Europe

21 May 2019; DW: Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is preparing to fight a no-confidence vote in his leadership. His bid to sack the far-right interior minister over a corruption sting has triggered a damaging backlash.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is set to face a no-confidence vote from lawmakers in a special parliamentary session next Monday, the speaker of the lower house said.  

21 May 2019; DW: A senior aide to Russia's opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been detained over a rally organized by the opposition last year. In 2018, Navalny himself served two stints in jail for violating protest laws.

Police in Moscow on Tuesday arrested a key ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. 

Leonid Volkov tweeted that he had been detained "according to Article 20.2.8 over the rally on September 9, 2018 against raising the pension age." 

21 May 2019; DW: Seven men accused of forming a "Shariah Police" brigade in western Germany have gone on trial. The group allegedly patrolled the streets of Wuppertal in orange vests, telling people to abstain from music and alcohol.

The retrial of seven alleged members of a self-proclaimed "Shariah Police" vigilante group began in the western city of Wuppertal on Monday.

BERLIN, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Two high schools in southern German city of Munich were evacuated due to unspecified threat, German media Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday.

The two schools, Staatl. Dante-Gymnasium and Klenze-Gymnasium, are next to each other. One of the schools already announced that it would cancel all lessons, the report said.

Local radio said that one school received a mail package and the content must be evaluated.

A police spokesperson in Munich said the threat situation is "still a bit unclear," but must be taken seriously.

MUNSTER, Germany, May 20 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday assured Germany's help for Ukraine to solve the conflicts in its Donbas region.

Merkel made the statement during her visit to a rapid reaction force of NATO in Germany's Munster.

The army unit, consists of soldiers of Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, was founded in 2014 after an escalation of clashes in Ukraine's east.

MOSCOW, May 20. /TASS/: Russia will continue to provide assistance to Christians in the Middle East, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.

"The Middle East is going through serious trials, with Christians fleeing Iraq, public executions of Coptic Christians staged in Libya, Christians being massacred by terrorists and extremists in Syria. It is only a small portion of consequences of geopolitical engineering by United States and their closest allies," Lavrov said at a reception in honor of Orthodox Christian Easter.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, May 21. /TASS/: The Caspian Flotilla's air defense forces have repelled an attack by an 'enemy' helicopter group during military drills, the press service of the Southern Military District said on Tuesday.

"Air defense forces of the flotilla's 10 ships have promptly prepared the equipment and detroyed an 'enemy' group of helicopters after locating and identifying them," the press service said.

The ships that took part in the drills included the Grad Sviyazhsk, the Uglich, the Velisky Ustyug, the Volgodonsk, the Makhachkala and the Astrakhan.

VIENNA, May 21. /TASS/: Austrian representatives refused to participate and provide a venue for the 6th European conference of the Valdai International Discussion Cluba because of the domestic political crisis, Russian Ambassador in Vienna Dmitry Lyublinsky said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, May 21. /TASS/: Multipurpose laboratory module Nauka will be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in the autumn of 2020 at the earliest, a source in the space rocket industry told TASS.

"The Nauka module will be launched at the end of October or November 2020 at the earliest," the source said. He added that the module will be delivered to the orbit by a Proton-M carrier rocket.

The source noted that "the relevant decree was signed by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin."

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Filled with paratroopers, a U.S. warplane lumbered down an English runway in 1944 to spearhead the World War II D-Day invasion with a message for Adolf Hitler painted in bright yellow across its nose: “That’s All, Brother.”

Seventy-five years later, in a confluence of history and luck, that plane is again bound for the French coast for what could be the last great commemoration of the Allied battle to include D-Day veterans, many of whom are now in their 90s.