Europe

KIEV, January 31. /TASS/: Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Monday said his country will fully comply with the Montreux Convention regarding the regime of the straits as tensions around Ukraine are mounting.

Ankara will also continue to reach out to Moscow and Kiev in a bid to help their relations to come back to normal, he said.

The regime of the straits, which the convention established to regulate the transit of warships, "benefits all sides," the minister said on TRT television. "Abandoning the convention isn’t under discussion," he said.

MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 124,070 over the past day to 11,861,077, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Monday.

In relative terms, the growth rate reached 1.06%.

As many as 9,090 patients with COVID-19 were hospitalized in Russia in the past day, down 8% from 9,883 a day earlier. Meanwhile, in 51 regions the number of those hospitalized has decreased, while in 32 regions the number has climbed, according to the crisis center.

MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/: A group of the Russian Northern Fleet’s combat ships and support vessels practiced anti-submarine warfare missions during drills in the Norwegian Sea, the Fleet’s press office reported on Monday.

The naval sailors hunted down a notional enemy’s submarine using sonars and data from military pilots, it said.

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced renewed calls to resign on Monday after a report found that alcohol-fuelled parties at his offices and residence when COVID-19 lockdown rules were in force should never have taken place.

The report by senior civil servant Sue Gray into the lockdown gatherings - at a time when Britons were all but banned from social mixing to tackle the coronavirus pandemic - pointed to "serious failures of leadership" at the heart of the British government.

MOSCOW, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- New findings by Norwegian researchers show that the novel coronavirus could have arrived in Europe a month earlier than previously thought, Russia's Sputnik news agency reported Wednesday.

Researchers at Akershus University Hospital found antibodies against COVID-19 in blood samples from as early as December 2019. The antibodies were detected in 98 of the 6,520 samples that were analyzed.

The researchers described the results as valid yet very surprising, adding that "the discovery changes the story of the corona epidemic."

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized Monday after an inquiry found that Downing Street parties while Britain was in lockdown represented a “serious failure” to observe the standards expected of government or to heed the sacrifices made by millions of people during the pandemic.

But Johnson brushed off calls to quit over the “partygate” scandal, promising to reform the way his office is run and insisting that he and his government can be trusted.

30 Jan 2022; MEMO: Shahd Abusalama is allowed to teach again at Sheffield Hallam University after a week's suspension due to an anonymous 'anti-Semitism' complaint filed against her.

Palestinian lecturer was suspended from teaching by the university over an anti-Israel social media post after it received a complaint against Abusalama.

ST. PETERSBURG, January 30./TASS/: Russia is in no way threatening Ukraine, all allegations by the US authorities about its threat are a total absurdity, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Sunday as he was laying a wreath and flowers in memory of the victims of the Siege of Leningrad at Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

MOSCOW, January 30./TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases across Russia grew by 121,228 in the past 24 hours, amounting to 11,737,007 overall, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Sunday.

The relative growth rate is 1.04%. As many as 9,833 coronavirus patients were hospitalized across Russia in the past day, which is 32.2% less than during the previous day. The number of hospitalizations declined in 75 regions, the crisis center said, adding that this figure grew in ten regions.

MOSCOW, January 30./TASS/: Ukraine is not ready to be a NATO member country, it will bring nothing useful to the Alliance, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in the Voskresny Vecher (Sunday Evening) program on Channel One.

"It turns out each time that the line they are supposed to defend is moving further east. Now, it has already come close to Ukraine. They want to also pull this country into there. Thought it is clear to everyone that Ukraine is not ready and it won’t make any contribution whatsoever to the strengthening of NATO’s security," the foreign minister said.