandemic, has left governments across the world grappling with stressed populations, a stalled global economy and overloaded health services.

LONDON (Reuters) - The novel coronavirus outbreak has caused as many as 41,000 deaths in the United Kingdom, according to a Financial Times analysis of statistics office data.

The FT extrapolation is based on the number of all fatalities in official data recorded recently that have exceeded the usual average. These figures include deaths that occurred outside hospitals.

The latest hospital death data show 17,337 people have died after testing positive for coronavirus across the United Kingdom as of this Monday.

GENEVA, April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United Nations has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could almost double the number of people around the world suffering from acute hunger.

The UN’s World Food Programme said the virus could be catastrophic for millions of people whose lives are already hanging by a thread – who can only eat if they are earning a wage.

A report compiled by the organisation said the total number suffering from hunger could be pushed from 135 million last year to more than 250 million.