Europe

PRAGUE, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Hospitals in Slovakia, one of Europe's least-vaccinated nations, have been filling up with coronavirus patients, with the northeastern region of Presov reporting almost no spare intensive care beds, authorities and hospitals said on Monday.

President Zuzana Caputova has signed a law allowing the government to force unvaccinated people to test twice a week before attending work in the worst-affected regions and keep them out of restaurants and other services. The country of 5.5 million was not planning a national lockdown, however.

MOSCOW, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Azerbaijan's troops on Monday of violating the border between the two countries and sacked his defence minister, the Interfax news agency reported.

Another Russian news agency, RIA, quoted Armenia's Security Council as saying the incident took place on Sunday but the Azeri troops had since left.

Interfax quoted an Azeri foreign ministry spokesperson as saying Azeri forces were operating on the country's own sovereign territory and accusing Armenia of "provocations".

MINSK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Vladimir Makei has told the European Union (EU) that his country would try to reduce the migrant flows from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to the EU.

He made the remarks in a telephone conversation with Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the BelTA News Agency reported on Sunday.

Both sides confirmed their intention to end the migration crisis in an early date, the report said.

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia on Monday to be more transparent about its military activities near Ukraine but he stopped short of suggesting that Moscow might be preparing to invade its former Soviet neighbor.

Ukraine claims that Russia kept tens of thousands of troops and equipment near their common border after conducting war games earlier this year. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has supported a separatist insurgency that broke out that year in eastern Ukraine and still controls territory there.

LONDON (AP) — A blast in a taxi outside a hospital in England that killed a man was caused by an improvised explosive device and is being treated as a terrorist incident, but the motive remains unclear, police said Monday.

Russ Jackson, the head of Counterterrorism Policing in northwest England, said Sunday’s explosion at Liverpool Women’s Hospital was caused by “the ignition of an explosive device” that was brought into the vehicle by a passenger.

The male passenger died in the explosion and fire that followed, and the taxi driver was injured.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Monday ratcheted up pressure on Belarus by agreeing to slap sanctions on airlines accused of helping President Alexander Lukashenko to wage a “hybrid attack” against the bloc using migrants, as tensions mounted on the Polish border.

Up to 4,000 migrants are stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather after Poland reinforced its border with Belarus with 15,000 soldiers, in addition to border guards and police. At least nine migrants have died. Many of them want to head further west, often to Germany.

BERLIN (AP) — Austria took what its leader called the “dramatic” step Monday of implementing a nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people who haven’t recently had COVID-19, perhaps the most drastic of a string of measures being taken by European governments to get a massive regional resurgence of the coronavirus under control.

MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/: Moscow once unilaterally halted the flights of its strategic aircraft but resumed them after Washington had failed to respond in kind, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Rossiya-1's "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" show.

MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic plans to discuss the gas price and increased supplies with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Vucic said in an exclusive interview with the YouTube channel SolovyevLive on Saturday.

"This time we will have plenty of practical issues to touch upon. In addition to political issues, I can say something, and I also leave something for the one-on-one conversation. I would say that the top issue here, in Serbia is gas," Vici said.

MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/: Russia's coronavirus cases rose by 38,823 to 9,070,674 in the past 24 hours, the anti-coronavirus crisis center said on Sunday. Russia's new coronavirus cases have been above 30,000 every day for a month.