Europe

BERLIN, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Germany's Greens on Saturday elected their youngest ever leader, building on their success in a national election last year that revealed their popularity among young voters.

Ricarda Lang, a 28-year-old lawmaker, will co-lead the party with her parliamentary colleague and foreign affairs expert, Omid Nouripour. They replace Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck who have led the party since 2018 but have both taken ministerial posts in Germany's new government.

KYIV, Jan 29 (Reuters) - From Monday to Friday, Mykhaylo is a lawyer, Alexander is an IT programmer and Konstantin freelances in online advertising.

On Saturday, the three came together in an abandoned construction site on the outskirts of Kyiv to train as Ukrainian army reservists, ready to be called up in the event of any war breaking out with neighbouring Russia.

ARGUINEGUIN, Spain, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Spain's sea rescue service on Wednesday picked up more than 300 migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands in rickety boats, with nine of them clinging to a semi-sunken dinghy.

The rescue service said it was unaware of any drownings as reported by a rights group.

Helena Maleno, founder of the Walking Borders migration monitoring group, said 18 people had died trying to make the perilous crossing to the island of Lanzarote from Africa. Reuters could not confirm that figure independently.

ROME, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Italian governing parties will ask current President Sergio Mattarella his availability to be confirmed for a second term, local media reported on Saturday.

Parties' whips would formalize the request in a visit to Mattarella at the Quirinale presidential palace Saturday afternoon.

The leaders of the country's two coalitions -- the center-right and the center-left -- agreed on this after a meeting in the morning, while their respective lawmakers were going through the seventh, inconclusive vote.

LONDON, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The number of black women killed in gun violence in the United States has been rising sharply, but no one seems to care, The Guardian said in a recent report.

While the killing of Brianna Kupfer, a white woman, in Los Angeles this month garnered national attention, the death of Tioni Theus, Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton, all Black women, in two other separate killings in Los Angeles, received scant attention and were largely treated as local news, said the report released on Thursday.

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian lawmaker is encouraging residents of the rebel-controlled areas of Ukraine to join the Russian army, a sign that Moscow is continuing to try to integrate those territories as much as possible amid Western fears that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine.

Viktor Vodolatsky said Saturday that residents of the regions controlled since 2014 by Russia-backed rebels fear assaults by Ukrainian forces and that those who hold Russian passports would be welcomed in the military.

28 Jan 2022; MEMO: Armenian Foreign Minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, is to visit Turkey in March, his Turkish counterpart said on Thursday, as the neighbours work to mend ties after decades of animosity, Reuters reports.

Turkey has had no diplomatic or commercial ties with its eastern neighbour since the 1990s. The two are at odds over several issues, primarily the 1.5 million people Armenia says were killed by Ottoman forces in 1915.

MINSK, January 28. /TASS/: Russia is Belarus’ main partner and it has no intention of absorbing the republic, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said during his address to the Belarusian people and parliament on Friday.

"Our number one partner is Russia with whom we are consistently moving along the path of economic integration. Practically half of our products are being exported to this country," he noted. "According to the most modest estimates, the growth of Belarus’ GDP will amount to more than 2% only accounting for integration with Russia," he added.

MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/: Brent oil futures prices with delivery in April 2022 gained 2.09% to $90.01 a barrel on the London-based ICE today, according to trading data.

Brent oil prices were at such level for the first time since October 2014.

Later on, Brent futures climbed to $90.95, up 1.5%.

At the same time, the euro and the dollar are in the red during the trading session on the Moscow Exchange.

MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a telephone conversation with Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock shared Russia’s first impressions of the US and NATO’s response to security guarantee proposals.