Europe

VIENNA, January 19. /TASS/: Moscow expects a written response from the US and NATO countries as soon as possible to Russian proposals on security guarantees, Head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna talks Konstantin Gavrilov said on Wednesday.

KIEV, January 19. /TASS/: A court in Kiev ruled that former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko be released pending his trial on treason charges as long as he pledged to appear in court and law enforcement offices, according to a TASS reporter present in the courtroom.

The court rejected the motion by the prosecution to arrest the former president or have him pay a bail of $35.8 million.

Several thousands of Poroshenko’s supporters rallied outside the court building during the hearing.

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/: The Iranian side has handed over to Moscow a draft agreement on strategic cooperation for a 20-year period, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Wednesday following talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/: The current situation is calm, but fragile in Libya, so the international community should help the country on its way towards national reconciliation, Stephanie Williams, Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary-General on Libya, said in an interview with TASS.

"The situation in Libya is calm but fragile. And in this I think it’s relay in common on the entire international community to help the Libyans and also to encourage them to continue and energize their efforts towards national reconciliation and transitional justice," she said.

KYIV, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Germany will do everything in its power to guarantee Ukraine’s security, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on her first visit to Ukraine, amid rising fears of a Russian invasion.

   “We will do our all to guarantee Ukraine’s security. We will do our all to guarantee Europe’s security,” she said at a Monday press conference following talks with her Ukrainian counterpart, a day before she is due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

GENEVA, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Global employment will not recover to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2023, with a projected shortfall in hours worked this year equivalent to 52 million full-time jobs, according to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

While an improvement compared with 2021, hours worked globally are expected to remain 2 per cent below levels seen before the arrival of COVID-19, according to the ILO’s outlook for 2022 released on Monday.

GENEVA, Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The overall number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has exceeded 325 million and the number of fatalities has exceeded 5.53 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

   As on Monday Jan 17, as many as 326,279,424 novel coronavirus cases and 5,536,609 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 2,669,054 over the past day and the number of fatalities increased by 6,916.

   The WHO statistics is based on officially confirmed data from the countries.

VALLETTA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Police searched the residence of former Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Wednesday as part of a probe into alleged corruption in a deal struck by his government that handed management of three state hospitals to the little-known Vitals Global Healthcare group in 2016.

Muscat confirmed the police search in a Facebook post, saying officers had turned up to search his house at 7 a.m. and had also confiscated his mobile phone as well as those of his wife and teenage daughters.

BELGRADE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Montenegro's opposition parties and one grouping in the ruling coalition jointly proposed a no-confidence motion on Wednesday in Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic's Cabinet.

The small Adriatic country's parliament must vote on the no-confidence motion by mid-February. To pass, it will require the support of at least 41 lawmakers in the 81-seat assembly.

FRANKFURT, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Syrian doctor suspected of crimes against humanity, including torturing prisoners at military hospitals in Syria, went on trial in Germany on Wednesday in the second such case over alleged state-backed torture in Syria's conflict.

After a landmark German court ruling last week sentencing a Syrian former intelligence officer to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, the trial of the 36-year-old doctor started at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main.