Europe

KIEV, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a phone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss Ukraine's security situation, Zelensky's press service reported Friday.

During the talk, the two leaders discussed the ways to unlock the negotiation process in the Normandy format, designed to end the conflict in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas through diplomatic means.

Zelensky said that Kiev stands ready to continue active work within the Normandy Four, which includes Ukraine, France, Russia and Germany.

PARIS (AP) — Authorities in France want to accelerate vaccinations against the coronavirus before Christmas as infections surge and more people with COVID-19 seek medical attention.

“People can celebrate Christmas normally, but we must respect the rules...and get vaccinated,” French Prime Minister Jean Castex told public radio outlet France Blue during an interview in the Alsace region late Friday.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Environmental protesters blocked roads in Serbia for a third consecutive weekend to oppose plans for lithium mining, despite a bid by the country’s populist government to defuse the demonstrations by agreeing to the key demands of organizers.

Several thousand people braved rain and cold weather Saturday to halt traffic in the capital, Belgrade, and in other cities and towns in the Balkan nation.

LAJKOVAC, Serbia (AP) — Belquis Gonzales and her family enjoy something close to celebrity status in a small town in Serbia, where they live after fleeing Cuba five years ago.

While most emigrants from the Caribbean island go to the United States or Spanish-speaking countries, Gonzales and her husband chose Serbia — a rare country in Europe for which Cubans do not need visas - and arrived there via Russia.

LONDON (AP) — The British government may need to introduce tougher restrictions to slow the growth of the omicron variant and prevent a new surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths, British scientists said Saturday.

U.K. health officials say omicron is spreading much more quickly than the delta strain and is likely to replace it and become the dominant variant in Britain within days. The U.K. recorded 58,194 coronavirus cases on Friday, the highest number since January, though what portion were the omicron variant is unclear.

LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of Seven industrialized nations gathered beside the River Mersey in Liverpool, with host country Britain seeking “a show of unity against global aggressors” amid a crisis over Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine.

The U.K. is seeking elusive consensus from the wealthy nations’ club in response to what it calls “malign behavior” by Russia, and over tensions with China and Iran.

11 Dec 2021; MEMO: France will open up judicial archives on the Algerian war 15 years ahead of the stipulated declassification, the government announced on Friday, a move which could confirm the long-held allegations of torture by the French police and the gendarmerie against Algerian and French nationals.

French law provides for declassification of government documents labelled "confidential," "secret" or "very secret" after a period of 50 years, Anadolu News Agency reports.

NOVO-OGARYOVO, December 10. /TASS/: Ukraine did express the intention to join an association of countries in the Eurasian space when such plans were still being discussed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a videoconference of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on Friday.

Putin recalled that Kazakhstan’s first president Nursultan Nazarbayev was the brain-father of such an association.

MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/: Russia’s initiative on reciprocal moratoriums on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe is still in effect and Western nations should not brush that off, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday.

"As a first step, I invite [our] NATO colleagues to tackle the issue of how to make Russia’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such systems bilateral, mutual and verifiable. Our proposals are on the table, please don’t shrug them off," he said.

HELSINKI, December 10. /TASS/: Chief Editor of Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper Dmitry Muratov, who received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize along with Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, has called for the creation of an international tribunal on torture, as he himself said in a lecture delivered at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo.