Europe

BRUSSELS (AP) — A car slammed at high speed into carnival revelers in a small town in southern Belgium early Sunday, killing six people and leaving 10 more with life-threatening injuries. Several dozen were more lightly injured.

“What should have been a great party turned into a tragedy,” said Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities said Sunday that Russia’s military bombed an art school sheltering some 400 people in the embattled port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine’s president said an unrelenting Russian siege would be remembered for centuries to come.

It was the second time in less than a week that city officials reported a public building where residents had taken shelter coming under attack. A bomb hit a Mariupol theater with more than 1,300 believed to be inside on Wednesday, local officials said.

20 March 2022; MEMO: Ghanaian player Thomas Partey, who plays for the Arsenal football club, announced that he has converted to Islam.

Sheikh Muhammad Al-Azhari, an imam, preacher and researcher in Sharia sciences in London, announced that the Ghanaian player took his Shahada at a mosque in London and declared his conversion to Islam.

Partey joined Arsenal about two years ago from Atletico Madrid for a sum of £45 million.

MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/: The West is waging an information war against Russia, it includes elements of information terrorism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday in an interview with the RT TV channel.

"Substitution of notions often takes place. When something happens, like mass protests, demonstrations that they [the West] don’t like, they immediately call it domestic terrorism. It’s a war. It’s a war which involves methods of information terrorism. There is no doubt about this," he said.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: There are no shortages in supplies of vital medicines, neither are there price hikes on medicines, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said on Saturday.

"Companies confirm that supplies of medicines to the Russian market continue. There are no shortages of vital medicines and price regulation is ensured. So, there are no price hikes," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

Murashko said earlier that the situation on the Russian pharmaceutical market was stable, with all manufacturers continuing to operate.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: Russia’s economy will never collapse because of the sanctions, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has held another phone call with Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, the second one in a week, the Kremlin press service said in a statement on Saturday.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin and Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel have held a telephone conversation, initiated by Luxembourg. In a continuation of their previous call, the parties discussed the situation in Ukraine and Donbass with regard to Russia’s special military operation," the statement reads.

LONDON, March 19 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Saturday that Brexit showed British people loved freedom in the same way as Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion, comments that were branded tasteless by opposition lawmakers and commentators.

With Ukraine's ambassador to Britain present, Johnson told a Conservative Party conference it was the instinct of British people, like Ukrainians, to choose freedom every time.

ZURICH, March 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights office (OHCHR) said on Saturday that at least 847 civilians had been killed and 1,399 wounded in Ukraine as of March 18.

Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons such as shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, OHCHR said.

The real toll is thought to be considerably higher since OHCHR, which has a large monitoring team in the country, has not yet been able to verify casualty reports from several badly hit cities, it said.

March 19 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is healthy, sane and "in better shape than ever", his close ally Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has said in an interview with the Japanese television channel TBS.

"He and I haven't only met as heads of state, we're on friendly terms," Lukashenko said in a recording of the interview shared by state news agency BelTA. "I'm absolutely privy to all his details, as far as possible, both state and personal."

Russia used Belarusian territory as a staging post for its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.