Europe

MADRID, Jan 11 (APP): Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Tuesday met his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Albares and urged the Spanish government to review the Pakistan travel advisory following remarkable improvement in the law and order situation.

During the meeting, the foreign minister, who arrived here Monday, discussed the bilateral relations, trade and economic relations, besides regional and global situation.

Ambassador of Pakistan in Spain Shujaat Rathor also attended the meeting.

MOSCOW, January 11. /TASS/: Russia’s Kamaz-Master Team crew of Eduard Nikolaev won the 9th Stage of the 2022 Dakar Rally in the truck category, while his teammate Sotnikov’s crew crossed the finish line in 2nd place.

Nikolaev and his crew of Yevgeny Yakovlev and Vladimir Rybakov won the 287 kilometers distance in 2 hours 38 minutes and 43 seconds.

KIEV, January 11. /TASS/: Ukraine risks facing the adverse consequences of strategic stability talks between Russia and the United States because a boundary line between spheres of influence will run through its territory, Director of Ukraine’s Center for Research on Civil Society Problems Vitaly Kulik said.

"The possibility of strategic stability talks between Washington and Moscow is an unpleasant sign," he told Ukraine’s Glavred news outlet, commenting on the consequences that Kiev might face following the talks.

RIGA, January 11. /TASS/: The Latvian State Security Service jointly with the Defense Intelligence and Security Service (MIDD) has taken two individuals into custody on suspicion of spying for Russian military intelligence for a lengthy period of time, the LETA Latvian news agency reported on Tuesday.

MOSCOW, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Russia warned on Tuesday it could face a "very intense" rise in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant in the coming weeks and authorities preparing for a new wave of infections said they would make more hospital beds available in Moscow.

Speaking at a televised meeting of the government's coronavirus task force, Anna Popova, a top consumer health official, said Russia had so far recorded 305 cases of Omicron across 13 of its regions.

"The risk of a very intense rise in (cases) of the disease is real," she said.

MOSCOW, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Russia staged live-fire exercises with troops and tanks near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday while sounding a downbeat note over the prospects for talks with the United States that Washington hopes will remove the possible threat of an invasion of Ukraine.

A day after the U.S. side urged Russia at talks in Geneva to pull back an estimated 100,000 troops from near the border, the defence ministry said about 3,000 servicemen had started combat training including mock battles in four regions of southwestern Russia. 

COPENHAGEN, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is on track to infect more than half of Europeans, but it should not yet be seen as a flu-like endemic illness, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Europe saw more than 7 million newly-reported cases in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period, WHO's Europe director Hans Kluge told a news briefing.

SOFIA, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria's state and political leaders have been in self-isolation after Parliament Speaker Nikola Minchev tested positive for COVID-19, authorities said Tuesday.

The measure was taken after Minchev tested positive on Monday evening, hours after a meeting of the country's Consultative Council on National Security (CCNS) where he participated together with President Rumen Radev, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and other high officials.

MOSCOW (AP) — The president of Kazakhstan announced Tuesday that a Russia-led security alliance will start pulling out its troops from the Central Asian nation in two days after completing its mission.

The mostly Russian troops were deployed to Kazakhstan last week by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance of six former Soviet states, at the president’s request amid the worst public unrest the former Soviet nation has faced since gaining independence 30 years ago.

BRUSSELS (AP) — David Sassoli, an Italian journalist who worked his way up in politics while defending the downtrodden and oppressed to become president of the European Union’s parliament, died in an Italian hospital on Tuesday at 65.

European Council President Charles Michel called Sassoli a “sincere and passionate European. We already miss his human warmth, his generosity, his friendliness and his smile.”