Europe

BRUSSELS, January 20. /TASS/: The European Union does not have any evidence that Iran is allegedly supplying ballistic missiles to Russia, a high-ranking EU official told reporters in Brussels on Friday.

"No, we have no proof that Iran is delivering ballistic missiles to Russia," he said replying to a question on the matter.

That said, he stressed that the EU does have evidence that Iran supplied drones to Russia.

MOSCOW, January 20. /TASS/: The Russian public’s level of confidence in President Vladimir Putin fell by 0.3 percentage points to 78.1% on January 9-15, according to a poll released by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center on Friday.

"When asked if they trusted Putin, 78.1% of the poll’s participants said ‘yes’ (a 0.3 percentage point drop from a rating referring to December 26-30, 2022). The share of people who approve of the way the president is handling his job rose by 0.3 percentage points to 75.2%," the pollster said.

PARIS, Jan 20 (NNN-XINHUA) – France’s Ministry of the Interior, said that, an estimated 1.12 million French people took to the streets across the country yesterday, to protest against the government’s controversial pension reform plan.

The CGT, France’s largest union, estimated the nationwide protest number at two million. According to the ministry, in Paris alone, 80,000 demonstrators expressed their discontent.

MOSCOW, Jan 20 (NNN-TASS) – Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that, the Ukraine crisis is “the result of preparations by the United States and its satellites, for the start of a global hybrid war” against his country.

The West is trying to prove that they are not fighting Russia, but are only helping Ukraine respond to an “aggression” and restore its territorial integrity, Lavrov said, at his annual press conference, adding that, the scale of their support makes it clear that the West has staked a great deal on its war against Russia.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Global leaders and business executives departed a freezing World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting on Friday after a frank exchange of views over how the world will tackle its biggest issues in 2023.

Here's what we learned:

ECONOMY: Gloom and doom heading into Davos turned into cautious optimism by the end with the global economic outlook for the year ahead looking better than feared.

Jan 20 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday that relations with the United States were at an all-time low, dismissing the idea the two sides could turn things around halfway through U.S. President Joe Biden's term in office.

"Bilateral relations are probably at their lowest point historically, unfortunately," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"There is no hope for improvement in the foreseeable future."

GENEVA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - China reported a large jump in COVID-19 hospitalisations in the week through to January 15 to the highest since the pandemic began, according to a weekly report published by the World Health Organization on Thursday.

However, the WHO said it awaited "detailed provincial data disaggregated by week of reporting" on nearly 60,000 additional COVID-related hospital deaths reported by China last week and did not include them in the tally.

MOSCOW, Jan 20 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday that Western countries supplying additional tanks to Ukraine would not change the course of the conflict and the West would regret its "delusion" that Ukraine could win on the battlefield.

European leaders meeting at the Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany urged Berlin on Friday to give the green light for the delivery of German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine to drive back Moscow's forces, although no decision was made.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany/KYIV, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Germany said it would need agreement from allies to give the green light for the delivery of German-made tanks to Ukraine to fend off Moscow's invasion, apparently dashing Kyiv's hopes for a quick decision.

Defence ministers from NATO and other countries were meeting in Germany amid warnings that Russia will soon reenergise its almost 11-month-old invasion to seize parts of Ukraine's east and south it says it has annexed but does not fully control.

LONDON (AP) — A British judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit that accused the U.K. government of allowing the import of cotton products associated with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region — though he acknowledged there were “widespread abuses” in the region’s cotton industry.

High Court justice Ian Dove ruled against a Uyghur organization and a human rights group who claimed the government unlawfully failed to investigate conditions in which cotton was produced.