Europe

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/: The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is ready to be launched, deputy department head of Gazprom Alexei Finikov said on Monday.

"The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has been completed and is ready for a start," he said.

Construction of the Nord Stream 2 ended on September 10, 2021. The gas line consists of two strings with the total capacity of 55 bln cubic meters per year from the Russian coast across the Baltic Sea to Germany.

PARIS, Nov 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A police officer was attacked by a man with a knife in Cannes, southern France, and his assailant has been “neutralised”, said French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.

The attack in Cannes comes as worries over violent crime and terrorism feature among voters’ main concerns, in the run-up to the 2022 French Presidential election.

The police were treating the incident as a possible terrorist attack, police sources said.

“I offer my support to the national police and to the city of Cannes,” said Darmanin on his Twitter account.

Nov 8 (Reuters) - Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 250 million on Monday as some countries in eastern Europe experience record outbreaks, even as the Delta variant surge eases and many countries resume trade and tourism.

The daily average number of cases has fallen by 36% over the past three months, according to a Reuters analysis, but the virus is still infecting 50 million people worldwide every 90 days due to the highly transmissible Delta variant.

By contrast, it took nearly a year to record the first 50 million COVID-19 cases.

AMSTERDAM, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Relatives of the 298 people who died when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 on Monday asked judges presiding over the Dutch murder trial looking at the crash to provide clarity over the alleged role of Russia in the incident.

Piet Ploeg, whose brother, sister-in-law and nephew died in the crash, told judges to look specifically at Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict.

KYIV, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Poland accused Belarus of trying to spark a major confrontation on Monday as video clips showed hundreds of migrants walking towards the Polish border and some trying to breach the fence using spades and other implements.

Warsaw said it had deployed additional soldiers, border guards and police, while neighbouring Lithuania said it might introduce a state of emergency on its border with Belarus.

PRAGUE, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Czech Republic's prospective new centre-right prime minister promised rapid change on Monday, after reaching an agreement among a coalition of five parties to form a government and oust Prime Minister Andrej Babis following an election last month.

The parties - ranging from the mildly eurosceptic Civic Democrats to the progressive Pirate Party - pledged to cut budget deficits, which have spiralled since last year amid the pandemic and hikes in pensions and wages.

BRUSSELS, Nov 8 (Reuters) - EU authorities say there is no conclusive evidence of a cancer risk from synthetic face masks and have urged people to keep wearing them after a Belgian study warned last month they may contain carcinogens.

Face masks are widely considered crucial tools to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and have become an everyday item for a large part of the world's population through the pandemic.

LONDON, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Another 30,305 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 9,301,909, according to official figures released Sunday.

The country also reported a further 62 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 141,805. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

There are currently 9,160 patients in hospital with COVID-19.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to talk about climate change. But his opponents want to focus on corruption.

As a United Nations climate summit aimed at staving off catastrophic global warming enters its final week in Glasgow, Scotland, host Johnson is facing a barrage of criticism in London over his attempts to change the system that oversees lawmakers’ standards.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russians went back to work on Monday after a nine-day hiatus ordered by the authorities to tame a record-breaking surge of coronavirus infections and deaths.

Despite the drastic move, the daily tallies of new cases and COVID-19 deaths remained high throughout the non-working period. Officials in the Kremlin argued Monday that it was too early to tell whether the measure had the desired effect.

“Too early to draw a conclusion. It will be clear in about a week,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.