Europe

AMSTERDAM, March 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Four fugitive suspects go on trial in the Netherlands on Monday charged with the murder of 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which was shot down with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

Wreckage of the Boeing 777 fell to the ground in fields surrounding the Ukrainian village of Hrabove in territory held by pro-Russian separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces.

The jet was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. There were no survivors.

GENEVA, Mar 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Additional five countries — the Philippines, New Zealand, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia — have seen local transmission of COVID-19, according to the daily situation report on COVID-19 released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Friday evening.

Compared to the previous day, the transmission classification of those five countries have been revised from “imported cases only” to “local transmission,” making the total number of countries and regions where local transmission emerged to 41.

KASTANIES, Greece (AP) — Clashes between Greek riot police and migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey erupted anew Friday as European Union foreign ministers criticized Turkey for using migrants’ desperation “for political purposes.”

Greek riot police used tear gas and a water cannon in the morning to drive back people trying to cross its land border with Turkey. Turkish police fired volleys of tear gas back toward Greece in an ongoing standoff between Ankara and the EU over who should care for migrants and refugees.

PARIS (AP) — Crossing more borders, the new coronavirus hit a milestone, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and vast masses in between.

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: London’s reluctance to provide consular access to the Russian citizens who were the victims of the Salisbury incident two years ago is an overt violation of international legal obligations stemming from the consular convention, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters at a press briefing on Friday.

TALLINN, March 6. /TASS/: Several Estonian veterans of the Great Patriotic War will attend the celebratory events timed to the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Second World War (WWII) on May 9, 2020 in Moscow, Russian Ambassador to Estonia Alexander Petrov said on Friday.

"Two veterans of the Great Patriotic War will come to Moscow with accompanying persons," he told the ERR portal. "Five more veterans will come to St. Petersburg in May."

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: Deployment of Russian-made S-400 air defense systems would commence in April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, during his meeting with the journalists in the wake of Moscow talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

"They [S-400] already belong to us. In April, we will begin deploying them," Erdogan said, according to Yeni Safak newspaper.

The Turkish President underscored that Ankara does not reject the US-made Patriot air defense systems.

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: The excessive presence of foreign warships in the Persian Gulf region does not facilitate ease of tensions in the region but works as an additional irritant instead, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday.

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin has met with British Ambassador to Moscow Deborah Bronnert to discuss Moscow’s initiative to hold a summit of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, France, the United States, the United Kingdom and China), the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/: About 60,000 residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have been granted Russian citizenship since the beginning of this year. More than 225,000 people in these republics have been granted Russian citizenship since the presidential decree on the issue came into force last year, the press center of the Russian Interior Ministry informed TASS.

"More than 225,000 residents of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Lugansk regions were granted Russian citizenship in 2019 and 58,000 in 2020," the press center said in response to an inquiry from TASS.