Europe

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 10,656 over the past day to 21,335,087, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Wednesday.

A day earlier, 9,474 daily cases were recorded.

As many as 1,583 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, down 18.3% from a day earlier. The number of hospitalized patients decreased in 49 regions, while in 28 regions the figure increased. The situation remained unchanged in eight regions. A day earlier, 1,937 people were rushed to hospitals.

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/: The Russian Interior Ministry has initiated more than 100 criminal cases over attempts at discrediting the Russian armed forces and 4,500 administrative offenses have been prevented, Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said on Wednesday.

"A total of 4,500 administrative offenses involving attempts at discrediting the Armed Forces and spreading falsehoods about their operations have been upset. Over 100 criminal cases have been initiated on the basis of our materials," Kolokoltsev told the State Duma.

MOSCOW, October 14. /TASS/: The Kherson Region will be closed to inbound civilian traffic for seven days due to an uneasy situation in the region, the region’s acting governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel on Wednesday.

"If hostilities break out, there will be an artillery cannonade. They will bomb the city. It is better to take people elsewhere, which we are doing right now. For this work to be more orderly, the entry of civilians into the territory of the Kherson region is suspended for seven days," he said.

ZURICH, Oct 19 (NNN-GNA) — The Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) has recorded a total of 2.89 million ticket sales in less than 33 days to the 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar. 

According to the world football body, the 2.89 million tickets sold so far were for the 64 matches to be staged in eight different stadia in Qatar. 

It said, out of the tickets sold, the highest countries to have purchased the most were United States of America, Saudi Arabia, England, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, France, Brazil and Germany.

PARIS/BRUSSELS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - European Union governments will agree to impose new sanctions on Iranian generals and entities over the use of Iranian-made drones in Russian strikes on Ukraine, four diplomats and a French official said on Wednesday.

Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks using Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks. Iran denies supplying drones to Russia, while the Kremlin has not commented.

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - New steps from Group of Seven countries to cap Russian oil sales at an enforced low price will not be replicated against OPEC producers, whose plans to cut output have irked consumer countries, a United States Treasury official told Reuters.

Washington has communicated to representatives of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reassure them of those limits to its plans and has maintained from the beginning that the cap would not target other oil producers, the official added.

Oct 19 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that COVID-19 remains a global emergency, nearly three years after it was first declared as one.

The WHO's emergency committee first made the declaration for COVID-19 on Jan 30, 2020. Such a determination can help accelerate research, funding and international public health measures to contain a disease.

The UN-agency has said in recent months that while cases are falling in parts of the world, countries still need to maintain their vigilance and push to get their most vulnerable populations vaccinated.

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The British government on Wednesday won a vote in parliament on fracking it had earlier told Conservative lawmakers it was treating as a confidence vote.

Members of parliament voted by 326 to 230 against introducing a ban on fracking for shale gas.

Oct 19 (Reuters) - Belarus said on Wednesday it was unable to repay its foreign currency-denominated debt due to sanctions imposed on it by the European Union and the United States.

The World Bank said on Monday it had placed all loans made by its main lending arm to Belarus into "nonperforming" status effective immediately, citing overdue payments amounting to $68.43 million.

VIENNA, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Inflation continues to surge in Austria, reaching 10.5 percent in September, the highest level since July 1952, Statistics Austria said on Wednesday.

The September inflation rate was 1.2 percentage points above that registered in August and exceeded the high inflation levels "during the oil crisis in the 1970s," Statistics Austria said in a statement.

Tobias Thomas, director general of Statistics Austria, said soaring household energy and fuel prices were the strongest drivers of inflation in September.