Europe

KIEV, May 22. /TASS/: Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) has approved a bill on the country’s withdrawal from the agreement on the perpetuation of the memory about the heroism of the peoples of the CIS member states during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, leader of the Servant of the People party Elena Shulyan said on Sunday.

LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) - Britain's Conservative government needs to take measures now to help those most effected by a worsening cost-of-living crunch, former party leader and senior lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith said on Saturday.

British inflation surged last month to its highest annual rate since 1982, with consumer price inflation hitting 9% in April, putting finance minister Rishi Sunak under pressure to do more to help those struggling to pay rising food, fuel and energy bills. 

VIENNA, May 22 (Reuters) - Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, a 78-year-old former leader of the Greens, announced on Sunday he is standing for re-election this year to a second six-year term, which is likely to limit the number of candidates.

Van der Bellen is a popular figure who has been a steady hand in periods of turbulence including the scandal-tainted collapse of a ruling coalition between the conservative People's Party (OVP) and the far-right Freedom Party in 2019.

LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not intervened in an internal investigation into breaches of COVID-19 rules at his Downing Street office and residence, education minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Sunday.

Britain's opposition Labour Party has called on Johnson to explain why he met senior civil servant Sue Gray to discuss publication of her final report into parties held at Johnson's Downing Street office during COVID-19 lockdowns, which is expected next week.

BELGRADE, May 21 (Xinhua) -- The presidents of Serbia and Hungary Aleksandar Vucic and Viktor Orban warned on Saturday the impact of Russia-Ukraine conflict on regional and global food security at the opening of the 89th International Agricultural fair in Novi Sad, a city in northern Serbia.

A prolonged crisis could result in hunger across the world, they warned, stressing the importance of strong agriculture and pledging for more cooperation between the two countries.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s sprawling financial trial may not have produced any convictions yet or any new smoking guns as prosecutors work through a first round of questioning of the 10 suspects accused of fleecing the Holy See of tens of millions of euros.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Davos — the hub of an elite annual gathering in the Swiss Alps — is back, more than two years after the coronavirus pandemic kept its business gurus, political leaders and high-minded activists away. There’s no shortage of urgent issues for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to tackle.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — One is a restaurateur who fled Belarus when he learned he was about to be arrested for criticizing President Alexander Lukashenko. Another was given the choice of either denouncing fellow opposition activists or being jailed. And one is certain his brother was killed by the country’s security forces.

What united them is their determination to resist Lukashenko by fighting against Russian forces in Ukraine.

POKROVSK, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pressed its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Sunday as Poland’s president traveled to Kyiv to support the country’s Western aspirations and became the first foreign leader to address the Ukrainian parliament since the start of the war.

Ukrainian lawmakers stood to applaud Polish President Andrzej Duda, who thanked them for the honor of speaking in a place where “the heart of a free, independent and democratic Ukraine beats,” according to remarks carried by the Polish state-run news agency PAP.

Pokrovsk (Ukraine), May 22 (AP) With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the besieged Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate as a Moscow-backed separatist leader vowed they would face tribunals.

Russia has declared its full control of the Azovstal steel plant, which for weeks was the last holdout in Mariupol and a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity in the strategic port city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 residents feared dead.