Europe

MADRID (Reuters) - European Central Bank’s policymaker Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Friday all the measures taken by European Union countries to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus epidemic would lead to “very severe” economic disruption.

De Cos added in an emailed statement sent to Reuters that a coordination at the EU level is “not an option” but “a necessity”.

He added the bank’s governing council is determined to do “whatever is needed”.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) said on Friday that the impact of the coronavirus outbreak may affect the lender’s ability to meet its financial targets as the fragile bank undergoes a major revamp after years of losses.

The warning is the first time that Germany’s largest lender has sounded the alarm on the outbreak, which has upended the bank’s operations by causing it to split teams globally and cancel major events. Deutsche’s shares have fallen to a record low amid a broad market rout.

MADRID (Reuters) - Two Albanian men were arrested after crashing a car into the interior of Barcelona airport’s Terminal 1 early on Friday morning yelling “Islamist-type” slogans, but there were no injuries, officials said.

Barcelona’s airport is nearly empty, as are airports across Spain, because of a partial lockdown imposed to fight the coronavirus epidemic.

The police bomb squad Tedax confirmed there were no explosives in the car.

BRUSSELS, March 20 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 is not a Chinese virus, said a senior EU official on Thursday, as he called for global cooperation in confronting the "massive threat."

"Viruses don't have a nationality and they don't care about borders," tweeted Josep Borrell Fontelles, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

He said COVID-19 is not a Chinese virus, as the Spanish flu was not Spanish.

"We all face a massive threat that requires global cooperation and all of us working hand in hand," he said.

MOSCOW, March 20 (NNN-TASS) — Russia’s sanitary watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has launched tests of a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, reported Russian news agency TASS.

“In Russia in order to prevent and control the COVID-19 epidemic the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology Vector of Rospotrebnadzor has swiftly developed prototypes of vaccines based on six various technological platforms,” the watchdog said.

Experts have managed to create vaccines based on broadly used recombinant viral vectors of flu.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: Russia’s Konteiner new-generation over-the-horizon radar, capable of tracking launches of cruise and hypersonic missiles at the distance of up to 3,000 km, will be deployed in Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad to cover the entire territory of Europe, including the United Kingdom, a defense industry source told TASS on Thursday.

The first Konteiner radar went on combat duty in the Volga area region of Mordovia on December 1, 2019.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: Moscow officials do not plan to introduce a curfew in the city to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Moscow’s coronavirus task force reported on Thursday, disproving media reports.

"The task force on controlling and monitoring the coronavirus situation in Moscow informs that the reports claiming that Moscow will introduce a curfew are false. We ask you to only trust official sources of information," the task force stated.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: The accumulated resources will allow the Russian authorities to quickly respond to a difficult situation, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters.

"I believe that the measures that were determined by the government, the resources and reserves that we have formed in the budget, which make the National Wealth Fund, overall 300 bln rubles, will allow us to quickly respond to developments and to help businesses, people, constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and of course enterprises in need," he said.

SEVASTOPOL, March 19. /TASS/: Russia’s Black Sea Fleet carried out late-night artillery drills at Crimea’s Opuk training range, the Fleet said in a statement on Thursday.

"The exercise was primarily aimed at training artillery recruits to use the Grad-M multiple rocket launchers and the Msta-B howitzers," the statement reads. Troops particularly practiced ways to calibrate artillery pieces, prepare to fire and change firing positions.

YEKATERINBURG, March 19. /TASS/: Trials of Russian antiviral drug Triazaverin, which is being tested against the novel coronavirus infection in China, are scheduled for completion in May, the head of the drug’s manufacturer Medsintez told TASS on Thursday.

A humanitarian batch of the medicine was sent to China in late January, and its tests against the novel coronavirus began shortly after.