Europe

MOSCOW, February 1. /TASS/: In their responses to the Russian proposals on security guarantees, the US and NATO ignored Moscow’s fundamental demands, President Vladimir Putin told a news conference following talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The president said they had substantially exchanged opinions regarding proposals on giving Russia long-term legal guarantees of security from the West.

PARIS, Feb 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet will not attend the Beijing Olympics after testing positive for COVID-19, the French organising committee said.

Estanguet was due to fly to the Chinese capital to observe the first part of the Games but will now stay in France, with Etienne Thobois, the Paris 2024 chief executive, expecting to make the trip.

Estanguet was at the start of last year’s Tokyo Olympics after also attending part of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

OSLO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - A Norwegian court has rejected mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's parole application, it said in a ruling on Tuesday, ordering that he must stay in prison.

Breivik, an anti-Muslim neo-Nazi, killed 77 people in Norway's worst peacetime atrocity in July 2011. He killed eight with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp.

OSLO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - British nature broadcaster David Attenborough, the World Health Organization and Belarusian dissident Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya are among the nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize after being backed by Norwegian lawmakers who have a track record of picking the winner.

Also among the candidates for the accolade were Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, the Myanmar National Unity Government formed by opponents of last year's coup and Tuvalu's foreign minister Simon Kofe, last-minute announcements showed.

GENEVA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Discarded syringes, used test kits and old vaccine bottles from the COVID-19 pandemic have piled up to create tens of thousands of tonnes of medical waste, threatening human health and the environment, a World Health Organization report said on Tuesday.

The material, a portion of which could be infectious since coronavirus can survive on surfaces, potentially exposes health workers to burns, needle-stick injuries and disease-causing germs, the report said.

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cannot answer specific questions over lockdown parties at his Downing Street office and residence because he does not want to prejudice a police investigation into 12 gatherings, his deputy said on Tuesday.

British police are reviewing more than 500 pieces of paper and over 300 photographs as part of an investigation into whether the Downing Street gatherings, including some attended by Johnson himself, broke COVID-19 lockdown laws. The inquiry is expected to take weeks.

KYIV, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed a decree on Tuesday to boost his armed forces by 100,000 troops over three years and raise soldiers' pay, but said this did not mean war with Russia was imminent.

Zelenskiy urged lawmakers to stay calm and avoid panic as he prepared to host the leaders of the Netherlands, Britain and Poland - all NATO members - as part of efforts to defuse tension with Russia and shore up international support for Kyiv.

01 Feb 2022; MEMO: Amnesty International has labelled Israel an apartheid state in a report released today, making it the latest human rights group to charge Tel Aviv with imposing a system of racial segregation.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — The table tennis coach, the chaplain’s wife, the dentist and the firebrand nationalist have little in common except a desire to defend their hometown and a sometimes halting effort to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian.

The situation in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers (25 miles) from some of the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed at the border of Ukraine, feels particularly perilous. Ukraine’s second-largest city is one of its industrial centers and includes two factories that restore old Soviet-era tanks or build new ones.

VIENNA, January 31. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's message to his Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, laying bare Russia's approaches to the European security architecture, has been handed over to the Austrian foreign ministry, Russian Ambassador to Austria Dmitry Lyubinsky said on Monday.