Europe

PARIS (AP) — Protesters disrupted traffic in Paris on Friday as angry critics, political opponents and labor unions around France blasted President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to force a bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 through parliament without a vote.

Opposition parties were expected to start procedures later Friday for a no-confidence vote on the government led by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. The vote would likely take place early next week.

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: The Ukrainian armed forces can’t shoot down Russian ballistic missiles such as the Iskander-M, S-300 air defense missiles and Smerch rockets, in addition to hypersonic Kinzhal and Kh-22 missiles, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat said in an interview aired on Thursday.

"We don’t shoot down ballistic missiles, for example Iskander-M," he said in the interview with Ukraine’s 24 channel. "Also, unfortunately, we don’t have the capability to intercept rockets fired by multiple launch rocket systems such as Smerch."

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: Eurozone countries are trying to convince everyone of the imminent collapse of the Russian economy, while their inflation is higher than in Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, speaking at the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

In this regard, Putin recalled a saying by American writer Mark Twain, who once joked: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: The United Nations Secretariat needs to be more balanced in how it treats information with regard to the Ukraine issue, otherwise Russia will question its impartiality at a session of the General Assembly’s Committee on Information, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: Russia will leave Armenia’s attempts to put responsibility for the security of Nagorno-Karabakh on third countries on the conscience of Armenian authorities, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing Thursday.

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has termed the phrase ‘unfriendly countries’ inexact and incorrect, because it is not so much the countries themselves but rather their elites or leaders that are unfriendly.

BERLIN, March 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — German authorities said they had taken down the “world’s largest” money laundering site for cryptocurrency, seizing millions of euros’ worth of bitcoin in the process.

Law enforcement officials secured around 44 million euros of the digital currency in the move against online platform ChipMixer, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Frankfurt prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Working together with authorities in the United States and Europol, investigators also seized the servers belonging to the “darknet” site.

GENEVA, March 16 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — At some point this year the Covid-19 pandemic will be over and will cease to be a public healthcare emergency of international interest, according to WHO considerations, published by specialized media.    

The statement was made by World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, when making an account of Covid-19, since it was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.

SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus contagions were declared a public healthcare emergency of international concern as early as Jan 30, 2020.

PARIS, March 16 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne triggered a special procedure to push an unpopular pension reform bill through the National Assembly without a vote, amid shouts and chants from left-wing lawmakers brandishing placards against the reform.

The move, using the so-called article 49.3 of the constitution, will ensure the bill raising the retirement age by two years to 64 is adopted, but it shows President Emmanuel Macron and his government failed to garner enough of a majority in parliament.

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) has been suspended from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) for two years over what the ABPI on Thursday described as "serious breaches" of its code of practice.

ABPI's statement linked to a website of a self-regulatory body run by the association that pointed to a complaint alleging that Novo Nordisk had sponsored courses on weight management on LinkedIn for health professionals, without making clear the company's involvement.