Europe

MINSK, January 5. /TASS/: The crews of Belarusian and Russian Su-30SM fighters conducted their first joint air patrol of the Union State's borders this year, the Defense Ministry of Belarus reported on Wednesday.

"The Belarusian and Russian pilots flying Su-30SM multirole fighters conducted their first joint air patrol of the Union State’s borders this year. The pilots spent 120 minutes in the air, covering a distance of over 1,150 km during their patrol," the ministry said in a statement.

MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/: Security at key facilities of Baikonur’s spaceport has been tightened and the branches of Roscosmos’ enterprises are working as normal, the Russian state space corporation’s head, Dmitry Rogozin, said.

MOSCOW, January 6. /TASS/: Russia has registered 15,316 new confirmed COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, the lowest number since June 17, 2021, with the total number of infections reaching 10,601,300 cases, the anti-coronavirus crisis center told reporters on Thursday.

According to the crisis center, the relative increase of new infections is at the level of 0.14%.

YEREVAN, January 6. /TASS/: The Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) made the decision to send peacekeeping forces of the Organization to Kazakhstan, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, who chairs the Council in 2022, said on Thursday.

THE HAGUE, Jan 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Netherlands said it would cease funding a Palestinian NGO because of its “individual links” to a group deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union.

   The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is accused of ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group blamed for a 2019 West Bank attack that killed an Israeli woman.

   The NGO is also one of six civil society groups Israel designated a “terrorist organisation” in October for alleged links with the Palestinian group.

PARIS, Jan 6 (Reuters) - France's parliament on Thursday approved President Emmanuel Macron's plans for a vaccine pass to help curb the spread of the Omicron variant after a tumultuous debate whipped up by Macron's comments that he wanted to "piss off" the unvaccinated.

Macron told Le Parisien newspaper earlier this week that he wanted to make the lives of those refusing the COVID-19 vaccine so complicated by squeezing them out of public places that they would end up getting jabbed. 

ROME, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Italy on Wednesday made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people from the age of 50, one of very few European countries to take a similar steps, in an attempt to ease pressure on its health service and reduce fatalities.

The measure is immediately effective and will run until June 15.

Italy has registered more than 138,000 coronavirus deaths since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, the second highest toll in Europe after Britain.

MOSCOW, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it views the riots in Kazakhstan as an attempt, stoked by the outside, to undermine the country's security and integrity with trained armed formations.

In a statement published on its website, the ministry noted the rapid degradation of the internal political situation and the growth of violence in Kazakhstan.

MOSCOW, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Aerospace Forces are delivering a contingent to Kazakhstan as part of a peacekeeping mission organized by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the military bloc said Thursday.

The Collective Peacekeeping Forces include troops from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the Moscow-led CSTO said in a statement on its website.

PARIS, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- French Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday that he hopes the vaccination pass bill will enter into effect on Jan. 15 as the parliament adopted the first reading of the draft bill.

Speaking to French news BFMTV-RMC, Castex said the draft bill, transforming the health pass to a COVID-19 vaccination pass, was passed in the lower house of the parliament with 214 votes against 93 on Thursday morning.

"It is a good thing, not only for the government, but also for the country and for the French people," Castex told BMFTV-RMC.