Europe

KIEV, April 13. /TASS/: Despite use of aviation, which has dropped almost 400 tonnes of water on wildfire hotbeds in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the Ukrainian firemen cannot cope with the fire for 10 days already, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported Monday.

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/: The number of novel coronavirus in Russia has risen by 2,558 over the past 24 hours reaching 18,328 in 82 regions across the country. By now, 1,470 patients have recovered, 148 people have died, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Monday.

PARIS, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — France reported a drop in COVID-19 deaths on the previous 24 hours, with the total toll from the coronavirus epidemic in the country now 14,393, the health ministry said.

It said that there were 315 deaths in hospital over the last day, compared with 345 the day earlier. The total toll includes those who have died in nursing homes.

France had on April 6 recorded 605 deaths in hospitals, its highest daily number so far.

ROME, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Italy reported its lowest coronavirus death toll in more than three weeks, confirming trends showing that the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe’s worst-hit nation had peaked.

The 431 new deaths reported by the civil protection service were the lowest since March 19. Italy’s death total now stands at 19,899, officially second behind the United States.

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway, Western Europe’s largest oil producer, will soon decide whether to slash its output and thus aid a global effort to shore up crude prices, the energy minister said on Monday.

“The agreement among the OPEC+ producer nations is very positive,” Minister of Petroleum and Energy Tina Bru said in an emailed statement to Reuters, adding that Norway will draw its own conclusion on potential cuts “in the near future”.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain, one of the countries worst hit by the global coronavirus epidemic, on Monday started to ease tough lockdown restrictions that have kept people confined to their homes for more than a month and put a brake on economic activity.

Spain’s cumulative death toll from the coronavirus rose to 17,489 on Monday, up 517 from 16,972 on Sunday, the Health Ministry said. Confirmed cases totalled 169,496, up from 166,019 the previous day.

ROME, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The coronavirus pandemic has claimed 19,899 lives in locked-down Italy since the pandemic first broke out in the country on Feb. 21, according to the latest official data released on Easter Sunday.

Speaking during a televised press conference, Civil Protection Department Chief Angelo Borrelli said that the total number of infections, fatalities, and recoveries has reached 156,363.

The day also saw 1,984 new active coronavirus infections, bringing the nationwide total to 102,253.

MOSCOW (AP) — Spring is not turning out the way Russian President Vladimir Putin might have planned it.

A nationwide vote on April 22 was supposed to finalize sweeping constitutional reforms that would allow him to stay in power until 2036, if he wished. But after the coronavirus spread in Russia, that plebiscite had to be postponed – an action so abrupt that billboards promoting it already had been erected in Moscow and other big cities.

Now under threat is a pomp-filled celebration of Victory Day on May 9, marking the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

MOSCOW, Apr 13 (NNN-TASS) – Russian President, Vladimir Putin, U.S. President, Donald Trump and Saudi King, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, supported the agreement on a phased reduction in oil production reached by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some other major oil producing countries, the Kremlin said Sunday.

“Vladimir Putin had a phone conversation with U.S. President, Donald Trump and Saudi King, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud,” the Russian president’s press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused the U.S. State Department of spreading disinformation by not mentioning Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in a Facebook post about the International Day of Human Space Flight.

The United Nations General Assembly in 2011 proclaimed the annual observance held on the anniversary of the solo one-orbit mission that made Gagarin the first man in space on April 12, 1961.