Europe

TIRANA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday that Spain is ready to support Albania to continue its reforms to improve people's quality of life and integrate into the European Union (EU).

He made the remarks at a joint press conference in Albania's capital Tirana with his Albanian counterpart Edi Rama following a meeting.

Albania is the last stop of Sanchez's Western Balkan tour, which took him also to Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

(AP) --- Even as Moscow’s war machine crawls across Ukraine’s east, trying to achieve the Kremlin’s goal of securing full control over the country’s industrial heartland, Ukrainian forces are scaling up attacks to reclaim territory in the Russian-occupied south.

The Ukrainians have used American-supplied rocket launchers to strike bridges and military infrastructure in the south, forcing Russia to divert its forces from the Donbas in the east to counter the new threat.

With the war in Ukraine now in its sixth month, the coming weeks may prove decisive.

01 August 2022; MEMO: The Big Ride for Palestine took to the roads and cycle tracks of England's midlands and north-west over the weekend to raise awareness of the Palestinian issue and funds for children and para-cyclists in the besieged Gaza Strip. More than 250 riders left Derby city centre on Friday morning and headed for Manchester via Stoke on Trent.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: It will be possible to say for sure if the coronavirus has become a seasonal disease in a year, immunologist and specialist in particularly dangerous infections Vladislav Zhemchugov told TASS.

According to him, there are two scenarios for the end of the coronavirus pandemic. Under one of them, the infection will turn into a flu-like seasonal disease.

"Next spring, we will see if the wave ends in a flu-like disease or persists through the summer. We need time to figure out if [the coronavirus] has become a seasonal disease," the expert emphasized.

SEVASTOPOL, July 31. /TASS/: The number of victims of the explosion at the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet has risen to six people, governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev said on Sunday.

"There were no fatalities, six people were injured, two in moderate condition, the rest are ins stable condition," Razvozhaev said.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: Russia calls on Pristina and the United States and the European Union who are backing it to stop provocations and observe the rights of Serbs in Kosovo, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

"We call on Pristina and the United States and the European Union backing it to stop provocation and observe the Serbs’ rights in Kosovo," she said.

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/: Anatoly Chubais, the ex-CEO of Rusnano corporation and a former Russian presidential envoy, is on life support at a European clinic, Russian TV host Ksenia Sobchak said on Sunday, citing Chubais’ wife, Avdotya Smirnova.

"Chubais is in an intensive care unit. I have just spoken to Avdotya. His condition is instable. He felt sick suddenly, with weakness in his arms and legs," she wrote on her Telegram channel.

"I was taken to a European clinic with Guillian-Barre syndrome. I am in condition of medium gravity, stable," Sobchak cited Chubais.

SEVASTOPOL, July 31. /TASS/: Senator from the republic of Crimea Olga Kovitidi branded the incident with the explosion on the territory of the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol on Navy Day as a terrorist attack.

She added that so far it cannot be definitely stated where exactly the attack came from.

ZURICH, July 31 (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has not yet received permission to visit the site of Friday's attack that killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, it said on Sunday, condemning the incident at the Olenivka facility.

"Families must receive urgent news of and answers on what happened to their loved ones. The parties must do everything in their power, including through impartial investigations, to help determine the facts behind the attack," it said in a statement.

SPIEZ, Switzerland, July 31 (Reuters) - The setting is straight from a spy thriller: Crystal waters below, snow-capped Swiss Alps above and in between, a super-secure facility researching the world's deadliest pathogens.

Spiez Laboratory, known for its detective work on chemical, biological and nuclear threats since World War Two, was tasked last year by the World Health Organization to be the first in a global network of high-security laboratories that will grow, store and share newly discovered microbes that could unleash the next pandemic.