Europe

MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/: Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied reports saying that the Russian Aerospace Forces' aircraft carried out airstrikes on a hospital and a bakery in the Syrian city of Idlib.

"Foreign media reports alleging that on the morning of January 30, an aircraft from the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out airstrikes on a hospital and a bakery in a southern suburb of the Syrian city of Idlib are an instigation," the ministry said in a statement.

According to the ministry, Russian aircraft did not carry out any combat tasks in the area.

MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/: Russia’s authorities have no plans to provide law enforcement agencies with unlimited access to the personal data of the country’s citizens, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a cabinet meeting.

"As for reports saying that law enforcement agencies will get unlimited access to people’s online personal data, the way it was presented has nothing to do with the real state of things. There was no discussion of such a plan," Mishustin pointed out.

MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/: Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed an instruction to close the state border in the Far East as a measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

"A corresponding instruction was signed today. Work on it is already in progress. We will inform all those concerned properly about the measures to close the border in the Far Eastern region and other steps the government has taken [to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Russia]," Mishustin said in his opening remarks at the Cabinet’s meeting on Thursday.

London, Jan 30 (AFP/PTI) Britain's economy, lifted by the country's post-election political stability, risks fresh turbulence as Prime Minister Boris Johnson seeks tricky Brexit trade deals amid global threats that include the coronavirus.

Recent positive British economic data offset weaker figures at the end of 2019, but this is not expected to have a lasting impact despite government promises of major infrastructure spending.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg said on Instagram on Wednesday she has applied to register her name and that of the Fridays For Future movement she founded in 2018, which has gone global and catapulted her to international fame.

The move would allow legal action against persons or companies trying to use her name or the movement’s which are not in line with its values, she said.

“I assure you, I and the other school strikers have absolutely no interests in trademarks. But unfortunately it needs to be done,” she said on the social network.

BRUSSELS/LONDON, Jan 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Members of the European Parliament have overwhelmingly backed the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU.

MEPs ratified the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement by 621 votes to 49 following an emotional debate in Brussels.

After the vote, MEPs marked the UK’s exit by singing Auld Lang Syne.

Several British MEPs said they hoped the UK would return one day although Eurosceptics, including the Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage, used their final speeches to tear into the EU.

HELSINKI, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Minister for Employment Tuula Haatainen said on Wednesday that employers are suffering from lack of personnel and foreign labour is required to realize the existing growth potential.

There are people interested in coming to Finland for work, "but the process is terribly slow", the minister said at a press conference after a cabinet seminar.

At the seminar, the Finnish government rolled out emphasis on work-based immigration following the change of ministry duty.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union grudgingly let go of the United Kingdom with a final vote Wednesday at the EU’s parliament that ended the Brexit divorce battle and set the scene for tough trade negotiations in the year ahead.

In an emotion-charged session at the session in Brussels, lawmakers from all 28 EU countries expressed their love and sadness, while some, notably from Britain’s Brexit Party, their joy.

GENEVA (AP) — Sophisticated hackers infiltrated U.N. networks in Geneva and Vienna last year in an apparent espionage operation that top officials at the world body kept largely quiet. The hackers’ identity and the extent of the data they obtained are not known.

LONDON, Jan 29 (APP): British members of Parliament (MPs) and other speakers here at a seminar on Tuesday night asked India to stop genocide, gross human right violations, and atrocities on the defenceless people of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOK) and give them their inalienable right of self-determination.

An overwhelming support and solidarity with the Kashmiri people was witnessed among the audience of the seminar on ‘Kashmir Human Rights’ organized by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Third World Solidarity here at the British Parliament.